writers note
Life was really ridiculous recently. I had been laboriously working through this chapter - I had over-researched this one part and lost all inspiration entirely. And then! I was in the car leaving Roswell, New Mexico, when suddenly I just had to write. I scrapped the half-chapter that I'd written before and eight hours later, this is what came. I've been steadily plodding through since then. And, I'll be spending the rest of the month participating in archaeological dig in Japan, so hopefully we'll be getting more inspiration from that as well!
Greenflower the beta is such a great beta fish. I am confident that she would beat you all in a beta fish fight. Everyone say huzzah to her for beating me with a stick over my sluggishness in updating this story! She is awesome.
chapter seven
Around the edge of the town, after they'd passed through the plaza filled with its vendors and laughing children, there appeared to be a series of stairs hewn from rock, much like the ones Satoshi had seen before leading to the Perch. This staircase, however, steeply ascended the edge of a craggy rock face without railing and without buffer; weaving and spiraling before ending as if into the sky itself.
He, Shigeru, Haruka, Masato, and some other people from the village - guards, or officials of a sort, Satoshi guessed - had been taking that escalator up the mountain for twenty minutes already, and still the distance of it loomed ahead, seemingly unchanged. And, since neither the mysterious attitude of Haruka, nor the grouchy demeanours of Shigeru and Masato had lifted, Satoshi had contented himself with looking around his surroundings from an increasingly panoramic view. When he caught Shigeru doing the same thing with a poorly concealed smile, Satoshi immediately caught up to him and began to talk.
"This is pretty tiring, huh? I wonder why the village leader wants to hang out all the way up there," asked Satoshi, pointing at the top of the staircase.
Shigeru rolled his eyes, but kept on walking, without moving over on the slight path, forcing Satoshi to keep to the trail behind.
"Well, for one thing, Satoshi," Shigeru spread out towards the vista below them. "The village leader can see everything from here. It's better for watching the village and making sure everything's going okay. It also symbolizes his position as a leader."
Accepting this answer, Satoshi looked up at the mountain and nodded several times. Haruka, who had been keeping up the back of the line, suddenly appeared at their sides with a delicate cough.
Satoshi punched his fist into his palm. "That's right, I remember now! Haruka told me that he rides a bird pokemon to the top of the mountain every day."
"Seriously?" Shigeru turned his head towards Haruka, utterly bewildered. "Then why do we have to take the stairs?!"
"To... build anticipation?"
Shigeru frowned. "It's not good for me to go up stairs! It puts me into a lot of pa -"
Immediately, he stilled. The air still buzzed warmly around him, but it was as if Shigeru had been frozen in time.
"Uh, Shigeru?" said Satoshi.
Haruka's eyes widened. "Are you... Is something wrong?"
"Haruka!" Masato's voice rung out with the sharp reprimand. "You're not allowed to talk to them!"
Haruka began to protest, flinging out her hands as she spluttered wordlessly. Satoshi looked back and forth between the siblings and then back at Shigeru, who was still looking at his leg. Satoshi couldn't tell what was going on in Shigeru's head; he wasn't very good at reading people, and Shigeru worse than others. But it seemed like Shigeru was surprised and for some reason, angry; this didn't make sense to Satoshi in the least.
He felt the awkward silence hanging in the air. Though, staring at the sky that wrapped vastly around him, the memory of flying on a giant bird pokemon only the day before surfaced and Satoshi gladly shared the idea it spawned.
"Now that I think of it, the Chief really had a good idea, huh? It's pretty hot and we still have a long way to climb. Why don't you just get Altaria to take you the rest of the way, Haruka? Shigeru and I can take Staraptor. I wouldn't mind riding him again," added Satoshi, wiping sweat from the back of his neck. Shigeru, red-faced from the walk and whatever had just happened, appeared exasperated. He didn't say anything in reply, though, simply turning around, and, brushing his hand against the juniper bushes alongside the weaving staircase, he caught some of their leaves and crumpled them in an angry fist. He continued on the path, and beside Satoshi, Haruka nervously put her hands together.
"I do think it would be better if we walked, though. We'd get there faster than if we called bird pokemon," she said, slowly.
"Are you still scared of him?" asked Satoshi.
"N-no, not at all!" laughed Haruka. "Shigeru seems... nice."
"Shigeru?" Satoshi asked, puzzled. "I was still talking about Staraptor..."
After further reflection, he added: "Shigeru's not that nice, either, now that you mention it."
From the front came Masato's overly familiar, and now immediately discernible, condescending scoff. Satoshi was pretty sure he overheard Masato grumble something about 'breaking ceremony' but lost himself in conversation with Haruka anyway. She was more than happy to explain to him how one went about building a trail up a vertical mountain, and the difficulties that came in it from erosion or other natural dangers. Of course, since there was only enough room to walk single file - or walk over the edge of the path and fall into empty space - Satoshi wasn't sure the whole venture was worth it. Haruka laughed, and Shigeru generally ignored them, his head down and his eyes (undoubtedly) glowering as he kept several strides ahead of the group.
That is, until he came up to the last step, and his body tensed and froze like a jolt of lightning was passing through.
"Shigeru!" Satoshi barreled forward, mindless of his footing, "What's going on? What do you see?"
Satoshi could barely see it from the angle he as at, but Shigeru's mouth seemed to twitch several times before he was able to soothe his expression and take a few more steps forward.
Satoshi, tailing him, reached the top of the staircase merely moments later, and he found his jaw dropping, too.
There sat, on a large, mutli-colored cushion, an apparently very happy, very tan, fairly fat, fairly old man. Patterns in white paint - or was that tattoo? impossible! - adorned his face, neck, arms, and bare belly. In his ears were bone earrings. Around his waist there was more than a loin cloth, for which Satoshi had never even realized he could be so grateful. The fact was, this tribal leader held no semblance to the person who Satoshi had known since his childhood.
"There's no way that that's Ookido-sensei," said Satoshi, turning back to his friend-turned-rival-turned-who-knew-what. But Shigeru's eyes remained fixed straight ahead.His jaw seemed slightly unhinged, actually, and there was a light sheen of perspiration collecting on his forehead. Of course, that could've been from the heat and the climb up the mountain. Satoshi had been certainly been doing his share of sweating. He did a quick underarm smell check. Surprisingly, not that bad.
"To to to to to to," greeted the old man. This seemed to be his way of laughing, Satoshi reasoned. Something about it was so absurd that Satoshi laughed, himself.
Shigeru's head whipped around to stare at Satoshi, and then whipped back towards the chiefsman. There was no question now: he appeared horrified.
"Shigeru-san, are you okay?" piped up Haruka from behind.
"Shigeru, there is no way that that is Ookido-sensei," managed Satoshi, inbetween giggles.
"You don't think I'd recognize my own grandfather?" growled Shigeru. "He raised me and my sister from the age of four! I know what he looks like!"
"But, Shigeru..."
"Would you just sit down already?!" called out Masato in a whine, from several meters below. "I'm tired of standing on this staircase for no reason!"
"I thought you guys weren't supposed to talk," said Satoshi.
Warily, Shigeru stepped forward and inched around the edge of the circle of tribesmen that had seated themseleves around the embankment of rock. Satoshi looked at them in amusement. They were all wearing loose-weave skirt-tunics, of an almost slate shade, though several of them had piercings, too, and all of them had the same, apparently symbolic, white tattoos on their chests, arms, and faces. They also all had long hair kept up in buns on top of their heads.
"Strange young men!" cried out a deep baritone, from the middle of the circle. Shigeru and Satoshi both whipped their heads around and stared at a man who was at the side of the Chiefsman.
"Kenji!?" they cried in unison.
"There are two seats for you here, before the Chiefsman," said Kenji, motioning towards two flat stones that apparently were meant to function as seats. Warily, Satoshi and Shigeru shared a glance, and moved towards the absurdly familiar (albeit oddly attired) figures of their friends.
As Satoshi sat down, he realized several things in quick succession: for one thing, the Chiefsman was sitting on some sort of bamboo chair that looked perilously close to being crushed by said Chiefsmans' weight, and secondly, on a flat stone in front of them lay a drawstring leather pouch.
"I wonder what that is," Satoshi thought aloud. "Hey, Shigeru..."
The brown-haired boy, however, was still staring at the Chiefsman as if the world were about to fall down around him. It seemed that the old man was oblivious to this much, at least, as he (and the Kenji look-a-like) was speaking with Haruka and Masato.
Satoshi elbowed Shigeru in the ribs.
"Hey, Shigeru! Snap out of it!"
Shigeru looked at him from the side of his eyes. Satoshi flinched at the expression he found there; it was rather glazed over and disturbing. Satoshi briefly wondered if Shigeru had lost it, so to speak, especially since now he was speaking in a way that Satoshi couldn't describe as anything less than conspiratory.
"There was this one year, when I was nine," he said, slowly. "We'd gone to visit a tribe in the Orange Islands and we participated in a ceremony that was the crowning of Sloaking. My grandfather was the - err - special guest." Shigeru swallowed. "That night, we arrived in the middle of the jungle. My grandfather... I... I thought I'd never have to see anything that disturbing again."
"What did your grandfather do?" asked Satoshi, his gaze wandering from Shigeru to several tribesmen who were apparently motioning Shigeru towards a sort of stone bench carved out from the side of the mountain. For a researcher, Shigeru was acting incredibly unobservant. "Really, it couldn't have been that bad, could it?"
"You don't understand. He - he looked almost exactly the same as the man you see sitting in front of us. Except that Gramps is pale as a sheet. When they dressed him up in white paint, you could barely see the paint. And... And it was so horrifying... I should've stopped him. I should have never let him do it."
Haruka and Masato had both made it up to the platform and were speaking with several tribesmen, who were holding large staffs with steel-fashioned spears tied with leather straps on the ends. There were red hibiscus flowers, too, though Satoshi found those to be a rather less threatening accent.
"Uh, it's okay, Shigeru... I've seen your grandpa do a lot of strange stuff, too. He also gets attacked by pokemon a lot."
Finally bored by Shigeru's stupor and continued silence, Satoshi leaned back, turning a bit, propped up with his arm extended behind him and stared out at the sky and the sea and the town below. His look of wonder became a look of contentment and a soft smile.
There had always been something about being up high that would make Satoshi feel excited, no matter where he was. He had climbed mountains and had seen vistas that would make artists weep, with mist rising and with sunlight trickling in like melting snow between the highest peaks. He had been on islands, and on top of dormant volcanoes, and underneath active ones. There is something different about the excitement stirring in him now, however. For one, he didn't have with him the blanket of safety that came with having his best friend, his Pikachu, at his side. Neither Takeshi or Kasumi or Kenji or Haruka (and Masato) or even Hikari were with him. Having Shigeru instead felt different. It wasn't any better or worse, as far as he could tell, that it was Shigeru with him rather than someone else. The thing that bothered Satoshi more than anything was the fact that his old friends were with him, but they were people he didn't even know.
The man who had once been Professor Ookido, Shigeru's grandfather and guardian, now sat on a seat of bamboo leaves, his chest covered in strange tattoos. Conferring with him were Haruka, Masato, and Kenji, the latter face being perhaps the least surprising to Satoshi, who had always known Kenji to be rather obsessed with the professor in his more familiar world, at least.
Satoshi turned to Shigeru, to comment on that particular serendipity, when he felt a spear point nudge him in the back.
"Woah!" he cried out, stilling the turn of his head immediately. "What-"
From the corner of his eye, he saw Shigeru mouth the words 'quiet', and jerked his chin forward, towards the center of the circle. Satoshi looked and sure enough, now only three people remained in the middle; the chieftain still was seated in his throne of sorts, while in front of him, Haruka was passing her hand over a set of clay pots. As soon as her hand had passed, the interior of them lit with flame, and grey, burnt orange, and white waves of incense wafted out from within. Once this had been completed, she clapped her hands and took from her sash an intricately carved knife, the handle made of ivory and of similar design to the ocarina she had used for calling Altaria. She leaned down to the ground, and sweeping the skirt of her tunic to the side, knelt on the ground, began to carve into the rock. As the knife made contact with the surface, sparks flew up. Satoshi strained to see what she was drawing, but from where he sat, he could only make out a circle for certain.
Haruka finished, coming to her feet and sheathing the knife once more in her sash. She clapped her hands once more, and bowed her head without releasing her palms. The smokes around her began to part and, rolling, overwhelmed the entire circle in smoke but for a path that rolled open like a carpet straight from the center to Satoshi and Shigeru.
Satoshi watched, horrified and fascinated, as the smoke danced right up to him and though not touching him, undulated, as if beckoning him forward.
"Outsiders, please come forward," Kenji called out again, in a very deep voice.
Satoshi hesitated for a moment - after all, there was still a spear pressing into his back rather pointedly - but somehow he scrambled to his feet all the same and walked the path lined and walled by intoxicatingly fragrant smoke. It only took moments to arrive at the center of the swirling smoke, all which seemed trapped by an unseen barrier from entering the vicinity of the carved circle in the ground. Satoshi looked at his feet in wonder, now able to appreciate the intricacies of what Haruka had made; there was an outer circle, lined by the clay pots, and within there was a sort of rectangle some several feet before the chief.
"Stand back! Remove your shoes!"
His own compliance took him by surprise; he didn't tend to take Kenji very seriously. But all the same, Satoshi was already untying his shoes before he realized what he was doing, and from a covert glance at Shigeru, it seemed true for both of them. There was no time to think it strange, though, because the voice - it must be coming from the area covered in smoke, thought Satoshi, since he couldn't seem to find its source - was calling out again.
"Step into the circle."
They did.
Haruka clapped her hands, and straightened. She opened her eyes and the smoke immediately dissipated, melting into the clear air once more. She bowed again, and stepped out from her place in the circle. It was now just Satoshi, Shigeru, and the chief. Satoshi set his jaw determinedly, and looked up towards Professor Ookido, who waved his hand towards them like a gracious host as he stood.
"You may kneel," he said, as if bestowing some incredible favor on them. Which it was, kind of.
"Outsiders," Ookido-sensei now boomed, "What are your names?"
Shigeru spoke quickly, with a bow of his head. "Shigeru, sir."
"And I'm Satoshi... Uhm, sir," Satoshi added belatedly.
The chief sat back in his seat, as if considering this information. "And where are you from?"
"Pallet town," said Satoshi. "It's in the Kanto region. Actually, Shigeru and I, we're both from the same place."
"Oh? You have the same mother?"
Shigeru looked absolutely affronted, for some reason. "No, we are not related. I have a sister, obviously absent. And Satoshi is an only child."
"I see," said the chief. He shifted in his seat, rather distractingly, since the fat on his stomach rippled with the movement.
"And what do you do as your trades, Satoshi and Shigeru of Pallet town?"
"We, are, well-" Satoshi fumbled for words. He had been about to say 'pokemon trainer' or even 'pokemon champion', but he remembered Haruka's words in the Perch, and how she hadn't understood. How pokemon seemed to interact with people differently in this village. And besides that, Satoshi hadn't been training pokemon for a year - not really. It struck him suddenly that he wasn't sure what he did at all. There was something in that that worried him.
He turned to Shigeru, his eyes flashing desperately. He didn't want to lie, but he didn't even know what was true anymore. Shigeru made eye contact with him, only for a moment, before looking away and facing the chief.
"We are researchers, sir. I investigate science and the past. My friend, Satoshi, is a traveler. He seeks to understand pokemon wherever they may be, and to become their friends."
A murmur began outside the circle. Satoshi winced, seeing the village people break out into conversation with that knowledge. He had thought that Shigeru had stated the truth of what they did pretty well.
"Look, Mister Chief, those are pretty normal activities where we're from," Satoshi defended. "But we are pretty good at it."
The chief cleared his throat pointedly. "Please explain further, Satoshi, Shigeru, what is your trade."
Shigeru's palm flew to his face. "We. Well. We don't have trades exactly, sir. We simply... travel and study."
The chief leaned forward, eyeing the two of them speculatively.
"Do you not provide for your families?"
A brief vision of his mother, smiling and waving him goodbye flitted in Satoshi's mind. "They don't need our help," he said, and he realized that this was true. Ever since he'd turned ten, his mother had been fine on her own. She'd even been able to take care of herself without his father. She was stronger than he'd realized.
Shigeru added, looking at his grandfather's doppelganger with as much irony as his eyes could hold, "My grandfather is a greatly respected man in his community. Like me, he is a scholar, and does not have a trade besides."
The professor Ookido look-a-like, now the Chief, affected a very familiar, skeptical expression. It reminded Satoshi of all of the times that the professor had chided him for not catching more pokemon for him to study.
"Does this mean you are both unwed?"
"Uhh," Satoshi's hand found its way to the back of his neck, and he rubbed it nervously. "Well, I'm kind of young..."
Masato sputtered behind them.
"Impossible! Unmarried and without a trade -- they're either thieves or princes!" he declared.
"Princes?" he repeated, incredulously, and laughed. It was fairly obvious, though, that it didn't seem as incredulous to the village elders in the outer circle as it did to him, as they watched Shigeru and himself stoically, as if afraid that his laughter was a mere prelude to some dastardly, criminal deed. Shigeru, too, cast a glare at him. Satoshi cut off his laughter rather abruptly after that.
The spicy scent of the incense still lingered, somewhat, but only at the edges of Satoshi's mind as Shigeru began to speak.
"Prince or thief, it doesn't matter, does it?" Shigeru interrupted. "We just want to go back to where we're from. We don't want to cause you any trouble or inconvenience."
The chief tapped his fingers against the front of his bamboo chair. "Then what are you doing here?"
"Nothing," said Satoshi.
"We don't know," added Shigeru.
The chief lowered his chin. "And how did you get here?"
Satoshi looked at Shigeru nervously. How to explain it, exactly...?
"We don't know that either, sir," said Shigeru. "There was a sort of bizarre accident."
"Then why did you want to come here?"
"It may surprise you, but I don't actually want to come here. In fact, staying in your village is really disorienting. So I'd rather go back to where I'm from, too."
"Yeah, that's true," Satoshi agreed. "We just kind of came here."
"And I woke up on the sand of that beach feeling like I'd died and been born again. What am I supposed to make of that? I had already been alive and I was okay like that. I was okay."
There was something in Shigeru's voice that didn't sound as confident as Satoshi would've expected it to, and he shifted uncomfortably as he wondered why it was. He began to speak even before he knew that he had opened his mouth.
"I woke up in Haruka and Masato's home, so I don't know where I should woken up, but before I did, I remember that there had been an earthquake, and uh - this is weird, but - I thought I heard singing. Or some sort of music. After that, I thought I'd been buried alive. Except I woke up completely okay, but in a place I hadn't been before. You've gotta believe us... This is all really weird," he trailed off, strangely dejected. Their story really did sound ridiculous.
"Young man," said the chief. He furrowed his wiry white eyebrows together, and folded his arms. "You hadn't come by sea or air, but had - unexpectedly - been transported here in an earthquake?"
"It seems that way," said Shigeru, now with a voice that was droll and emotionally unyielding, "And I don't blame you for not believing us."
For the first time, a broad smile broke out on the chief's face, once again effecting a happy, jovial appearance to the man.
"Oh, quite the contrary," he exclaimed. "I think we can very nearly trust you."
"Really!?" said Satoshi.
"Nearly?" said Shigeru.
"Of course! It's just like you said earlier. It's not important whether we trust you or not," the chief added, nodding his head in a sagely manner, and clasping together his hands. "Since we're sending you away."
The boat was just like any other that he would've expected to see. When Shigeru felt the wood it seemed sturdy enough, and though it was very lightweight, it didn't seem like it was about to rot. It was only the color that seemed uncertain, and prematurely aged. The constant rub of sand and saltwater had cast the boat a light grey shade of taupe. The pair of oars were much the same, worn and dyed a dark shade at the handle from passing through many palms.
More than anything else, though, Shigeru's eyes were fixed on the oars in Satoshi's hands as he steadily pushed the boat along its course. Sitting opposite of each other, Shigeru couldn't help where his eyes had fallen and rested; though, to be fair, it wasn't that Satoshi's hands were extremely unusual, or deformed; they weren't especially big or small, even. But there was something about the way Satoshi used them - something in the way that they moved that felt like the very application of quiet strength. There was a confidence in his hands, in the calluses on his fingers. So much so that it was soothing, even though the shoreline and the beach with all of its hibiscus flowers was growing further away with every stroke.
The water, though, was clear enough, and a deepening shade of blue. The sea was fairly calm, also, with only small waves now that they had pushed out past the main reef and entered the true edge of the sea. But, with the sun beating down, as intently as it ever had in the deserts of Alph, Shigeru couldn't help feeling a certain degree of unease.
"We're getting pretty far out now, huh?" commented Satoshi.
Shigeru, coming back to himself, nodded. "It's strange, though, to think that we're leaving Alph. If there was any place that had clues for us, about how to get back home, it would be there."
"Not necessarily," Satoshi said, lightly, "There's plenty of, well, you know... I bet there's plenty of ways to get back."
"Just as many as got us here, I'd bet."
Satoshi took his row out of the water and rested it on the side of the boat so he could rub his upper arms. "We can't exactly go back there, though. Those spears seemed kind of sharp and uh, I don't want to face them from the wrong end."
"Well I don't see what the big deal is," Shigeru complained, digging the oar into the water ferociously. "We're just outsiders, that doesn't make us dangerous! They should've let us stay. Besides, when I said I wanted to leave, it was obvious that I meant that I wanted to go back to where we're from... which is the future... I guess that wasn't as obvious as I'd thought it had been. But that was no reason for us to have to take a freaking boat and leave!"
"Shigeru, you're making us go in circles."
"Then you should start rowing again, too. We need to get to mainland after all, and we don't even know where it is."
Sighing, Satoshi picked up his oar and stuck it into the water. "All right."
It was hardly five minutes before Satoshi stopped rowing again. This time it was Shigeru sighing, though in exasperation.
"What is it?"
Satoshi bit his lip. "Do you think... Do you think Pikachu might be back at Alph?"
"Why?"
"Well," Satoshi leaned forward and loosely enfolded his knees inside his arms. "I was with Pikachu when the earthquake happened."
Shigeru was silent for a moment. "Satoshi, I didn't even arrive with my pokeballs. But they had been on my belt when the earthquake happened."
"Oh," Satoshi said, his voice low and his expression simply screaming his dejection.
Shigeru rolled his eyes. "Look, this is not the time for you to be acting like a girl."
"'m not actin' like a girl," muttered Satoshi.
"Fine. Act like a man and keep rowing."
"Do you think we can take a break now?" Satoshi asked, petulantly. He rubbed his biceps languidly. "I feel like I can't move anymore."
"You'll just have to push harder. We have a long way to go before we reach land fall, you know," Shigeru said.
Satoshi, mollified, put his oar back into the water and moved his arms in a steady stroke.
Thud.
For a split second, the boat seemed to ricochet off of itself; in the very next moment, it bobbed on the sea as if nothing had happened at all.
"What was that?" wondered Satoshi.
"That's what happens when you suck at rowing," Shigeru jeered.
"Hey! That sound came from your side of the boat, not mine!"
"Whatever! You're the one who was complaining."
"Yeah, 'cuz I was doing the hard work! You were just steering and I had to push the boat along! And... And you were complaining too!"
"Fine, if you're going to be a baby about it, let's switch places, and I'll do the 'hard work' for you."
With his arms stretched out beside him, Shigeru slowly rose to his feet. Satoshi did the same, though less gracefully. After an awkward dance around each other and the wooden planks that served for seats, the boys had switched to opposite sides.
"Now, let me demonstrate how to do this correctly," said Shigeru, placing the oar into the water.
"I know how to row a boat," muttered Satoshi.
"To propel the boat forward you have to put the weight of your whole body into the stroke, like this--"
Aside from a weird bump that happened just as the boat crested a passing wave, the boat didn't move at all.
Shigeru blinked in bewilderment.
"Ha ha! See? Nothing's happening!" Satoshi shouted triumphantly. "You suck at rowing, too!"
Shigeru jumped out of his stupor, bristling. "I do not! The bottom of the boat is probably just hitting something so it won't move! Hold on, I'm going to check the sides of the boat," he said, putting down his oar and scooting over to the edge of the boat. The sea water lapped against the wood with little waves. He put his hand in the water and felt along the side and bottoms of the boat as far as he could reach.
"It doesn't look attached to anything on this side, and I don't see any damage," he said. "Satoshi?"
"Uh, Shigeru? I think there might be something here."
Shigeru righted himself immediately. "Do you see a leak? Are we, are we going to sink?"
"No, I-"
"Then what is it? A pokemon attached to the boat?"
Satoshi's face was lost and terrified and regretful all at once.
"It's not on the boat. It's... Uh, just... Look," he pointed out to a patch of the sea not a full boat length away. Shigeru shielded his eyes with his palm and squinted. At first glance, the water seemed same as any other spot, with choppy waves all around. Except - maybe - there was one place, where it seemed as if the water was splashing against itself.
"If it's a boulder, we can work around it. We can deal with it," Shigeru encouraged.
"How?" asked Satoshi. "We can't even see it..."
"Let me see what it is."
"Alright," said Satoshi, picking up an oar. "Why don't you try to reach it with this?"
"And poke it?" Shigeru snorted reproachfully.
Satoshi glared back at him. "I don't hear you having any better ideas!"
"Fine." Shigeru took the oar and scrambled over the small bench where he had sat originally. The boat sank several inches deeper on that end, where both Satoshi and Shigeru's weight overwhelmed the small ocean craft.
"You try to stay at the middle while I lean out of the boat, alright?"
"Should I do anything?"
Shigeru turned around.
"Yeah. You're going to have to hold on to me," he demanded. "I can't reach it from here."
"Why don't you just swim out to it?"
"Because we don't know what's out there. If it's a pokemon, it could take me under and you won't be able to do anything, because you don't have any pokemon with you."
"I won't be able to do much if I'm holding you by your legs, either," pointed out Satoshi. All the same, he sat down next to Shigeru and tentatively put his hands around Shigeru's legs.
"If you go much further out, I won't be able to hold you anymore," he warned.
"That's okay," Shigeru replied. As he felt his hips break the water surface, he turned his head to see Satoshi clutching his knees with a rather pained expression.
"Just find out what it is!" Satoshi shouted, tightening his grip. "You're kind of heavy!"
Shigeru made a face at him. Then, he turned his head to the side, took a deep breath, and reached under the water's surface. Halfway submerged, his eyes tightly shut to keep out the salt, he swished his arms through the sea. Nothing. He resurfaced, and strained his neck to see the place where the waves were meeting together. He went under once again, and this time, the tips of his fingers brushed against something slick.
He jerked back and came up immediately.
"What is it!?" asked Satoshi.
Shigeru gasped for air. "I don't know! We need to get closer. Do you think you can move the end of the boat towards me?"
"And still hold on to you?" Satoshi shook his head. "I think the boat'll capsize if I try to do both! Besides, the front is still really stuck for some reason."
Shigeru huffed, and spit out the salt water that had splashed into his mouth. "Fine, then. Throw me an oar."
The oar landed in the water beside him with a very wet 'plop'. Shigeru reached over and dragged it to himself.
"Alright, why don't you try to hit it again? Let's find out how big it is."
Shigeru prodded the oar forward through the water. Just like when he had reached with his hand, the oar made contact with something and came to a stop. Biting his bottom lip, Shigeru dragged the oar as far left as he could. Then, he moved the oar back to his front and tried moving the oar to the right, and just like when he'd moved the oar to the left, he could feel the oar touching the solid, smooth surface.
"It seems really long!"
Shigeru let his forehead fall forward and float on the surface of the water. "I think it's a boulder or some sort of rock. It's really smooth, though. I just wonder where it's caught our boat."
Satoshi rather absentmindedly released and tightened the grip of his hand against Shigeru's ankle. It gave Shigeru the urge to kick him away, but he refrained. Even more than he didn't want to be touched, he didn't want to be released into the ocean.
It startled him to realize, again, that his leg wasn't bothering him as much as usual. He had noticed it before, of course, when he'd had no problem walking up the mountain, and it was ludicrous enough to be annoying and maddening. Now, even with Satoshi holding him by the ankle with hands like anchors, the idea that he wasn't experiencing any pain was nearly frightening.
Satoshi's voice broke through the quickly gathering haze of anxiety.
"Shigeru, do you... Do you think we could lift the boat over it? Over the stone, or the obstruction, I mean?"
After a pause, Shigeru nodded in agreement. "If we both get out of the boat and hold it above our heads, that should probably work."
Satoshi pumped a fist in the air. "All right! Just tell me how high it goes, and we can get a move on!"
Shigeru took hold of the oar again, and as he prepared to cut it into the water, there was another Thud.
"Did you hear that?!" called out Satoshi. Shigeru turned back, glaring.
"Of course I heard it! Did you just hit the boat against the boulder again?"
"No," said Satoshi. "I thought- I thought it was you hitting the oar against the boulder."
Shigeru narrowed his eyes, and once again, raised his oar--
-- and there was another thud. No question. Except, the oar wasn't hitting anything. It was still mid-air, and, as far as Shigeru had ever known, the air did not go thud.
Blinking the sea water from his eyes, Shigeru looked up to where the oar touched the sky, and water droplets trailed from the end of the oar in straight lines down the hardened air, like rain drops against a glass window, or tears on the lenses of glasses.
"Shigeru! Shigeru, what's happening? What are you doing with the oar? You're - You're trembling. Are you cold? Shigeru?"
He dropped the oar from his hand. It fell to the surface of the water and he didn't even flinch when salty droplets splashed him in the face.
His jaw opened as if it were held together with rusty hinges. "There's a wall," he managed. "There's a wall!"
"What do you mean 'a wall'?" Satoshi's voice was incredulous.
"I mean that there's something in both the water and the sky that we can't see that we can't get past!"
Satoshi's grip tightened behind Shigeru's knees. "Well... But, maybe it's just a giant invisible pokemon? Or - or a mirage? We're in the middle of the ocean! Why would there be a wall there?"
Shigeru picked up the oar again, lifting it to the sky, and slammed it into the seemingly empty space as if he could break the wall through and through, but the only thing that gave way was the hope that he'd been harboring inside.