Cherrygrove's Winter Knights
…
- "We will meet again."
Aubrey had never been in love with a boy before.
She had heard the stories, of course. TV, movies, books, video games, and music and even her friends at school all told soaring stories of love that conquered all, love that could overcome anything, love that was mighty and just and the only thing right in an increasingly-evil world.
It was all very pretty to think about, but for a thirteen-year-old girl, none of it could hope to ring true. Boys in Aubrey's classes had known her since kindergarten, and vice versa. Mitch the Nose-Picker and Billy the Homework Copier weren't the dashingly handsome gentlemen from the stories. They wouldn't sweep her off her feet in some majestic fashion; the former would probably pick his nose, and the latter would copy someone's homework. That was the world Aubrey lived in.
...But this boy was different.
The four of them walked hastily down the black corridors, each seemingly lost in his or her own thoughts. Rory marched like a soldier, increasingly proud of her ineffective actions, while Marie never seemed to feel any sense of satisfaction at a job well done. They were worse than two sides of a coin; they were two continents on opposite edges of a planet. Aubrey wanted to say something to break the tension, but didn't know where to begin.
For starters, as much as she hated to admit it, she hadn't known these people for longer than it took her to write a decent school paper. But at the same time, something about Rory and Marie struck her differently from her other friends. She couldn't quite put her finger on it. Aubrey found herself laughing alone; she was walking through the dark corridors of a government facility on lockdown, with a Chikorita in her arms, and wondering what about this was different from the norm.
"What are you cackling at over there?" Rory asked mockingly. Her spitfire ponytail whipped around. Even though Aubrey couldn't see Rory's expression in the darkness, she knew there was smile directed her way.
…And then Aubrey's thoughts were back on the boy.
"I'm Paddy," he had said. Marie wielded her basically-bionic arm like live ammunition, maintaining a grip on Paddy's shirt collar as they began the lengthy exit.
"I don't care what your name is," Marie had said back. "But if you're lying about Lanette, I'll skin you alive. I'm sure you care about that."
Aubrey and Rory hadn't said a word, but their last traded glance had said it all. Marie was one of those girls that needed a chill pill. Sure, Paddy might have been a bit suspicious, but Rory wasn't one for skinning boys, dead or alive.
Footsteps came from further down the hall. Breath became short; Aubrey's lungs forgot how to function. Had they been followed?
"Don't look at me," Paddy responded to the unspoken question. "I'm alone, and I made sure I wasn't followed."
"Shut it, Panty."
"Paddy," he corrected.
"I know what I said," Marie barked as she pulled him behind her, nearly slamming him against the wall in the process. Her trained eyes watched as the corridor before them slowly lit in a dim yellow glow. When she squinted her eyes, Marie could make out the four bright points. Flashlights.
Was that bad news? Or perhaps just the proper authorities, come at last?
At the mere thought of something making sense today, Aubrey rolled her eyes and pursed her lips. Of course they weren't police. Not that she had any answer herself, but—
"They're obviously the police!" Rory cheered like a buffoon. "It's our ticket out of here! Come on!"
The red blaze took off like a rocket. Marie reached out to grab her, but was less than a fraction of a second too late. "Rory, you moron!" She bellowed after her.
As Rory ran, the figures Marie could barely make out suddenly became clear. She could make out the silhouettes of five grown men, four with flashlights and clad in black, with the fifth dressed more casually, in a sweater and jeans. The centerpiece to their ominous ensemble was a girl their age; her long golden hair blended in with the dull glow of the flashlights. The girl was far too well-dressed to have been lost in the Pokemon Center like they almost were. Perhaps she was lost outside? Or perhaps Cherrygrove's Police were evacuating and finally getting a move on with…with whatever was going on?
"Hey! Over here!" Rory waved a gloved hand.
The footsteps ceased. The flashlights hovered in the air like lights of a supernatural craft.
"My friends are a little ways behind me," Rory announced. "So glad you made it here, though. I was starting to think that this city was totally kaput, or something."
Rory stood with her arms to her side and her hair falling down her back and across her shoulders, letting the light wash over her. Why were they taking this long to say something? Maybe she wasn't supposed to be here, and the police were making a report.
…Wait. This wouldn't jeopardize her standing as a Junior Leader, would it?!
She opened her mouth to ask—
The lights vanished.
As she waited, alone in the cold and inky dark, Rory realized that she might have been a little too quick to action.
Pitch black surrounded her in all directions. She turned around and tried to find Marie and Aubrey again, but even though they were only just behind her moments ago, they might as well have been miles away.
"Aubs? Marie? Where are—"
"Hit the deck!"
Rory pitched forward and onto her front as the white light exploded onto the ceiling. Marie reached out and caught the returning Pokeball with ease. Emolga burst forth, spreading it wings to crash against its opponents. Flipping over and scrambling to get off of the battlefield, Rory watched the combatants with frightened eyes. Two blue bird-type Pokemon with beaks sharp like knives dove and circled the gentle Emolga like parasites.
"Tailow," Aubrey recalled from her lessons the week before.
"Looks like some of your Hoenn buddies came to join the party," Marie scowled. Paddy remained silent. Was he watching planned events play out, or was he just as clueless and powerless as Aubrey herself?
Rory cursed at herself. If someone else had done something this stupid, she would have had a field day. "Where did they come from?"
"Waiting behind that light, no doubt," Marie suggested.
"Oh, that's fair."
Emolga swerved through the sky, darting through and across its opponents, but one telling disadvantage proved impossible to overcome: the electricity discharging from its cheeks. The Tailow followed it like moths to a flame, picking and stabbing away without hesitation. The bird Pokemon struck with murderous precision. Aubrey shut her eyes and buried her head in Chikorita's leaf.
She had to say something. This would be the second time that Aubrey had stood by as Trainers allowed innocent Pokemon to be harmed. Even if this wasn't the right time to make a statement, Aubrey knew that there was no such thing as the right time to do what was right. She had to do something, say something. Something, anything—
"Marie—"
"Your Emolga can't fight back," a man's voice called from the void. Rory knew it had to be the casually-dressed one of the five. His words were smooth as silk, his voice restrained and patient. "An electric, flying Pokemon can't do much in a restrained space without harming its Trainer. That's too bad.
"Not for us, of course," he laughed. "Glad I'm not you guys."
A shrill cry escaped from Emolga as the dual Tailow crashed into it from both sides, sending it careening onto the ground and skidding toward Rory. As though she were rebooted from fresh batteries, Rory sprung to her feet and reached for her belt. The lights from Emolga's cheeks were fading with each passing second, but they showed Aubrey all she needed to: Rory pulled up the hem of her sweater, revealing a lone Pokeball at her belt.
Rory's gloved hand danced eagerly around the shiny red weapon—
"Don't you dare," Marie barked. "I've got this."
"You know, Covenant girl, I'd love to let you have this? But your Emolga's getting turned into bird food—"
"Emolga! Aerial Ace past the birds, and then use your Spark," Marie commanded, bellowing over Rory's words.
Aubrey had all but disappeared.
"You're insane!" Paddy interjected. "Those are Shadow Pokemon. Your Emolga doesn't stand a—"
"Emolga, go. Now."
The three youths watched as Emolga scrambled to its feet. The Tailow hung in the air, seeming almost suspended by some other power, with eyes trained on Emolga and ready for a finishing blow. The instant that Emolga was on its feet, the two azure birds swooped in for the kill.
Paddy and Rory recognized the technique: Aerial Ace! Emolga shot past the two Pokemon in the split-second before they would have crashed beak-first into its gold fur. Its cheeks ignited into a punishing white light—
It headed straight for the opposing Trainers.
Marie and Rory could see him clearly now; the man no more than five years their senior, with his purple hooded sweater and his baggy jeans. The four men with flashlights were virtually interchangeable: they were a squadron of bald men in suits, burly in the arm and wide in the chest. As Emolga charged for them, the muscular men dropped their flashlights and cowered, arms over their faces and heads down. The man in purple—merely a boy by more mature standards—simply watched with an amused expression on his long, elf-like face. A pitiful excuse for a beard and wide blue eyes only made him younger still.
Aubrey blinked as the white light startled her. Chikorita bounced out of her arms and fell to the floor, shaking violently to scramble to its senses. Aubrey went for the Chikorita—
When the girls' eyes met, Aubrey felt as though she were staring into a mirror from another dimension.
The blond girl's lifeless expression bore into Aubrey like a drill, piercing further and further with the passing nanoseconds.
She had never seen a girl like this before. Not in school, not in town, not on long walks during vacation and certainly not at home. Her hair might as well have been composed of light; the locks of wavy blond perfection danced around the girl's collarbone without any possibility of flaw or imperfection. That said nothing about her clothing: though she was only a girl Aubrey's age, her white dress sparkled against Emolga's energy like the feathers of a swan in the moonlight. Only her shapeless legs, clad in unassuming black leggings, were fitting of a girl merely beginning her journey to womanhood.
All of this hit Aubrey an instant later, however. The first thing to disturb her was the cold, lifeless, bleak and depressing stare of the girl's hollow, gray eyes—
Emolga covered itself in raw electricity as it careened for her—
"Nice try!"
The boy in purple shot his left arm into the air. Aubrey's eyes raced just past the girl's dark stare to watch his metallic fingers form a fist—
Wham!
Emolga crashed into a violet force field. There was no other way to describe it; the barrier of translucent violet light appeared the moment the boy raised his clenched hand into the air, and Emolga rebounded across the corridor and back toward Marie like a child's ball. The flying Pokemon had fought valiantly, but as Marie was painfully aware, Emolga's energy was spent.
The Tailow hovered like vultures, eyeing Emolga like an expensive meal.
"Enough of this," the girl finally spoke up. Her words were as icy as her disposition. "Kenneth, turn the electricity back on."
"Let the birdies have their fun!" The boy talked like this was a party and not a battle.
"Kenneth. Now."
"Fine, fine. Don't chew my head off, princess," the boy called Kenneth said begrudgingly. He turned back to the other men and nodded. "You heard her, fellas. Hit the lights, would you?"
A moment later, the overhead lights came to life as though they had never ceased. Aubrey heard as the machinery began to boot and turn on all sides. The corridor suddenly made sense: the raw, alien hardware lining the walls and ceiling, and the exposed wires running all along the floor, told her that this was an emergency hallway of some kind. They had been walking through the emergency exits the entire time.
The realization hit Marie like a bucket of freezing water. There was no emergency exit to escape through; they were already in it and trapped like rats.
Footsteps…this time from behind them. Marie turned quickly, keeping her grip on Paddy tight enough that his shirt nearly tore apart. She had expected as much: more men in suits. Three, to be exact, all with Pokeballs at their sides and all looking ready to escalate this from bad to much, much worse.
Kenneth held his breath. If Aubrey didn't know any better, she would have said that he was the one calling the shots…but then she remembered the girl standing just a few inches away from him. The one that remained motionless and emotionless during the entire fight. As Aubrey's eyes traced the scene—trapped on both sides by people that obviously weren't interested in making nice—she found Chikorita standing by the downed Emolga. There was no fear in its green eyes, but simply a look of wonder at the sudden lights.
It was a brief moment where Aubrey remembered why she loved Pokemon in the first place.
"Does that Chikorita belong to you?"
It was the voice that belonged to a woman much older than the girl it came from. A person who had seen much harder days than fourteen years could bear—
"Answer me," she commanded. "Does that Chikorita belong to you?"
"Aubs doesn't have to talk to you!" Rory barked back. "Who are you, anyway?"
The girl's head tilted as though it sat on a ball joint of a doll, twisting with no change in the deadpan facial expression. "Excuse me?"
"Well, forgive me for wondering, but you bust in here with your boyfriend and a bunch of goons. So, what are you? Team Rocket? Please, don't be Team Rocket. Those guys are the worst."
"Nothing gives you the right to demand anything of me," the girl replied coolly. "Now," she turned back to Aubrey. "That Chikorita does not belong to you, then. Where did you find it?"
Aubrey's bones locked up and had thrown away the key.
"Don't tell her anything," Rory chided, as though Aubrey had anything to hide.
The girl's eyes chilled Aubrey through to her toes and back up again.
"Did it come to you?" The girl asked. And then, "Like mine did to me?"
"…What?"
Marie sprung into action—
"Emolga, one more favor. Shockwave!"
Rory's hair stood on end. "Have you lost it?!"
Emolga stood on its feet, letting its wings droop and slide along the concrete floor. Its cheeks illuminated one final time, and Chikorita had just enough sense to leap away—
The wall exploded in a display of crashing rubble and exposed wires. A cloud of dust manifested from the blast, shrouding Kenneth and the curious girl in a curtain of dust and men on both sides began to panic, covering themselves as the ceiling began to cave. As the wall broke apart and parted like the red sea, Aubrey could see daylight. The piercing breeze tore at her skin like it had only minutes ago. Through this way was freedom—
Pokeballs broke against the ground on both sides! Aubrey couldn't look fast enough at their new opponents. There was a veritable army. Marie couldn't handle all of them. No one Trainer could ever—
"Aubrey."
Marie took Aubrey by the wrist and squeezed her tight.
"Aubrey! Look at me."
Marie's hazel eyes were hard as stone.
"Follow this boy," she said. "Don't let him out of your sight. Promise me that."
What was she doing?! Emolga was out of energy. She was going to get them both hurt! Marie—
"Promise me!" She barked. The dust was clearing, the Pokemon were on the verge of unleashing an onslaught—
"I promise," Aubrey said shakily. "B-but what can I—"
"This isn't a Covenant job anymore," Marie said quickly. The panic she tried to keep out of her words was quickly seeping through. "It's bigger than me, and it might be bigger than both of us, so we need to work together.
"But I know I can trust you, Aubrey," she said. "Don't prove me wrong."
"Covenant girl? Hate to break it to you, but we've got company—"
"Then I hope you're as good a Trainer as you pretend you are," Marie called back. Aubrey wanted to turn her head and get a final look at Rory, maybe even see if Rory was all that she had claimed herself to be, but there was no more time. And then, to make it all worse, Marie let go of Paddy's shirt, took his hand, and put the two of theirs together—
"Please, don't do this," Aubrey begged through the nervous, electric charge running in her fingertips.
Marie shifted her attention to Paddy. "Lanette's not far, is she?"
"Less than a mile. And we can take side-streets," he said. "I can keep her safe."
"Good. Get out of here, both of you."
Aubrey couldn't take this. She might have just met these girls, but she wasn't about to leave her friends to a slaughter in the ruins of a Pokemon Center, and she certainly wasn't going off with this boy she doesn't know, no matter how much she wanted to. Aubrey felt herself starting to beg, but didn't even care. "Marie—"
"Go!" She barked, and this time, Aubrey's muscles responded without asking the brain for permission. She and Paddy moved through the rubble and out onto the cold, frost-covered pavement of the outside world. Chikorita bounded to Aubrey's side and into her arms the second its feet hit the ice.
Rory removed a Pokeball and stood to one side, while Marie and the exhausted Emolga faced the other. Despite the grim realities of the situation, Rory obviously lived for the battle; her battle pose, with the Pokeball out to one side and her knees angled and bouncing, came out of a TV show.
"It's been nice knowing you, Covenant girl," Rory joked. She looked around at the opponents that Aubrey could not see, for better or for worse. Her head turned one inch too far, and her eyes landed on those of the frightened Aubrey.
Rory's gentle smile appeared for the very first time. Like a warm blanket against a frozen winter night. Raw heat…Aubrey recognized it as courage.
"We will meet again," Rory said. "It's okay! Trust me."
Paddy took hold of Aubrey's hand and gripped it tight. Her heart nearly ripped out of her chest and into Chikorita's skull—
"We need to move," Paddy said. His words caressed her ears like lavender. "Your friends have this covered. Come on!"
Aubrey turned and headed down the unwelcoming streets, Chikorita in her arms and strange boy at her side. Snowflakes tickled her nose and chilled her fingers, just like they had when she first set out this morning.
Aubrey didn't look back until they had turned a corner, and the Pokemon Center was a memory.
…
End Part I: Innocent Starter