Cherrygrove's Winter Knights
…
-"Come and get me!"
"Ivysaur! Take Down!"
Leaf's Pokemon complied instantly, racing for the lone Quilava fearlessly. The heat might have gotten to a lesser grass Pokemon, but not Ivysaur: Leaf clenched her fists and watched as her stoic champion separated itself from its environment and situated itself for combat.
Quilava flipped forward, the flames on its back at full ignition. It became an orange bullet, flying for the undeterred Ivysaur—
Summer's chance! Before Aubrey's eyes, the red light of the Styler zoomed around Quilava as it hung in the air. The light spun round and around, stunning Quilava worse and worse by the passing millisecond. Its limbs began to creak and lock at the joints, its flames peter out and putter like a broken engine.
When it landed, the fiery Pokemon might already be out of commission—
But that would be too easy.
Kenneth's confident voice boomed over the shrill squeaks of outdated machinery. "Quilava," He bellowed. "Be ready on my mark."
Leaf's confident expression met Summer's eyes as they widened in realization. These were not the words of an evenly-matched adversary. Three seconds into battle, and already they'd fallen into a perfect trap.
Kenneth threw his arm behind him, whipping his finger as he bellowed, "Rolling tackle, now!"
The carnage shook Aubrey like nothing in her life.
Quilava morphed into a ball of burning reckoning, inching forward just so slightly as to knock Ivysaur off guard. Ivysaur waited just long enough to mount a counterattack, and that was the give-away. Quilava tore into the unsuspecting Pokemon, a crimson tire to the blossoming bulb on its back. In a display of singed flesh and fireworks, Leaf's Ivysaur went down hard.
Kenneth covered his nose.
"Ivysaur!" Leaf cried, her voice decorated with horror.
"You've gotta love freshly-cooked Pokemon in the morning," he said.
Leaf reached to her belt for Ivysaur's Pokeball, to retire it from further injury, but Quilava had a thirst for blood. It locked eyes with Leaf herself, marching forward with a seductive, frightening gait—
"Hey!"
The Styler flew around like an irritating Zubat in a darkened cave, distracting Quilava and drawing its attention to the confident Ranger still in the arena.
"We're not done yet," Summer said confidently.
Aubrey plugged her ears, shut her eyes as tight as her little girl eyelids would go, but even that wouldn't get the burnt smell from her nostrils. Chikorita stuck behind her calf, and Aubrey could feel its soft body quivering from the action. It was the one good thing from this; if Chikorita ran into that no man's land, Aubrey didn't know what she could do…
"Aubrey!" Paddy's voice beckoned. Without thinking, she turned away from the fight and watched a confused Paddy crane himself over the control panel. "I could use some help here, if you don't mind!"
A shiver ran through her spine, locking her worse than a Pokemon on the wrong end of the Styler—
He grinned quickly; Aubrey could see the apology in his gentle face. He didn't mean to raise his voice; it kind of happened. Aubrey felt herself un-tense, but only just.
"I do need your help," he said again. This time, Aubrey ran to his side, Chikorita bringing up the rear.
"If the two of you are done with…with whatever you're doing," Maggaly's words boomed from above. "I've got some instructions, and I'm hoping you're not too brain-dead to listen!"
"Maggaly!" Aubrey looked up at the singed ceiling.
"The one and only. I used the Styler's wireless as a backdoor into the stereo, but I can't hack anything while Summer's doing her hero thing. It takes too much SRAM to power a Styler's core while the Arc Router is streaming the command line and batch files—"
"In English, Mags!" Paddy shouted.
"In English, you need to hit some buttons."
From the corner of her eye, Aubrey spied Summer dive under the flame-covered Quilava and weild the Styler point like a laser-guided whip.
"Kyah!" She roared with Olympian strength.
"We're ready and able," Paddy said hurriedly. "Though it's getting kind of hot up here."
"Then let's get you out fast, eh?" She paused for a moment. "Standing in the middle of the console, you want a red lever."
Aubrey scanned for a red lever. It glistened against the approaching flames. When her hand moved for it, Paddy's was already there.
"I'm lowering it—"
"No! I never said to do that!"
"Sorry!" Aubrey said reflexively, even though she hadn't done anything. Her hands jumped to her mouth. She suddenly realized her face was covered in grime, and her lips were chapped like never before. Had Paddy noticed? What did he—
"Just to the left of that, you want the blue button," Maggaly said. She ran through the words like a tongue-twister, and the Almian accent only made that worse. "Press it hard."
Paddy slammed the tiny blue circle with his fist. It clicked into position and stayed. "Done!"
"Good. Good," she trailed off. Then: "Super-fly!"
Aubrey mouthed the phrase. Super-fly? Pokemon Battles were brutal, but what did that even look like?
"It's just a phrase, Aubrey," Maggaly chided. "I've got the Radio Tower's signal online. If I can hack it from here," she paused and added, "Which you know I can, then you just need to patch the Styler through and the SOS should beam as planned."
"How long?" Paddy asked.
"What, do you have a date? As if you're not already on one…"
"Maggaly!"
"Twenty seconds! Don't rush me!" The keyboards wailed in the background, louder than Maggaly's voice. "Whoa," she added.
"What's whoa?"
"Nothing bad. Just, this looks nothing like…Never mind, done! The Intercoms and satellite radio should be on. I'm just patching myself through into the central—"
A blood-curdling cry wailed through the halls, and the line went dead. Aubrey's stomach churned.
"Two down," Kenneth sang. Footsteps casually grew louder as he approached the radio room again. "Where's the Bearer?
"Would she like to play?"
Aubrey's parents raised her to always be helpful, but staring at the controls, she had no idea what to do. She couldn't help with the radio signal once Summer's Styler was damaged, and she couldn't run away. And there was no way she could fight Kenneth…
…That wasn't necessarily true.
Did she have to fight?
The answer: a thunderous, forbidden, seductive and alluring and impossibly-empowering yes.
A strange kind of magnetic force pulled her away from the radio controls and into the hallway, Chikorita at her side and fearless. This was something she could do. And it wasn't something she could do for some boy—because even Aubrey knew how dumb that sounded—and it wasn't something she would do for her new friends.
Adrenaline.
This was something that only she could do, and that was reason enough—
"Aubrey, no!" Paddy's words chased her as she ran out, chestnut curls tailing behind under her beanie cap. Before she knew it, her supercharged legs carried her into the burning hallway, locking eyes with Kenneth, who loomed not ten feet away, confident eyes locked on his defeated opponents.
Leaf's panicked eyes saw Aubrey first.
"What are you doing?" Leaf shouted, cradling a collapsed and singed Summer.
"So she comes!" Kenneth turned, the conniving grin back into place. "Does the prodigal hero want to fight?"
Aubrey ignored the words. She saw the image in her head, and if she deviated, she'd lock up from the fright that beckoned at the very edge of her mustered will—
"Kenneth!" She screamed. "If you want me, come and get me!"
She expected a dramatic quiet—that's how it was in the movies, right?—but Paddy's feverish words flooded the building's speaker system.
"This is Paddy McKenzie, of Cherrygrove's Winter Knights—"
The realization kicked in; Kenneth's grin became a scowl so fast that Aubrey thought she had imagined it.
"—this is an SOS. Repeat, SOS. We are under attack from Team Cipher. Civilians have been taken hostage, and we are outnumbered and severely outgunned—"
Kenneth started running, Quilava bringing up the rear. Now or never—
"Chikorita, Vine Whip at the door!"
Aubrey threw herself back inside the control room, grabbing Chikorita from its battle stance just as the vines extended and wrapped around the separated door. Their body weight hurled them back inside with enough force to slam the door shut behind them. Chikorita's vines released just before the door sealed—
Kenneth's fist banged with megaton force—
"—They are armed with Shadow Pokemon. SOS. We are being invaded! SOS!"
Paddy pulled himself away from an intercom mounted on the wall. At the door slamming shut, Paddy reflexively jumped to see Aubrey pull herself off the floor.
"You improvised," he said.
"You said to never look away, right?" Her lungs beat at her ribcage. And it was now so hot—
Paddy ran to Aubrey and took her by the hand. They were standing in a locked room, with death on the other side, both covered in grime, but he wore it so well. She got only the tiniest glimpse of the deep dark in his eyes, uninterrupted and free to be you and me.
The door pulled back and slammed down on the floor, making the two of them jump as though electrocuted, or perhaps caught in a treehouse.
Ivysaur stood in the entryway. A single charred vine pulled back into the blackened bulb on its back. Leaf stood behind it, her knees pulsing.
Paddy was smiling. "Not bad, right?"
"You improvised," Leaf said. "And unless you wanna get burnt, we need to get!"
The four of them took off down the now-too-familiar hallways, racing without direction—
Aubrey and Paddy ran into the hall. Chikorita jogged along, still racing with energy after saving all their lives several times in under an hour. Since coming on this mission, Chikorita had fought in its first battle, attacked a human being, assisted in a takeover of a radio tower, and was still ready. Not even twelve hours before, it was shivering to death in a pile of snow. How had Chikorita come so far, when in such a short time frame, Aubrey had seen newborns barely be able to lift their heads?
She beared the Chikorita.
What did that mean? And then how much she herself had changed, commanding battle commands…and Kenneth had called her a hero?
Wait, what happened to Summer?
"Maggaly said there's a turn this way," heaved an exhausted Summer. Aubrey craned her head back: Summer limped along the wall far behind her and Leaf. If she and Paddy didn't wait, they would get separated again.
"Don't stop!" Paddy kept going. Her feet slowed for just a fraction of a second, but Paddy was there to drag her further and further from them.
How many friends did Aubrey have to make and abandon in one day?
Her heels dug into the ground, and Paddy nearly careened into the pavement. When he got back up, Aubrey could almost see her reflection in the sweat on his face.
He coughed hard. The smoke choked at their eyes. She had to squint to make out the Pokeball on his hat and the concern in his tired face.
"Keep going!" He ordered, and this time, he didn't stop to make it nice. Paddy ran back, with Aubrey's eyes on his back, and took Summer's arm under him beside Leaf. The three Knights caught up fast enough, and soon the four were back headed for the exit.
The left turn approached. Almost there, almost there, almost there—
"Aubrey! Get back!"
Her feet skidded to a halt, and she almost grabbed onto a metal railing to steady herself—
The ceiling caved in not inches from her face. The hallway was a distant memory now, fire looming down the halls and along the wall like mirrors from the way they had come. If she hadn't stopped even a millisecond sooner, she would have become a permanent resident.
Aubrey turned back to her comrades. Fire to the right of them, fire to the left.
"And behind us," Leaf said. "A conveniently-placed window!"
…Hold on.
"Aubrey, do you trust me?" Leaf faced her with all the gentleness of a corpse. Leaf might have been short and cheery, but even unable to walk, Summer was much more comforting than the tired Trainer.
So, what was the plan? Jump out of a skyscraper? Aubrey looked to—
"I'm not asking Paddy, I'm asking you." Leaf said. Her words landed in Aubrey's mind like weighted anvils.
"Because if you don't trust me, this isn't going to work and you are going to die."
Paddy's face twisted. "Leaf, don't—"
His throat caught in the smoke. Aubrey could barely see Leaf through the black curtain. What choice did she have?
"I do," she said.
"Like you mean it!"
"I do!"
"Then we're going to jump out this window, and exactly three seconds later, you're coming down with us. Got it?"
What?!
"Got it?!"
Aubrey didn't get the luxury of a choice. Leaf turned around.
Aubrey couldn't see what happened—she could barely see the window from the inky darkness surrounding her and Chikorita—and only the hollow smash of broken glass gave her the sign.
She began to count. One.
Chikorita let out a tiny cough from its petered-out lungs. It, too, began to realize just how far it had come, and just how much it still had to do. Aubrey scooped it up; her arms wailed. Two.
The smoke stung her eyes to the point that she had to shut them. The black of her shut eyes and the darkness of the smoke were one in the same. And if she didn't move, she'd be there permanently—
Three.
One foot in front of the other, and soon you're running out the door—
"Aubrey!"
Paddy's voice came so near her as the relief of outside air caressed every joint, every bruise and every single solitary sore. It was so close in the freefall, so close as wind buffeted her tired legs and scrunched arms…and then it was so far, far above her as she continued downward, down and down and suddenly too tired to even scream—
A thud below her that wasn't her—
A tight rope gripped her waist, and she slowed to a gentle float, ultimately wafting, eyes still shut out in case she opened right to pavement—
And suddenly, the heavenly frost of the snow pulled Aubrey into a careful embrace.
"Aubrey! Aubrey, are you okay?"
"You know she's okay," Leaf said. "Get up, new kid. We're not out of this yet."
Aubrey tugged tighter—
"You're going to strangle that poor Chikorita," Summer said. It was beaten and tired, but it was Summer.
Aubrey unhinged her elbows and let Chikorita crawl out, walking along her chest to snuggle in the relaxing ice. Aubrey put her hands on the ground; water seeped into her mittens. She had forgotten she was wearing them at all until now, when she was too tired to even open her eyes.
But…really, come on, Aubrey.
What was there to look at?
The night had long since come over the empty streets. The only light would be the towering inferno behind them. The snow would be the same as it always was: light, fluffy, comforting as all get-out on a bad day at school…
She opened slowly. No more stinging.
From left to right: Chikorita grinning like a newborn, a satisfied and nodding Leaf kneeling beside Ivysaur as it retracted a vine, Paddy and that lovely happiness of his, and Summer, with a thumb in the air. Summer's outfit was at least an entire palette darker, with the jeans burned through and the shirt ripped at the neck. Her hair definitely picked up a distinct frizz back in the hall.
"You," Aubrey huffed. Her lungs were done for the day. "Your hair…"
The world went black again, as Aubrey's eyelids gave way along with every other muscle. Only voices came through to her:
"Paddy, you might want to get your girlfriend off the ground."
"I don't blame her for passing out," He said without denying anything. Aubrey was glad she was too tired to blush. "With Ivysaur's help, I think we can carry her back."
"Ivysaur's help?" Leaf again. "I saw the two of you in there. Aren't you supposed to pick her up with your pulsing biceps?"
Aubrey begged in vain: if Paddy were going to hold her then please, don't let her pass out…
"She's gone," Summer said. "But she deserves a rest.
"Looks like a Mission Clear!"
…
End Part II: Chikorita Bearer