Chap 9
Disclaimer: Twilight and characters is not now, nor will it ever be claimed as mine.
Sorry it took so long to post- Enjoy! : D
BPOV
At 5 o'clock we rolled out of the garage, loaded down with training gear, tons of coffee and of course the dogs.
We were all wearing our uniforms and added some make up to make us look refreshed. We bypassed on the sleep since there was really no point- owing to the fact that if we did sleep we wouldn't wake up till that afternoon.
We pulled into the training garage and unloaded all of our stuff. Alice took all of the gear inside and went to the kitchen to start a fresh pot of coffee. Rose went in to set up the multiple workout courses, while I unloaded the dogs and strapped on their bright red vests.
Seth was jumping up and down excitedly, but all the others were serious and calm. Although there was a slight wag to their tales, you could see the different emotions clearly in their eyes; excitement at what they were going to do (mostly Seth), annoyance at being up so early (Leah), and focus (Sam and Jake).
I pulled them into the giant room and hooked each leash to one of the hooks on the wall, so they would not go anywhere. At this point Rose was about completed with the set up, with Alice's help. When they called "Done" Carmen walked in holding a Starbucks coffee cup in her hand.
"Good morning ladies." She said with a beautiful smile. Eleazer walked in behind her also holding coffee. Carmen turned to the right toward the office, while Eleazer made his way over to us.
"Good morning. I hope you had a good night, cause I can tell by the small bags under your eyes that you didn't get a whole lot of sleep last night." A smirk was hidden on his face, but you could tell from the glint in his eye that he was going to enjoy every bit of this. "The board members will be here in about an hour. They are going to be slightly late due to the roads." The clock read 5:35. We had already been here for twenty minutes.
"Get to work." He called over his shoulder as he walked away.
I turned back to my sisters. Rose was slightly fuming and Alice looked alert as usual.
"I can't believe this! We could have stayed home and slept, if we knew that they weren't going to be here on time!"
"Well we can't do anything about it now. Alice can you bring us some coffee and Rose and I will get started." Alice turned for the kitchen at the same time I turned towards the dogs.
I walked over and unhooked Jake, as he was the easiest to work with in the morning, and with Rose's temper- I really did not want to push her over the edge.
Rose placed a small piece of clothing with the same scent as the piece of the cloth in my hand, in an unknown location to either Jake or I. She grabbed a timer off the hook and went to stand by my side.
I bent down in front of Jake and presented the small red fabric to his nose. He took a whiff and began his search.
I forced him to search every nook and cranny ensuring he did not miss any spot, but urging him on so that we could beat the clock.
As soon as he caught the scent of the small clothing item he barked incessantly. When I came closer to him he backed away and sat quietly, just as he was trained to do. I pulled the cloth from its hiding place and revealed it to Rose. She smiled signaling silently that this was the piece of clothing she hid.
"That was his best time yet." She said sauntering over. I jumped for joy and began playing with Jacob. I grabbed a ball from the toy basket and threw it across the room. I repeated that a few more times, finally placing the ball back in its bin and hooking him back up to the wall with the other dogs.
At the same moment Alice came back into the gym area with three mugs of coffee.
"Sorry it took so long; all the coffee mugs were dirty so I had to clean them. Then Carmen started drilling me on the events of last night." Alice stated as she moved over to us.
"That's cool." I replied.
"What was his time?" Alice asked Rose seeing her holding the stop watch.
"3 minutes and 5 seconds." Rose answered. (A/n: random time don't know how long those usually take)
I went over and unleashed an over eager Seth, Alice following along behind.
"I'll do this one." She stated. We all had to do runs with the dogs, so Rose and Alice had to practice doing run-throughs too.
Rose went and hid a different piece of clothing in a different location. While she did that, I traveled around with other objects trying to divert his smell; this would make the run-through slightly more difficult for him. I rubbed my own clothing, Rose's clothes, Alice's clothes, and random pieces of material that we had for these drills, against the different objects.
When we were done we nodded to Alice and she began with Seth running through the course; Rose watching the clock in her hand. If we went over ten minutes we stopped, even though that wouldn't happen in a real scenario- but the point of the trials were to ensure speed and accuracy, if that wasn't happening under ten minutes in a self made environment, it wasn't going to happen in a real emergency.
Seth began barking causing Rosalie to poise her finger over the stop button. We never hit the button until the other person revealed the article of clothing, so as to guarantee precision.
Alice displayed the material and Rose nodded hitting 'stop' on the clock.
"4 minutes and 43 seconds." She called out to the two of us. Alice cheered and began Seth's favorite game of tug-o'-war.
This went on for some time, doing different routines and scenarios for each dog.
At the end of the hour Eleazer came into the room.
"All right ladies the real test is about to begin. The three board of directors just arrived. They will come in and explain what they will have you and each dog do… I'm not sure why I'm explaining this to you, you know the drill." We smiled at him and giggled slightly, too nervous to really laugh.
At that moment three people walked in though the front doors, dressed in jeans and business shirts. Vests detailing who they were and what they were affiliated with displayed across their front and backs.
My stomach erupted into butterflies.
EPOV
My brothers and I sloped across the girls' front yard toward the car, smiles plastered onto our faces.
"Well that was fun." Jasper stated once the car doors had been closed behind us, enclosing us in the semi-warm cab of the pick-up.
"Yeah, I hope the girls won't be held up for to long tomorrow, so we can get together with them," was Emmett's supplied answer.
"What if we planned to surprise them with something fun to do tomorrow? You know they're going to be tired tomorrow...er...today…after this whole thing. If we got together with them and did something fun maybe it could get their minds off of it." I stated.
"Yeah!" Emmett shouted in the close quarters, excited at the prospect of a surprise and doing something fun. But usually his idea of 'fun' and mine were somewhat different.
Jasper caught onto this as well when he interrupted Emmett's thoughts with, "Let's keep it somewhat reasonable and tame. Ok? We don't want to scare the girls off…or scare them period. Just hearing stories about Rose and Alice, I'm pretty sure that if we do anything in the way of 'scary' or 'terrifying' they would slug us."
Emmett and I laughed causing Jasper to chuckle along with us.
"Yeah you're probably right."
"What about skiing/snowboarding? Since we didn't actually get to go, and the fact that they live and work in the mountains, I bet they know some pretty secluded places to go, or at least good places to go." stating my thought out loud for my brothers to ponder over.
"That's not a bad idea," Jasper retorted.
All the way back to the hotel we coordinated plans for us and the girls.
Once we had reached the elevator a light seemed to have gone off in Emmett's mind as he spoke up in a defeated attitude, "What if they can't make it? I mean they said they had no idea how long this thing was gonna take, what if we make all these plans and then they go to the kaputz because the girls can't come."
I snickered at his word choice, kaputz? Really?!
But Jasper looked over that statement and replied rather rationally, "At 1 o'clock I'll call Alice, if she says that can't come or if there is no answer we'll continue our plans without the girls and do it some other time. Deal? But let's think positively okay?" Jasper said, staring straight at Emmett.
"Deal." Emmett replied with a huge grin plastered on his face.
We got into the room and changed into different clothes.
Emmett wandered over to the desk where the hotel phone was sitting and dialed his office number, ensuring that no new messages or important meetings were missed.
Jasper jumped and landed in a sitting position on the bed closest to the wall and began scrolling through his newly upgraded I-phone as well.
I strolled over to my black duffel bag searching for my MP3 player. Once located I sat down on the bed parallel to the one Jazz was currently seated on and laid my head restfully on the heavenly pillow, scrolling through the multitude of tunes currently on the system. My thoughts turned to Bella and wondered what she was doing at this point in time. Eventually my head shut down and my world turned black, creeping into unconsciousness.
What felt like a short time later I was being jostled awake.
"Hey man its 12:30 get up and get dressed. We were gonna call the girls soon and see if they have finished. Are you hungry?"
Emmett's massive form came into clearer view as I raised my head up from the pillow that I was laying on, my head phones having fallen out sometime during the nap that I had taken.
I sat up and replayed in my head what Emmett had just said trying to remember if I was supposed to answer. I rubbed my eyes and answered with a thick 'no' to his 'hungry' question.
I took a deep breath and got up off the bed. I drug my feet over to my bag and began rifling through for some warm clothes. I found some fresh ones and trudged to the bathroom, taking a quick shower to wake myself up and wash my hair. I got dressed and exited the small exotic themed bathroom and put my other clothes in my bag.
Emmett and Jasper were already dressed and ready but were currently watching a NBA basketball game between what appeared to be the Detroit Pistons and New York Knicks, glancing at the score in the upper left hand corner confirmed my suspicions. Not being from either location, tended to mean we had no real interest in which team won but it was a game nonetheless.
"Who are you rooting for?" I asked Emmett as I sat down next to him.
"Uh… Knicks. Jazz is goin' for the Pistons." He replied with a serious focused expression on his face. I chuckled at his appearance of determination for the team to win. I glanced at the TV and noted that The Knicks were shooting a free-throw- meaning that their team got fouled in some way, but I missed the reason.
I glanced over to Jasper and he was not paying attention to the screen, but to his phone.
His eyebrows furrowed in puzzlement.
"What's the matter Jazz?" I asked curiously. I hadn't seen him like this since we were about 13 and he was confused as to why this girl kissed him on the cheek and then started crying, then ran away.
"The girls haven't called or texted. And I've sent at least 2 texts and called once already."
"Dude, they're probably still working, just relax. You did tell Em that if they didn't respond we would just head out with out them, not that I want to, but this is more important than spending an afternoon with us."
He took a deep breath, "Yeah I know, it's just, I kinda expected them to at least answer."
"Maybe they don't have signal," came Emmett's response from beside me. Somehow his statement seemed to make since to me, but Jasper just looked even more confused.
"I mean you don't expect these…who were they? Board members... to have the dogs train in their own environment do you? That kind of defeats the purpose for what they are trying to determine." I looked at my brother with slight shock, impressed that he had reached that conclusion. I turned back to Jazz, "You know he has a point."
"Of course I do," he said smugly. I just shook my head at him. Jasper sighed and said,
"Well if you guys don't think much of it then I guess I'll call them one last time then we can go."
"Yes!!" Emmett jumped up and yelled, excitement etched onto his face, his hands thrown in the air. I turned back to the basketball game and noted that the Knicks had just stolen the lead with a fantastic 3-point shot, as displayed on the instant replay.
"Ha, Ha! Beat that! I bet your wishin' you chose the Knicks now huh?!" He taunted with an evil smirk.
Jasper just rolled his eyes, "Don't hold you breath, big guy, they'll be behind in no time." As soon as he said that screaming came from the TV, the Pistons laughing and yelling as their players just took back the two-point lead.
"Told you," Jazz said as he got up and went into the other room. I roared with laughter at the defeated look on Emmett's face, as he dropped down back onto the bed. "Oh shut up." He mumbled to me, which just caused me to laugh harder.
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
After the game, we piled into the car, having tried unsuccessfully once more to reach the Hale girls, coming to the conclusion that they were unavailable. Either way Jasper was in a slightly better mood than Emmett, as the Pistons won with a very close victory of 110- to 107, but Emmett being Emmett lost money out of it therefore bumping his mood down more.
Our snowboards were strapped down in the back of the truck, and we were bundled up in our gear to prevent us from getting cold or hurt. Jasper, being a military man, had a medium sized back-pack on, full of necessary items in case we got lost or into trouble.
We drove to the top of the mountain where the Sporting goods store was, as well as the Starbucks where we had first officially met the girls. Emmett parked and we all climbed out of the heated truck, stepping onto the freezing ground, shin deep in snow.
We made our way over to the small building beside the sporting goods store, where a mountaineer office sat. We received our wrist bands, allowing us access to multiple slopes and strode off to the nearest one.
We came up to the edge of the cliff stopping to strap our boards to our feet.
"Last one down get's to buy me dinner!" Emmett taunted. Jazz and I laughed.
"What if you're the last one?" I shouted back before he could start.
"I guess I'll buy dinner then." He stated simply then jump started his decent. Jazz and I followed shortly after.
We curved, cut, and sliced our way down the hill, laughing and calling out as much as was possible.
Anyone could see the abnormally large grins plastered on our faces, as we felt the glorious wind on our faces (at least the part that wasn't covered by a mask).
We made our way safely to the bottom, I coming in first, followed closely by Jasper, and ending with Emmett. Jasper and I both laughed.
"I guess you shouldn't have taken so many detours!" Jasper called out to him as him, as he came to a stop beside us.
"Oh whatever! At least I had the guts to swerve my way through trees! What did you do go straight down?!"
"No! I just didn't come face to face with a tree branch!" Jasper gibed.
"That was him!" I cried and laughed so loud a few people turned to stare. "Oh my god! That was hilarious! I didn't know it was my own brother!" I laughed harder, Jasper joining me, as we watched Emmett's face turn into a pouting grimace.
"You just wait; I'll make sure your not laughing later!" He goaded.
"Oooh, I'm trembling with fear." Jasper teased as we laughed and followed a retreating Emmett.
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
Our day continued much the same, starting at the top, carving our way to the bottom. Teasing, jeering, and laughing every time in between.
At about 8:00 the sun was starting to set making it a little cooler than it was before.
We were at the top of another hill waiting to start our decent.
"Hey, let's be adventurous! Why don't we go though the trees instead and make our way down a little slower, I see some awesome hills for jumping over there." Emmett said. I wasn't to sure about this idea, but didn't want to be called a wimp by my own flesh-and-blood so I agreed as well as Jasper.
We started out slowly making our way through the sparse trees, which quickly became more compact. The closeness of the trees prevented us from going very fast, but we were still going down at a decent speed. We continued staying close together so as not to get separated.
After about fifteen minutes of down hill treading I called out to my brothers.
"Hey where are these hills you saw Em?"
"I don't know they should be around here somewhere. I guess it was farther than it looked."
As we continued, slowing down more each second, I looked up and noted that we could no longer see any sky or any land markers from the top of the hill. In fact all I saw around me were tree, trees, and more trees.
I made the note to my brothers who too began looking around seeing no change in scenic appearance. Emmett came to a sudden stop, forcing Jasper and I to halt rather quickly as well.
"Maybe this wasn't such a good idea," Jasper voiced, his voice laced with concern.
"Well, probably not, but the only way we can try and fix it, is if we go straight down. We might possibly run into a village on the outskirts of the main town." Emmett stated with authority.
"That sounds like a plan. What do you think Jasper?"
"Well we can't do much else." He said looking up from his I-phone. "We have absolutely no signal. So trying to use GPS to get us back, is out."
"Well alright then, lead on, big brother." I said trying to keep my voice light, yet was starting get concerned as well.
We continued our decline through the forest covered mountain, swerving through the multitude of trees that stood in our way. Twenty minutes later Jasper called out for us to stop.
We did as he asked and slid over next to him. He tossed us each a water bottle from his bag. We opened without response and took a swig.
"I think we should take a break, for a short while before we resume the decline." Jasper noted, with a serious expression. Emmett and I both nodded our agreement.
We sat and took slow mouthfuls of water, so as to not make our-selves sick, and simply sat in silence listening to the sounds of nature around us.
With a five minute break behind us we righted our-selves and kept on with our downward slope to the bottom of the mountain.
Forty-five minutes later (according to my watch) we still had not reached the bottom.
"My god this is getting frustrating!" Emmett yelled not wanting to show his growing fear, which was directed secretely toward my other brother and I. Knowing Emmett as I do, he continually played the part of the big brother, and knew when he put us into a compromising situation. But in most other cases he was able to get us out of trouble easily, unlike the one we were currently in.
"Em, it's okay. We have to keep a level head, otherwise we're not going to get anywhere." Jasper said, with brother and military mode kicking in. Unlike myself, Jasper knew in a different manner how he was feeling, having always had this aptitude for understanding other's emotions (except in some cases when it came to the female gender, he had trouble figuring them out, like most us guys do). I on the other hand just had a capacity of 'reading' people, picking up on things that no one else noticed. (Again except sometimes when it came to women.)
"No it's not okay Jasper! I got you two into this mess because of my stupidity! Arg I never should have made the suggestion, especially when the sun was going down! Now we have no idea where we are, and no way to get a hold of anyone!...Ugh and now I'm hungry!!" He shouted. At this point we knew he just needed to let his frustration out of his system, otherwise it was going to explode in a worse way if we kept trying to console him. We learned that the hard way in grade school.
Jasper chuckled beside me, "Well I can't really help with the first few complaints, but I might be able to help with the last."
He sat down and whipped his back-pack, off and around to his front, placing it onto his lap. He slid the zipper down the side and pulled out several items. Military canisters.
"Food!" Emmett cried. A few of the packages were military supplies that Jasper placed in our Emergency Kit back home in case of natural disasters or some other reason.
We all sat down and opened the containers, digging into the pre-packaged items.
Meanwhile…
RandomPersonPOV
I was in the small booth that substituted as an office, lounging in the black leather cushioned chair, reclining with my feet resting on the counter in front of me. The office was small and square, but a long counter/desk area took up the one wall underneath the window, on the same wall as the office door. Behind me were radios, cabinets, and control panels, which would allow me to alert other officers if there was a missing persons report, bad weather, and so on. A small TV was sitting in the corner where two of the walls connected, on top of the counter. My feet were slightly to the side of it so that I could see the screen. The radio was making static noises in the background, but I was focused on the current soccer game on in front of me –US versus Britain- which was currently 0 to 0.
Suddenly a voice came over the radio reporting bad weather headed straight for our location. I whipped into action changing the channel to the weather station, grabbing behind me for the walkie-talkie, and twisting and turning knobs to hear clearly of whether this was a storm worth reporting.
After some fiddling and jotting of important information, I began relaying the information to the others on the mountain, and the town below.
"Attention all officers, heavy snow storm headed in South by Southeasterly direction. Will hit possibly under an hour. Begin removing all from the mountain suggesting all to reach shelter." I continued with the current wind speed, temperature, and other factors.
I repeated the message to ensure that everyone heard and received the message. I got up locked the door, blocked the window with a large cut piece of wood, and prepared to bunker down myself.
Back with the guys…
EPOV
We ate a small meal, saving what we could for tomorrow, as we had decided to call it a night and continue our hunt for the bottom in the morning, when we could see clearly.
"We should dig some semblance of holes so that we can keep warm and keep some of our bodies out of the surrounding elements." Jasper said, supplying his military expertise.
We nodded our heads and began scooping our holes for our-selves close by to each other to supply more warmth. Once that was done, Emmett went to the nearest tree and snapped off several branches to create a fire.
"I'll start it and keep watch, so it doesn't spread."
"I'll take a shift after you, and Edward can follow," Jasper said with a nod in my direction, I supplied my own nod and he continued. "We can switch off every…3 hours, so we can have some semblance of sleep."
Emmett and I nodded, Jasper and I slouching into our current holes and falling into an uneasy sleep.
Several hours later Jasper nudged me and I sat up to take watch. I noted that the wind was howling and snow was falling. Emmett's large frame was slumbering a few feet away, the fire glowing brightly but blowing around in the wind. Good thing we don't have sleeping bags, they'd have caught on fire by now with the flying sparks, I thought.
Every few minutes I added wood to the fire or turned a log so as to burn the other side of it. I was cold and in pain from the awkward position that I slept in, but didn't complain, even to my-self.
I kept my- self on full alert to listen for approaching steps, falling/snapping trees, or any other noise that could signal danger.
Almost toward the end of my shift a loud bang, and low slow rumble filled my ears. I quickly went over to my brothers and shoved them awake, not knowing what was going on.
Jasper and Emmett were immediately on alert turning their bodies around to place a source to the persistent noise.
Jasper quickly turned back to my brother and I horror etched on his features, "It sounds like an avalanche."
…