When the light began to fade away, Drew risked opening his eyes. He took a deep breath and braced himself before he turned to look.
"Oh my…" May muttered.
"Who…" Daichi trailed off.
"What the hell is this?" Shu had taken a step backward.
Carlos and Damon were too shell-shocked to even say anything.
As for Drew, he could only stare, his mouth gaping open, vaguely aware of his uncomfortable seat on the ground and the small stones digging into his palms.
Standing before them was a ditto. Not just any ditto, it was the ditto who had followed Drew from LaRoussa, and through the whole adventure, and who had disappeared just before they reached Rubello town.
At the time, Drew had not thought much of it. May had told him that the Ditto had gone off for some berries. He had assumed that maybe it ran off. After all, it had no reason to stick around. Maybe it had saddened him to not have it return back to him but it had been wild. It was free.
But here it was, standing before them, apparently just freshly transferred from water.
"Dit?" The pokemon said in a small voice, staring at the green haired boy who had still not said anything.
"Di…ditto?" Drew muttered, still staring. When the Ditto took a step forward, he scuttled back, "No! No, just…stay. Don't move."
The ditto obeyed, staring sadly at Drew as he stood up and put some more distance between them. "What are you doing here?"
"Dit-"
"No! You stay there!" The ditto stilled again, "What are you doing here?"
The ditto sighed, "Ditto. Dit ditto. Ditto ditto dit dit ditto d-"
"No, stop." Drew commanded, "I can't understand you. Maybe…"
Drew reached into his poke-belt and picked out one ball. He released his Roselia, "Rose, ask Ditto why is he here."
The others were watching this exchange curiously. Chiyo turned to Drew when Roselia busied himself interrogating the Ditto, "Drew, who is this?"
"The ditto," Shu answered for his brother, "I told you about."
"What?" Damon made a choking noise, "The…the ditto that followed him from LaRoussa?"
Shu nodded. Carlos frowned, "But Shu, that doesn't make sense."
"What doesn't?" Drew demanded, "It followed me from LaRoussa, it followed me here."
"Drew," Daichi sat a hand on the younger boy's shoulder, and said gently, "we believed that Ditto belonged to Brodie."
O.o
Alex slumped on his stool, leaning back against the wall and stared up at the ceiling. He wondered what the intruders were doing. Maybe he shouldn't have left them alone. He should've gone with them.
But then no guards were allowed down, in the basement. There was only one entrance to the basement and no guards were allowed past it. Only the four guards the boss had appointed were allowed inside to guard the big project.
He looked around. He was alone. Very few guards were left in the building as most of the more experienced ones were summoned to assist in the battle raging outside the headquarters. Infiltrating the Rubello Police Headquarters was a dangerous business, but it was necessary to obtain the fire and water stone.
The Police administrators had thought that the objective of the infiltration was the what-is-it-called stone. They did not know that the main objective, all along, had been the water and fire stones. The hasty and unplanned attack by Team Aqua had only served as an advantage to Team Magma and helped them steal the Stone as well.
Maybe he had betrayed the organization by assisting the enemies to reach the basement. Alex bit his lip and frowned. Maybe he was betraying the organization by caring about the enemies? Maybe he should inform someone of the infiltration, omitting his role? Maybe he should….
"You will take us to your bosses."
He looked down and went cross-eyed, trying to see the barrel of the gun pointed between his eyes. He traced the hand holding the gun. Feminine, definitely feminine. Delicate looking, but the hold was strong. The nails were short. The arm was clad in black leather. He looked further up. Black eyes, glaring down at him. The girl holding the gun at him was pretty. Black hair pulled in a pony and wearing entirely black.
"Rubello Police?" He questioned, leaning back to look at the girl properly and clasped his hands behind his head. Not just pretty, beautiful. Yep, definitely beautiful. He could get used to this.
The lady's glare intensified and she pushed the gun against his head, "One wrong move, and I'll blow your brains out."
Gee, where had he heard that before?
Alex rolled his eyes and stood up slowly, holding his hands up in surrender gesture, the gun fixed to his head. In less than 2 hours, he had a gun pointed at him twice. And he was still helping these people.
Aw hell, like he cared about the fate of Magma-dan. He only worked here because the pay was awesome.
O.o
"Roselia says, that Ditto says that he wants to help." Drew announced.
"Help?" Daichi said incredulously. "He wants to help us?"
Ditto nodded. Chiyo frowned "Ditto, who do you belong to?"
"Ditto." Ditto replied, looking expectantly at Roselia. Roselia looked at him for a few moments before he translated for Drew.
"Brodie." Drew said grimly. "He says he belongs to Brodie."
Daichi scowled, "And he has the nerve to come here and-"
"Ditto! Dit dit ditto!" Ditto cried, flailing his pseudo-arms around.
Drew bit his lip as Roselia translated, "He says that he wants to help. Help us, I mean. Not Brodie."
"Why was he following you?" Shu asked, staring at Ditto as it replied.
"Brodie's orders. He knew that Shu will cross my path since he was keeping an eye on me-" Drew shot him a glare, "-and so, he set Ditto on me to track Shu-"
"Why does he want to help us?" Carlos asked, looking at Ditto gently.
"He says," Drew started carefully "he does not like what Brodie is doing. He says that humans should not try to wake up ancient powers as that will destroy the world."
"They have been doing it since forever." Chiyo pointed out. Ditto cried out again.
"But this time," Drew glanced at the purple Pokémon and his Roselia, who was nodding along in agreement, "they are going too far to use the stone. They do not know what powers the stone can unleash. The stone is best destroyed."
"Why did they steal the fire and water stone?" Damon asked. Ditto exclaimed a 'dit!' and moved away.
For one moment, they thought that the Ditto was going to run away and inform Brodie of the infiltration. But the Ditto returned with a scroll, which he handed to May.
"Open it." Shu urged. May unrolled the scroll and held it up for all to see.
"Oh." Shu said after they had read the scroll, which was in English. "So that's the plan."
"They are going to use the fire stone to help Groudan rise and the water stone to weaken the water spirit?" Daichi raised his eyebrows, "The hell is wrong with them?"
"This machine design is awesome." Damon said, staring at the detailed diagram of the machine in awe.
"Now is not the time, Dae!" Carlos exclaimed, "We have to stop them before it's too late!"
"They can't do anything without the stones though, can they?" May asked, pointing at the stones in Chiyo's hands, "So Ditto did a good job, bringing the stones out."
Ditto brightened up at the praise, before his expression turned to one of terror as he stared at something over Drew's shoulder.
"Well, he certainly did a good job." A deep voice said. They all spun around to see a blue haired man standing behind them.
He was wearing all black, his silver-blue hair tied back at the base of his neck like Shu's. His grey eyes danced with amusement and malicious ruthlessness. From the breast pocket of his black jacket, the Rubello Police ID card was peeking out.
Next to him stood a girl, decked out in Magma uniform. She would have been pretty if her face was not contorted with anger and disgust.
"See. It was you all along. Your ditto…" She grimaced at the last word, as if the word 'ditto' left a sour taste in her mouth.
"Now, Ditto. What are you doing? Were you not on Magma-dan's side?" The grey eyed man crouched down, holding his arms out to the pokemon as a mother would for a child. Only, there was none of the warmth a mother holds. The man's gaze held only malice, and promised only severe repercussions for the betrayal.
Roselia moved forward to shield the shivering pokemon and met the man's gaze head-on. The man's face was amused once again as he stood up and smiled coldly at the Roselia. "Ah. Friendship, beautiful thing."
"Don't waste time." The girl muttered, glaring at the group of intruders with great distaste, "They already know too much. Finish them."
"Of course, Courtney." He drawled, looking at the group. He met each of their eyes one by one and finally came to stop on Shu's, "Where is the ice queen? Miyuki?"
"Don't take her name, you filthy-" Chiyo snarled.
She was cut off by the sound of a blast and suddenly the torches lighting up the room was extinguished. The temperature began to drop drastically as the room was plunged into darkness.
They heard a yelp and a high pitched shriek, loud enough to render you deaf permanently.
They heard the man scream, "Zubat, atta-"
There were a few thuds, another shriek of 'Poochyena, y-', a loud groan and then silence.
Drew reached out in the dark and came in contact with soft fingers, hand covered with fingerless gloves. He grasped it tightly, interlinking their fingers together.
It was so silent that he could hear his heart beating. His other hand reached down to where his Roselia was standing. He felt around and finally came in contact with a silky-soft petal. He reached around again and felt the warm, soft body of Ditto.
A choked cough sounded and a lighter was lit up.