Shane had been watching the entrance to the recess for a little too long, if he was being honest with himself. Nothing had happened for at least a day and a half. Shane still felt the pull of whatever it was within that recess, but it had faded significantly since he'd arrived in Veilstone City.
He was becoming less and less certain of this entire thing being some clever plot by the pink thing to recapture him. Surely, if she had meant to capture him, she would have done it that initial moment he'd stepped into the little cave area, instead of letting him leave and then trying to wait him out again- while he tried to wait out her.
Shane had, however, been seeing some strange vision-like mirages as he'd stayed in his little spot, hiding. He had been seeing what looked like ghosts. Only two of them and very faint. They'd appeared to be in deep discussion with something invisible- only to later run away from the city entirely. The next day, they'd come back, only to be dragged away- still by something invisible.
Shane didn't know enough about ghosts to make a proper judgement on how any of that was supposed to work, but it was certainly something worth noting during his stakeout. Now, however, it had become boring and he just wanted something, anything to happen to break that monotony.
If only something would happen…
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Alexis and Espir were sprinting as fast as they could down the seemingly endless corridors. Each one looked the same, but there were no windows to the outside anywhere. Espir assumed that this meant they were underground. It would have been a huge building if it were above ground, especially to not have any windows.
Espir took every opportunity to climb stairs, whenever they came into view. The only problem was that they rarely came into view, and were almost always guarded by grunts as the members of Team Cosmic that were at that base were beginning to converge on the floors that Alexis and Espir were hurtling through.
Every time they reached a doorway that guarded a flight of stairs, with grunts nearby, Espir would run ahead and begin to lash out at anyone in their path. Now wasn't the time to hold back. He had to be ruthless or they would be overwhelmed.
Finally, they found a stairwell that appeared to travel up more than just a few floors. Was this their route to making it out of the base in one piece?
Alexis and Espir raced up the stairs. They could hear shouting from below them as they climbed towards the higher floors. At first, the shouts sounded like all the rest of the shouting- aggressive, wanting to get the prisoners to stop their escape. Then, slowly and then all too quickly, the shouts became panicked, fearful, and cut out swiftly.
Espir, with his impressive hearing, could hear what was going on below them, while Alexis could not. The doppelgangers were on their tail. Espir wanted to push on, but he couldn't outrun Alexis. He had no way of telling her about the threat that was gaining on them, without slowing them both down first. He just had to trust that she could keep up her pace for as long as possible.
He had noticed that she knew the shouts were different, but he had no way of knowing if she had put together what was going on behind them.
They reached the top floor of the stairwell, and Espir slammed into the door, forcing it to snap open. He rushed out into the corridor beyond, looking for a clue to their escape, before Alexis was able to get through the doorway, too.
"You're dead!" The echoing scream of the doppelganger found its way to the surface, letting Alexis know just how much they needed to hurry.
She looked left and right and then picked at random, Espir was happy enough to go along with the decision, as long as they were keeping the distance between their murderous doppelgangers and themselves.
The efforts of Team Cosmic had become little more than an afterthought in the bloodthirsty chase between the two versions of prisoners.
With most of Team Cosmic apparently dealt with or still reeling from the attacks in the lower levels, the upper portion of the base- closer to ground level- was more readily deserted.
Alexis had chosen correctly, as she started to find signs that looked more like directions within a business, than a prison. She followed the arrows that were pointing towards a loading bay. If there was a loading bay for something, that would need an exit of some sort.
They rushed through, pushing open a set of double doors to find a warehouse, with what appeared to be a ramp, leading to a large sliding door at the other end.
Alexis and Espir started to rush towards the exit, desperate- to a point of near delirium- to get out of this building and into the sunlight once more.
It was tantalizingly close.
"Stop!" The doppelganger shouted furiously from the other end of the warehouse- where Alexis and Espir had run from. "Right here, right now."
Alexis groaned in frustration and exhaustion looking back at the doppelganger. Her Marshadow was nowhere in sight.
Espir immediately began looking around for the other Pokémon, as Alexis confronted her doppelganger.
"Why? What is it to you? Can't you be content with just letting us all get out of here in one piece, you raging lunatic?" Alexis spat.
"You're the one who left me in that cell," her doppelganger replied, starting to walk slowly towards Alexis.
"We were in a rush," Alexis said, "and you're a terrible person."
"I'm you."
"No," Alexis said, "you're everything I've cast out from myself."
"I'm better than you ever could be!" The doppelganger shouted.
"Perhaps, or maybe you're just deluded by your own self-hatred. Easy to attack yourself when it isn't really you, isn't it?" Alexis said with a grim smile. "I know you because I know me. Beating me won't stop the demons inside. You already lost because you're already lost."
"You don't know a damn thing about me," the doppelganger hissed, now within arm's reach of Alexis, who'd been standing her ground.
"If you're anything like me," Alexis said, "you can't take a punch."
Alexis lashed out, slamming a balled fist into her doppelganger's face, before clawing at her neck with her other hand. Espir had to trust she knew what she was doing. He had his own fight to take care of.
The Marshadow, as his trainer was being attacked, jumped out of its hiding spot- hoping to ambush the back of Alexis, but Espir was waiting. He struck out, slamming a Shadow Punch into the abdomen of the other ghost Pokémon and sending it hurtling away from the tussling girls.
Espir didn't give it a chance to recover, sprinting after it as the two Alexises continued to shout and tear at each other.
Espir approached the Marshadow, that was already wounded from its previous fight with him, and started to slam his fists into it, not giving it a moment to recover. He didn't like fighting other Pokémon, especially in those staged battles that always ended up with the Pokémon bloodied and broken.
This was different.
Espir felt something new inside of himself. He enjoyed this. He hated looking at that Marshadow. A reminder of everything he had become, of everything he had lost. It had been ready to keep him trapped here in its place. Had attempted to steal from and attack Alexis while they were in their care. Espir allowed himself this brief escape of fury. The Marshadow was long since unconscious by the time he pulled back, remembering why they were even in that warehouse to begin with.
Alexis pulled Espir back. He looked up, still slightly out of the moment. She had blood all over her face from scratches and, what looked like not her own blood, too- from the pattern it had caused across her face.
"We need to go," Alexis said, "before they wake up and before Team Cosmic catch up."
Espir looked past her, to her doppelganger. However bad Alexis had looked, her doppelganger looked much, much worse. She wasn't moving, lying prone, having been shoved through a stack of boxes.
Espir surprised himself at how little he felt for the doppelganger. Perhaps it was all the other beings he had seen end up unconscious recently. It felt fitting that the humans would need to deal with this sort of pain, too.
Espir nodded to Alexis' words and the two of them ran away from their defeated foes, towards the doors that promised freedom.
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Shane was going to leave. He'd decided it. Whatever had felt important about this place, he didn't know and didn't very much care anymore. He hadn't seen any ghosts for over a day and he had better things to do than sit around and wait for something to happen.
He sighed, annoyed at himself for even bothering to waste so much time on something so random. How did he know he'd even felt the magnetism in the first place? Perhaps it was just him needing sleep, or a snack?
He got to his feet and stretched out, having sat for so long, watching and waiting.
At that moment, he spotted it.
He knew it.
It had been a trap all along!
Shane ducked back down, watching the streak of pink rush across the sky towards the recess. It hovered at the entrance, still in view, as Shane watched on. While he watched, he started to feel the magnetism grow, almost out of nowhere. Before it became too intense, he stood behind a rock, to ground himself, as he peeked over and continued to watch.
The air in front of Mew split open, in a similar manner to when that larger Pokémon had stepped out and berated the pink Pokémon. Shane watched on, but didn't see any sign of the pink being's superior.
Shane watched as the pink being struggled against the rift, clearly trying to do something to close it. The magnetism was becoming too much for him and he retreated entirely behind the rock. As his head was to the side, resting against the rock, he saw two figures, running hastily towards the city center. The ghosts!
Shane didn't care about the magnetism. Something told him those ghosts meant something.
He forced himself up and, ignoring the possibility of Mew spotting him, he stepped out to confront the ghosts.
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Alexis and Espir considered themselves incredibly lucky. Having run out of the ramp and into the sunlight, they recognized- from where the mountains were in the distance- that they were still quite close to Veilstone City.
It forced every muscle in Alexis' body to scream out in pain, but the two of them continued to run, this time back towards civilization. They would have to make new plans for what to do, once they had shaken those chasing them.
This world was twisted. Evil. Even those that appeared good, were swayed by evil methods to their good intentions. Espir had begun to felt the effects, too. He was realizing, as they ran, that many of his more intense outbursts of anger, were within the vicinity of the portal to this world- or within this world itself. He hadn't thought of himself as particularly angry in the past, just someone who had quite a bit more to be stressed about than everyone else.
He and Alexis charged into Veilstone City and, before they could really get too into it- were stopped by what appeared to be a ghostly form of a Pokémon. It was ever so slightly transparent, as if not entirely there. The other ghost Pokémon they'd seen appeared to be just as much ghost as Pokémon, but this one appeared to be even more of a ghost than even Espir.
"What is it?" Alexis asked, tired and impatient. She kept looking over her shoulder for those chasing her.
"What are you?" Espir asked the Pokémon.
"You're ghosts, right?" Shane asked.
"I am, she's not, but what are you?" Espir repeated himself. "Look, we really don't have much time."
"Oh god, come on," Alexis moaned in frustration, with a tinge of fear.
Espir looked back at what she was seeing. He couldn't believe it either. Their doppelgangers, limping, had just come into view. They were catching up.
"What is your business here?" Espir asked hurriedly, "we don't have time to talk."
"Follow me," Shane said, "the magnetism. It's to you, not that hole."
"Hole?"
"Near where some meteorites should be," Shane nodded, "a hole, in the sky."
Espir smacked Alexis' knee to get her attention. She looked down at him and he pointed towards where the recess was, urgently.
"But it's a dead end," she protested, running alongside Espir anyway. "We'll be trapped!"
Shane was running ahead of them. He didn't really know if they knew where he meant, but he had to guide them to it, he felt. If these people weren't ghosts, then they were somehow stuck somewhere and that hole in the air was something to do with it.
"You'll regret making an enemy of me!" The doppelganger shouted after Alexis, but Alexis didn't care. She could see the portal. She could see the stack of meteorites. She could see Mew, waiting on the other side.
"We're going to make it," she muttered, half to Espir, half to herself.
Espir waited for her to make it through first, stumbling through the rift in the air. The Marshadow grabbed a hold of him as he tried to follow, but there was no chance he would allow himself to be kept in this world, trapped once again.
He felt his eyes glow bright, his determination and anger- propelled by the state of this world- forcing the same energies out of him as those that had come out in the abandoned house of the ghosts.
Glowing, he turned to the already injured Marshadow, who's look turned from triumph to fear on the spot. Espir didn't give it the luxury of seeing his smirk. He reached back and backhanded the other ghost Pokémon away from him, sending it slamming into Alexis' doppelganger.
Then, finally, he jumped through the rift to re-join Alexis.
Mitzi-SAGA: Thanks for another great review, although I hope you're heart is feeling ok! For reference, jlrsutton's real name is Jamie, and he is the main writer for this story. I've only been doing some editing and other stuff on the sidelines. He's very appreciative of your last review!
shemidreamer: To be honest with you and myself, if I were to risk losing all of my memories, I wouldn't mind staying in a body like Shane's to avoid that outcome lol. Also, I believe you might be mistaken about the last update. This story was originally POSTED a few months ago, but I'll be sending out updates hopefully once or twice a week.