I would like to once more thank everyone who has read this far. Chapter 7 really blew up the day after I posted it, and I'm so happy to see so many people (hopefully) liking this tale.

Here's the eighth chapter. Reviews, favorites, and follows are always appreciated; I would like to know what you're all thinking of Escape from Thunderhead. Enjoy!

The nurses offered to let me sleep on a cot next to Janelle's bed. I was going to decline this offer, partly because it felt like mooching and partly because I didn't think she would want me there.

However, it soon became clear that I had no other option. Not unless I wanted to endure insane traffic on the way back to Chilly Waters, that is. So I eventually relented, and they brought in a mattress for me.

"Why do you care where you sleep?" Janelle spat when I told her the news.

"I don't" I responded. "I care about whether or not I'll sleep at all. And this hospital seems pretty unscathed; at least, compared to the rest of the city."

"But why don't you go back where you came from?" she replied. "To Deep Bloober Sea or whatever it's called?"

I frowned. "I don't know where you got that name from. It's Chilly Waters. And I don't think the Secret Service guys will drive me back there. They wanted me here for a reason."

"Fine" Janelle sighed. "Maybe you can find us both a way back to Earth."

"Are you kidding? Being in the Pokemon world isn't just a dream come true; it's a fantasy come true. This is what I kept imagining throughout much of my childhood!"

"Rough family life?" she asked, bending her arm towards me as much as her IV tube would allow.

"Not necessarily" I muttered. "You know how interested I am in Pokemon. And to witness an actual extreme weather event - that's not an opportunity I've ever had before this!"

The other Litleo looked towards the window, using her right arm to scratch some of her fur. She heaved a great sigh.

"You've got quite an imagination, but I'll let you in on a little secret, Lucas. It might be a dream come true for you to be here, but it certainly isn't for me. Forrest County isn't perfect, but at least it's predictable. So for you to claim this world is better-".

"For me, it is."

" - is the most privileged, ignorant thing I could have imagined. And as far as I'm concerned, you're probably the reason I'm in this world too. You made this mess; you should clean it up."

I grimaced. "Really, Janelle? You think this is all my fault? You don't even know what happened!"

"Well, what happened on Earth after you left? It was a pretty big storm. I'm not saying you created the weather; you're not God."

"Good. I'm glad we've established that. Anyway, I hid in a ditch to wait it out. Not the smartest decision, but somehow I woke up here."

"Eh, it's whatever," Janelle replied. "I mean, we're young. It's easy enough to forget that we're only seventeen - nobody would expect us to be put through all this."

I didn't respond; I didn't really know what to say. But Janelle spoke for me.

"The nurses say I'll recover from my fall within a few days" she said. "Apparently the bodies of Pokemon are far more durable than human bodies. I guess I have that to be grateful for, though I still wish none of this had happened in the first place."

"Don't we all?"

"No, you don't understand, Lucas. I could have gone to prom if none of this had happened."

"But prom isn't until senior year" I pointed out. "And who knows if we'll still be in the Pokemon world then? Quite frankly, I say we should enjoy it as much as we can."

"Enjoy it? Tell me, dude, do you think being a Pokemon is enjoyable at all?"

Try to see it from her perspective, I reminded myself. Janelle didn't get to visit Chilly Waters with you. In a way, she's had all of the negative aspects of becoming a Litleo, without any of its benefits.

And plummeting from such a great height…I mean, I didn't consider myself acrophobic by any means, but I couldn't envision too many worse ways to die. At least it would have been quick in theory.

But then I imagined Janelle the Litleo, all hyped up on adrenaline and fear, managing to cling onto a massive slab of debris like a boogie board. I pictured her using that piece of debris to "ride" the "wave" all the way down to the ground, her heart nearly thumping out of her chest.

And then when she'd landed, Janelle would have needed to give an interview to the local news media - at least, that's what one of the Secret Service guys (or had it been Secretary Flowers?) had said. Only once they'd called an ambulance could she give in to unconsciousness.

So in the end, perhaps I should have understood the situation from her point of view. Indeed, that was something I'd struggled with for much of my life - always looking at the world through my own eyes. And that would have to change if I were going to forge a lasting friendship with another individual.

But, as I looked over at the hospital bed, where Janelle had once more turned away from me, I saw that her breathing was deep and even, as if she were asleep. And that observation led me to understand one thing above all others.

It won't be with her.

Ferguson: Do you believe that your inability to see Janelle Wilson's perspective, as you put it, may have been related to your condition?

Defendant: My medical history has nothing to do with this. Leave my condition out of it, will you?

Ferguson: Mr. Teller, it's a potential mitigating factor, is it not? It wouldn't turn a conviction into an acquittal, but it could turn a life sentence into a fifteen-year one. You'd be thirty–three then, and still have plenty of life ahead of you. We threw you a life preserver, and you rejected it.

Defendant: As far as I'm concerned, it feels more like you threw me overboard. I didn't do it.

Ferguson: That's what they all say. But it's not the defendant's incessant denials that determine whether or not they're truly innocent. It's the evidence that determines if, beyond a reasonable doubt, the person is guilty.

Defendant: Uh, yeah. Isn't that a basic tenet of civics?

Ferguson: We are not here to argue about "basic tenets of civics", Mr. Teller. I care about one thing, and one thing only.

True to the words of the medical professionals, Janelle recovered from her injuries (which apparently included a punctured lung!) within three days. By the end of that third day, she was jogging down the hospital corridor despite the pain medication she'd been dosed with.

During those three days, there hadn't been much to do. I slept as much as I could, but after the first day, my body just wouldn't get tired again without more effort.

Each day, Leopold would visit us in order to give updates on life in the outside world. The aftershocks had mostly stopped, though there were a few rumbles on the outskirts of the city. No new visitors had arrived in Chilly Waters, which disproved the notion that bad things must always come in threes.

Janelle always looked upset whenever the Village Elder mentioned life there. She never voiced this in front of me, but I believe she was jealous of what life was like in a Litleo settlement. That was where she belonged, not this damaged city.

Not only did Leopold bring us news, he also came bearing some reading material for me. One such book, which I devoured within a day, was called The Power of Us. According to the Village Elder, it was a novelization of real events, not to be confused with the film of the same name.

I must say, it was quite a page-turner. This was mainly because it felt pertinent to my current situation; it even took place in Fula City and involved Zeraora. Of course, some details were different, and yet…

"Ash Ketchum is real!" I exclaimed while reading, which woke Janelle up from a nap.

"Could you please be quieter?" she bellowed groggily. "I was trying to get some beauty rest, and you interrupted me!"

"Sorry" I replied, and I meant it. It didn't feel good to deprive Janelle of something she needed, even if it hadn't been on purpose.

When Leopold visited again a few hours later, I voiced my pleasant surprise that Ash Ketchum had existed at one point.

"Well, I did say it was a true story. But how surprised can you really be?"

"I dunno, pretty damn surprised."

"I'll have you know, Lucas, that Ash Ketchum is canonized as a saint in the Church of Arceus. He's practically worshiped."

"Really? What miracles did he perform?" I asked, because I was pretty sure that's how canonization worked.

"Well, he saved the world on multiple occasions, for one," Leopold replied. "Of course, with humans and Pokemon working together, almost any problem can be solved. That's the main lesson of the book you're reading - did you enjoy it?"

"I sure did. It feels important somehow, like I should be reading it."

"Well, nobody can tell you what you need to do, Lucas. You're seventeen, almost an adult. And you went through the coming-of-age rituals in our village, so that gives you even more maturity."

I snorted. "Don't remind me."

"Wait", Janelle spoke. "What coming-of-age rituals?"

I felt my cheeks heat up as I realized that this conversation was being steered into some very rough waters indeed. "You don't want to know," I said defensively.

Luckily, Leopold saved me from having to say anything more on this subject. He said, "Now, I have rented you both an apartment in one of Fula City's nicer areas. It's a relatively unscathed neighborhood. You can live there until we figure out how to get you back to your own world.``

I knew better than to express disappointment in front of Janelle, but in the back of my mind, I knew that making it back to Earth would be bittersweet. On some level, I would miss the few friends I'd made in the world of Pokemon.

Speaking of my friends, another Pyroar entered the room behind Leopold, nearly causing my heart to stop. I hadn't expected this at all.

"Oh yeah, Sionne's here too, '' Leopold said with a smile. "I'm sure you will be happy to see her."

Sionne slowly walked around the room, looking back and forth between the bed and the window. She then frowned, sighing at the same time.

"It's horrible what happened to this city" she said weakly. "And I feel like I could have done something to stop it. I should have done something to stop it."

Now, I can feel guilty pretty easily, but I knew right away I had to console Sionne.

"You couldn't have" I told her, stroking part of her multicolored mane. "It's an extreme weather event, and earthquakes aren't even affected by climate change. They just happen."

"You don't understand!" the Pyroar all but wailed. "It's not just that I have a guilt complex - there are things you simply don't know!"

I was about to object to Sionne's self-blame, but Leopold gently patted my back. "Now's not the time, Lucas. Don't push her any more."

"Whatever" Sionne replied, shaking her mane as she turned to face the window. "Who knows how many people lost their lives in this disaster…many more will have to start their lives all over again. If the city's building codes had been more stringent - ".

"They were pretty stringent," Leopold said. "It's just that you can't prepare for everything. Besides, it's not productive to ponder what should have been done differently, because it wasn't. It's in the past, Sionne, even if people are suffering from it right now."

"And that's the problem" the younger, female Pyroar mumbled through tears. She seemed nearly inconsolable at this point. "I can't sit idly by and let people suffer."

None of us knew what to say. There was simply no way to talk Sionne down from the proverbial ledge, even though I couldn't fathom why she felt responsible for the earthquake. But just when I thought she might snap, she took a deep breath and started speaking more clearly.

"I guess you're right. So Lucas, is Janelle your girlfriend?"

We both shook our heads forcefully in unison. "She's not my girlfriend!" I shouted, much louder than I should have.

"And he's not my boyfriend either" Janelle said, giving me a brief glare. "We're just two people from Earth who happened to get sent to this world together. We share nothing else in common."

"Anyway", Leopold interjected, "the nurses say that you can leave now, Janelle. The Secret Service will escort you and Lucas to your new apartment."

The next hour or so is still mostly a blur to me. There are, however, things I remember from that period of time.

I remember, for instance, the nurse coming in and giving Janelle her discharge instructions, which mostly involved coming back in if any of her wounds were bothering her. But when the nurse told her this, Janelle immediately spun around to show that her cuts and bruises had almost completely healed.

"I've been caring for Pokemon for many years", the nurse said, "and still, the uncanny ability of various species to recover so rapidly never fails to amaze me. I hope you two have a nice life together."

She clearly had good intentions when she said that, but I couldn't separate that statement from the idea that Janelle and I were…well, together. Because we just weren't.

Another thing I remember is walking down through the hospital lobby in a daze. I had barely left the room in the last 72 hours, so I felt jolted seeing just how insane the waiting room was.

According to the receptionist, whom our Secret Service escorts briefly spoke to before we left, most of the new patients were not direct victims of the earthquake, but rather first responders who faced respiratory problems from breathing in the rubble. This in itself made them heroes - they were willing to risk their own health, perhaps their lives, to help the city survive this tragedy.

The limo ride to our new apartment was very short, especially when compared to my initial trip into Fula City. "This is Dark Bay", Leopold told us as we entered the neighborhood.
"It's the neighborhood best known for its cable cars, which are unfortunately broken now. You would have been able to ride them on better days."

A pang of grief hit me at those last two words. It seemed evident that Fula City wouldn't see "better days" for a long time to come.

Cable car malfunctions aside, this was clearly where the well-to-do lived here. The apartment buildings had grass lawns that were perfectly manicured, and several of the balconies had their own miniature gardens. Even the windows were nearly spotless.

"Janelle, your nurse said you shouldn't do any heavy lifting for a few days. I'll help Lucas carry the stuff upstairs."

Janelle rolled her eyes. "I can do anything you two can. I'm a Pokemon, remember? I'm as good as new."

"Leopold's the boss," I told her. "Whatever he says, goes. You don't want to disagree with him."

"Exactly" the Village Elder chimed in. "I make the rules here, and I say that you don't carry a couch up six flights of stairs until you're given the all-clear."

I gasped. "Wait, a couch? Six flights of stairs?"

Leopold nodded. "Hey, I didn't say the place would be fully furnished right away. And if Janellle can't do it, then you have to help."

"Fine" I muttered, though my back already ached at the prospect.

An hour later, I was doubled over in pain after some hard labor. It literally could have been back-breaking, because I had no doubt that there had been the potential for bones to fracture.

To make matters worse, being a small quadruped, I lacked the ability to carry items with my paws. Therefore, I had to use my teeth to move the objects up to our seventh-floor studio apartment. And as you can imagine, this put immense strain on my jaw, to the point where it was hard to open my mouth for hours afterward.

Finally, when everything Leopold wanted for us had been hauled upstairs, I took a look around the room.

Perhaps this was due to being a lion, but I found that I took considerable pride in my work. A poster hung on the wall featuring the Mythical Pokemon Zeraora. The couch sat in the center of the room; hopefully it would be worth the effort. A hard hour's work had certainly paid off.

Probably the most satisfying part of it all was when Janelle entered the living room after having been in her bedroom for the last few minutes. She cast a wide look around the room before smiling at me.

"You did well, Lucas."

It was hard not to be ecstatic to hear this young woman, who had been so angry with me not long ago, offer just this small amount of praise. It wasn't much, but it meant the world to me.

It didn't take long for us to settle into a routine. After all, even when you're in a whole new world, a life requires some order so as not to devolve into utter chaos.

At first, our life in the apartment wasn't much different from how it had been in the hospital. We sat around and read the books Leopold brought us daily. The Village Elder might have been, well, elderly, but he still had more physical strength than me, and he was able to carry as many as ten large volumes at once.

When we weren't reading, Janelle and I sat in front of the TV set. Compared to the rest of this apartment's amenities, the TV didn't look very fancy, but function was more important than fashion anyway.

The news was rarely good.

True to what Leopold had told me back in Chilly Waters, the frequency of extreme weather events was increasing precipitously. Each account the news provided felt like a tiny little shank to the heart.

The Alolan Archipelago, far to the south of the Fula Region, had been hit with its most destructive tsunami on record, killing thousands of people and leveling many of the buildings. And so the glamorous vacation resorts, always built to look so pristine and wonderful, now lay in ruin, their once-spotless beaches covered in seaweed.

Further to the north, the Coronet Range in Central Sinnoh had been struck by a series of wildfires, with each fire encroaching closer to populated areas. In Coronet City, air quality was rated as "Hazardous", equivalent to smoking three packs a day of cigarettes.

All in all, something was horribly wrong with this world. And that made me even more determined to do something about it.

"But what are we going to do?" Janelle asked, turning to her typical habit of peppering me with questions. "What can even be done? We've got no clue where Zeraora is, or even if he's involved - ".

"They, Janelle. Zeraora is genderless, which is not to be confused with nonbinary."

"It doesn't matter," she responded. "The point is, why does Leopold seem to think they're related? Correlation doesn't equal causation, or so they say."

"I don't know, Janelle," I said with a sigh. "I honestly have no idea. But if you think I'm going to sit idly by and watch this world burn and drown, you're delusional."

Before Janelle could reply, there was a knock on the door. It was faint at first, to the point that I wondered if it was an auditory hallucination.

But then came the sound of claws scratching against the door, reminding me of a dog that needs to go outside desperately. "I'll get it" I said softly, sending a nonverbal message (the way I'd been taught to) that said, You got lucky, Janelle.

I opened the door to find a familiar female Pyroar on the other side. She held a thick book between her paws.

"Here's a copy of the Book of Arceus, Lucas," Sionne told me. "If you want it, that is."

"Eh, I'm not religious," I replied. "I really don't see the need."

"Still, it's important in the culture of this world," the Pyroar said. "And it's something to do; don't you ever get restless holed up in there all day?"

"It's not like the rest of the city is much better!" Janelle exclaimed. "A lot of it's gone, is it not?"

Sionne shrugged rather uncomfortably. "I guess you have a point there."

"Why don't you visit for a while?" I asked Sionne. "We've got nothing but time here, and just like Janelle said, it's dangerous out there."

"Don't mind if I do," the Pyroar replied. "I'd love to see more of your new place."

Janelle and I gave Sionne a brief tour of our apartment. Really, there wasn't much to see. It was a two-bedroom apartment, so at least I didn't have to sleep in the same room as Janelle, but other than that, the living room/kitchen was all there was.

"I wish we had some tea and cookies," Sionne said a few minutes later. By now we were all seated on the couch in front of the TV, where one of Vulpix News' talking heads was going over the latest updates on the wildfires in Central Sinnoh.

"Well, make some yourself" Janelle muttered. "You cooked for Lucas in the village, did you not?"

"I suppose. But do you two even have the ingredients for cookies?"

I snorted. "Leopold's been bringing us food every day. I'm not sure if we have what we need, since we haven't even been to the store. Are there even any functioning supermarkets in town?"

"I'd assume there are," Sionne replied. "But that's no big deal. It's just that tea and cookies make all of this more bearable."

While Sionne had been talking, I couldn't help but notice that she gave Janelle a slight glare. It probably meant nothing major, but it did raise my eyebrows nonetheless.

And then something else occurred to me. Why did Sionne seem to blame herself for all these catastrophes?

It had been a few days since I'd last seen her, and who knew when I'd get the opportunity again? Now might be my best chance to ask her why she felt so inclined to self-flagellate.

Still, I resisted this desire. If she wanted us to know the reason, she would have been forthcoming. She had every chance to tell us more, and she hadn't yet made use of it. Whatever the reason was, she had to have good cause to keep it under wraps.

Ferguson: Now we're getting to the good part, Mr. Teller. That is, the good part for us.

Defendant: Shouldn't you be more impartial than that?

Ferguson: I am a prosecutor, not a judge. I've got a job to do. And part of that job is to ask you questions.

Defendant: Like what?

Ferguson: When you spent that afternoon in your apartment with Janelle Wilson and Sionne Pyroar - I guess I'll use her supposed species as her surname in this case - did you feel any tension between the two women?

Defendant: Well, I'm not going to play the spectrum card here, but-

Ferguson: What is the "spectrum card"?

Defendant: Some people on the autism spectrum, they say their condition excuses their wrongdoing because they didn't understand what they did was wrong. I'm not going to bring that in as mitigation.

Ferguson: It sure sounds like you wanted to for a moment.

Defendant: Well, I don't. That's a shitty thing to do.

Ferguson: Please watch your language, Mr. Teller.

Defendant: Fine. Anyway, even if I were not on the spectrum, I would not be able to know exactly what Sionne and Janelle thought of each other. I can't read minds, and neither can you.

Ferguson: Did you feel as though you were caught between the two females?

Defendant: No, there was no love triangle. I can't say I loved either of them. Sure, I was grateful that Janelle had kept me company during those long days of nothing at all, and I was happy that Sionne had allowed me to live with her in Chilly Waters. But gratitude isn't the same as love.

Ferguson: Perhaps you didn't care about either of them because…

Defendant: Oh, I cared. I'd rather you not put words in my mouth. Please, if you want to know the truth, let me tell you the truth.

Ferguson: How do I know it's the truth?

Defendant: Because I'm under oath, and I know that lying under oath, perjury, will put me in even more trouble. You just have to trust me.

Ferguson: Fine. Continue.

After that afternoon with Sionne, during which we mostly sat around watching TV, the Pyroar did not return to our apartment the following day. Or the day after that.

It was easy enough to conclude that she did not want to talk to me. Perhaps she found it too awkward to be in the same room as Janelle, though if Sionne thought I was flirting with either girl, that was her problem.

As for the apartment itself, the novelty wore off quickly. Sooner or later, Janelle and I went from being happy in the same flat to trying to stay out of one another's way as much as we could.

To this day, I'm not sure if this was a conscious decision or not. Perhaps we actively hated one another, though the fact that neither Janelle nor I tried to get the other evicted went against that notion.

Or maybe we didn't hate each other, but rather I understood that Janelle wanted some time to herself, and vice versa. I can't tell you which is true, but I do know which interpretation I prefer.

We ate our meals separately, to the extent this was possible. Whenever I planned to enter the kitchen, I first took a careful look to see whether or not Janelle was there. And then, if I saw the other Litleo rummaging through the fridge, or even sitting on the couch watching the news, I'd return to my room.

It also seemed to be an unspoken agreement that we'd take turns in front of the television. Janelle would watch for an hour or two, and then she'd evidently get bored of whatever the TV equivalent of doomscrolling was, at which point she'd get up and slink back to her bedroom. Exactly what she was doing there, I didn't know or care.

The news coming from the various channels was, for the most part, more of the same. The endless cycle of calamity eventually lost its power to shock me the way it once had. It was like the parable of how to cook a frog in water: You don't drop the frog in a boiling pan, because then it'll jump out. Rather, you gently lower it into pleasantly warm water and slowly raise the temperature, because one degree warmer is not so bad, and one degree warmer than that isn't so much worse.

And in that way, one becomes desensitized to the endless tragedies taking place all over the world. Even the news no longer covered them quite as much after a few days - it was just one more item on the list, rather than headline news all the time.

And so the conversation turned to celebrities; who slept with whom, who was doing drugs, who was giving their Pokemon performance-enhancing drugs, and who was the favorite to win the Sinnoh League later in the year. It soon grew almost as boring as the endless reports of floods, or forest fires, or landslides - newsworthy, yes, but no longer as jarring as it had once been.

Once the news was no longer a worthwhile time suck, I would spend hours poring over the Book of Arceus. Sionne had a point; even if one did not believe the stories within it were true, they still felt valuable, and more importantly, they still killed the time.

But even reading lost its appeal after a while. One afternoon, when I put down the holy book of the Church of Arceus, it occurred to me that I had absolutely no desire to pick it back up.

It was hot on the 7th floor of the complex; not only does heat rise, but the air conditioning was no longer working. My thick coat of fur didn't help either; it was like a thick parka in Southern summer weather (never a good idea, trust me.)

My eyes felt strained, and I may or may not have uttered a few choice words. I couldn't think of anything else to do, as childish as it might be to complain about such a predicament.

And then footsteps approached my room, frantic footfalls that let me know that their owner was coming in a hurry. Perhaps she thought I'd gotten hurt, or that some other horrific thing had happened. I didn't even care that I'd made a point of not talking to her, for right now I was desperate for any distraction.

"What happened?" Janelle exclaimed quickly. "Did you hit your head or something?"

"No" I responded, feeling my body start to shake, "it's not like that. I'm just…so…bored."

"It's no surprise," she said. "We've been here for about a week. And before that, you spent three days in the hospital with me."

"I'm well aware of that."

"Look, Lucas, why did you hide from me all this time? You know that I'd have been more than willing to talk!"

"Really?" I asked. Quite frankly, getting me to believe that would be akin to convincing me that two plus two equals five.

"Of course," Janelle replied. "What makes you think I'm any less bored than you are? We've both got nothing to do!"

Hearing those words felt like a gigantic weight off my shoulders. Part of me had thought it privileged to complain about being bored when so many people were dead.

"I'm glad you seem to forgive me," I told Janelle. "It means a lot."

"No problem. The question is, what do we do about our situation? Is it time to re-engage with the world?"

"I don't see how we would" I muttered. "The world's going to hell lately."

"That's a problem," Janelle admitted with a sigh. "I just hate being cooped up in here all day. That's not what a lion cub is supposed to do. I came this close to clawing that couch into smithereens!"

I did not need to know that.

"Well", I said, "I guess I have one idea. I don't know if it's a good idea, but…".

"But what?"

I decided to just go for it.

"Would you like to go out to dinner again?"