-chapter 29, dead world-
Eventually the morning came and the sun rose up over the horizon, bringing warmth to all.
We put the fire out and before long we were walking along the road, not a car in sight. At this point, we had been here for almost a day and we hadn't come across anybody, it was crazy, atleast with the ruins, we found a place to explore, but out here there was nothing but this road, and it didn't seem to be going anywhere.
"This reminds me of that time I almost died." I said.
"Which time?" She asked.
"Hehehe, when we were on the run, I got stranded on my own." I said. "The motorcycle."
"Ohhh yeah, I remember that." She replied.
"I hope a car comes soon." I said, having no desire to repeat that situation.
"I hope so too." She replied. "I'm getting hungry."
"Yeah, me too." I agreed.
"Let's just keep following the road, it has to go somewhere." I said.
An hour later a gas station appeared on the horizon, another 30 minutes and we reached it.
It was abandoned, there was no power, there was nobody around, and most of the stock was gone save for a few cans of soup and some soda.
"Is this world dead or something?" I asked.
"I don't know." Was all she could say.
"Maybe it's just closed." She suggested.
"It'd be empty if that were the case." I answered as I tried to find a way to open the soup cans.
"Um...Cj?" She said, nervously.
'Yeah what's wrong?" I asked.
"There's a dead person behind the counter." She replied in a disturbed tone.
"How dead?" I asked.
"Well...they're a skeleton." She replied.
"No way..." I said as I set the can of soup down for a moment and went over to look.
"Well, that confirms it, this world is screwed." I said.
"But why?" She asked.
"I don't know, come on, let's have lunch and then get going, if this world is really as dead as it seems to be so far, I don't want to spend anymore time here than neccesarry." I said as I went back to the soup can and scanned to room, looking for something I could use to poke a hole in it, or otherwise get the contents out.
"What happened to trying to enjoy it?" She asked.
"If there is anyone around, you know they're going to be very violent and unpredictable, it won't be good for us." replied.
"Violent, yes. Unpredictable? Don't be silly." She replied.
Just then an old beat-up station wagon flew by. A 1950s model, but it appeared to be much older, with faded paint and rust, it's presence did little to indicate the actual year, other then we were somewhere passed the 50s.
"Hey that was a car." I said, surprised.
"Mhm." She said.
"Well, come on, teleport us out..."
"It's moving too fast." She said. "Besides, you know, they could be violent and unpredictable."
"Yeah, true." I agreed, even though I knew she only said that because she was hungry.
"And there's food here and I'm hungry." She continued as she seized one of the soup cans. Proving my point.
"Hehe, ahh, fine, let's get something to eat then, maybe another car will come by." I replied.
"Where's a can opener?" She asked.
"I don't know." I replied.
Long story short, we found a knife in a small kitchen area, where they used to make pizzas and stuff, and then we used that to cut open the cans, we poured the soup in some plastic cups, the kind that you can get with gigantic fountain drinks, not the red plastic party cup variety, and using Cap'n'Magnum to temporarily power the station, we put the cups into what seemed to be a 1970s microwave, and about a minute or so later we had the best lunch we were going to get in this empty wasteland. We never saw that station wagon again, the entire time we were in there having lunch we never even saw another car pass by. Anyway, when we finally decided to leave the station, we took the knife with us and a couple extra cans of soup. We were starting to get a bit grumpy because this world did not have much to offer so far.
"I kind of hate this place." I said, tired of walking for hours and not comming across anything. This was by far the most boring world I had ever seen, the ruins were abandoned too, but atleast there was something to explore. I could count the number of things we had seen here in the last few days, on my hands, sand, the sky, stars, the road, the bridge, various desert grasses and bushes, the gas station, and finally, that mysterious station wagon which was quite possibly the only working car around for miles.
"I know what you mean." She replied. "But this road has to go somewhere, that car had to come from somewhere."
"Maybe it was just an illusion." I replied.
"No it was real, I can tell." She said.
"Maybe we wanted it to exist so bad it did exist?"
"No, because if that were the case, wouldn't it have appeared at a time when it was more convienient?" She replied. "Not while we were desperately trying to open a can of soup?"
"Maybe" Was all I could say. "I don't really know. Did you get any reading on anybody inside?" I asked.
"I wasn't ready for it and it went by too fast." She replied.
" So how do we know if it's real?" I asked, the desert sun and the lack of sleep were starting to get to me.
"Because we both saw it you weirdo." She said.
"We're going to die out here." I said.
"No we're not, we'll make it, we have to." She replied.
- several minutes later-
At some point we started singing to pass the time.
"See chameleon, lying there in the sun." I began
"All thanks to everyone. " She continued.
"Run run away" We sang together.
Anyway, in an effort to keep this as interesting as possible, we walked down that road for another two hours before anything interesting happened. By then we had gone through almost every song we knew we could competently sing together.
We were making our way up a hill when we heard the roar of an engine in the distance, it was faint at first, but with every passing second it got louder, so we cautiously moved to the side of the road, thinking a car was going to pass at any time.
."We're running with the shadows of the night." She began to sing, expecting me to take the next line like we had been doing for the past few hours.
"So baby take my hand it'll be allright." I continued.
"Surrender all your dreams to me tonight." She followed up.
"They'll come true in the end." I said before comming to a stop.
"You said oh girl it's a ..." She began to sing again before, for once I interupted her.
You see, at that moment, we had just crested the hill and almost right away, I saw not one, but several cars, some were on the road and others were driving alongside, and they were all comming towards us. Indeed what we had been hearing was not one car but several, much further away than expected, for now atleast. Anyway;
"What the hell?" I said as I interupted her beautiful singing, surprised at the army of steel that was bearing down on us. I was expecting one car, not a mobilized infantry platoon, or whatever this was.
"This doesn't look good." Phoebe said, begining to get nervous.
"Should I use Aggron?" I asked. "Or could you teleport us around them?"
"Let's go." She said as she took my hand, closed her eyes, and moments later teleported us away from the road, out of the way of the massive rolling armada.
"Is this some kind of race, or is this like Mad Max?" I asked, completely unsure of what was happening.
"What's Mad max?" She asked in return.
"Nevermind that now, let's just, try not to get killed." I replied as the array of vehicles approached, I didn't know what their intentions were, and it didn't seem that they were close enough for Phoebe to pick up on them yet either.
"Will do." She agreed.
"Let me know when you can 'hear' them." I said.
"Ok, that might not work, there's so many and they're all quickly moving in cars." She said.
"You had no problem with this in the last world." I said.
"That was one car, this is like twenty. You know how hard it is to make out what somebody is whispering when 20 people are whispering at once, and because they're moving and the distance between us and them is changing their individual voices are constantly changing in volume?" She replied in a manner that suggested that I was supposed to know this already.
"Um...no, I don't think 20 people have ever tried to whisper something to me at once." Was all I could say.
"It's harder then it looks Cj." She said.
"Ok well, just wait till they get close and try." I replied.
"I will." She answered.
"And try not to be seen."
"Duh." She said as she watched the approaching pack in anticipation while I quietly prepared to send out aggron in case they decided to come after us. Surrounded by a mostly flat, desert landscape, there was nothing out here that aggron's massive size could accidently destroy, so unless they happened to be packing anti-tank guns, this entire force would be no real threat.
The metalic horde came and went, they didn't even seem to notice us, and before long they dissappeared over the hill.
"Did you pick anything up?" I asked as the sound from their engines began to fade into the distance.
"They're chasing after that other car." She replied. "I think whoever is driving it has stolen something from them."
"Are they friendly?" I asked.
"I don't know, that's all I could make out." She replied.
" Well, I don't feel like chasing after that wagon do you?" I asked.
"No" She quickly replied. "I want to keep going this way."
"Allright then it's settled."
So we continued to head in the same direction, two hours later, we finally came across a town, a town that hadn't been lived in for quite some time. There were no cars to be seen anywhere, a lot of the buildings had broken windows and the stores had been pretty much picked clean, for the most part it was a whole bunch of empty buildings.
"I wonder what the hell happened to this world." I said as we looked through the remnants of something that may have been a hardware store, the windows were smashed out and there were no signs or anything to indicate what kind of store it was. There wasn't much left inside either, just a computer behind the counter that was useless because there was no power, the cash register was missing, there were a few cans of spray paint, in various colors, some bolts, a handful of socket wrench sets, sockets, other bits and bobs , and a ladder and these were the only things that indicated what it might have been at one point.
"I don't know." Phoebe replied while looking through the cans of paint.
"I don't think we're going to find anything useful here, it's just tools and paint and stuff." I said.
"Let's see if we can find an apartment, with a bed."
Phoebe: "Oh yes let's." She said with excitement.
We headed across the street where there seemed to be loft apartments. On the first floor there was a cafe at some point, a sign out front and many booths inside seemed to confirm this. Once again the windows were smashed and the register was missing, but the second-floor windows were intact.
There were a few long dead skeletons in the booths, cause of death unknown, they were intact, they were wearing clothes even, and there was no bullet holes in their skulls or clothes or anything else that would indicate they'd been shot. Atleast they had been there for awhile so the place didn't smell too bad, there was still a slight stench of death, however.
Upstairs there were three bed rooms. One was completely empty, the next was well furnished, but there was a skeleton in the bed, as if it was asleep when it died. Neither of us were really comfortable with removing it. Everything was covered in an inch of dust, and despite the bones being dry, the bed was...really gross, the sheets were stained kind of a gross brownish green color, and it probably didn't smell too good either. The third had a bed, there was a skeleton on the couch, as if it had died while watching tv, the bed was fine, but the couch was also super gross. It was just as dusty as the last, but the bed was ok.
" Well there's a bed, without a skeleton in it." I said as I looked over the room. "We can just move tv buddy to another room or something."
"TV Buddy? Cj, these skeletons are too creepy, I don't want to stay here." Phoebe replied, just a bit creeped out.
" Well, why don't go outback, dig a hole, and burry them all?" I asked. "I think there was a shovel over in that hardware store."
"Yes, but what killed them all?" She asked.
"I don't know." I said."Was it the mad max wannabes?"
"What?" She asked.
"Never mind." I replied, feeling that now wasn't the best moment to explain.
"Can we just find somewhere else? I don't want to be in the same buiding as that disgusting bed." She said, not wanting to stay here at all.
"ok." I replied after letting out a sigh to show my dissapointment.
We left the building, and went in search of another.
"Won't it be best to stay off the main road? So nobody can see us?" She said as we came to an intersection.
"Maybe." I replied. "But then we can't keep track of who goes through."
"Why do we need too?" She asked.
"So we can try to get a sense of what's going on here." I replied.
"We can do that later, hey maybe there's a car somewhere." She suggested as she took a right and headed off the main.
"I doubt it, there's nothing parked on the main, this place has been picked clean." I replied as we headed for a residential street, I already missed that little sedan we had in the last world.
The houses had it just as bad, broken windows, empty garages, overgrown lawns, and some had the doors open and others were closed. After searching for a while we found a house that, while it had already been scavenged, it must not have been locked as the doors were intact. However, a living room window was broken, most of the furniture was gone, there was a skeleton half-burried and scattered in the front yard, with remnants of clothing, but no skeletons inside. There was no sign of panic or struggle, whatever killed these people came so fast they didn't even realize what was happening, there was no bullet holes, no blood, no burn marks, and obviously nothing exploded. We decided to stay here for the night, thinking it would be difficult to find another place like this.
Long story short, we burried the skeleton in the front yard, we got some water from Bubba, who as a blastoise carried a limited supply to use in attacks, and we used Hellblade's flames and a pot we found in the kitchen to boil it. Phoebe had Cubey and Cloudela out trying to clean up all the dust in the house, which to be honest was kind of silly since we'd only be there for one night, but she insisted and wouldn't take no for an answer. Anyway, while she was busy cleaning the house I did some exploring, taking my pokemon with me for protection.
Every house was the same story, skeletons, broken windows, stolen appliances, no cars, no guns, no ammo even, I found a baby skeleton in a high chair, which was about the saddest damned thing I've ever seen. Part of me just wanted to light this entire town on fire, in some kind of grand viking funeral, but the smoke it would create would surely gain some attention from the mad max wannabes, attention neither of us were sure we really wanted.
On the next street over, there was a white 1980's chevy mini-bus lettered for a presumably local church parked in front of a house, full of skeletons, likely why it was still here. Somebody had taken a spray can to it, "Don't bother it's a diesel" "Condemned" and "R.I.P" were comically sprayed on one side in black and red paint, among other things. Jnside the smell was unspeakable, as in I'd rather change Charley's diaper for the rest of his life, than have to deal with that again, but it was the only abandoned vehicle I had come across in this world, so I didn't have much of a choice but to throw all the skeletal geezers out.
As I was doing so I remembered how ironic it was back when we were on the run there were abandoned vehicles left and right, but of course, I already had one and now that we didn't have one I had to do the almost unthinkable to get a silly bus. Once I had all the bones assembled into a pile, I had Hellblade turn them to ash, then, using an assortment of tools I collected from nearby garages, I took out the seats out which were disgusting and stained with, I don't even want to know, and had Hellblade burn them as well, they were so gross I didn't even want to look at them anymore. They were just bolted to the floor so removing them wasn't too difficult. This left me with two seats that were unsoiled, one in the back, and one that was kind of in the middle on the opposite side, and no driver's seat. I took these seats out for the time being. Then, I opened the back door, and let Bubba out, inside the bus, since there was now a lot of room without the seats and then I had him use hydro pump to try to clean everything out as best as I could, trying not to hurt the electronics. Then I reinstalled the remaining passenger seats in the front-most positions. Then in litterally the first house I went to, I took some cushions from an unsoiled sofa, and, using them as a replacement for the driver's seat, I turned the key and...nothing...the battery was dead, of course it was, like a bus that has been sitting still for so long would just start back up, so I popped the hood, let out Cap'n'Magnum, and had him use thunder on the battery, more of a thundershock really, as I didn't want to blow it up. While he was outside helping me to jumpstart it, the big v8 diesel engine turned over, and after strugling for several rotations, it gradually turned faster and faster until it finally started up. Finally, we had a vehicle, not just a car, but a mini-bus big enough to carry some stuff, it had a nearly full tank of diesel too, so I drove it back to the house to show Phoebe, while the back end dried out. Of course it wasn't the fastest thing in the world, but hell, a golf cart would be amazing at this point, a minibus with a big v8 diesel and working air conditioning, it's a miracle.
"Oh arceus Cj, where'd you find this?" She asked moments after I pulled up, Cloudela floating around behind her.
"It was a few streets over, full of skeletons, I guess nobody wanted to touch it. Bubba helped me clean it out, so it doesn't smell as bad as it did. The air conditioning works!"
"Hold on I found something." She said as she headed into the house.
She came back out a bit later with a can of air freshener.
"Maybe this will help?" She asked.
"Does it still work?" I asked in return.
"Yep." She said as she tested the spray.
"Ok then, come aboard." I said as I pushed the doors wide open.
She came in and sprayed air freshener everywhere, and before long it didn't smell bad at all.
"This reminds me of our old van." She said after she was finished.
"Yeah it's the same basis I think, it's just a bus version with a diesel engine. You know we should go back to the hardware store and customize this thing, spray some paint on it, get rid of the old church lettering. and the graffiti and stuff, and put on some of our own." I suggested.
"Unless you still want to clean up a house that we're only going to stay in for one night. Might not even stay in it, now that we can move." I said.
"True." She replied. "Ok just let me go get my new purse."
"New?" I asked.
"I found it in the closet. My old one has a hole in it ever since we helped the resistance get those trucks." She replied. "It's about the same size too."
"Ok, fair enough." I said as she headed into retrieve it.
"Cubey, Cloudela, get on the bus, we're going on a trip." She said as she headed back into the house.
Both her pokemon entered the bus, then she got on a few moments later after retrieving her thigns, then we finally headed for the hardware store, once there we picked up some cans of paint, and set to work on customizing it, using white paint to cover up the existing graffiti. Atleast that was what I was doing, Cubey was exploring the hardware store, cloudela didn't like the smell of spray paint so it was avoiding me, Phoebe was on the other side of the bus, there wasn't as much grafitti on that side so she was finished before me and now she was trying to be creative, but she couldn't decide what to do so really she was just holding a can of green paint and staring at the bus with determination.
"Allright Pheebles did you get this side taken care of?" I said as I walked around to her side of the bus.
"Pheebles you ok?" I asked, noticing that she seemed to be spaced out.
"Yes I'm ok, just,...um.." She said as she walked towards the bus and started to paint on the side.
"What are you painting now?" I asked.
"It's gardevorian" She replied as she sprayed on some green triangles and other symbols.
"Do you remember what it means?" She asked as she finished her creation.
"Yeah, but, nobody else is going to understand." I replied.
"Well then what's it say?" She asked.
I should've known she would call me out, a while ago she taught me the written gardevorian language, key word being a while ago. It was hundreds of years old after all, and it wasn't frequently used either. So I stared at it for awhile as she patiently waited for an answer.
"Love is eternal?" I asked.
"Mhmmm." She replied.
"That's a bit cheesy." I continued.
"Awe, that's like something Nina would say." She defended.
"Well sometimes Nina is right." I replied.
"I know it's cheesy, but they'll never be able to figure it out." She insisted. Which, was true, if we ever came across somebody, odds are they'd just think it's some sort of fake alien language.
"Allright fine, if that's what you want, I'm painting a stealth fighter." I said.
"Why?" She asked.
"Because it's one of the few things I know how to draw." I replied as I looked around for a gray and black can of paint, I ended up only being able to find a gray one. So my fighter ended up looking like a gray triangular . . . . ish blob, because even though I've drawn them several times on the sides of tests and class notes, I've never painted them before.
"I like the detail, it's very stealthy, if it's surrounded by blobs." She said, jokingly.
"Yeah, yeah" I replied, somewhat dissapointed in myself.
"You know I've been thinking, there's a lot of room in the back." She said.
"Mhm, and?" I asked.
"What if we put a bed in the back?" She continued.
"Like some kind of cheapo RV?" I asked.
"Um...yeah" She replied.
"Ok, yeah, we can go find one while the paint dries." I said in agreement.
"Um . . . . . yeah . . sure." I replied, bewildered that somehow she never learned what an rv was.
"Cloudela! Cubey! Where did you go?" She called out for her pokemon.
Cloudela came down from the skys, it had been watching us from a distance this whole time, while Cubey was still messing around in the hardware store, we waited for a bit thinking he'd make his way out, but after awhile it just made more sense to go in there and get him.
"Cubey, come on, we need to go." She said as we approached the entrance of the store.
"I don't get why you still have them out." I said.
"Because they were helping me clean earlier, I just didn't return them yet. There's nothing wrong with letting them hang out for a bit." She insisted.
"As long as you can keep track of them." I replied.
Cubey was messing around with a wrench in the back of the store, one of the few times I've ever seen him hold something other than his bone, especially since he wasn't trying to smack anybody with it. Anyway, he must have decided that the wrench was not a suitable replacement as he quickly dropped it and reclaimed his bone when he saw us.
"Marrow Marrow." He said as we approached.
"Come on Cubey we need to go find a bed." She said.
"We can just take the one from the house we were at." I replied.
"I think there's one across the street remember?." She asked.
"Oh yeaaah, the lofts above the cafe of the dead." I said, jokingly.
"Allright then let's go."
So we headed across the street, and, to save time, we smashed the window out of the apartment, with help from Cubey, and then we pushed the mattress out of it, where it fell to the street unharmed. From there we left the cafe and carefully shoved it into the rear entrance of the bus, and then we recovered it with the sheets it had in the apartment, turning the once abandoned church bus into an rv of sorts. We spent a little more time adding some things to the paint job , some blobby blue waves, a green stripe, flames, a crudely drawn image of a pokeball, so crude that even if they knew about pokemon, they wouldn't recognize it anyway. It was not a very pretty paint job, but it was fun to paint, things upon the big white canvas of a vehicle, before long the evening snuck up on us, so we retreated back to the house for the night.
We spent the night in the house, planning to take our new creation on a road trip tomorrow. For once we had a bed to sleep in, so the night went by fast, the house was without heat so it was very frigid, but as we held each other close under the covers, we found it warm enough to sleep. At some point during the night we were awoken by that same group of cars, who were heading back to wherever they came from. They passed through harmlessly, not even knowing we were there, as soon as they came they left, all went quiet, and so we quickly fell back to sleep.
We awoke the next morning with more energy than before, ready for another day of travel, hopefully to a place of greater significance. With our new rv bus thing, we would be able to travel a lot further than we had the previous days, maybe now we could finally get somewhere. It wasn't long before we were on the highway, with me driving and Phoebe chilling out on the bed in the back.
"So how are we going to find a portal here?" Phoebe asked from the comfort of the bed.
"I don't know, but there has to be one somewhere, let's try to find some people to talk to first."
"Comfortable baby girl?" I said, teasingly.
"Snuggly." She replied. "This was the best idea ever."
"Glad you enjoy it." I said, trying not to fall off of the stack of sofa cushions I was using instead of a seat.
About an hour down the road, a lone car appeared on the horizon, when we got close enough to know for sure, it quickly turned around and headed in the opposite direction.
"Keep your eyes open Pheebles, I just saw another car, it might be one from that group." I said.
"Really?" She asked.
"Yeah, you'd see it too if you'd sit up and look out the window." I said.
"ehhh...it's more comfortable down here." She insisted.
"Well, get up now Pheebles, we need to stay alert." I said turning my attention towards the horizon, halfway expecting a large group of cars to appear at any moment. That one we had seen was almost certainly a scout that had just sped off to inform the others that our big white whale of a minibus was approaching. A few more miles down the road another town appeared on the horizon, with lots and lots of cars and trucks and other vehicles parked all around it in no particular order. It seemed like every car that used to be in the last town was parked here, along with many, many others, before we could get much closer we were approached by about a dozen cars.
"Oh crap.." I said, realizing we couldn't out run them."
"Should we teleport out?" She asked.
"If they start firing at us." I replied.
The vehicles encircled us in a well-choreographed manner, escaping with the bus was impossible. The cars were a mix of former 1980s police cars along with 4wd pickups and suvs. Some of them had been modified to make them better offroad, The apparent leader of the group stepped out of a militarized suburban looking thing, I figured he was the leader because he's the only one that stepped out while everyone else stayed in the safety of their cars.
"Ok Pheebles, teleport out before they see you." I said as the mysterious stranger approached the bus.
"Ok, just remember I love you, and don't do anything stupid." She replied before teleporting out of sight, as she did so, I noticed the man caught a brief glimpse of the light created when she teleports, as he turned his head towards the rear of the bus, but it happened so fast he quickly dismissed it.
When he got close I opened to door for him.
"What seems to be the problem um...officer?" I asked, trying to sound cool but probably just sounding really awkward.
"This bus, it was full of bodies..." He said.
"And now it's not, so?" I replied. " What's going on here?"
"Who are you?" Was his reply.
"Cj, who are you?" I asked.
"Come with us." He replied, not very keen on answering any of my questions.
"Why?" I asked.
"Come with us, or you die." He replied in just a slightly sterner fashion as he headed back to his blazer, giving hand signals to his lackeys before he got back in.
The cars started up and began to pull away, one by one, until only the leader's blazer, and a few pickups remained. The pickups beeped at me, prompting me to go and follow the other cars.
Phoebe teleported back inside shortly before I began to move forward.
"Ok, I've been doing some digging, and I don't like these guys." She said as she layed down upon the bed.
"They're going to take the bus, and then they're going to lock you up, and use you as a slave." She said. "Do you know how to run a methane plant?"
"Um no." I replied. I guess we're going to have to get creative."
"Mhm." She replied.
"Ok, when the speedo hits zero, teleport us out." I said.
"You send out Bulby, I'll send out bubba, we'll use Aggron as a distra..."
"No...we're not going to kill them." She vehemenantly protested with an interuption.
"Pheebles if we knock them out they're just going to come after us again." I replied. "Their town is just a few miles away, we can't go back the other direction we'll run out of fuel before we get anywhere."
"It sucks, I know, but this world's already seen hell, possibly even worse than mine, with them out of the way, maybe somebody that's not as . . . . . . broken will have a chance."
"No . . . Cj . . . . . . no . . . . " She refused.
"Ok, fine we'll try to run away, but, I don't know how much time we're really going to buy." I replied. "We're going to end up right back where we started."
She stared at me for a few moments as we continued down the road, towards the mass of parked cars and the city that layed behind them. She didn't want to spill any blood, so I really didn't have a choice.
"Ok so Bulby, Blossom, Magnum... are you ready?"
"Mhm." She replied.
"Ok then." I said in reluctant agreement.
She took my hand, I hit the brakes, the pickup behind us began to beep with fury. The bus came to a stop, she teleported us out, to the north, let go of my hand and teleported over to the south where she let out Bulby, while I let out Blossom, and using a combination of Petal dance and sleep powder, a cloud of sleep powder soon enveloped the highway, quickly knocking out the trucks that were following us. The rest of the group ahead of us began to turn around, by then I had let magnum out as well and a few thunderwaves had left them completely immobilized, to the point where Phoebe could just walk up and put them to sleep. After that I stole a pistol from one of them and shot out all of their tires, to slow them down a little more. Again, we had to refrain from destroying them completely, as a large fire could gain some unwanted attention.
"Ok that's the best we can do, let's get out of here." I said, wanting to get as far away from them as possible before they woke up.
"Wait." She said as we got back in the bus. "Maybe we can free the slaves?"
"At the methane plant? " I asked.
"Mhm, and the town in general" She replied.
"Where they produce methane using pig crap?" I asked.
"Mhm." She replied again. "Maybe they might know where a portal is."
"Maybe, oh what the hell, why not?" I agreed, relieved to be able to do something besides travel down this road we were on. It was a long shot, but we had nothing else that even resembled a lead on a portal so far.
Over the course of the next hour, we parked the bus outside the city, hiding it behind a delivery truck and a nearly identical school bus, adding it to the huge amount of cars already parked there. We navigated through the dormant labyrinth of steel, there were thousands of cars here, they must have gathered everything from miles around. I noticed how nothing was newer than the 1980s, meaning that this world's apocalypse must have happened around that time. Most of the cars were identical to ones from our world, in fact, from what I could tell there was no difference in brands or models. Once we finally made it into the city, we quickly found the methane plant, which was built as an extension to a pre-existing meat-packing plant that at one time was the town's largest industry. Finally, so we could get a better view of the place, Phoebe managed to teleport us to the roof of a silo without being noticed.
"This place smells disgusting." She said moments after we arrived on the roof.
"It's full of pig crap. What did you expect?" I replied. "Atleast it's not as bad as that bus smelled when I first found it."
"I wasn't there Cj, and I don't wanna know." She defended.
Well then, just trust me on that." I said.
"Where are all the slaves?" She asked. " I only see three of them."
"I don't know, you're the one that told me about them." I replied. "Some of them are probably working, some of them are . . . probably . . . . um, is there a jail? They have to be holding them somewhere or they'll try to run away and the ones that are working probably have some kind of overseer that we're going to need to drop."
"That guy is an overseer." She said, pointing to a rifle-wielding man that was standing on a little catwalk above a large pen of pigs.
"Ok, that's definitely one of them, we need to make sure we find the..." I stopped talking when I noticed she already teleported over to the man and quickly knocked him unconcious.
The urge to yell was immense, but I realized it wasn't wise in this situation. I couldn't say anything without blowing my cover.
"I got him." She said, telepathically.
"Great, now hide him and keep the slaves from trying to escape." I replied.
"Isn't that what we're trying to help them with?" She shot back.
"Yes, but that guy isn't the only guard. If they try to escape now they could get shot by the others." I said.
"What should I do with him?"
"Just bring him up here."
She teleported back with the unconcious guard.
"Why did you do that?" I asked, annoyed that she almost blew the entire operation, so many things could have gone wrong there, I didn't even want to think about it.
"Because I just want to get this over with." She replied.
"It was your idea to begin with." I defended.
"Yeah...I know." She agreed.
"Ok we're going to have to make this work, leave this guy here, and bring me to this roof over here." I said as I tried to re-evaluate the situation. "And then all the slaves that are outside."
"Ok." She replied.
She took my hand and we moved to the lower, but larger roof of an adjacent building, large enough that we could bring more people up here as opposed to the silo where only two or three could hide at once. Then she teleported off to collect the newly liberated allies. Finally we had some people that could answer our questions.
"What's going on? Who are you? What are you?" The first one said shortly after Phoebe brought him to the roof.
"Relax." I replied. "We're going to free you all, but we need you to stay up here for the time being so we can get the others. Also we have some questions."
"What happened to this world, why are there skeletons everywhere?" Phoebe asked before I could.
"I don't know, one day the air became toxic, most of the country died within the year. Just a handful were immune. " He replied, nearly breaking down in tears.
"Is it still...toxic?" I asked, just a bit worried now.
"No, it has dissipated by now, I'm sure." He said. "So you're going to save the others?"
"Yeah, just wait up here, we'll come back and get you once we've got everything settled then you all will be good to go." I replied.
"Wait where's the portal?" Phoebe suddenly asked.
"What?" He asked.
"There's nowhere to go, this is the only hospitable town for miles." He replied. "They've taken everything from the others."
"There was one over that way." I replied.
"It doesn't have any water, they moved it all over here." He defended.
"Well..." I looked over at Pheebles, as the mission had now gone from liberating the slaves, to taking over the entire town.
"Your former masters, how many are there?" I asked.
"Fifty." He replied.
"Fifty masters, 130 men, women and children slaves." He replied.
"And they can control you all?" I asked, somewhat surprised.
"They have the guns." He replied.
"Pheebles, go gather up the others that are outside before they realize they're unsupervised, I'll keep questioning this guy." I said.
"Yeah, just don't forget to ask them." She replied before teleporting away.
"So there's only three of you outside, where are the others?" I asked.
" There's more inside, there's some tending the garden, others are working on the cars, the rest are in the jail. "
"They trust you to work on their cars?" I asked, somewhat surprised.
" Yes, at gunpoint and with the understand that if they find anything wrong they'll kill the one responsible along with their family if they have one." He replied.
"Ok, so, we knocked out about, 14 of them so far." I said.
"Fourteen?" He asked, surprised.
"The one that was holding you at gunpoint, and another group that tried to stop us from entering the city." I replied. "A driver for all twelve cars, plus the leader of that group. If they have radio they'll probably find out about it soon and send more out to investigate."
While I said this, Phoebe returned with another one of the former slaves, and then quickly teleported away again.
"Are they dead?" He asked.
"No, just unconcious, unfortunately Phoebe, bless her soul, wouldn't allow it." I replied."So that means there's 36 left to deal with." I replied moments before Phoebe came back with another woman, the last of the former slaves that were outside.
"Ok that's all three of them." She said.
"Allright, now you explain to them what's going on, and we'll be back." I said.
"Right." He replied.
"Stay on the roof and stay out of sight." I said as Phoebe took my hand and teleported us away.
"Did you ask them about the portal?" Phoebe asked as we arrived on another rooftop across the street.
"Wait till after this, ok, odds are if something like that exist the first 3 people we meet aren't going to know about it, it'd be better to ask them all at once." I replied.
"Yeah, I see what you mean. So where are the others?"
"He said some were in the jail, some are in the garden, and some are working on the cars, there's 130 in total."
"Where are all those places?" She asked.
"It's a small town, it won't take long to find, the garden is probably in a playground or a park or something." I replied. "It's kind of like our world, remember, except it didn't get this bad."
"Yeeeeaaaahhhh, maybe."
" Come on Pheebles, the jail is probably the closest, I don't know where they're going to work on the cars. There's 36 more guards for you to take out before I forget to mention it. "
"Wouldn't they work on them in a garage?" She asked.
"Yeah, but, they could also be somewhere in that mass of cars parked outside the city." I defended.
"Maybe." She said.
"Take me down to street level so we can explore more in depth." I said.
She took my hand and teleported us down without saying anything more. Long story short, about an hour of walking later, taking our time to avoid detection, we found the jail on mainstreet, which was a few blocks away from the methane plant. It was easy to stay hidden because this town was almost as empty as the last. It was likely that they were staying in all the best houses in the nice side of town, not the ones near the industrial areas. We didn't even see as many skeletons here than in the last town, though that may have been because they cleaned some of them up.
Anyway, we found ourselves across the street from the place, where we stopped for a moment so Phoebe could scan the area.
" Yep there's a lot of people in there." Phoebe said as she opened her eyes.
"Any guards?" I asked as I looked towards the jail.
"Probably, but I can't tell, too many voices." She replied.
"We can try to lure them out." I suggested, as fighting them inside the building was a bit more risky, and quite obviously only the guards could come out cause the slaves were locked up.
"Yeah, that seems like the best idea." She agreed.
"Think aggron will be enough?" I asked as I fished his ball out of my pocket.
"Yeah, I think so." She replied in a matter that suggested it should have been obvious.
"Ok, then." I said as I pressed the button and tossed the ball into the air. Releasing aggron for the first time in awhile. The asphault cracked beneath him as he materialized.
"GRAAAAAHHHHH!" He yelled in a voice not unlike that of the iron giant, awaiting a command I didn't even need to give as that yell had already gotten the attention of the guards inside.
"Allright aggron that's litterally all you needed to do, I'll just return..."
Phoebe grabbed my arm before I could press the button again.
"Don't return him now the beam from the ball will give away our position." She insisted.
"Hell you're right."
"Just brave it out buddy, I'll get you healed as soon as I can I promise."
"That won't be neccesary, cover me in case somebody comes up behind." Phoebe said before teleporting to the roof of the jail alone.
"Pheebles?" I said in confusion, as several guards came out of the police station next door, guns drawn.
The sight of aggron stunned them for just a moment before before they opened fire, not that it would help them very much. Phoebe waited around on the roof for awhile, then she quietly snuck up on the guards and when the time was right she put them to sleep one by one. When they were all down she teleported back over to me.
"You really need to stop doing that, you know? One of these days they'll get the drop on you."
"Yeah . . . . well . . . . ." She stamered, awkwardly.
"Well what?" I asked, curious as to how she would defend herself.
"Nothing, you're right, I should have given you more warning." She replied.
"Graaaaaahhhhh!" Agron yelled, not very happy with being shot at, even though it didn't hurt him at all. One more guard came out, panicked and opened fire.
"You missed one." I said as I shot the panick stricken guard, encassing him in a bubble, then the little lcd screen on the gun turned red and displayed "Cartridge empty" in black letters.
"Well . . atleast you didn't." She replied.
"Um . . . . . . " I muttered as I looked at the screen. "I think it's out of ammo, going to have to switch to real guns."
"Awe but Cj." She said with a hint of dissapointment.
"No butts, my pistol is still on the bus right?" I asked.
"Yes." She replied.
"Ok, well I'll take this guy's for the time being, now come on let's go see what's inside." I said, walking towards the jail's entrance after I grabbed a pistol from one of the unconcious guards.
"Ok." She said, somewhat dissapointed that I was so willing to return to using lethal force. I didn't really have much choice, bubble gun was out of ammo, and we'd have to encounter a world with the space police again for any chance of getting more.
"Allright aggron, thanks for the help, now return." I said as I held up his ball and clicked the button.
We quietly entered the building, it was a fairly small jailhouse\police station, so there was only a little tiny office space up front, and then the back was where all the jail cells were, as well as a few others in the basement. The police station was next door in a separate building The jail cells were packed as full as they could be, full of men and women that really wanted out. There was probably ten people in a cell meant for 2, 3 at the most, and with the commotion we had caused outside, none of them were very happy.
"So, should we just let them out?" Phoebe asked as we stood at the entrance to the back.
"No, I don't know, same situation, if we let them out they could get themselves killed, but there's so much more of them this time." I answered.
"I'm not taking them all to the roof, that'll tire me out." She replid.
"Let us out!" One of them cried, somehow managing to hear us despite the yelling of his cellmates.
"EVERYONE QUIET!" I yelled.
Seconds passed without a change in the noise level, but a few of them noticed right away that we weren't their usual guards, and assisted in quieting the others, almost two minutes after I yelled, the jail finally fell silent.
"You think we should just say screw it and let some of them participate?" I asked. "We have the guns, they have the manpower."
"It might go faster that way." She replied.
"OK, LISTEN UP, we are going to free all of you today, but in order to help things run more smoothly, we need some volunteers to help fight against your former masters so you can take over the city. " I said as all eyes fell upon me as I walked down the hall between the cells. "There's only a handful of guns, and I strongly recommend they only go to the most capable, there's no sense in the rest of you charging them unarmed."
"After you have your city back we have one more request to ask, but we can get to that later." Phoebe said, following behind me.
"Those that are unarmed, just stay safe somewhere, hell, I know it sounds silly, but stay in here until the smoke clears. We'll leave the cells unlocked, and somebody will come to tell you when it's safe to leave. " I said.
"Any questions?"Phoebe asked.
"What are you some kind of alien lady?" One of them, who was only a small child, immediately asked.
"Yep, that's right." She answered.
"Is he an alien too?" The child continued with his series of questions.
"Yeah, they just, they don't make disguises in my size." She answered.
"Allright, Pheebles, unlock the cells." I said.
"Right." She replied as her hands began to glow. She used her powers to unlock all the cells one by one.
"Ok, there's 6 unconsious guards out there, and 5 pistols, one for five of you, we need five volunteers, no children." I said as the cell doors began to open. "The rest of you stay here, or find somewhere else to stay safe. The five of you should go rescue the others working on their cars, we'll take the gardens."
"Five of us taking on all of them is suicide." One of them spoke up in a rough voice.
"There's only thirty of them left." I said.
"Twenty of them are with their cars." The same man spoke up again.
" Ok then, we'll take the cars, you take the gardens." I said.
"Are you sure you can handle it?" The same man asked.
"Yeah, we got it, also before I forget, three of you are on the roof of a building next to the methane plant, for their own safety, now you comming or are you just going to question everything?"
"Yeah, I'll go." He said as he left the confines of his cell.
"Ok good, go outside, grab a pistol, that's one volunteer, we need four more."
It was another minute of discussion before we had a team of able volunteers assembled, not because nobody wanted to volunteer, but because a majority of them wanted too, even some of the children, who, despite their courage, were obviously the first to be counted out. So we ended up with a team of five men armed with pistols, and from the volunteers, a secondary team of 5 who were going to stay back until more weapons could be aquired, they were comming with us to the cars, and also showing us the way there, since, I mean , there were cars parked all around the city, as some sort of rudimentary barrier, how the heck were we supposed to know what ones they were working on?
Unfortunately, from what one of our new allies told me, this one was a man that said he used to be a high-ranking soldier until he was caught stealing cuts of meat to give to the enslaved children, which resulted in him being demoted to slave as well, there was only two working radios in the entire town, one with the leader of the raid team, and another with the chieftain, these were the only two that had rechargeable batteries, as all normal batteries of the AA, AAA, 9v, variety had expired a long time ago, and even the rechargeables were on their last legs. We had no way to communicate with the other team once they left Phoebe's telepathic range, which was about a city block.
"Ok, once we make contact with the enemy, all of you need to stay back until we can drop a few and feed you some guns." I said. "Only engage once you have a gun."
"And only kill them if you need too, they may know something that we need to know." Phoebe said.
"And what is that?" One of them asked.
"We'll tell you after this." Phoebe replied.
"Are you going to take us to your home planet?" Another one asked.
"No, I wish..." Phoebe replied.
"For what?" The second one fired another question.
"Wait till we're done, then we'll tell you." Phoebe insisted.
Eventually our new allies led us to the outskirts of the city, to a narrow road that lead through the maze of parked cars which would be fun to explore if we weren't pre-occupied with something else.
"Ok Pheebles, you know the drill." I said as we cautiously made our way down the road through all the cars and other assorted vehicles, with the occasional cargo container or other large object thrown in for good measure.
"Yeah, I'm listening." She replied.
"The rest of you stay back, we could contact them at any moment, even with her powers, there's a lot of metal around, she can't see everything." I said, looking around in all directions while cautiosly proceeding forward.
"Oh, now you remember." She chimed in.
"Yeah, Pheebles, I remember things sometimes." I defended.
"Can't even remember our anniversary." She commented.
"We've had like four weddings, which one do you count?" I asked.
"Wait, what? How?" One of our companions asked.
"It's a long story." I replied.
"Mhm." Phoebe agreed.
"So you two are?" He continued to ask.
"Yes we're married." Phoebe replied. "Everybody always asks that, we have a baby too."
"Oh so you . . . .?" He started to ask another question, but Phoebe wisely interupted him.
"Yes, now no more questions." She quickly answered before he could finish.
A few minutes passed of us quietly walking around the field of vehicles with our companions giving us general directions, to navigate the surprising labyrinth of roads, until Phoebe suddenly stopped.
"Shhh." She said out of the blue, perking up her ears and scanning the area.
"Allright, here we go." I whispered, motioning the others to stay back. We were now beside a cargo container, at the end of a line of school busses lined up front to back. creating a sort of a wall around this little road of dry grass. This place seemed to be where a lot of the heavier vehicles were, busses, semis, trailers, dumptrucks, all sorts of equipment was scattered around in a somewhat orderly fashion. They had taken the buses from atleast four different schools, so there was quite a few of them.
"We're close." She said. "Really close."
"Ok now's the time you all need to back up." I said to our allies.
"Come on Pheebles, let's go investigate." I said as I peaked around the end of the container, to be met with the sight of the front of several semis, and a huge open area.
"I can't see anything." I said.
"They're back there." Phoebe replied, pointing forward and to the left. I crossed the "road" where there was a large gap between the containers , and peaked around the side. Between the row of semis, and another row of even more school busses, in front of a high wall of double-stacked containers, was an assortment of vintage cars, mustangs, challengers, camaros, firebirds, monacos, belvederes, impalas, galaxies, a mixed bag of 70s americana. There were people working on them, and people watching them with rifles, the upper level of containers also had holes cut out of them and windows installed, and were used like a crude building.
Just then we heard gunshots in the the distance, the other team had made it to the garden, unfortunately this also alerted the guards of the cars that something was going on. A few of them ran around, got in whatever car that was operable, started it up and began to come towards us.
"Crap, they're comming, hide." I said as I ran to the far side of the container.
"Right, come on, hide in the busses." Phoebe said she teleported next to me.
She teleported us inside the container as five cars passed in a hurry to investigate the commotion at the garden.
" Crap, garden team is screwed." I said as I heard the cars go by
"No." Phoebe replied as we left the container.
"Ok, that was close." I said as I watched our companions crawl out from underneath the busses across the "road".
"Shhh, there's still some guards here." Phoebe responded.
"Yeah, well, I didn't expect them all to leave, that would be stupid." I answered.
"Eh- heh." She replied. "So shhh."
"What about garden team?" One of our companions asked out of concern.
"Shhhh!" Phoebe and I said simultaneously.
"We'll deal with it later, if we take these guys out fast enough we can take the cars and get back in time to support them."
"Screw that, if I get in a working car, I'm leaving this dump for good, I've been here too damned long working for these assholes." Another of our companions replied.
"And you don't want revenge?" Phoebe replied.
"Well, uh, I uh . . . . . . . " was all he could say.
"Hehehe, nice." was all I could say as I gave her a quiet hi-five.
"Ok, let's do this." I said as I pulled Cap'n'Magnum's pokeball out of my pocket.
"Is that a grenade? Don't blow the cars up, we need them." One of our allies spoke up.
"Shh." Phoebe said.
"It's not a grenade, it's a pokeball, just watch." I quietly said as I clicked the button and held onto the ball as it opened, releasing Cap'n'Magnum.
Cap'n'Magnum: "Magna, magnazone." He said as soon as he materialized.
"Shhh, quiet." Phoebe said once again.
Our allies were frozen in a state of amazement.
"Out there, there are men with guns, I need you to target them, and only them, and paralyze them with thunderwave, so Phoebe can go in and put them to sleep." I said with a whisper.
"Mag!" Magnum whispered back.
"Go around the containers, turn up there by the double stacks, and attack from behind, you'll have a better element of surprise that way." I instructed. "They're around this corner on the other side of the double stacks."
"Magnazonnnne." Cap'n'Magnum replied.
"I thought we were trying to conserve them." Phoebe quietly protested.
"Guns won't hurt Magnum any, Thunderwave doesn't use much of his energy, and even so, all we have to do is find a working generator for him to get more." I quietly defended. "Go on Magnum, let's get this over with."
"Mag." He said affirmatively as he began to hover away, down the row of schoolbusses toward the doublestack container wall.
"He'll take care of the fighting, we'll get in those cars, and then we'll head back to help the garden team." I said as Cap'n'Magnum dissapeared around a corner near the end of the bus row.
"What is that thing, how did, what what?" Said one of our allies.
"It came out of the grenade?" Another said in confusion.
"Is it like some type of robot or?" Yet another one of our companions said.
"It's a pokemon." Phoebe spoke up. "It's the same thing I am, in that way."
"Did you come out of a ball?" One of them asked.
"It's been a very long time since I had a ball." She replied. "Now shhhh."
A few moments later Magnum rose up over the doublestack container wall. It took awhile for the guards to notice him, and the sight of him led them not to attack but to stare in wonder and disbelief. This gave him plenty of time to identify his targets, and plan an attack pattern accordingly, eventually though, before he even attacked they decided he was hostile and began to fire at him, at which point he quickly set to work. From behind the containers, we heard nothing but gunshots, a bzzzzt noise and an occasional scream of pain. This went on for about 2 minutes at which point magnum flew over the row of busses and returned to me.
"Magna, magnazonnne, maag, magnnna." He said.
"He says he zapped everyone with a gun. " Phoebe translated for me.
"Ok thankyou magnum, I'll try to find a generator for you soon."
"Mag." He replied in an affirmative matter as I pressed the button on his ball and returned him.
"Ok, now you guys need to break the ice with your friends over there so we don't look out of place." I said to our companions, as the recently liberated mechanics began to realize the current state of affairs.
"And try to keep them from killing anybody." Phoebe added.
"You know we can't guarantee that." One of them spoke up as they came out of hiding and approached the mechanics, who were already stealing weapons from the disabled guards.
After Phoebe went around knocking the struggling guards unconcious, putting an end to their whining which was starting to get annoying, we introduced ourselves, and because the garden team was in danger, and time was short, we instructed the ones who didn't volunteer to join us to shove their former masters in jail, and then we hurriedly got in the remaining cars and headed for the garden. Unsurprisingly, one of our allies bolted for one of the cars and took off into the distance just as he said he would, but it was of little consequence as we had plenty of new friends that were willing to fight, so we headed to the garden, with four cars and 10 armed men. We made it to about a block away from the garden, as we came across several guards that were standing outside a run down bakery, their cars were circled around behind them, and their rifles were pointed towards the windows. The garden team was cornered. We bought them some time as the guards noticed us as we approached and headed around a corner to the alleyway to avoid having a head-on conflict with them. We parked behind the first building on the row, which I didn't even have time to identify, then we got out of the car as our allies pulled up behind us.
"GET MOVING, THEY'RE COMMING." I yelled as they clambered out of their cars. "Get to the roofs if you can, go in the backdoors if they exist, do not just walk out infront and expect to win, spread out, cover some ground. No more than 3 per building, go." I commanded, trying to think on the move.
"You wanna go to the roof? " Phoebe asked.
"Yeah, that will give us..."
She took my hand and teleported us up to the roof of the first building in the row before I could finish my sentence.
"Pheebles!" I exclaimed, somewhat annoyed.
"You said get moving." She defended.
"Yeah, you're right, thanks." I replied.
We peeked over the side of the building, watching a pair of guards run down the street to investigate.
"If they keep running I can't keep up with them." Phoebe whispered.
"Well just wait and see." I replied.
"Why don't you just use magnum?"
"They have garden team at gun point."
"I things get rough they'll kill them all just to have them out of the way." I replied. "This has come to the point where blood must be spilled Pheebles. I can use magnum to distract them, but then the garden team will open fire when they see an opening, once that happens Magnum can go hostile and paralyze the survivors."
"Do we have too?"
"It's either them or the people we're trying to protect."
Just then we heard a few gunshots comming from the stores below, the conflict had begun.
"Two down." Phoebe said.
"Who?" I replied.
"Both of the guards, got shot in the alleyway by our friends." She replied.
These shots got the attention of the guards holding the garden team hostage in the store. They were spread pretty thin now, only 8 of them left, reluctantly, they opened fired on the bakery. We heard the shot ring out, we heard the glass shatter, it didn't look good for whoever was inside, a few of them headed in afterwards to investigate the carnage, some more shots were fired, and then they came out. Having almost certainly, slaughtered their hostages, I went and sent out magnum, they all dropped like flys within a few seconds. It was over, we had one, but, we failed to save the garden team.
Pheebles teleported us down to the cafe to put the guards to sleep. Once she did so she just stared at the broken glass, the blood, the bodies, everything.
"Pheebles, are you ok?" I asked out of concern.
"Let's just ask where the portal is and leave." She said, looking forlornly at the dismal scene that was the bakery.
"It's not your fault, you didn't get them pinned in there. You didn't fire the shot that scared them into opening fire." I said, trying to calm her down.
"What if one of them was the only one that knew where the portal was?" She asked.
"I don't know." I replied.
"We should have just had one team, we shouldn't have sent them here." Said
"We didn't know they were going to send reinforcements." I said.
"Besides if they succeeded it would have made things go faster, they volunteered to fight against their masters, they knew what they were getting into."
"Just relax ok?" I replied.
Another gun shot wrang out as one of our "Companions" decided to put a bullet in the head of one of the guards.
"What are you doing? Stop it!" Phoebe cried out.
"5 fucking years, he raped my wife, he starved my daughter, you have no idea how gratifying that felt." He replied as he casually strolled to the next unconcious guard and pulled the trigger.
"And this guy, this guy was just an asshole, killed this kid's mother for trying to steal an apple, a fucking apple." He said as he proceeded to yet another.
"Stop killing them! It's over." Phoebe cried. "Cj stop him."
"What you gonna do?" He asked as he looked me in the eye.
"You mind waiting another ten minutes?" I asked.
"Sure? Why not?" He said.
"Come on Pheebles, let's go somewhere else." I said as I took her hand and began to walk away. "We have to go to city hall to meet with everyone, let's go there."
Another gunshot came from behind.
"GOD DAMMIT I SAID 10 MINUTES, THAT WAS LIKE 5 SECONDS, COME ON!" I yelled.
"He's crazy, you need to stop him." Phoebe whispered.
"You're not too sane yourself right now." I replied.
"I want to go back home, I want to see Charley, I want to hold my son. I want to know he's safe!" She cried out as she hugged me.
"Dammit Pheebles you're going to make me cry too. Let's just, let's just get back to the bus and go for a drive ok? Ok?" We'll ask about the portal some other time." I suggested, trying to find an outlet.
"Ok..." She replied, trying to control her tears.
I knew she was stronger than this, but she gets caught up in the moment sometimes. It wasn't really about what happened to the garden team or the guards, it was about Charley. She'd calm down once she had time to think things through.
"What about city hall?" The vengeful psychopath behind us had the nerve to ask.
"Give us an hour, and I mean an hour, not 30 seconds." I said, extremely annoyed with his actions.
"Come on baby let's go."
"Why didn't you stop him?" Phoebe asked as we walked away.
"You heard what he said, they deserved it. There's no point trying to save them you're going to piss off everyone we just saved. They are the law now." I replied.
"Cj?" She asked. "I'm fine let's just ask them where a portal might be."
"Are you sure?" I asked as I stopped and looked into her eyes.
"Mhm." She replied with a little bit of sadness to her voice.
"Ok." I said.
So we headed to the city hall, which wasn't very far away since we were already on mainstreet, and we waited there for awhile, as all the people we had liberated began to assemble. More people than we had seen for awhile all at once, but still not nearly enough to fill the town. It took about an hour for all of them to arrive.
"Ok, listen up, first off, enjoy your new freedom, don't waste it, secondly, if any of you happen to know where a portal is, or anything that could take us to another world that would be extremely helpful." I said to the crowd from atop the concrete steps of the city hall building. As expected, most of them were competely confused by the question, some thought it was a joke, and only one had a serious answer.
"If you can get us off this planet, I'll tell you everything you need to know, this is a dying world, we could live here, for a while, but it's been a long time since any of us have been outside of this desert. Most of us used to live in the neighboring towns prior to the die-off." Since we were en-slaved, travelers joined our ranks as well, but, you two are the first that have come through in atleast 2 years." One of them spoke in a sorrowful tone, surprisingly it was one of the ones that had been fighting with us the whole time, the one that claimed to have military experience.
"Well, if you have a portal or something, we'll see what we can do, but we can't guarantee that the next world will be any better, it could just lead to another dead world like this one, it could lead us to the middle of a big city, or somewhere where the air is even more toxic." I replied as honestly as I could. "Get a car, and show us the way, if you can't drive, get someone else to drive you."
"If we get him alone I can just see it in his head, I know where it is." Phoebe spoke to me telepathically.
"Yeah, but if they want to leave, and the portal can stay open long enough we might as well let them come with us." I replied.
"Ok, everybody, just get any vehicle that works, and follow us, ok, we'll see what we can do, Pheebles, come on, let's get back to the bus, you sir, you come with us and lead the way."
Another hour later our bus was heading down the highway with a massive fleet of cars behind.
"Ok so where is this place?" I asked.
"It's an abandoned military base just a few hours away, I used to work there." The man replied.
"Yeah, that figures." I said.
"It's always a military base." Phoebe muttered.
"And nobody tried to use it before?" I asked.
"I told them about it, several times, they wouldn't listen, either they thought I was making it up, or they liked having power over us, they didn't want everything to go back to normal."
"So I heard one day, the air became toxic, how did that happen?" I asked.
"It was project Silverwind." He replied.
"What?" I continued to ask.
"It's a long story but, it was supposed to enable mankind to manipulate the weather, but it failed, the chemicals they were using mixed with the oxygen in the atmosphere and created a toxic gas, that while it did cause it to rain, also made the air toxic to 85% of all life, almost overnight, most of the people, animals, and plants died, so fast they couldn't even be burried, if you haven't noticed the skeletons everywhere, deserts expanded, chaos broke out, the people revolted, wars were started, people starved to death, as far as I know we're the only ones left." He said, finally giving us a full story of what happened.
"Where are you from? Some world where people capture monsters for pets?" He asked.
"Yeah, kind of, and then there's battles with other pet owners, competitions, contest, tournaments, it's a big deal." I replied.
"So they're like slaves too?" "He continued."
"No, well, some people treat them like that, but we're more like, boxing coaches or something like that." I defended.
"Trainers."Phoebe pointed out.
"Yeah." I agreed.
"But the balls are like cages." He asked.
"Not really, first of all they aren't concious inside of them, secondly, it's more just so they're easier to carry around, because some of them are pretty big, if you've seen my aggron, he's like what, 20000lbs, I can't just have a giant metal dinosaur following me everywhere, and he won't exactly fit into a car either." I explained. " His last trainer treated him more like a slave, his last trainer is now a rotten puddle of red paste somewhere in our world's nebraska.
"Also, we're from different worlds, but they're closely connected." I pointed out. "Mine is recovering from an apocalyptic event caused by those two worlds colliding, but it's not as screwed as this one sounds atleast."
"They collided?" He asked.
"It's a long story." Phoebe replied.
"As a pokemon myself, the general consensus amoung all pokemon is that it's important to always be getting stronger, to always keep improving, maybe not so much to be the best, but atleast the best we can be, in our world, humans were the first to develop technology, mostly because we didn't need it, but combined with a common interest in adventure, and the technological advances of the humans, having a human trainer is very appealing to many pokemon. Although there are a few that are very shy, or that think they're better off on their own. It's confusing, but it's tradition that if a human is able to capture a pokemon, that human has proved themselves worthy of being their trainer, atleast for the moment. It also did wonders for technology as well, as my world is nearly 40 years more advanced than his, even though it's the same year." Phoebe spoke up.
"But you don't have a ball..." He pointed out.
"That's because we're married." She defended.
And once Phoebe took over, the conversation only got more awkward from there.
Anyway, we eventually arrived at the military base, and after finding the backup generators and getting them working, our new friend led us into a secret underground chamber, full of secret stuff, alleged spaceship parts, experimental lasers, a jetpack, no actual spaceship, surprisingly enough, and finally, a portal machine, unlike the last one, which was kind of a small chamber, and immobile, and unlike many we had seen at Devon co which are all shaped like an arch, and are also fairly hard to move, this one was basically comprised of two lightweightm cylindrical towers, and, when powered on, a large, rectangular portal spanned between them, unlike the advanced models of the space police, there was no way to control where it went, so once again we were relying on random chance. Another few hours passed as we needed to rely on a few more members of the group to make sense of all the notes and documentation that was left behind, to even be able to confirm they were a sort of portal machine, as at first, we really didn't know what to think of the strange cylindrical towers, but somehow, we managed to get it working.
"Ok, listen up, let's not be stupid, ok, we need somebody to go through and make sure we're not walking into a deathtrap, just walk through and come back. Usually we have robots to do this, but they don't have one here."
Our new friend walked through the portal, and came back out a few seconds later.
"It's safe." He declared, "It leads to a forrest, I haven't seen so much green, in so long."
"Allrighty then, let's get out of here." I said as I took Phoebe's hand and walked through the portal with her, after we made it through, the procession of people and their belongings through the portal took a few more hours as the group decided to move the portal outside so we could send some vehicles through. This was an advantage of this particular portal design, as it was lightweight and easy to move. This entire process of moving things over took awhile longer than expected, but it was worth it, as we were able to take the bus with us, along with a few other vehicles, though we had to leave several behind as there just wasn't enough room in the forrest the portal led to. This left us with the bus, and about twenty trucks, vans, and sedans, of about 80 vehicles that we brought to the base from the city. Once that was done, we all gathered around to have a little meeting.
"Ok, now that we're finally here, let's stick together for awhile, atleast until we find civilization, from there you're free to go."
"How do we know there is civilization?" A young woman asked.
"We don't, but in all likelyhood there probably is." I replied.
"Unless we're on a deserted island." Phoebe argued.
"Yeah, that's happened before." I agreed.
"We'll leave the vehicles here for now until we've made a clear path for them, if you haven't noticed we're in the middle of the forrest, it's going to be difficult to manuever them between the trees. Look out for dangerous wildlife that may or may not be present, and if we make contact with any locals, be wary around them because we have no idea where we are or what their culture is like, there's a chance they may be hostile to outsiders. " I said to the crowd as I tried to come up with more helpful information in an attempt to try to keep our group safe. I didn't know how long we were going to stick around, but there was no reason to part with them at the moment. It was around noon where we were on this world, so we were in for a long day, as it was almost evening in the last.
We wandered through the forrest for a bit, in search of a road, just like in most of the worlds we had just arrived in. The forrest itself was lush and full of life, full of many birds and squirrels running about. Eventually we located a modern asphault road, and then we spent the next few hours clearing a path between our cars and the road, thankfully we had the help of our pokemon, Bulby and Rhyhorn were indispensable here. Once the path was completed it took another two hours to get all the vehicles over the rough path. The trucks made it fine, but the sedans, vans, and even our bus had problems with it, to the point where they would often get stuck on a rock or stump, or something, and then we would have to send one of the trucks back to pull them out. Some of the trucks did have chains thrown in the bed along with other equipment, which was put to good use here, and this all went down while local traffic occasionally passed by and wondered what the heck was going on, why were there so many 1980s era vehicles parked along the side of the road? Why is there a path here now? Thankfully that's all they bothered to think about it for the moment, a spectacle and nothing more.
When the time came, it was not fun to drive the bus down that path, as the lack of a proper driver's seat meant every bump threatened to collapse the tower of sofa-cushions and dump me out on the floor, but it somehow made it down in one piece.
After all the vehicles had made it down, our group split up for the first time, as half went one direction, the other half went the other. After heading down the road for a bit, it was clear we were in some kind of hilly region. The local traffic was modern, and very european in appearence for the most part, but I couldn't recognize any make or model in particular, so that didn't mean much, atleast the presence of traffic meant this world wasn't dying like the last one. By the evening, because of the difference in time, we were tired, and even though the sun hadn't set, we found a secluded dirt road, pulled over, and attempted to get some sleep, by this time, nearly everyone in the group had gone their separate ways.
"This bed isn't too bad." I said as Phoebe layed down next to me.
"Mhm." She replied. "I was hoping we could rock the bus the first night we slept here, but I'm just too tired."
"Hehehe, -sighs- Pheebles, yeah, I'm tired too, maybe tomorrow, we've been awake for atleast 20 hours by now." I replied as I wrapped my arms around her, shortly after I remembered the state I had found the bus in.
"Atleast." She said with a whisper.
"Actually on second thought, that's a bit creepy." I said, as memories of the utterly horrid smell began to return. I did my best to clean the bus out, and it worked so well it didn't smell of anything, but it didn't change the fact that several old people died in here.
"Goodnight." She quietly replied, either ignoring me or she was already too far asleep to properly respond.
"Night baby girl." I said as quietly as I could, although she was apparently more concious than I thought as moments later I felt her hand gently brush my cheek and I fell asleep quickly afterwards, so quickly I barely had time to realize it.