AN: I'm baaaaaaaack...
(Yes I am updating today everyone who asked)
The first thing Sabrina noticed was her throbbing head. The second thing she noticed was the metal floor she was lying face down on. The third thing she noticed, after she opened her eyes, was that said floor wasn't one she was familiar with.
She pushed herself up with a groan. She felt the thoughts from her pokémon standing around her. Since they were free and active, she guessed that she was safe, at least for the time being.
Sabrina looked around. The room was trashed; evidently her pokémon weren't taking any chances after…. after… after whatever it was that had happened to her. She ducked her head, rubbed her brow, and tried to think.
Her targets! Sabrina's head shot right back up to where she'd last seen them, but the room with the human sized teleportation rig was empty… as she might have expected.
Sabrina groaned again. Human teleportation, using technology instead of psychic powers, was difficult and risky, especially over long distances. If she hadn't been out very long there was a chance that her targets were still in the vicinity. She glanced down at her watch and let out yet another groan.
She had been out for close to half an hour. There was no chance that they were still around. Sabrina wished that she had brought in some of the gym trainers from the Viridian City Gym with her; she hadn't wanted to wait for them or worry about them getting caught in the crossfire, thinking that it was best if they focus on tightening the net outside. But they would've come in handy half an hour ago when….. when…. Just what had happened anyway?
Reaching out to her pokémon, Sabrina sent a telepathic request and received several visual memories. Through the eyes of her pokémon she saw a dart of darkness pass through her barriers and then she saw her own collapse. Sabrina tried to figure out where she had been struck but none of her pokémon had caught that detail.
Her alakazam looked her over, and she looked through its eyes while it did so. Most of her body was fine, but there was an angry red mark on the back of her neck. The alakazam supplied another memory and Sabrina saw that there had been wisps of darkness rising from that location while she lay on the floor.
Tentatively Sabrina prodded at the spot with her fingers. It was tender, but it didn't seem to hurt. There wasn't any blood either.
The projectile had most likely been meant to stun, Sabrina concluded. She'd need to get herself checked out by some medical professionals ASAP, but there didn't seem to be any immediate danger.
She sighed. No danger, only disappointment. Her biggest leads were gone. She was still stuck with the investigation.
She stood back up. She had to go inform the Viridian City Gym trainers about what happened and then she'd head back home to lick her wounds.
Gary Oak gazed upon the skyscrapers of Saffron City. He was just returning from training in the wilds. Normally he would have been on his way to his next badge, but the Silph Co tour date had moved back to today.
He stopped by the pokémon center first. Most of his team needed a checkup and some rest. He'd only be taking Eevee and Squirtle with him, not that they would be needed that day. He also grabbed some breakfast while he was there, chewing a corner while listening to the gossip of the crowded cafeteria.
According to the rumors Gary overheard, something had happened with Sabrina recently. A few days ago, she returned all scuffed up and went directly to the hospital. She returned to normal duties the next day.
People were speculating about what might have happened, suggesting possibilities from a daring raid on the secret headquarters of Team Rocket where she fought the shadowy leader themselves, to extreme sports on Mount Silver, to training with the Elite Four, to an embarrassing accident involving a wet floor and a stack of books.
It wasn't anything that interested Gary, so he quit thinking about it after he had finished his meal and then headed off to the Silph Co headquarters.
He felt like the day was going to be a good one.
Sabrina rubbed circles in her forehead. She had been feeling strange ever since returning from the raid in the Viridian forest. The inside of her mind felt…. greasy for lack of a better term, like there was a foul sheen over it, complete with a sickly splash of shifting colors found in an oil puddle. The hospital had failed to find anything wrong with her, so Sabrina chalked it up to some lingering effects of the null mines or the dark dart.
She'd have to engage in some intense meditation to locate and purge any remaining energies. It was something she'd have attend to over the weekend, she had to get back to her usual duties at the gym.
Such as budget meetings.
Sabrina kept her sigh internal as department heads sniped and bickered over small percentages. The heads of City Outreach, Combat Trainers, General Trainers, Pokémon Education, Pokémon Medical, General Operations, and a few miscellaneous groups all sat in the large room, each accompanied by a few of their subordinates, all sitting around a circular table in a carpeted beige room, with a security camera blinking and moving in one of the ceiling corners.
Atsushi had been dragged along, so at least Sabrina could try and amuse herself by trying to flirt with him without being caught. It had been fun, making him blush and duck his head.
At least up until Torch, who was attending as part of one of the miscellaneous groups, had cottoned on to what was happening and decided to join the fun. He was also trying to secretly flirt with Atsushi, and much to Sabrina's absolute dismay, he seemed to be succeeding.
She really hoped that she wouldn't have to share Atsushi with Torch of all people. She had it bad enough just being friends with the mystic; sharing a lover with Torch, or Mew forbid, dating him in addition would be truly intolerable.
The bickering reached a point where she couldn't just ignore it, so Sabrina rolled her eyes and turned her attention from her love life back to managing supposed adults.
Archer and one of the engineers minimized the Saffron City Gym blueprints on one of the consoles. They were standing in a control room identical to the one that they had used to oversee operations at the outpost where they had managed to tag Sabrina with the implant. This time the feed from the Saffron City CCTV was being shown on the screen at the front of the room.
"You're sure that she can reach it, even if she can't teleport?" Archer asked.
"For the final time, yes," the engineer said. "It's in the supply room down the hall. It should take her thirty seconds to reach it."
"We've only got one shot at this," Archer cautioned. "We have to be absolutely sure that we'll succeed the first time."
"We're not going to get a better chance," the engineer said. "Not with the boss's current timeframe. Not without trying to relocate the helmet somewhere else."
"Too risky," Archer said immediately.
"Then this is the best we're going to get."
"Fine," Archer sighed and then turned to the rest of the room. "Alright people, it's go time!"
All the psychic humans and pokémon in the gym felt the sudden flare of energy. They instantly began to link their powers together, preparing to repel an assault, forming a network that reached out to Sabrina.
In the meeting room, Sabrina stopped mid-sentence, her face blank. The psychics in the room flinched back from her, linking with each other instead of attempting to reach Sabrina.
Sabrina stood up, slowly, mechanically, a robot utilizing discrete instructions instead of the gestalt motions of a living being. Minds and powers reaching out to her found only a void where they expected the burning beacon of their gym leader's power. Psyches floundered around in confusion, some withdrawing from the emptiness, others struggling to find and link with Sabrina's mind.
Only her personal pokémon team managed to link with her and to their horror they found something that they couldn't escape from. The faces of those outside of their pokéballs went as blank as their trainer's.
"Stay back," Torch hissed, herding all the non-trainers and non-psychics behind him with one hand, the other reaching into one of the pockets of his long coat.
"What's happening?" Atsushi asked, hands gripping the other man's shoulder, looking around Torch, eyes wide. "What's wrong with her?"
Atsushi watched Sabrina walk out of the meeting; her stride still unnatural but gaining speed. One of the psychic trainers tried to grab her wrist. Just as her hand made contact something erupted from Sabrina and blasted the other woman across the room too fast for Atsushi to track. There was a loud crash and then he turned his head and saw that the trainer had ended up going through the plaster wall opposite the door.
Sabrina left the room and the gym trainers in the meeting followed her after taking a few seconds to shake off the shock. Atsushi moved to follow them, but Torch made sure to bar his path.
Torch took out a chunk of crumbling grey earth from his pocket and waved it around his head in a circle, speaking in a language that reverberated in the dark places of the soul. Sickly blue flames surrounded them. The fire swirled in a circle, following Torch's motion. Atsushi flinched back from the flames, acting on basic instinct, but there was no heat. Instead, a blue haze that surrounded the group.
"Don't step out of the circle," Torch told everyone. "As long as you stay in the circle then nobody can know that you're here."
"Can you move it?" Atsushi pleaded, still clutching Torch's shoulder, fingers digging into the other man's coat. The accountant could feel his heart jackhammering in his chest and his palms were covered in sweat. A lead weight had been settling in his stomach ever since he had first caught a glimpse of his girlfriend's blank face and now it felt like it was becoming red hot. "We need to see what's happening! There might be something we can do to help!"
"I-" Torch began, turning to look at Atsushi, and then his voice faltered. He sighed. "I can try. Everyone, huddle together and follow me."
Atsushi was enveloped in a mass of bodies as all the noncombatants huddled together, pressing into each other, holding each other. Flashes of white light and the sounds of pokémon being sent out came from the hallway. Slowly, ever so slowly, Torch began to walk forward, swinging his arm in a circle above his head the whole time. The group followed, still pressed together.
It took them a good twenty seconds to creep out of the meeting room. While they crept, a bright light began to shine from the hallway and a keening cry filled the air. Both light and sound grew in intensity and the group was halted in front of the exit, forced to cover their ears and eyes.
There was a crack like that of lightning. Walls broke and crumbled. The entire gym shook. The keening sound ended and Atsushi didn't feel the intense light on his skin. He opened his eyes to see trainers and their psychic type pokémon stumble back past the doorway.
He made a move to dash out the doorway, but Torch's arm stopped him again.
"We're sticking together, people!" Toch said, looking back, his face grim. "Got it? Nobody steps out of the circle until I know what we're dealing with."
Atsushi met his eyes and then slowly nodded. Torch lowered his arm and the group continued.
The hallway was littered with feebly stirring bodies of people and pokémon alike. The group walked over them, the blue haze covering the beings on the floor while they passed by. The trail of people and pokémon ended at the storeroom down the hall. Torch led his group down that way, moving faster in the relative openness of the hallway.
Inside the storeroom was Sabrina and a blue haired gym trainer. Sabrina was slowly donning a helmet, her movement as mechanical and deliberate as the last time Atsushi had seen her. A scuffed and bruised blue-haired gym trainer was fighting to stop her, the trainer's expression desperate and grim as she struggled physically and psychically against her gym leader.
The gym trainer switched to trying to pry the helmet from her hands, but another invisible eruption hurled her away before she could touch it.
"We've got to stop her," Atsushi shouted, his heart in his mouth, fingers digging into Torch's shoulder.
"Think you can do better than all those trainers?" Torch shouted back.
Sabrina had the helmet halfway on when suddenly she flinched.
"Wha-" She began, but her fingers had gone loose and the helmet slid on.
"We're green!" Archer shouted. "Connection has been made, takeover initializing! We're in the home stretch people! Let's bring her in for a landing!"
Sabrina was silent again. Her face was hidden behind the impassive sheen of the metal helmet. The trainers and pokémon still attempting to link to her located her power and reached out. The connections were established and they had just enough time to scream.
The other trainers and pokémon, figuring that something had gone horribly wrong, had formed their own psychic network, independent of Sabrina. They reached out to the now silent beings, attempting to pry them from whatever was holding them.
A ruthless and cold, psychic force met them, a force without emotion, something that they had never encountered before. Their attempts were rebuffed and then counterattacked.
There was the pop of displaced air from the storeroom, but Atsushi couldn't see if it was someone teleporting to or from there. The group under Torch's protection was making its way back down the hall, heading for an exit.
"Everyone keep together, keep moving," Torch repeated, shepherding them along. Atsushi was being crushed by bodies from all sides, surrounded by rapid breathing and quiet sobs. His vision was blurry with tears and he was utterly miserable with fear.
Something boomed from inside the gym and the entire structure shook again. Screams and the sound of battle began to filter in through the hallways as the group crept along.
They turned a corner and saw a gym trainer with a face as blank as Sabrina's had been blasting psychic energy at an abra. The abra was standing over the groaning body of another gym trainer, surrounding them both with a shining translucent barrier.
"Everyone stop," Torch said sharply, Atsushi barely managing to hear him over the sound of his own heartbeat. He and the rest of the group stopped and then Torch reached into his coat and took out two pokéballs.
"Jester and Caster, take him down," Torch commanded, throwing the balls down within the circle. White light blazed. A haunter and a mismagius appeared. Without wasting an instant, the haunter let forth a purple beam from its hands and the eyes of the mismagius glowed red. The blank face trainer fell to the ground without the slightest sound.
"Who's going to carry them?" Atsushi asked, his mouth uncomfortably dry.
"No one," Torch's voice was flat and grim. "We can't bring them into the circle and I'm not sure I can recast the spell. We'll have to leave them and hope that their pokémon can take care of them from here."
"What if I stay-" Atsushi began but Torch put a hand on his shoulder and shook his head.
"There's nothing you can do right now," he said. "Alright people, we're moving again."
The sounds of battle intensified as the group crept along. Walls crumbled around them as people and pokémon screamed. The acrid smell of smoke and the metallic smell of blood wafted all around them. Blasts of psychic energy speared through ceilings, floors, and erupted from the sides of rooms and corridors. Waves of telekinetic force rippled through the air, tearing up the carpet and structure underneath. People and pokémon staggered through the halls clutching at their heads and screaming as they crumpled beneath a telepathic onslaught.
Whenever an attack hit the circle the blue haze roiled and the attack vanished and reappeared on the other side of the circle. What the circle didn't stop, however, was flying debris and several people cried out as they were battered and slashed. Atsushi himself had a cut across his right cheek from a shard of glass from a shattered light.
The blank faced trainers and pokémon stalked the halls, inexorably chasing down the unaffected trainers and pokémon. Torch and his pokémon took them down where they could.
Occasionally there was an explosion of psychic power or a telekinetic storm that ripped apart nearby rooms. Atsushi caught glimpses of people and pokémon being torn apart in a spray of blood and viscera or being burnt to nothingness as they were engulfed in psychic energy. Whatever was responsible was teleporting rapidly, never standing still for more than a few seconds.
Atsushi's mind knew what it was but refused to put the thought to words. Instead, he was occupied by the miserable sensations of his body, shivering despite the heated building, needing to urinate despite barely having drunk anything, feeling time passing too quickly and yet feeling like the ordeal had been going on forever. He couldn't recall most of the trip from the meeting room; he didn't even know where they were despite having worked at the gym for years.
Finally, they reached the lobby. Once, it had been a nice modern room, a two-story opening, large windows, and a marble floor, plants and art on the walls, comfortable seats everywhere else. It had been pristine and pretty, a place for the people of the city to meet for tours, for families to come to visit the people who worked at the gym, for visiting trainers to check in, for children who wanted to see pokémon or get their first pokémon and for visiting officials to talk about mundane issues between the gym and the city.
Now, marble dust and debris floated through the air; furniture was overturned and the artwork destroyed. There was a huge pile of debris off to one side. The receptionist, a pretty young man, lay dead sprawled over the front desk, which was shattered from the same falling debris that had slain its occupant.
Atsushi's heart quit beating when he remembered that there had been a tour scheduled for children who would be getting their pokémon come summer. His mind raced; the tour was supposed to have started soon, what had happened, what had happened to them….
Terrible jittering nervous energy filled him as he surveyed the lobby, standing on his toes to see over the crowd. He couldn't see any sign of them which just made it worse. His knees went weak and he barely caught himself as he thought about how they might be trapped further in.
"There was supposed to be a tour group," Atsushi said, his voice faint, his fingers digging into the man's shoulder again. "Torch, kids were supposed to be here now."
"Fuck," he swore. He looked at the pile of debris that was all that remained of the entryway. "Once I've got everyone out then I'll go back and look for them. But first we've got to see what fresh hell is waiting for us at the exit."
Atsushi tried to say 'Okay', but he found that his voice had deserted him. They group stumbled through the ruined lobby and inched their way to the exit.
Another translucent barrier, scarlet and crackling, met them there. Torch had his haunter phase out of the circle and hurl a piece of broken marble at it. The barrier vaporized the stone. Atsushi wondered if it was also blocking teleportation, restricting the gym trainers and their pokémon to the building.
"I think I know a way out of this, but I'm going to have to drop the spell keeping us hidden," Torch told them. "Everyone spread out. Try and find some cover if you can."
As he spoke, he swirled his arm above his head once more, this time in the opposite direction. The haze surrounding them vanished and the group started to spread out. Atsushi stayed close to Torch, hovering over the other man's shoulder.
"After you get them out, we need to go back and try and help Sabrina," Atsushi managed to say. "We're going to do that, right? Right?"
"No, we're not," Torch said. "You are going to lead the rest of this lot to safety and stay there while I try to manage the situation here."
"Something's wrong with Sabrina, she's not herself-" Atsushi said.
"Obviously," Torch replied, drawing an intricately decorated and nasty looking dagger.
"Maybe I can get through to her," Atsushi continued. "I can't just hide and do nothing."
"That's exactly what you're going to do," Torch told him. "Now step back." The mystic strode forward and rolled back the sleeve on his left arm. He held it out and raised the dagger high in his right hand.
"Jester, Caster," Torch cried out, his voice rising above the din of battle from the gym behind them, becoming full of reverberating power. "Let's show everyone one of the world's big tricks! Let's show them that distance is just as much of an illusion as Life and Death!"
The haunter waved its hand in a circle and a translucent ring of purple-black fire appeared behind Torch, framing the man. The mismagius floated over to the center of the ring and then glowing leaves shot out from it, forming a smaller ring within the black fire. The leaves became strange emblems that began to wheel around. Torch spoke three phrases in the strange and terrifying tongue that he had used to hide them. Atsushi's soul quaked in fear at the sound, but he kept watching the man.
Without any hesitation Torch slashed at his arm with the dagger. Blood sprayed from the limb. A sourceless pale light shone in front of him as reality parted, a tear in the air leading to outside the gym.
"Get-" Torch started speaking and then staggered. Atsushi rushed over and grabbed him, keeping the man upright.
"Get going people!" Torch shouted, leaning on Atsushi. "It's not going to stay open forever!"
That was enough encouragement for most of the group, who hurried on through, while Atsushi took a roll of bandages from one of Torch's many pockets and quickly worked on tending to the man's left arm. Torch looked down at Atsushi and opened his mouth to say something, but there was the sound of rock shifting against rock behind them.
Atsushi, Torch, and Torch's team turned around, the pokémon moving forward to shield the people. The enormous pile of rubble on the left side of the room was moving, pieces of broken marble shifting.
Dust billowed. The haunter and mismagius were there, shadowy energies at the ready.
"Don't attack!" A young girl's voice cried out. "It's me!"
"Bren-, no, Brittney?" Atsushi asked, still holding Torch as they staggered over to the rubble.
"Yeah, and you're Sabrina's boytoy," Brittney said, crawling out of the rubble. "And you're the weird spook."
"Accurate if not flattering," Torch muttered.
"What happened to you?" Atsushi asked.
"I wanted to say hi to a friend of mine who was going to tour today," Brittney explained, brushing marble dust off of herself. An abra crawled out of the hole she had made. "I need your help to dig his class out."
"The tour group is under that?" Atsushi asked, the pit of his stomach finding room to drop even further.
"Yeah," Brittney nodded. "Me, Shys, and Sleepers managed to keep them safe, but there's not much room to move there."
"You kept them safe," Atsushi let out a deep breath. Cresselia had gifted them at least one mercy that day. "You did good Brittney, you did good."
"Yeah, sure, but can someone tell me what's going on here?" Brittney as she helped a ralts out of the rubble.
"Later," Torch said. "We've got to get everyone out now, before the portal closes."
The accountant and the tired mystic helped the child psychic shift more of the rubble, freeing a mass of trapped, dust covered, tear stained children and their parents who were in a similar state. Torch and his pokémon ushered them through the portal, which had started to shrink. Finally, it was only the three of them and their pokémon left.
"Off you go," Torch said, ushering Brittney and her pokémon through the portal. He then stood up and turned to Atsushi. The mystic still seemed unstable, but he was at least capable of walking unaided again.
"Alright, now it's your turn," Torch told Atsushi.
"No," the accountant shook his head. "You can barely stand and you're the one with pokémon. You need to keep those people safe. Right now, I'm the person who has the best chance of stopping Sabrina."
"You have no chance of stopping Sabrina," Torch shot back.
"And you have even less in the condition that you're in," Atsushi retorted. "I can't fight if there's something else out there. Are you just going to abandon those kids?"
"Fuck you," Torch spat. He looked over at the portal. "Fine, you win. And if you die I will do horrible things to your ghost. You know that's not an idle threat."
"Probably won't be worse than whatever is going on here," Atsushi sighed and then smiled a teary smile. "Good luck."
"Don't die pretty boy," Torch said, walking through the portal. "If Sabrina gets through this, she'll need someone to help her."
"Take care of it for me if I don't make it," Atsushi told him. "I'll see you on the other side."
AN: I'd like to thank Amationary for beta reading this.
My buffer, not counting this chapter, is back up to 18k words. Next time it gets low I think I'll go with this 'month off' approach instead of releasing every other week. It feels so much nicer this way.
Not too much else to say today.
Don't forget to review!