A bit limey in one scene, so I'm warning you now. But no livid descriptions or anything but I don't know what all of your standards are so I just thought to include this disclaimer aside from the standard one below. I also decided to have a person help pre-read this for me (my first ever pre-reader!). Thanks Rhionae! Warning: This is not standard Pokemon fanfiction. It contains scenes of violence and some inappropriate language. ************************************************************************* Pokemon Master Fanfiction by Ace Sanchez. All parts of this story may be found at http://jsa.users.fl.net.au Note: Pokemon and its associated characters are copyright by Nintendo, Game Freak, Creatures Inc, and 4Kids Productions. ************************************************************************* Part 11 - Regressions Near the jagged and rocky shoreline of the U-shaped Viridian Gulf, all that could be heard was the overwhelming sound of hard rain striking the ocean. As if the sheer amount of falling water would pulverise the mass of dark and violent tossing waves, the blue-black heavens above continued to let free its floodgates relentlessly. Even the dark spray ricocheting off the massive waves arose little before being disintegrated by the powerful bullet-like downpour. Bits of the razor-sharp rocks of the cliffs of the gulf crumbled and fell to be swallowed up by the hungry ocean. In the midst of that black and wet turbulent body of water suddenly arose a pointed white ship, barely visible as it rode the high waves up and down, each second seeming to be its last before it crumbled like a paper boat - either by the violent waters or by the heavy downpour. But the ship's plating seemed to weather the assault and it safely survived each jerking jar of the huge waves and the continuous rain. Darkness caused by the total absence of natural light was barely chased away by the bow's overhead spotlights. After carefully lowering the hood of his cloak over his head and adjusting the straps of his small backpack, Ash, below decks, slammed the ship's hatchway open, and with a slight exhalation of breath, sprang up into the cold, wet night. Immediately a torrent of violent rain washed over him and he quickly grasped on to a nearby mast for support, the steel beneath his black fingerless gloves slippery and wet. Sensing a sudden large wave rather than seeing it in the extremely poor visibility, Ash rolled with the deck's abrupt rising and falling as it was jerked about like an out-of-control roller coaster. There was a roar as water collided against the ship's side and exploded over him, almost forcing him to lose his grip and wash him away into the ocean. But he retained his hold and shook his head, jerking the drops of salty water from his eyes that had found their way into the hood of his cloak. "Quick, before the next wave hits!" he shouted behind himself, above the wailing and screaming of the wind and rain. He turned his attention back to the hatchway which had been almost flooded with water, and watched attentively as the rest of the group they had designated to come ashore climbed their way out. Misty and Duplica came out first, both dressed in their hooded cloaks to ward off the rain. Deep puddles of water splashed beneath their boots as they took their positions atop the deck. A slight pause later, Duplica just let go of the handhold and dived over the starboard railing. Her shape melted as she shifted into an elegant and long-necked, blue lapras and splashed into the sea. Her wide flippers moved quickly to keep her afloat and beside the ship. "Hurry!" she said telepathically, so that her voice seemed to come from within the minds of whoever she talked to. "The ship won't be able to take much more beating staying on the surface like this." Bruno was next out of the hatch. "Go, go, go!" he yelled in a tight voice. Ash could see that he still showed a tinge of pain from all that he had lost. The maroon-cloaked, hugely-muscled man leaped off the edge and into the sea to grab on to Duplica-Lapras' side, followed closely by the green-cloaked Erika who also dived down but with more expertise. Finally, two rain-coated figures prepared to jump over the side as well as the white, panther-like persian wearing a thin waterproof cat- jacket. Despite this being decided as a Master-only operation, Jessie and James had managed to convince them that they should come along. Apparently they wanted revenge on Butch and Cassidy for some reason or other. "Oh, I hate swimming!" James exclaimed, his voice just barely audible over the sound of the wind and waves as he held the hood of his rain-coat over his blue hair steady with one hand. Jessie just forcefully pushed him over the edge. "Just get in there, fool, and grab on to that lapras!" She jumped in after him with Persian at her back. When they had gone, Misty looked at him. "After you," she said with a flourish. Even though her face was invisible under the darkness of her cowl, he could sense an ironic smile on her lips. He was about to answer when a slight prickling of his senses touched the back of his mind and he scanned the deck alertly. "Ow!" Misty was suddenly clutching her upper left shoulder with her right hand. "What is it?" Ash asked, his eyes narrowed as he searched for what he had felt. He thought he saw a shadow fly off the edge of the ship but he wasn't sure. Immediately, he leaped across the deck for a look at where he thought he saw the shape jump from. But there was nothing there save for more heaving black waves and hard rain. He turned back to her. "Nothing. I think it was just a mosquito or something," she said as she looked within the fold of her cloak. She stumbled a little as the deck rolled to the side and she ripped her arm away from her shoulder. "Anyway, we got more important things to worry about! I can barely still see them out there. Let's go!" She stepped back and then took a running dive off the side of the ship. Graceful as only a professional diver could be, she cut into the ocean with nary a hint of a splash. Pulling his hood further down against his face, Ash stepped to follow. "Ready, Pikachu?" he said, directing his voice at the top of his backpack where his pokemon was still riding inside. "Pii." "Let's go then." He launched himself over the railing with a quick leap just as another huge wave struck the ship and actually forced it to submerge, sinking it deep within the ocean's depths. <><><> Misty had barely reached Duplica's side and grasped on to the side of her grooved back, like the others were doing, when the churning water behind them suddenly began to get sucked into a massive wave. It grew quickly to tower high over their heads. "Hold your breath everyone!" she shouted as she treaded closer to get a better grasp. "Better listen to the expert," Jessie said, eyes wide as she stared up at the outsized current of water about to crash over their heads. And then everything was black and wet and there was a roaring in Misty's ears as what felt like a slab of concrete seemed to smash itself over her head and upper shoulders. Underwater, bubbles fizzed in front of the darkness in her eyes and she almost lost her grip on Duplica's flank. But just as suddenly as the wave had crashed down, it was abruptly gone and she was breathing and coughing and spitting out sea-water as she exploded upward. Even though she was a good swimmer, the hard water still managed to find its way through her defences. Her eyes stung as she blinked and regained her vision. "Everyone okay?" she asked out loud. She desperately checked to see if all of them had survived the submerging. "Ugh!" Erika sputtered as she clung on to Duplica's opposite side with one arm. "I think I swallowed a gallon of ocean." Jessie, James and Persian were treading water nearby - all of them seeming to be firmly attached to one another - with Jessie the one who was actually holding on to Duplica for support. "My fur's all wet," Persian growled in complaint. "We're going to drown!" was all James said. Jessie bopped him on the head with her free hand. "Stop pulling my hair!" Bruno was just silent as he leaned on Duplica's flank and treaded water almost lethargically, although he did give her a nod of okay. However, a tight feeling had invaded Misty's throat. Ash was nowhere to be seen. "Where's Ash?" she shouted out, her voice hoarse. Had he made it off the ship? There was something that had attracted his attention just before she had dived into the ocean. Uncaringly, she threw her sodden hood back for greater visibility, although it meant letting the hard rain pound over her now-unprotected head. "Ash!" she continued to cry out as she wiped sodden strands of long red hair from out of her eyes. She knew she shouldn't be this worried about him - it made suggestions about herself that she didn't want to face right now - but she couldn't deny her concern. "Over there!" Duplica-Lapras' voice projected into her mind as the woman-turned-pokemon pointed her head in an easterly direction. Misty followed her gaze and saw a black shape ride a huge, hilly wave up and down in the near distance. At the exit of the wave, the figure began to move his arms and swim freestyle toward them. The rain falling all around them and the darkness threatened to rend everything invisible despite her better-than-average night-vision. "I think that's him!" Misty shouted in relief. She lightly slapped Duplica's spiny back. "Move it Duplica!" Duplica-Lapras swivelled her head to look at her briefly and snorted in playful indignation. "Watch it sister, or I'll report you to the cruelty to pokemon association!" But she began to stroke all four of her wide flippers to powerfully propel all of them toward Ash. Unfortunately, the current was against them - the waves destined for the rocky cliffs of the Viridian Gulf - while Ash was out to sea. Every time Duplica actually began to gain some lee-way against the powerful waves, they were just pushed backward even more. And despite the powerful strokes Ash was using to swim over to them, it actually seemed like he was only swimming on the spot like a bizarre version of an aquatic treadmill. Suddenly, Misty sensed multiple alien signatures of water-based pokemon all around them. "Wait! Something's wrong!" Normally she could tell exactly what species a Water Pokemon was if it was anywhere in her vicinity, but these ... these just felt wrong. Even Duplica sensed it. "Forbidden Pokemon! We're surrounded!" Her eyes immediately flared like bright yellow spotlights, brightening up the black night and improving the visibility around them. Surprisingly, James turned serious, and began to look all around the tossing waves alertly. In one hand, he abruptly flashed one of his sai knives and spun it around his finger. "Careful, they're underwater!" Jessie also produced a knife and searched around the water they were treading in. "I just hope they're not gyarados," she said with some remembered dread. "Over there!" Bruno shouted, his rust-coloured eyes flaring within his sodden hood as he pointed to the waves behind Ash's back in the distance. In horror Misty was just able to spot a sharp, shark-like fin streaming in toward Ash's rear. It almost blended in to the black waves of the ocean as it headed toward its target. Then more and more fins began emerging to the surface around it - all of them heading toward Ash. "Misty, watch out!" Erika screamed. Misty jerked her attention back just as something dark flashed in the water to the side unexpectedly. A huge gaping black mouth full of sharp, needle-point teeth exploded out toward her with a violent splashing that sent a huge geyser of water upward. Rapidly, she let go of Duplica's flank to leave both arms free and kicked off to the side, causing the mouth full of sharp teeth to narrowly miss biting her legs off. At the failed attack, it gnashed angrily in the water and turned to follow, but then stopped and hissed in pain as a sai knife found a home in its blaring red eye on the side of its head. Black blood gushed out of the wound and steamed as it fountained around into the water. "Nice throw," Persian growled. "But that was one of my favourite knives," James said a little sadly. However the knife only seemed to slow it down and it continued to thrash its way toward her. Calmly, Misty glided away backward, kicking her feet to propel her as she clasped her hands together out in front. Going from what Ash had said earlier, this pokemon would probably be one of the ones who could resurrect itself. She concentrated on dropping her aura's temperature. It was closer now. "Misty do something or I will!" Erika said in sudden worry. Cold, think cold... she thrust her clasped hands outward, palms outstretched. "Now!" Her hands fogged white, then all at once a spear of sub-zero energy exploded forth in a tightly-controlled beam of ice. It shot across the surface of the water toward her target, icing up a whole trench of ocean in its wake. The thing that was not a seaking roared as the beam flew through it, freezing it completely solid and immobile. "Good thinking," Erika congratulated her. But then even more fins began emerging from the surface of the ocean around them. Red eyes gleamed at them from beneath the churning waters. Although Misty was dismayed to learn that however many Forbidden Seaking things were around them, there were even more of them gaining on Ash as he tried to swim over to them in the near distance. "There's too many!" Bruno shouted as he powerfully punched one of them in the head, smashing it back and breaking off its horn. "We'll have to fall back to the cliffs and climb ashore as soon as possible or we'll be overrun!" Misty wiped her rain-wettened hair from her eyes again. "What about Ash?" "He can take care of himself! Duplica, move it! We're not making any headway against this current anyway!" Duplica-Lapras looked back worriedly. "I-I don't know..." Misty removed the black star-shaped badge from the front of her cloak and held it up in her right hand as she treaded water. "Don't worry, Duplica, I'll get him. Starmos, let's go!" She threw the badge out in front of her whereupon it enlarged into her six-foot-wide, black starfish pokemon. She dived forward, dodging another one of the Forbidden Seaking's attempts to bite her in two, and landed chest-first on her pokemon's back - upon the red jewel - and carefully held on so as not to cut herself to ribbons on its ten razor-sharp points. Riding it like a bodyboard, Starmos propelled both of them along with three jets of water which it shot out of its back limbs. Another seaking thing appeared in front of them, but Misty directed Starmos to ride a nearby wave and they used it to jump over with a fountain of expelled water. They landed smoothly on the other side and surfed and skipped along the waves toward Ash like a thrown rock upon a lake. Ash was still swimming on the spot when he spotted her, arms methodically cutting the water, but getting him absolutely nowhere. He looked a bit embarrassed. "I really thought I was a better swimmer than this," he said a bit sheepish. "Pika," Pikachu agreed, having stuck his small head through the opening in the top of Ash's backpack. "Huh, you can say a lot Pikachu, you just ride on my back," he said in a disgusted tone. "It's because of the current heading out to sea," Misty told him as she leaned to the side, getting prepared to intercept him and pull him up as she passed. Just then, from the waves behind Ash, exploded the head of one of the Forbidden, its long black horn aiming to impale him through the head. "Ash, dive!" Misty yelled as she pulled Starmos up vertical with a huge splash. Then she let go and launched it forward with a kick of her feet. "Starmos, Ice Slice!" she ordered as she backflipped to dive back into the water. "Woah!" Ash said as Starmos rocketed forward along the surface of the water and spun into a deadly-sharp shuriken. He dived and it passed over him with a slashing of the waves. Then an arctic glow surrounded its blurred form as it shot through the attacking Forbidden Pokemon, exploding it into two bloody chunks which then froze solid. The hardened pieces of the body then splashed back into the water and floated like oddly-shaped ice-cubes. Starmos then banked as it returned to her in a wide arc with a splashing of water, cutting and freezing solid yet another dark seaking. As it passed by her, she leapt back on to bodysurf back to Ash and Pikachu who had then resurfaced with a gasping of air. "Quick!" Misty said as she leaned over again and this time managed to grab on to Ash's hand and pull him aboard. She made room for him as he clung on Starmos' right side but almost slipped off when it banked again to turn back to Duplica and the others who were swimming toward shore. Another huge wave rose up by their left side like a rising wall of surf. Misty tilted Starmos into the steepening inclination and yelled, "Hang on!" Ash clung on tighter. "I hope you know what you're doing!" "Chu!" Pikachu mirrored. Misty rocked Starmos to the side then shot them all into the wave, spiralling smoothly upside-down then right-way-up again. "No problem! It's only water!" A spiny black shape dived out of the wave above them and Misty was just able to corkscrew them out of the way. Ash shook his head. "I have no problem with that. Just with whatever's in it!" <><><> Meanwhile, Duplica glided her fins along the water and looked up high at the seemingly-impossible-to-scale-cliffs. It was about thirty feet high with blade-like ledges scattered all along its vertical face. All throughout, this was what the Viridian Gulf was made up of - cliffs in a u-shaped formation, with sheer rock-faces that could so easily cut any unwary climber to ribbons. A wave behind threatened to smash them into the razor-sharp rocks in front of her, but she managed to keep them anchored relatively still with powerful pushes of her flippers. The rain was still pounding from above and making the water surrounding them resemble a well-used pin-cushion. Although it did seem to have quietened down a bit now, the sound of the rain dropping to the level of what was like background static. "So what are we supposed to do now?" James asked as he also looked up the cliff, wet blue hair hanging all around his pale face. His raincoat hood had been torn off by the violence of the storm. Jessie swam by his side, hood also removed, water-darkened red hair hanging around her face in wisps while her long ponytail floated in the water behind her neck. "Ash said that he'd be the one to take care of it," Bruno replied as he peeled his own sodden hood off his head and smoothed his water-darkened brown hair back - now not so spiky since he was soaked. "Oh that's just great!" Jessie said, her dark-blue eyes narrowing in annoyance. "Why couldn't one of you have been left behind instead of him?" Erika's eyes flashed green at that comment. "You're lucky we're even bringing you with us, 'Team Rocket'." Jessie turned around to glare back at her. "You want to start something with me, grass girl?" "I'd be happy to oblige," Erika replied angrily as she raised a fist out of the water and a golden glow surrounded it. Jessie smirked. "Oh, make me!" "Everyone, please!" Duplica interrupted. "We have enough to worry about without us fighting among ourselves, now we just have to wait for- woah!" A huge wave cut her off in mid-sentence as it splashed down over them with the force of a jackhammer. When it subsided, Ash, Misty and Pikachu were there next to them looking exhausted and wet as they lay on Misty's Starmos. "Finally," Persian growled, as he let go of Duplica's side - to her relief; those claws were sharp! - and doggy-paddled over to them. Ash slid off Starmos back into the water. Treading water, he unhooded himself and let his wet black hair blow around in the wind. "Now, just follow my lead!" He lifted one arm up and his black pikachu climbed up it. With a sudden crack of thunder which startled everyone, it reformed into his long, slightly-curved katana blade, its black colour almost camouflaging it completely in the night. "Alley Oop!" he yelled as he rapidly jerked his arm backward, then threw it point-first high up the cliff. From the bottom of its hilt trailed a long thin rope of what looked like black electricity. When the sword was at the top of the cliff, gravity then pulled it down to secure itself into the rock with a solid thunk that they could even hear from down below. "Let's go!" Ash said as he tested the rope with a few tugs, then leaped on to it and began pulling himself up hand over hand. His sodden black cloak dripped water profusely until a dark glow surrounded his form and then it was just suddenly dry. "Are you sure that's safe?" Misty said hesitantly as she shrunk her star pokemon back into a badge and pinned it to her blue cloak. "I mean ... that rope is made of electricity ... and we're treading in water. I know all about electricity and water." Ash looked down at her. "It's safe. As long as I hold on to it first - which is what I'm doing now - the rope is sufficiently grounded for anyone else to follow me." "And what if you fall off while we're all climbing it?" Bruno asked with more than a hint of doubt. The rope had begun to swing in the wind, causing Ash to rock back and forth dangerously, his boots trailing in the water. "I won't fall off." "But what if you do?" Ash paused. Then startlingly, he lifted an arm with the speed of a striking snake and exploded a bolt of dark lightning down at them. For a moment, Duplica almost thought that he was attacking *them*, until she realised that he had actually just disintegrated a Forbidden Pokemon behind them which had just been about to attack. His black-gloved hand still smoking, Ash just shrugged and continued to pull himself up. "How's your resistance to electricity?" <><><> The heavy storm above was wreaking havoc to the underwater ocean currents. So much so, that the submarine-capable white ship was being thrown around like an aircraft flying in severe turbulence. Visibility was also at a frighteningly low level - the water seeming to have been stained an ebony as black as the eternal night above them. If it weren't for the basic radar capability of the Waterflower, they probably would have been dashed against the rocks of the Viridian Gulf already. Within a darkened room inside the underwater ship, a white-coated man with glasses worked almost silently. Clack, clack, clack. His fingers danced along the keyboard. Green writing flashed on the display. No, not what he wanted. He had to find it, had to. The floor shook as what sounded like thunder rumbled outside. He almost slipped from his chair at the abrupt shaking. Pain flared within his sprained ankle, but he never lost concentration. And still the voice chanted within his mind. I can kill him for you. Kill him. Destroy all the obstacles between you what you want most. Kill him. Kill everyone. It was a mistake for him not to watch over me. He's crazy. You would be serving the world to allow me to get rid of him for you. It's so dark in here. You want her. I know you want her. I can make that happen. They're all bitches. They deserve whatever they get. Just release me. Release me. The voice went on. And then he found it. Found what he had been looking for. He adjusted his glasses and smoothed the sweat from his palms with a wipe on his lab-coat. "Combination accessed," the female-sounding computer voice said softly. Release me... RELEASE ME. <><><> The floor and walls of the chamber shook yet again as if some kind of psycho dentist was drilling on to the hull of the Waterflower. A complete maniac of a dentist, Laselle decided, teeth chattering, as she hung on to a wall strap with all her might. After a while, the shaking subsided to the more familiar vibrations of normal underwater currents and she let go with a sigh of relief. She looked over to Junior who was lying on his bed with a frighteningly blank expression on his face. He was staring up at the ceiling with glassy green eyes. "You okay?" she asked worriedly. She had just entered to check up on him before the ship's shaking had interrupted her. Junior had been holed up in his room ever since the fall of Cinnabar and hadn't spoken a word since then either. He didn't answer. Laselle shook her head as she stepped over to the side table and picked up his cap which had been resting upon it, along with three poke-balls. She spun the cap around her finger. She supposed if she had thought she was an orphan and then found her mom only to lose her again, she would have been feeling much the same. It was bad enough when her own parents had died... She looked at him again and gave a slight smile. "C'mon, JT. At least you still have your father. And with such powerful parentage, maybe some of their strength may have gotten passed down to you." He closed his eyes then opened them. "Don't call me JT," he said, breaking his silence. "Hey, you're talking!" Laselle said with a lopsided smile. Junior continued without acknowledgement. "As for Master Bruno..." His voice tightened in anger. "My father... what a joke." "What do you mean?" she asked a little warily as she played with the sleeves of the green jumper she was wearing. "He was never a father to me. One thing I don't understand is why should he have taken me from Mom if he was just going to deny me anyway?" Laselle placed his hat back on to the table. "All I know is that he does care about you. I've seen it." Junior grunted. "Uh huh. And first chance he gets, he splits." He closed his eyes and fell back to silence. Laselle was about to say more when suddenly everything began shaking wildly again with the sound of rumbling thunder. She grabbed on to the hand-support and held tight. Thinking that it was just ordinary, underwater currents again, she was surprised when the sound of an abrupt explosion somewhere outside mingled in with the commotion. A feminine computerised voice blared on the intercom. "SECURITY ROOM LEVEL ONE BREACHED." "Sounds like trouble!" she exclaimed as she let go of the hand-hold and desperately tried to balance over to the door on the shaking ground. She looked back to see if Junior was coming. He wasn't. "Junior!" No response. "Fine then!" She wrenched the door open and slipped outside. <><><> The room was clouded with smoke as inside the white-coated man with glasses and brown hair looked around intently. Various lights blinked on and off on the various displays all along the walls. Then he saw the large wall-high safe. He walked over to it and punched in a code on the touch pad on a panel on its side. There was a click as it opened. He wrenched the large safe door open with a creaking of metal. There. There it was. He looked upon the ball seeming to be made of shadow pulsing within. A construct of that monster. It lay secured on a raised cone-shaped holder. Release me. He reached over to pick it up. It felt cold within his palm. Like a sphere of dry ice yet with no solidity to it. "It's that Joe guy," someone shouted. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" He turned around to see two of Master Bruno's Power Trainers standing at the door. I'm sorry, he thought to himself. But I'm doing this for everyone. He threw the ball at the ground between them. It shattered open like a dissipating shadow. Brown energy flared, exploded, and began reforming itself into a tall humanoid figure with a cloud of steam. "Damn!" the other Power Trainer cursed. "He's freeing Brock! You go get help!" His companion quickly left to do just that, as he wrenched a poke-ball from a fold within his uniform and threw it. "Go, Rhyhorn!" The ball split, releasing its energy into the powerful, rock-armoured pokemon with four legs and a single thick horn upon its nose. It was too late. A long brown cloak flapped once as the six-foot-seven, heavily muscled Master of Rock finished reforming. Fiercely glowing eyes like narrow slits flashed under dark-brown hair worn in long spikes. "Rhyhorn, Horn Drill!" Immediately, the charging pokemon's horn began to spin rapidly within its skull just as it leaped up to the attack. A smirk twisted Brock's lips as he threw folds of his cloak back to free his arms. Instantaneously, the skin along them began to crackle as they turned to grey-tinged rock. By the time the rhyhorn had reached him, they were completely transmorphed. Then calmly and almost without effort, he just abruptly stopped the powerful charge by grasping on to its shoulders as it rose to impale him. The strike of rock against rock was violently loud as it echoed all along the metallic walls of the chamber. "Pathetic," Brock murmured. He looked up at the Power Trainer as he easily held the Rhyhorn's revolving horn at bay. "You haven't been training this Rock Pokemon well at all." He looked back down at it and his eyes flashed an ugly brown. "Best to put it out of its misery..." The Power Trainer gasped in shock as Brock's rocky fists twisted and there was a huge snap as he viciously snapped the Rhyhorn's neck to the side. Bits of rock and dust crumbled from the destroyed neck. "And you too!" Brock yelled, brown cloak flapping as he threw the severed head with its still spinning horn directly at him. The Power Trainer screamed in horrified agony as the horn sank into his chest and drilled through his heart with a wet grinding sound and a splatter of bright blood. The horn was still drilling through his chest as he took a drunken step backward then collapsed against the wall and finally lay still. Joe closed his eyes against the carnage. The end justified the means. It was all he could think of. "So you are the one who freed me." Joe opened his eyes and he felt his heart speed up in fear. For a moment his throat felt too tight to speak. Then he realised that Brock wouldn't hurt him. They were allies now after all. "Y-Yes, Master Brock." He took a step closer, his heavy boot seeming to shake the ground. Despite the conclusions that Joe had come to earlier, he was still warily afraid. "WHERE ARE ASH AND MISTY?" "H-He's-" Someone screamed, cutting him off, and he looked over to the open doorway. It was a girl with long brown-black hair wearing a green jumper and a skirt. He recognised her as Laselle, Giselle's little sister and formerly one of Erika's Grass Trainers. At her shoulder was hovering a strange black-coloured butterfree. She had just run into the room and was now staring horrified at the dead trainer laying against the wall and floor with the rhyhorn's severed head, which was still drilling through his body and was now making screeching noises as it tore at the metallic floor underneath. Brock turned, his eyes flashing at the intrusion. "A female," he said, a scowl twisting his lips. He lifted his rocky arms, palms glowing darkly. Joe paled. Not Giselle's sister! "No, Master, please don't!" Brock glanced at him for a second but then returned his gaze back to the young girl who stood as if paralysed, looking at the dead man. "She looks familiar," he mused darkly. "Ah! She's the sister of that bitch you're so enamoured of... I'm going to enjoy this." He began to step forward, brown cloak rippling over his muscular frame, the folds gliding behind him. Laselle seemed to snap out of whatever shock she had been in. "Butterfree, Psychic!" "Free!" A blue beam of energy shot forth from her flying pokemon directly at Brock. "Weak!" Brock yelled as he continued forward, arm outstretched to knock it away. Therefore he was absolutely surprised when the Psychic bolt of power struck his arm and propelled him powerfully backward, tumbling on to his back before he collided into the metallic wall of the room and created a massive dent in it. Arm smoking, he looked up, slitted eyes flashing an ugly brown as he stared at the black butterfree. "Free," the butterfree said hesitantly. "YOU!" Brock yelled. "Butterfree, Stun Spore!" Laselle ordered. But strangely, her pokemon flapped its wings and flew away back into the corridor she had come from. "Butterfree! Where are you going!" Brock chuckled evilly as he pushed himself to one knee and then stood up to his full massive height. "Little girl, you don't know what you're dealing with ... those who meddle with power ... will become overpowered." Laselle seemed to freeze up, absolutely frightened as the Rock Master slowly approached. "You simpering females sicken me," Brock growled. "Master Brock, please don't!" Joe yelled as he ran forward and grabbed on to his arm. He didn't spare him a glance. "WHERE ARE ASH AND MISTY?" "Master ... they-they swam ashore to the Viridian Gulf ... they're heading to Indigo Plateau and the Palace of the Elite Four..." "Good. I guess I don't need you anymore." He grunted as he transformed his rocky arm into a sharp spear and then turned around to impale Joe through the chest with it in a burst of blood. Joe screamed a gurgling death cry as crimson shot forth from his mouth. Then Brock jerked his spear-shaped arm from him with a splatter, almost ripping the dead man in two, and roughly kicked the pieces away. "Like, holy shit!" Daisy cried as she skidded into the room beside Laselle, blonde hair mussed up in her run. "This is totally bad," Lily said as she also ran inside with her other sister, Violet, in tow. Brock turned at the intrusion and smiled thinly. He morphed his arm back to normal and with a hard jerk, straightened out his brown cloak. "More females to play with," he growled, wiping the blood off his arm with a fold of the mantle. "Jerk!" Daisy yelled as she removed a white and yellow flower decoration from her hair. She threw it at Brock's feet and it exploded in a cloud of fog and mist. Brock coughed as he covered his nose. "BITCH!" Lily smoothed her long dark-pink hair back and raised her arms to the sides. "Quickly sisters! Link hands!" Daisy and Violet each grabbed one of her hands and an arctic-blue glow surrounded them. An unnatural breeze began to stir and their pink, blue and blonde hair each respectively began floating high in the air as the power of water coursed through them. "Misty's air-headed sisters," Brock growled as he recognised them. "Holding hands to pray for your lives?" "I don't totally think so!" Daisy shouted. "Now, sisters! AURORA BEAM!" She and Violet pointed their free hands at the Rock Master and a surge of bright rainbow-coloured energy washed forth in a wave of watery destruction. Brock yelled as he crossed his arms out in front of him and desperately tried to hold himself against it. But a second later, his thick boots lost their hold upon the metallic floor and he was powerfully smashed back like a small yacht washed away by a tidal wave. The already-dented wall gave way at his collision into it and he was smashed through more bits of metal and machinery until he was expelled out into the ocean. "WARNING! WARNING!" the female computer voice blared on the intercom. "HULL INTEGRITY BREACHED." The ship groaned at the punishment and ocean water began surging in to the room as if a huge dam had burst. The roar of the water was comparable to the sound of a huge waterfall. "Fall back!" Daisy yelled as she began dragging Laselle with her out into the corridor with her sisters following. "Emergency shut down the western wing before we get flooded enough to sink!" "Got it, sis!" Lily shouted as she began running toward the bridge, pink hair floating behind her at the speed she was running. Water tinged with red flowed out into the hallway by their feet until Violet opened a small control-box on the corridor wall and smashed it with her palm. Thick steel walls rapidly hissed and then shut the doorway off with a clang, stopping more water from escaping out of the room and into the rest of the ship. "I hope we get through this," Daisy said as she worriedly smoothed her blonde hair back. <><><> West of Viridian Forest, all was silent, save for the light crunching sounds of boots against dried leaves and the gentle patter of rain upon vegetation. Shadows danced against the trunks of thin trees as a group of seven people and a large persian trudged north in single file, the one in the lead with a dark pikachu sitting on his left shoulder and emitting a faint light; just enough to allow visibility through the blackness of the artificial night for a radius of about half a dozen feet. Overhead, dark swirling clouds dominated the sky, although it now seemed as if the violent storm had just about died down and was swiftly returning to what passed as normal in recent days. Walking in third place, just behind Ash and Misty, Duplica brought the hood of her violet cloak lower over her head so that the edge of it was about level with her eyes. Annoyingly, droplets of water dripped from it so that they fell in front of her face, slightly obscuring her vision. "Ash, how long do you think till we get to Indigo Plateau?" She was tired, wet, cold and hungry. And the forest around here gave her unpleasant memories... Features cast in shadow from his hooded cloak, Ash took a brief look back at her, but continued on at the same speed. He parted low-lying branches and other foliage in their way with swipes of his black-gloved fists. "I think we just hit old Route Twenty-two. We should reach the outlying ruins of the entrance to League Headquarters in about another hour or so if we continue on at this pace." Misty was directly in front of Duplica, walking uncharacteristically tired but also thoroughly hooded and cloaked against the light rain. "At least if we don't get lost," she said wryly. "Ruins?" Duplica asked, confused. "You mean Pokemon League Headquarters was destroyed?" Ash looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "Duplica, where have you been? Yeah, the old headquarters was destroyed, but we rebuilt it further inland - in the centre of the Indigo Plateau City." "Well, I haven't been around this area in a long time," Duplica defended. Nor did I ever want to come back, she added silently to herself. If she had known that this was the route they were going to be taking... "What's wrong, Duplica? Not your usual perky self?" Erika said at her back. There was a hint of acid to her tone which puzzled Duplica. "Erika, please," Misty said tiredly. Walking behind Erika, but in front of Jessie, James and Persian, Bruno - who was silent until now - grunted. "Stop it. All of you. I am sick and tired of petty squabbling. I just want to destroy the Pokemon League once and for all." There was still the deep grief in his voice that he couldn't hide ever since they had escaped Cinnabar Island. Duplica looked down, thinking as she watched for muddy puddles to step over. Losing the person you loved most... it was the most painful thing a person could ever experience in their lifetime. "My feet hurt," James complained in the back. "Ssh!" Jessie unsuccessfully whispered. "Don't let them notice us while they're fighting." "Yeah, ssh!" Persian said a little scared. After that, they fell to silence again for a while, just the sound of boots crunching on underbrush and twigs, and occasionally the sound of branches being swiped away by Ash in the lead. Then the silence was broken as suddenly Misty stumbled as she tripped over something and fell, clutching on to Ash's back. Ash stopped, halting the group. "Misty, are you alright?" he asked, turning around to support her with his hands on her upper-shoulders. "I-I'm, fine," Misty exhaled. "Just keep going. I just feel a bit tired, that's all." Although Ash's features were concealed by the shadows of his hooded-cloak, Duplica could sense his frown. He reached with one hand to slide Misty's hood from her head. "You look a bit pale." He was right, Duplica thought, as she stepped closer and studied Misty's flaccid features. Her red hair hung limply around her shoulders and she looked like she was sweating despite the coldness of the artificial night. Her normally light-cream skin looked as white as snow and her usually bright-blue eyes seemed to have lost some of their inner-light. "N-No, it's okay," Misty insisted, although lacking conviction. "We have to push on before ... before we run out of time to stop them." Ash threw the hood of his own cloak back to shake his head. "No. Look at you. You can barely stand up straight. There's something wrong." Erika pushed her way past Duplica and felt Misty's forehead with the back of her hand. "She's burning up with fever. It's almost as if ..." Her eyes flashed green. "It feels like poison!" "What?" Ash asked angrily. "Seems to be -" Then Misty groaned and collapsed into Ash's arms. Ash held her tightly with an expression of worry replacing his anger. "What kind of poison? Is it serious?" Erika closed her eyes once then opened them. "I-I can't tell. Some part of it seems Grass-based but it also has other elements within it..." "Pikapi!" Pikachu on Ash's shoulder suddenly shouted angrily, cheeks sparking. They all turned around to what had caught his attention. A small, yellow and scaly form with glowing black, round eyes was perched upon a low-lying branch on a tree about a dozen feet in front of them. It clutched something white within its sharp front claws. "Shreww..." it growled in a hostile manner. "A sandshrew?" James exclaimed. Ash was suddenly alert, eyes beginning to glow golden. "Not just any. That's AJ's Sandshrew." "Does that mean he survived when he was thrown off the ship then?" Erika asked, eyes also beginning to glow in suspicion. The sandshrew narrowed its eyes and then pointed a paw at them. There was a light whoosh of air as it shot one of its claws at them. Ash moved his left boot out of the way as it thunked into the wet earth where it had just been. There was a small piece of rolled-up paper attached to the claw that Ash reached down to pick up as he supported Misty on one arm. He stood up and unrolled it to read it. A second later, his gloved hand tightened, crunching it into a ball. He dropped it on to the ground, eyes blazing now as he stared hard at the sandshrew. "That bastard." The sandshrew turned to leap off the branch and then scampered off through the trees in a westerly direction. Ash gave Misty over to Duplica and Erika to support, each with an arm over a shoulder. "I have to go now. Meet me at the ruins of the old League Gate. I won't be long - no one follow me." He looked down at Misty with a brief tender look in his eyes. "Please take care of her." A lump grew in Duplica's throat at the look. And with that, he threw his hood back on and dashed after the sandshrew with Pikachu clutching on his shoulder, black jagged tail streaming behind in the air. As Ash rapidly ran out of view into the hundreds of trees all around them, Bruno stepped over to the crumpled note and picked it up. He unrolled it and read it. He shook his head. "That AJ is a fool." "What does it say?" Erika asked. Bruno read aloud, "Meet me at the old Viridian clearing if you want your bitch to live. Don't be late." Duplica looked at Misty's unconscious face, pale in her sickness, but still with an ethereal beauty. She removed her own violet hood with her free hand and blew a lock of damp blue hair from her cheek. "Rest in peace, AJ." <><><> The bridge of the ship was ankle-deep in water and Giselle was frowning down at her ruined shoes as she concentrated on keeping the edges of her lab-coat from getting wet. Designers they were, she fumed. And probably the only pair left in the world after the company that made them was all but obliterated in the war. That Brock guy had a lot to answer for. "Like, listen up everyone!" Daisy was saying, seated upon the captain's chair, which she had swivelled around to face them. All the survivors had been gathered onto the bridge. "I think we've gotten the ship into a stable condition. As it is, sections five to eight are totally water-logged, but we managed to survive. If the storm hadn't settled down by the time we surfaced, like we'd probably be all sitting at the bottom of the ocean." Giselle looked out the view screen. The surface of the ocean was still a bit wavy but like the blonde had said, it was relatively calm, more in touch with the deadness of the world. A light rain was still falling, but nothing serious. "Probably, the power given off by Cinnabar's destruction finally died down," she said aloud. "And we're totally lucky that it did so," Lily said as she swung her chair around, splashing her feet in the water on the floor. "But right now, we're stranded out here in the ocean until we can get the turbines online..." "But-but we have to warn them about Brock!" Laselle said as she hugged her butterfree. She stood up agitated from where she was sitting down on a box. Violet paused from her rapid tapping on her keyboard and looked at her. "Not possible," she said sadly with a shake of blue hair. "Like, by the time we could get there, it would be much too late. I don't think we can even get the repairs done in time to pick them up at West Indigo Plateau like we planned." "Where are we now?" Captain Jenny asked as she leaned against the wall of the bridge. "Somewhere south-west of the old Pallet area's shore," Daisy answered. "We've been totally pushed back by the storm." Giselle sighed. "Ash is so dull. He should have taken that damn Shadow Ball with him instead of leaving it here with us. After all, he would have had to kill Brock eventually." "But that's what he was trying to avoid to do," Laselle said forcefully. "How would you feel about having to kill someone who was once your best friend? Oh, that's right, you never had any. Unless you count 'boyfriends'." Giselle shrugged eloquently. "You got me pegged, little sister." "Besides, it was your admirer, Joe, who set him free in the first place!" "Look, I didn't ask him to love me so it's not my fault." "Please," Nurse Joy interrupted. "Fighting won't erase what's happened. We should be thinking of the solution, not bickering over whose fault it was." "Mistress..." a quiet voice suddenly spoke up. Giselle turned to see that it was that weird gothic-like girl in the black robe and charms they had picked up back at Cinnabar. Chanelle, her name was, she remembered. "I-I think I know a way to warn them..." the girl said. Laselle looked at her in suspicion. It was obvious that she had disliked the waif-like pale girl with long black hair on first sight. "Really?" "Yes," she said softly, pale-silver eyes looking scared. "Laselle, stop bullying her," Giselle said firmly. "If she knows a way to get to Ash and the others then let her speak." Laselle stuck her tongue out at her then sat back on the box, next to Junior who Giselle had almost forgot was in the room since he was so silent. She felt a light tinge of pity looking at him, but then returned her gaze to Chanelle. "Y-You see," Chanelle said, charms on her robes clinking as she stepped from foot to foot within the ankle-deep water, "back in Cinnabar, I was training to be a League Channeller-" Hikaru, one of Bruno's men, looked at her sharply. "A League Chaneller!" he said in horrified surprise. He backed away from the girl as if she had just grown two horns and a forked tail. Laselle had even let go of her Butterfree and was preparing to use it. "But that's all finished now," Chanelle said, looking down at her feet. "A-After Mistress Lorelei murdered everyone, I don't know what to think." Her pale silver-grey eyes moistened. "My friends ... my family. All gone." Nurse Joy stepped up to her and gave her a hug. "That's okay Dear. Don't think about it. You're with us now." Giselle was spinning the stethoscope on her neck around in circles. Finally she said, "So, a Channeller ... does that mean you know how to teleport?" Chanelle gave a slight nod. "B-But I'm not very good. I'm still a beginner. I get tired easily and I can only teleport a few at a time... maybe only three others besides myself. As far as Viridian City Ruins." Laselle frowned. "But if you knew how to teleport, why didn't you tell us sooner?" "I-I don't know. I guess I didn't think about it until now." "Like that's enough, as long as she can do it now," Daisy said before more hostilities could break out. "As long as we warn them about Brock and tell them that we'll be late." She looked over them. "So who's going?" Laselle immediately latched on to Giselle's arm. "C'mon big sister," she said sweetly. "You know you want to go." Giselle cursed underneath her breath. "You little power harlot," she whispered. "You're just saying that because of what you know about me." "Naturally," Laselle said unashamedly. Surprisingly, Junior spoke up too. "I'll go then. I need ... I need to speak to my father as well." "Okay, that's three-" Daisy said. "Me too," Hikaru interrupted. "But she said only three-" "No, no, I-I think I might be able to do four," Chanelle said. "It's okay." "You totally sure, Dear?" Lily said with a smile. "I'm sure," Chanelle said firmly. <><><> They stood around in a circle in the driest room they could find on the ship - surprisingly it was the bathroom. It was probably the waterproofing, Giselle thought to herself a little ironically. On the ground around them were six tall, lighted white candles that Chanelle had insisted she needed for the ceremony. It was also their only light source, since all power had been cut off in this section to save it for the engines when they finally became operational. "Now all link hands," Chanelle said, her pale silver eyes reflecting the light of the candles so it seemed she had a fire within her. She looked almost menacing; far different to the timid girl they had always seen so far. They lifted their hands to the sides and soon they were a completed circle - Chanelle, Junior, Giselle, Hikaru and Laselle. "Ow, do you have to hold my hand so tight?" Laselle complained. "Sorry," the young channeller said. "Now please be silent while I begin the incantations." They complied, and the room was completely quiet except for the light sound of gentle waves outside splashing against the ship's hull and their breathing. Chanelle finally began chanting in an eerie monotone, in perfect timing with the rocking of the ship's floor. "Night beyond light, Darkness beyond Twilight." A spooky breeze began to kick up around them despite the room being closed off. Giselle shivered. "I offer my soul to the dead." The candle flames brightened then burst into tall flames. "With this unworthy virgin's blood, I appeal thee." Chanelle produced a small pocket knife from her robes and slashed the fleshy part of her palm. Bright crimson blood dripped on to the tiles. It seemed almost to steam as it splashed in dark splotches. "Send us oh advocate, to thy location!" Her voice grew to an abrupt shout. "TELEPORTATION!" Chanelle's brightly glowing silver eyes seemed to dominate the whole room. To swallow them in a world of stark whiteness. And with it came a pain as white-hot as that gaze. Was it supposed to hurt this much? It was a thought that Giselle considered just before she lost consciousness. <><><> Light rain fell continuously from the blue-black skies above. The storm was over but the rain persisted. It pattered across the tops of the trees and the leaves so that it was the only sound that could be heard. Although without thunder and without lightning, a storm of a different kind would very soon take its place. At the edge of a circular clearing in the Western Viridian Forest, a tall athletic figure in a light-brown cloak waited, leaning against the gnarled trunk of a tall tree. A single eye that matched his cloak in colour glimmered in anticipation within the darkness of his concealed face. The corner of AJ's lip turned up. Ash was gonna pay. There was no way he was gonna ignore the letter of challenge. He remembered the girl with red hair and how she and Ash were so sickeningly close. He frowned. How the girl had cheered against him in the semi-finals. When unbelievably, he had lost. Pain flared in his palm and he looked down to see blood dripping from his closed fist. He had tightened it so hard, his fingernails had bitten the flesh. "Shrew!" AJ looked up across the other side of the clearing to see the squat yellow body of his pokemon scamper out of the shadows of the trees and run towards him across the wet grass. He frowned. Where was Ash? He was supposed to be following. "Where is he?" he asked angrily down to his pokemon when it had reached him and sat by his feet. Sandshrew looked back puzzled. "Shrew?" "Did you give him the letter?" he screamed, forming a long whip made of brown energy in his right hand. He began to crack it over its head. "I told you-" "You will give me the antidote," a voice said softly from above. AJ looked up into the branches of the tree above him, letting his whip dissipate. A lean form shrouded in floating black shadows stood motionless up above balanced perfectly along a bough. It was looking down at him, two glowing dots of gold that were its eyes gleaming out of the darkness. "Huh?" He leapt back into the clearing startled. It was him! How did he get up there without him noticing it? Ash jumped down, cloak trailing above him like a demon's wings, and landed swiftly in a crouch on the wet ground. There wasn't even a sound at the impact but his boots were smoking as if incredibly hot. Then he stood up, hands behind his back, all the while staring at him from underneath his hood with those frightening golden eyes. On his left shoulder was perched his black pikachu, cobalt-blue eyes gleaming as malevolently as its master's. AJ stood up straight and folded his arms. Sandshrew leapt up on to his own left shoulder. "I knew you'd come," he said with a smile devoid of humour. "You were always a sucker for a pretty girl." "Just give me the antidote, AJ," he said flatly. AJ narrowed his single eye. He flashed a small circular vial of red liquid in his hand. "If you want this, you have ta fight me for it." He flicked the vial into the air and caught it in his mouth which he then swallowed. "Just in case you think you can get it by stealin' it and runnin' away. Now I'll prove to the world once and for all, that I am the greatest Pokemon Master of all time." The gold eyes within the black hood narrowed to slits at the action. "You really want to risk attracting the Forbidden Pokemon?" AJ extended his right arm and Sandshrew ran along it. There was a tremble to the air, like an aerial earthquake, as it flashed and reformed into his thick steel broadsword. He threw his hood back behind neck, letting the rain fall upon his head, and spread his arms wide to the sides. He spun his thick brown sword around in circles. "You think I give a shit about any Forbidden Pokemon?" he roared. "We have to finish it! I can't live knowin' I'm not the best!" Ash regarded him silently as he adjusted his fingerless black gloves out in front of him. "Very well," he said softly. He extended his own right arm out to the side to let his pikachu run along it to his hand. There was an ear-splitting crack of thunder and a flash of bright lightning that forced AJ to look away. When he looked back, Ash was holding his long, wickedly-sharp katana horizontally behind his back, slightly curved black blade seeming to absorb the darkness around them. He stood slightly sideways in preparation, his black cloak sinuously moving around his body as if it were alive. "Just remember that you pushed me to this - I'll not go easy on you any longer," was all he said as he jerked his head back to let the hood fall behind his shoulders to release his black hair which fell partially over one of his glowing golden-brown eyes. AJ brought his arms together, locking the hilt of his sword within both hands. "I'll remember to have the funeral people engrave that on your tombstone," he growled, the rain wetting his own green hair to lie over his forehead. "DIE!" he screamed as he launched a swing upward from the ground, blade glowing an ugly brown. The grassy earth beneath him was ripped open and a jagged blade of hard rock emerged to rapidly streak across the ground toward his target. Surprisingly, rather than dodge, Ash ran boldly into it, katana blade still held behind his back with one hand. Then with a ringing of steel, he sliced through it with one smooth stroke - so fast, AJ only saw a diagonal slash mark before the blade of rock exploded in a shower of pebbles and granite. And then the Shadow Master was atop him in a flurry of precise sword strikes. Black and brown sparks flashed at each clash of their blades. AJ fell back, parrying the strikes with some difficulty. "Very good," he panted. "But you forget something... Ground overpowers Thunder!" He forced more of his element along the blade causing it to glow brighter and struck at Ash with all his strength. Ash attempted to slide his blade along his in a spin manoeuvre, defensive to offensive, but was instead blown backward by the sheer power of AJ's slash. Brown ground energy pushed him back and high into the air as like a boulder thrown by a catapult. AJ laughed until he saw Ash rotate high into a backflip to strike the horizontal face of a top of a tree with his boots. Using the tree like a launching pad, he propelled himself back down toward him, Shadow Blade at the ready. AJ tried to do the same thing again but was rudely surprised when Ash picked up speed, and seemed to this time, dodge the slash rather than parry it, and nimbly enter AJ's center of defence. His breath exploded out of him as he felt a hard fist strike his belly, then again, followed up by a shifting side kick which knocked him backward. Then Ash finished the series with a step, double roundhouse kick which struck him first in the chest, then on the chin and this time, launched *him* high into the sky. Feeling like a bashed-in punching bag, AJ spat out some blood as he desperately twisted in midair to face Ash who had leaped up after him, black sword held over one shoulder ready to finish him off. "Not yet!" AJ yelled. He still had his own sword which he had not let go of despite the beating. He swung it while simultaneously letting his ki course through the sword once again. A blade of brown elemental energy was released which flew down toward Ash like a bullet. However, Ash pointed his sword down and let go a huge bolt of black lightning to force his flight higher. AJ's blade of energy narrowly missed him and instead struck the lower trunk of a tree at the edge of the clearing and sheared through as if the hard wood was as weak as paper. It fell over with a shockingly-loud crash. AJ spotted the branch of a tree behind him, and he spun into a somersault to grab it with his one free hand. Then using his backward momentum to his advantage, he swung around the branch until he was above it, let go, flipped, and landed in a crouch on the precarious limb. Quickly, he looked in the direction where he had last seen Ash and prepared to let fly another Ground Slash, but he was nowhere to be found. "Where are ya, coward?" he yelled. "You should never have brought Misty into this." AJ spun around and stood up. Ash was standing on the root of the branch just where it was joined to the trunk of the tree. He held his curved katana in one hand to the side, calmly spinning it around his finger in wide circles. "Your quarrel is with me, and me only," Ash continued. AJ rubbed the scar which ran along the left side of his face, and the closed eyelid where an eye was missing. "You think I care about your whore?" he said harshly. "Anything that gives you pain is what gives me pleasure. In fact, I wouldn't be sorry if your whore was dead already. That poison was incredibly lethal." Everything turned frighteningly quiet. AJ stepped backward to prepare for an attack when a horrifying red colour began to replace the golden-brown of Ash's eyes. Darkest black aura began to emit around his body and the still air began to move in a sharp wind, blowing AJ's cloak around as well as rustling the leaves of the tree around them. "You don't like that do you?" AJ asked smugly, not understanding what was going on, but knowing full-well that the death of his girl would hurt him terribly. He lifted his sword out in front of him. "Well, playtime's over! Sandshrew, Electric Inversion!" The sword began to spark on and off. A pity he had to resort to this move - it was kind of cheap - but the way Ash was acting unnerved him a little and he didn't want to take any more chances. Ash's eyes flared red once and stayed red. "Pathetic." His voice had somehow grown deeper, deep enough that AJ could feel it within his bones. He blinked. "What?" Ash began to step closer despite the blinking of AJ's sword. "Truly pathetic." "What the hell?" AJ said, looking at the blade. "Sandshrew, are ya doin it just like I trained ya?" Shockingly, Ash suddenly just grabbed on to the blade with his free left hand. "You are weak." Then his fist closed and the blade just snapped. AJ heard the dying scream of his Sandshrew within his mind. "NOOOOOOO!" he cried as the shattered remnants of his sword fell through his hands like broken glass. "It was a mistake to push him like that," Ash said, eyes still glowing red. He lifted up his long curved black katana and there was an obscenely loud boom as it reformed back into his dark pikachu. Except now its eyes were also red. AJ screamed as the pikachu latched on to his chest and began to glow blackly. Despite his immunity to electricity, he could feel the powerful current course throughout his body, vibrating him like a rag doll. It felt as if his blood were boiling - like he was being cooked from within like a potatoe. His eyes felt as if they would pop from the blistering heat - and perhaps they already were. Desperately, he thought fast. "If you do this, the antidote will be destroyed! I was lying earlier - she's probably still alive!" Immediately the immense electrical current stopped flowing into him and he was released to fall down, grasping at the branch by Ash's feet. Abruptly, Ash shouted as he clutched at his head as if in pain. His eyes were blinking from red to golden-brown as if he could not decide what colour they were supposed to be. Tremulously, he said, "W-What's happening to me?" He's crazy! AJ thought wonderingly. Now's my chance! "Die!" he yelled as he jumped up, ki channelled within his hand to stab him through the heart. Unfortunately, Ash sensed his movement and recovered just in time to change his Pikachu back into katana form which he then used to slice the branch out from underneath their feet. And then they were both abruptly falling forty feet to the ground with nothing to support them. "Fool!" AJ shouted as he looked down and threw his senses outward. The grass far below ruptured and a narrow mountain of brown rock began rapidly rising upward with the sound and force of a rising volcano. He landed on top of it and used it to gain his balance and slow his fall. Ash bounced off the side of AJ's man-made mountain and continued to fall toward the earth. "Fissure!" AJ yelled, commanding the earth Ash was to fall upon to split apart. Steam hissed at the violence and roaring of the earth's opening. He would make Ash land in a pool of molten lava! "Shadow Levitation!" Ash yelled as he tumbled downward toward his apparent death. AJ cursed loudly when a disc of shadow grew from beneath Ash's feet to stop his wild spinning and he gained enough control to glide down to the ground out of harm's way. "Dammit!" AJ exclaimed as he too landed back to earth upon his improvised elevator of rock. "This is for Sandshrew! Lay down and die!" he screamed, as he pounded the earth with both fists. He had to attack hard and fast before Ash gained his bearings. The bastard still seemed a bit confused from whatever had happened up there. A crack of hard destruction zigzagged its way on the ground toward where Ash had landed from his fall. Seeing the attack headed his way, Ash leaped high into the sky. Black cloak gliding around him, he reared his arm back and rapidly threw his sword down at AJ. AJ dodged easily, the katana harmlessly striking down into the grass behind his back with a thunk. He jumped up and began rising up to meet him in the air with the helpful push of a rising column of rock. "That was pathetic!" he said disgustedly. "Now you've left yourself wide open!" "You should have just given me the antidote," was all Ash said with a regretful look in his brown eyes. He whipped what looked like a thin black rope of electricity down from his palm and it flew past AJ's shoulder with a burst of crackling energy. "You missed again ... ARGH!" AJ gurgled as suddenly he just saw the long curved blade of Ash's black katana sticking through the middle of his chest. How? How? AJ thought as he lost control of his column of rock and began to fall to the earth. He looked over his shoulder to find the hilt of the sword buried in his back and the thin black rope of lightning attached to it. Ash had pulled his sword back up with his rope to stab him! It was his last thought before he landed hard on his back upon the ground, forcing the katana even more through his body, bounced once and then died. <><><> Ash landed with a wet thump upon the damp grassy ground, the folds of his cloak settling around him. It was over. He jerked his wrist and his katana flew out of the fallen AJ's back with a whipping of the lightning rope. As he caught the hilt in his palm, he was already running. He had to get Misty's antidote from within the body. He frowned as he pushed his rain-wetted hair back from his eyes. For a second during the fight he had somehow blanked out. When he had 'awoken' he had felt the residue of fury ... and yes, pain, such that he had never known... it frightened him that he was capable of such hatred. He had to find out what was happening - although what he already suspected terrified him even more than what the conclusion of the Armageddon would bring if it was ever allowed to take place. <><><> Howling as shrill as a phantom, a wind had begun to blow in the dead atmosphere above - although there were no leaves and branches of trees to be rustled around in the near area. Like some sort of bomb of death that had been dropped, where there used to be a village in the midst of a surrounding forest, what lay there now was naught but blackened husks of devastated buildings and vegetation. Dirt roads that wound their way through the once-living town were now stained black - but it was anyone's guess whether it was from the ashes or the blood of the people who had died there. In the darkness, with nothing but a single lantern for light held aloft as well as the fire manes of their white mounts, four figures on horseback surveyed the destruction before them. In the lead, and the one holding the lantern, was a woman in a long black overcoat divided in the back for riding. Complex, braided blue hair lay still behind her neck and the half of her face that was not covered by her long bangs looked seriously upon what used to be the Pallet Settlement. Behind her, in line formation upon their steeds, was a blue-cloaked and hooded Pokemon Master as well as another aqua-haired man and blonde woman, both dressed in matching light, steel armor and thin grey over-cloaks which they wore upon their shoulders. "The Forbidden Pokemon have been busy," Suzie said quietly as she swung the lantern around and turned her pointed brown gaze upon the countless prints of clawed feet all throughout the ground before them. Most lay coagulated around suspicious piles of bones with gnaw marks on them. "Nasty business," Butch said in his scratchy voice. "I wonder. Are even us of the Pokemon League truly safe? How do you suppose they know their targets?" Silence reigned for the moment. Then Suzie answered quietly, "To tell the truth, I suspect not. There have been reports..." She supposed she should be worrying about her ship which they had left anchored around the shore near the destroyed Cycling Bridge with only a skeleton crew... but honestly, she only cared about one thing nowadays... Nothing else mattered. "So we were right," Cassidy said angrily with a flip of her ponytail over the shoulder of her over-cloak. "Our army getting savaged was no fluke. If you and your men hadn't come along when you did, we would have been devoured - even if those idiots Jessie and James hadn't come along. This farce of the League Master's is really some sort of suicide. All the better we find the twerp and bend his power to our own." The blue-cloaked Water Master suddenly broke his silence. "And after that we can kill him. I just want ... the bitches who did this to me." Rainer threw his hood behind his shoulders to show his abused face, swelling and with cuts as if he had barely survived from a brutal beating. "Silence," Suzie said with a calm but steely voice. "We're here to procure Brock, first and foremost, as you have failed to do several times already. I do not suffer repeated failures within my company." Rainer just stared down at his hands furiously, blue hair falling into his eyes. "Oh, you will have him alright, but I will have what I want too." There was also a hint of profound grief within his tone that was impossible to conceal. The Eevee brothers had been a tightly-knit family. And now they were a family no longer - just a lone man seeking recompense for loss of said family. Butch was thinking about what had been said earlier. "Speaking of Jessie and James, we should really find them again before they find us. I don't want to be surprised like that again." Shaking her head, Cassidy said, "I guess that girl isn't really as powerful as we thought to let them escape." "Enough talking," Suzie interjected as she hooked her lantern on to the saddle and wheeled her Rapidash around to begin galloping north-west. "We're wasting time. Now that the rain has stopped we should make much better speed." The two soldiers and the Water Master jerked their reins to follow. <><><> Over and over, powerful black waves crashed upon the hard rocks of the Viridian Gulf with the sound of powerful thunderclaps. Although the storm had died down, the seas of the ocean near the cliffs of the dangerous gulf remained violent and unending. Halfway up, on the slick, sheer, vertical face of slippery cliffs, a brown-cloaked figure was steadily climbing. Rocky hand over rocky hand, the six-foot-seven and more than two hundred and fifty pounds of solid muscle - more when he transmuted his body to rock - Rock Master climbed the razor-sharp cliffs as relentlessly as a force of nature. Smash. Smash. He created his own handholds to pull himself up by simply smashing his diamond-hard fists into the stone. The cutting wind was powerless to faze him as it was not enough to even jar the solid mass of his body. Less than half an hour later, he managed to pull himself to the top of the cliffs, even past the part that had grown almost upside-down and he had to climb up almost like on the monkey-bars he had played on as a kid. He paused, crouching on one knee to gather his breath, then stood up to his full height. The stone of the cliffs continued on in front of him for about a dozen yards before it slowly gave way to the brush and vegetation of a forest. As he examined the ground for footprints, his thick, brown cloak glowed for a split-second to dry itself of the ocean he had just come from. There. His slitted eyes glowed brown. Boot prints in the dirt by his side. They seemed to converge into a single path leading north into the forest. He pulled his cowl over his head and began to trudge on when he suddenly sensed someone behind him. He turned around. "Sabrina." Like always he could never tell when she decided to come in except when she wanted attention. The Psychic Master stood with her hands behind her back, twilight-blue eyes like her cloak, staring out at him from underneath her hood. "Still after Mistaria, I take it," she stated. He growled. "I appreciate your help back there in freeing me, but shut your mouth on matters not your concern." Her eyes flashed yellow. "Not my concern? Really?" His own slitted eyes flared brown to match her. "NOW it is no longer your concern. Leave me be, witch." He spun around with a flap of his mantle and walked relentlessly forward. Sabrina shook her head as she teleported out with a flash of white light. <><><> "Uhhhh," Laselle groaned as she opened her eyes. She slowly pushed herself up to a sitting position. Everything was black, shrouded in darkness. She couldn't see a thing and it was starting to scare her. "H-Hello?" she called out. "Hello?" Her voice seemed to echo around, mocking her. Where was she? The last thing she remembered was that crybaby Chanelle casting that spell or whatever it was to teleport them all to the ruins of Viridian City. Had something gone wrong? She remembered a brief pain just before the spell was cast, but then, nothing. Then white light flared by her side, startling her. She blinked to get the black spots out of her vision. "Free?" The butterfly pokemon was sitting by her side on the rocky floor, a bright light shining from its dark wings. "Butterfree!" she said happily as she hugged her pokemon. "Am I glad you're here! Do you know where everyone else is?" "Free..." it said sadly. "What is this place?" Laselle said looking around. It seemed to be an underground tunnel of some sort, kind of like the ones underneath Mount Moon ... instantly, upon that thought, her heart starting beating faster. "This isn't Mount Moon is it?" she asked desperately. Butterfree shook its head. "But then, where are we?" she asked, puzzled, but still scared. A tunnel was a tunnel. And she *hated* tunnels. She looked north and it seemed to continue on forever until Butterfree's light dissipated and then it was just black. On the other side to the south, the tunnel seemed to open up into two other tunnels. "Free, free, free," Butterfree tried to explain. "What?" Laselle asked. She wished that she could understand it, like the rapport between Ash and Pikachu, but apparently she had not had enough time with it yet. Butterfree sweated. Then it hopped out of her arms and seemed to grasp her hand with its antennae. It manipulated her fingers into a 'V' sign and then pushed her arm up. "You're trying to tell me something," Laselle said, understanding. She looked at the sign on her hand. It was the one she used whenever she won a Pokemon battle. "V ..." she mused. "V for victory?" "Free!" the Butterfree nodded happily. Then it looked down at the dirt floor. It leaned down and traced two wavy parallel lines through it. "Um..." Laselle said. "Squiggles?" Butterfree sighed. Then its red eyes brightened. It leaned down again and drew a stick figure person between the parallel lines and what looked like one of those cars people used to use before the war when all those things were destroyed. "A road?" she asked hesitantly. "Free!" Butterfree nodded affirmatively. "Victory ... Road?" Her throat dried out and it felt like she had suddenly swallowed a golf ball. "Victory Road??? Oh, shit, oh shit, oh shit..." She glared at her pokemon with a frightened look on her face. "Butterfree how could you! I would have rather stayed ignorant!" Butterfree sighed again. <><><> Upon the crumbling stone wall, the shadow of a small campfire flickered in random directions. Somehow in synchronisation with the shadow's movement, there was a cold wind that whistled through the holes in the roof where the dead pallor to the sky could be spied through from below. It wasn't much of a shelter, the half-collapsed section of a building - one of many within the ruins of the old League Gate just at the western edge of Viridian Forest - but it was better than having to brave the depressing, cold weather of the world outside. Especially when Misty was so sick, Erika thought with a lump in her throat as she watched her best friend of these past years toss and turn upon the open sleeping-bag, sweat-soaked red hair splayed around her face. She had removed the blue cloak earlier and had found the small thorn attached to her upper-arm. It wasn't hard to find since the area around the puncture had begun to bruise an ugly purple colour; a distinct contrast to the natural paleness of Misty's skin. It was an evil poison that AJ had struck her with. She suddenly and furiously wished that whatever Ash had done to AJ was ugly and messy. Misty mumbled something in her sleep. Erika thought it sounded like she had said Ash's name. She shook her head. Even if Misty blamed Ash and herself so much from what had happened, she couldn't run away. Perhaps it was the reason that Misty had foolishly sought him out before all of this Armageddon stuff even started. An excuse to finally meet him again and finally get the man out of her system. If that was the case, then her goal had truly and completely failed. Erika was no longer sure on what leg to stand on. She used to think that Ash had no empathy with himself or others, but she had been proved wrong so many times already. He obviously cared a lot for Misty despite all their fighting but it was completely contradictory to what he was supposed to have done. She removed her red hair-band and bent it around in her fingers above her crossed legs. She still blamed herself for the death of her last three Grass Trainers. No matter if she had been lost with Ash, she just knew that she should have been there for them. It was illogical, but whoever thought that feelings had to stay within the confines of reason? And now, Misty. The poor girl who had probably been suffering heart-break for more than a quarter of her life - and now with a slim chance at regaining all that she had lost, the poison was now rapidly taking even that away. Ash, hurry, she chanted in her mind. Hurry... if Misty died ... and with her right here and she couldn't do anything. Anything. It, it just wouldn't be right. Suddenly, a commotion started in the room next door where Bruno and the old Team Rocket were resting, voices shouting, and then the rotting wooden door banged open to reveal Ash looking deathly tired, his black cloak ripped in several places and with Pikachu on his shoulder. "Pikachu, give Erika the vial," Ash said as he banged the door shut again and leaned against the wall. As he brushed the hair away from his half-closed eyes, Pikachu leaped off his shoulder and scampered over to Erika where he dropped a small, round glass decanter. "Pika," Pikachu said sadly as he looked down at Misty, pointed ears drooping, then sat down on his hind legs by the campfire in the centre of the room. "Thank God!" Erika said anxiously as she lifted the container into the light of the fire and studied the liquid within. "This is the one. It could have been that AJ was bluffing that he really had an antidote and intended all along for Misty to die." "Just do what you have to do," Ash said in a haunted voice. He slid his back down the rough stone wall and fell to hug his knees and close his eyes. Erika quickly propped Misty up against a backpack and opened the decanter of liquid. "It was good you got it here when you did, I finally identified the poison. It's a lethal strain from the blood of a certain species of kakuna. It's only curable by the venom of the beedrill that would spawn from it ..." She opened Misty's mouth with a finger and began gently pouring the red liquid down her throat. "It causes a certain type of paralysation which tires at first, then attacks the nerves in your body causing non-movement and eternal sleep followed by death. It was even a wonder how someone like AJ was able to get not only the poison, but the antidote for it as well." Ash turned his head and opened one eye to look down at Misty. "So is she going to be alright?" "I think so. We'll definitely know in a few hours." He closed his eyes again and turned back to the front. "You seem to know a lot about poisons, Erika. I'm glad you were here for her." "It's not so puzzling since nearly all Grass Pokemon are part Poison as well," Erika explained as she sat down again and replaced her band back within her shoulder-length hair. "I'm nowhere near as good as Koga and Aya though. Those two were a veritable dictionary of poisons. I wonder if they managed to escape from South Lavender before it went nova." Suddenly she caught a flash of red on Ash's hands and she turned. Astonishingly, she realised that both his gloved hands were absolutely covered in dark-red blood, although most of it was dried now. Ash sensed her gaze and opened his eyes to look down at his red hands again. "You must be thinking I'm some kind of murdering monster," he said softly. "I was after all known as 'the Assassin' back in the wars." But Erika just turned back to watch over Misty, who now seemed a lot calmer, although if that was more from Ash's presence or from the administering of the antidote was unknown. "Is that AJ's blood?" A pause. Then, "Yes." Erika pulled her knees up and hugged them. "Then good." <><><> James had his ear pressed against the wooden door. "I think she's going to be okay," he whispered over to Jessie who was leaning against the half-crumbled wall on the other side of the room. He hunkered over and fell beside her to start brushing his longish blue hair with a comb. Jessie's dark-blue eyes were narrowed in concentration, long red ponytail laying over her shoulder, as she sharpened one of her knives on a smooth stone with light scraping sounds. "Good. We've been slowed down enough as it is." Bruno, who had been resting against the wall on the opposite side opened one eye. "If you think we're slowing you down, why don't you just go on ahead without us?" His deep voice was annoyed. Jessie clutched the black veil that was lowered under her chin as if she might raise it over her face in preparation for battle. "Fine. We just might go and do that." "No-no, Jessie," James immediately said. "I think we should stay together. Besides, our rain-coats are ruined." He indicated the torn yellow coats that they had discarded upon an old uneven table. "We can't go out in the wet with only our fighting attire." Persian, curled up in the centre of the room against some broken pieces of furniture, stopped licking his paws and gave a feline smirk. "Per... it's already stopped raining ... you just don't wanna go out there." James began to get angry at him. "Well, I was thinking more that we just might need some Pokemon Masters on our side. Remember what happened at South Lavender? Butch and Cassidy ended up having verrry powerful friends. I want friends like that too!" "Ah," Persian flopped a paw at him, "That was a fluke. I coulda whipped them eventually." "Hee hee ... I seem to remember that Jolteon making those whiskers of yours smoke," James said evilly. Persian glared at him with his vertically-slitted black eyes. "Shuddap." "So that's how you were captured?" Bruno was listening attentively now. "Those three Masters with Eeveelutions?" Jessie was back to sharpening her knives as she answered. But now they were harder strokes in her anger. "Yes, but it wasn't so much them as that damn bitch with the braided blue hair. That Ninetails she had ... I've never seen anything like it." "We tried to steal it so we could sell it," James admitted sheepishly as he scratched the back of his head, "but it didn't work out." Bruno gave them a flat stare. Persian shrugged his front shoulders. "Well, we gotta eat ya know." "I thought you were mercenaries now." "Well, it's been kinda slow what with most of our employers probably dead." Then the door creaked open startling everyone, even Bruno. Ash looked at them through the crack, his features exhausted and his black hair messy over his forehead. "We should get some rest everyone, for at least three or four hours. Misty might be okay by then. I'll take the first watch." Bruno leaned back upon the wall again and pulled his maroon cloak over himself like covers. "Don't worry. Duplica's out there already. She said she wanted to be on watch first and that she'd go get someone when she was tired." Ash rubbed his cheek with a bit of his black cloak and yawned. "Yeah, I did see her out there, sitting on a collapsed pillar. Is she okay? She looks like there's a lot on her mind. I've never seen her so serious." "I don't know. She's been like that ever since we got ashore," Bruno said. "Maybe, what with everythings that's happened, it's finally sinking in to her." Ash shook his head. "No, doesn't sound like her. Anyway, when she comes in, tell her to get me for next watch? I'll ask her what's wrong then. Right now, I ... I'll just get back to Misty and see how she's doing." He closed the door. Bruno looked around at them. "Well I guess it's time for some much-needed shut-eye," he said as he closed his eyes and tried to go to sleep. A few minutes later he opened them. "Jessie would you please stop that scraping with the knife." "Well, sorrrry," Jessie said sarcastically. She began sharpening her throwing stars instead which was even louder. <><><> Outside the half-collapsed stone building and sitting high upon a toppled-over column, a woman with long, blue hair and wearing a short black dress was looking up at the slowly swirling sky as she hugged her legs to her chest. Dark-bluish patterns almost like demonic symbols decorated the heavens - or was that hell? - that were haunting to look upon. They were strangely beautiful though... She blinked. For an instant, Duplica thought she glimpsed a shooting star behind that dark covering, but she wasn't sure if that was reality or just her imagination. However, according to the time-piece, it was supposedly around midnight so maybe she really had seen it. Nowadays, day looked as night and it was hard keeping track of the time. But at least she knew that there was a night sky up above - it was just being prevented from being seen. In any case, she had made her wish, even though she knew it would not come true. She had wished upon countless stars in her life and none had ever been answered. Except for one, but that had already been 'taken'. She rubbed her folded bare arms and shivered. For some reason a biting wind had arisen and was now howling around the broken ruins around them. It was all the hard-faces and shapes of the broken walls, boulders, overgrown weeds and collapsed parts of buildings that let the wind make its terrifying noises. Almost like ghosts. A tingle ran down her spine. Oh great, now that I've thought about ghosts, I'll keep on thinking about them... Still, thinking about ghosts gave her something else to think about other than what she currently was. She would rather feel frightened than this sickening feeling in her belly and throat and yes, her heart - especially her heart - remembering bad memories best left forgotten. She had tried to forget, and even actively tried to find a way where she would have to finally give up on her feelings for good ... but as with most things in life - at least hers - nothing was ever easy. The howling of the wind was harder now. The rustling of shrubs, vines and other foliage growing around the ruins grew louder and the collapsed stone column she was sitting on began to vibrate. Duplica stopped hugging her legs and stood up, long violet cloak materialising around her body as she willed her hair to stop flapping in her face. She lifted her right hand palm-first and created a brightly-lit torch from her flesh which she threw up and caught in her other hand. "Who's there?" she called out boldly, sweeping the torch from side-to-side. The light chased away most of the darkness, but there was nothing around her except for the shaking vegetation. And then suddenly the wind just quietened down, almost like it was just cut off, and everything was still once again. Duplica didn't let her guard down. The quiet before the storm and all that. She wasn't disappointed. A black, transparent ... 'something' swooped rapidly past her shoulder screeching loudly and it still startled her in spite of her foreboding feelings. Then another and another. She dodged from side to side, her heart caught in her throat. What were they? She could have sworn that some of them moaned her name, but she wasn't sure... even worse, she thought they had moaned *his* name as well ... She turned around, arms raised in defence, eyes searching above in the sky behind her for whatever they were ... spirits of some kind? But they had vanished, either out of thin air, or among the branches of the Western Viridian forest trees at the edge of the ruins. Her heart beating wildly, she debated whether to go inside and report what she had seen. Then she decided against it. She imagined Ash looking at her in disgust and then dashing off to investigate for himself. She had always been strong - the one never to take anything seriously - she had to live up to that image. Inwardly she began deciding on what form to change to ... ghosts and spirits. It would have to be something with high special abilities. But then wouldn't the Forbidden Pokemon sense that? "Thinking of something to change to?" a young girl's voice - eerie in its complete contrast to the terrifying atmosphere - startled her out of her desperate thoughts from behind. She immediately turned around and shone her torch brighter with a thought. A young girl's pale white face seemed to be floating, disembodied, in the shadows of a crumbled stone wall. Then she stepped forward, the sound of silver charms clinking, revealing a thin black robe over a slim body and long equally-black hair that tumbled loose behind her back. Pale silver eyes regarded her over a pert nose and a red rosebud-like mouth. "Chanelle?" Duplica asked, confused. "How did you get here?" Then she narrowed her eyes as her guard arose for some reason. Something weird was going on. It was strange and frightening in that the girl's manner was completely different to how she had met her and it didn't match up to the waif-like look. "Duplica, Duplica," Chanelle said, her soft voice low. "A most useful ability you have. To change your very shape to whatever you desire." Something was definitely wrong. "Well, it gets me on dates at least," she said uneasily. "Are you frightened of ghosts, Duplica?" Her pale silver eyes were brightening so that they lit up the night with their whiteness. The fine hairs on the back of her neck were standing on end now. "Is that a rhetorical question?" This had gone far enough ... it was obvious that the girl was dangerous. How about an ekans? She could paralyze her with a glare and then get some answers. But when she went to concentrate on the metamorphosis, she heard a scream to the air that was so appalling and terrifying in its sheer pain and hatred that she suddenly just froze up. Chanelle looked on with a half-smile. "If not, you soon will be." She lifted her arms to the sides and a black, smoke-like vapour began to rise up around her like a cloud of death. Vapour which gave appalling giggles and laughs. She began chanting in a dull monotone, "Night beyond light, Darkness beyond Twilight I pledge thy soul to eternal death Compel thy wretched one within thy sight..." Duplica stopped breathing. A terrible pain struck her heart, a pain like a thousand boiling needles being jabbed into it over and over. What was this? A spell? But the only one who relied on such powers was ... NO. It couldn't be. Chanelle's eyes were a burning hot light of twin boiling white brands. She jerked her arms down with a metallic clinking of the charms on her robe. "Let us find out your deepest thoughts. Stare into my gaze and be destroyed by the truth!" And then it seemed like she couldn't look away and she was staring down into a deep, dark abyss. Within she saw a young girl with blue hair. She was all by herself, crying, with no one to comfort her. Duplica closed her eyes, but still she saw it. She began to scream. She screamed and screamed and screamed. But no noise came out. <><><> A pretty sixteen-year-old girl with long blue hair and wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat skips southward along the dirt road through the forest humming a joyful tune. The folds of the skirt of her violet dress ruffle in the breeze of her movement and on her face is a sunny smile that would brighten the day of any who might catch a glimpse of it. Large light-brown eyes shining as burnished gold in the sunlight filtering from the upper-canopy of the trees seem to be brightened in anticipation. "I think we're almost to Pallet!" the girl says out loud as she taps her straw hat angled at a rakish tilt on her head. With her free hand, she straightens the strap of the small handbag she is carrying on the slim right shoulder of her dress. "Dits," the apparent straw-hat says in agreement, a little smiley face on the front of the hat putting the truth of what it really was. A shadow suddenly darkens across her face. "I wonder if he'll remember me though," the girl says in a worried tone. Her skipping slows down as she thinks. "Ditt, ditto," her hat encourages. "Well, I am a famous entertainer, but he was the Pokemon League Champion," the girl explains. "I watched him on TV. He's much more famous than me. Or what if he does remember me?" Her voice deepens into an incredibly realistic male voice. "Oh, I kind of remember you! You were the cheap entertainer we met back on my journey. The copycat girl! But why are you visiting me now?" Her voice returns to normal and now her skipping had completely stopped in favour of a slower, depressed walk. "That's right, why am I visiting him anyway?" She brushes her long blue hair over her shoulder sadly. "Ditto..." The girl abruptly laughs, changing emotional states completely. "You know me too well. I just couldn't stop thinking about him ever since I met him all those years ago. I've never met anyone like him. We had ... some sort of connection. I-I've got to see if-if, well you know." Her pretty face reddens in a becoming blush. Then she snorts at herself and begins her happy skipping once again. The forest begins to thin out and in the distance, houses begin to become visible. <><><> Ding dong! The doorbell rings as the blue-haired girl stands in sudden worry on the porch of the house. She has her hands behind her back, clasped together and wringing themselves. This was a mistake, she just knew it, the girl thinks to herself as she removes her straw-hat from her head and clutches it underneath one slender arm. And then the door opens and it is a beautiful woman with long brown hair and light-brown eyes. Familiar eyes. And familiar features. But it is something even closer to familiarity, the feeling that she feels. It prickles goose bumps along her skin. It is like she *knows* her. How, she doesn't know, but she can swear to it somehow. "Why, hello there!" the woman says cheerfully. Then she blinks her light-brown eyes as she studies the girl more intently. Then she laughs. "Oh, for a moment there, I thought you were someone I knew!" Then she stops laughing. "Oh dear, please forgive me. This is no way to treat a guest. I'm Mrs Ketchum, how can I help you, young lady?" Ash's mom! the girl thinks. No wonder she seems so familiar. She can see some of her features in her son's face. But that isn't only it. It is also something else... something she refuses to think about. "Hi, Mrs Ketchum," the girl says when she finally finds her tongue. "I heard that your son, Ash, has come back from his journey, and I just wanted to know ... if he was here? I-I'm a friend that he met on his badge quest." "Ah!" the woman says in delight. "A friend of my son's? How nice. Yes, yes, he's here in Pallet, visiting me. Now where did he go off to ... oh that's right, I think he went out for a stroll along the beach just North of the Viridian Gulf. It's not that far. Just follow that pathway over there and it should lead you directly to him." The girl smiles. "Thanks a lot Mrs Ketchum!" She turns to follow the woman's directions while placing her straw hat back on her head. But a haunting image of the woman strangely stays within her mind as she walks off. <><><> Underbrush leaves and twigs on the forest floor crunch like rice crispies as the girl walks through in a nervous mood. She thinks as she carefully steps and jumps over stones and small shrubs, keeping her straw hat steady with one hand on the wide brim. What would it have been like to have a mother? Ever since she could remember she had been alone. She did have a father, but he had been dead for so long she could hardly even remember him. All she pictured within her mind's eye was a stern-looking man with short blue hair and serious eyes. It was a wonder she couldn't remember more of him though, because she had been five or six before he passed away. In fact, nearly all of her childhood before that had been a blur. All she knew was that somewhere in those early years she had found Ditto, her best friend in the world. Since then she had lived within the old house with her Ditto. If it weren't for Ditto helping her with finding ways to make a living for herself so they could survive, she didn't know what would have happened. Her community had only been a sparse country-type place, no room for an orphan with no means of support. Nowadays though, she was quite well-off. With her entertainer career taking off, she had no more reasons to worry about getting enough money to survive the next day. In fact, with her detailed knowledge about all pokemon, she could have been a Pokemon Trainer - or even a researcher as well. Training a Ditto was equivalent to being constantly enrolled at a school like Pokemon Tech. But it didn't solve the problem of her loneliness. Often she would practise in front of a mirror in her various costumes just to play at there being someone else with her besides her pokemon. It made her feel not so alone. That's why when Ash came along when he did... She begins to hear the rhythmic sounds of something pounding on wood as well as smell the salty tang of the ocean. She peers around the next tree and she sees a boy, naked to the chest and wearing only baggy long pants with his back toward her, punching and striking a tall trunk with ropes wrapped around it for padding. His hair is worn in soft black spikes which rustles at each hard movement of his body. The girl admires his lean athletically-built back for a while as the boy apparently continues his training silently, giving no indication that he has sensed her presence. "C'mon, Pikachu!" the boy says, looking down to the side, "gotta keep up with the punches like this!" He does a three-step punch combination on the tree which incredibly seems to be snapping back at the force of the hits. The girl feels her mouth open in shock. Pikachu? She sticks herself out from behind the tree even more from where a bush was blocking her view and spots the small yellow electric mouse perfectly mimicking the boy's martial arts. It is standing on its hind legs and working on a smaller tree with corresponding ropes wrapped around it, cheeks sparking at each thrust of its paws. She looks back at the boy again, brown eyes wide open. So this is Ash! He looks so different ... so ... mature. Admittedly, it had been some years since she last saw him, and even then it was on the telly. Now that she had a more frontal view of his features she could see his cuteness as a kid had evolved to his current age... Unfortunately, she begins to lose her balance at the precarious position. She screams in shock as she slips and falls on her front upon a pile of autumn-brown tree leaves. The leaves scatter and fly up at her clumsy landing and drift around her like large snow-flakes. Eyes closed in embarrassment, she pulls her hat off which had become wedged over her face and pushes herself up. She opens her eyes in mortification and brushes long blue tendrils of hair out of her face. But the boy is only staring at her and rubbing his chin as if trying to work out a particularly hard puzzle. "I know, I know you!" he says enthusiastically. Then his light-brown eyes brighten and the girl knows already that he has come to the wrong conclusion. "You're Duplica the high class callgirl!" "Pika pika!" the pikachu agrees in excitement. Her eyes widen. She had *not* expected that. "Callgirl? I was the impressionist entertainer near Fuchsia City. But you know a callgirl? What dirty stuff have you been doing?" He laughs and scratches the back of his head self-consciously. "Hehehe, don't worry about it." "Pikachu," the pikachu says, correspondingly rubbing its head with its paw. She pushes herself to her feet with a groan and smoothes her dress down of sticking leaves and grass. Then she smiles at him. "At least you got my name right, Ashy-boy. Do I really look like a callgirl?" she asks wickedly and poses in a coquette position. Covering his mouth, he coughs once. "Duplica! Ahem, you've really changed a lot though!" He sweeps his gaze from side to side around her. "But where's-" "Dits!" The yellow straw hat on the ground bounces up from the ground to settle upon the girl's head. A small smiley face appears on its front edge and winks at the boy. "Ah! How cool!" He looks down at his pikachu sitting by his bare left foot. "Pikachu, why can't you turn into a hat? That would be really useful." The pikachu scampers up the boy's leg, then back and finally jumps up to sit on his head. "Pikapi?" it says grinning cutely. The boy lets out a sigh. "Pathetic." The Pikachu shocks him. "Okay, you're a great hat then," the boy agrees hastily, his body lightly smoking. The girl laughs out loud. Then she pointedly looks at the trunks with ropes wrapped around them and arches one slim eyebrow. "That's new. Since when have you been training to fight? You yourself I mean. Not your pokemon." "I'll have you know that I've been training myself hard even before Pokemon League," he says a little offended. "I trained right beside Pikachu here. I've got to be strong too you know or it wouldn't be right." He rubs his hair sheepishly. "Of course I did learn some new things when I was out on assignment for Professor Oak." "Strong, huh?" the girl says, grinning as she takes her hat off. It promptly morphs back into its original violet, amoeba-like form and sits on her shoulder. "Well then, how about a match, Mister Ashy-boy Pokemon League Master?" He waves it off. "Ah, I'm not the League Master. Gary has that title now and from what I hear he's been doing a great job. No one else has beaten him yet." He walks over by the trunk of another tree where a small brown backpack is lying against it. He lifts a cut-off black shirt out from it and pulls it on, followed by a beat-up old Pokemon League cap which he plops on sideways on his head. "Well anyway, yeah, I'll take you on," he says keenly. "I seem to remember that I haven't beaten you yet." "Ha!" she teases. "You want to use Bulbasaur again? You know it's kind of ego-gratifying to know that I totally whipped a League Champion's butt before." He smiles. "I've gotten better." The boy then looks down on his belt, at the several poke-balls attached. "I dunno about Bulbasaur... or Ivysaur now. He may want a rematch..." "Pikapi," the pikachu says, cheeks sparking little shocks. He looks at it. "Oh, you say you want to fight Ditto this time?" "Chu." "Okay. That okay with you Duplica? Ditto?" She folds her arms over her dress. "Fine with me. At least I know you're not going to go easy on me." "Ditto," her pokemon agrees. "I don't know," he says as he picks up his backpack and hooks it over a shoulder. "Pikachu's been known to be a softy around pretty girls. C'mon, let's battle down by the beach. It's cooler over there and maybe we can go swimming later." He begins to stroll off down an incline with the pikachu scampering by his side, expecting her to follow. The girl pauses for a moment, her heart beating. He thinks I'm pretty! She bends over to pick up her fallen handbag and then begins to follow. <><><> They stand facing each other upon the yellow sands of the beach, the sounds of the waves of the ocean unnoticed in the background. Above them, in the cloudless azure sky, the bright yellow sun is hot against their backs. But a cool ocean breeze is blowing a refreshing tangy wind over them which is rustling their hair and clothes around softly. Pidgeys and spearows squawk their bird cries as they soar and swoop high in the sky. "Go, Ditto," the girl orders as she tries to hold her skirt still from the wind which threatens to raise it indecently. The small violet blob with a smiley face on it, bounces forward over the sand. "Ditts!" The boy taps his beat-up old hat. "Okay, Pikachu. You know I choose you." "Pika!" The pikachu scampers forward on all fours with jagged tail upright, to meet its adversary. "Ditto, Transform!" the girl says, smiling. Smoothly, the violet amoeba changes shape until it is an exact mirror of the pikachu. Except this one is the colour of the girl's hair - a blue-teal colour - instead of yellow and it has black stripe markings and black cheek sacs instead of amber. "Huh? That's new," the boy says, extremely interested. "It's so we don't get mixed up," she replies a bit proudly. "I've been teaching her some new tricks with transforming." "That's great. Mind if I put a note about that in my pokedex later?" She gestures with her hand. "Help yourself." "Thanks. Anyway, let's get this battle started. Pikachu show them that Gurenken series we've been practising!" "Pika!" The pikachu scampers forward and begins a variant of punch manoeuvres that the girl recognises as the fighting moves the boy was trying on the tree. "Ditto, counter with Agility and dodge!" "Pika!" the teal pikachu acknowledges and desperately dodges the hand-to-hand punch and palm-strikes that the boy's pikachu is quickly executing. But it is obviously having trouble as each strike of the yellow pikachu is almost grazing it as it falls backward on its hind legs. "Pikachu, speed up with Agility also!" That proves to do the trick and the yellow pikachu manages to connect three times into the teal pikachu's chest and shoulder. Then it does a spin move and knocks it in high the air with its tail. The girl gasps. It was amazing how fast the boy's pikachu had moved! "Ditto, air-recover and Thunderbolt!" The teal Pikachu gains equilibrium in the air, flashes once, then sends a surge of crackling yellow-white lightning down at the yellow pikachu. "Pikachu, Absorb it!" Shockingly, the yellow pikachu takes the full brunt of the blast and instead of getting hurt it seems to suck all of the electricity into its body. "What?" the girl says in surprise as her ditto-turned-pikachu lands on all fours a dozen feet away and breathing hard. "How many new moves have you taught it?" The boy seems to think. Then he shrugs, a bit embarrassed. "I dunno. I sort of lost count." "This is crazy!" She is at a definite disadvantage. She only knows the basic attacks each pokemon has. She has no idea of any customisable ones that the boy seems to be using. She has to fight smart then... "Ditto, Thunderbolt the ground it's standing on!" "Pika chu!" The teal pikachu sparks, then instead of aiming its attack directly at the other pokemon it sends a charged bolt of lightning at its feet instead. There is a small explosion of sand and it is hard to see as a cloud of debris shaped like a mushroom hovers in the air around the point of impact. A second later, the yellow pikachu lands hard on its back a couple feet away looking a bit roughened up. "Good move!" the boy says. "You're easily smarter than the majority of the trainers at Pokemon League." The girl brushes a loose tendril of her hair back behind her ear, glowing at the praise. "Thanks." "But it doesn't mean you're better than me," the boy finishes with a confident grin. "Pikachu, Lightning Slash! But only use a quarter power!" The yellow pikachu leaps into the air, pointed ears laid flat against the back of its head. "PIKA!" Simultaneous with the cry, it slashes the air with its tail in a rapid spin move and a long blade of electricity explodes forth with so much power, the sand around them detonates a few feet into the air at the force of the blast. "Ditto, jump!" the girl says, stepping back in fright. "Pika!" The teal pikachu leaps high into the air. Unfortunately, the blade of electricity swoops upward to follow and it cannot escape. There is a small boom and sand flies everywhere. When it settles a minute later with both the boy and the girl coughing, the teal pikachu is lying on the sand a dozen feet away with X's in its eyes. "Ditto!" the girl shouts worriedly and runs over to her fallen pokemon. At her approach, the teal pikachu morphs back into its natural violet amoeba-like form. "Dits," it says weakly. Someone crouches by her side. It is the boy and his pikachu. "Is it alright? I'm really sorry! I shouldn't have told Pikachu to use so much electricity." "Pika," the pikachu says, ashamed. The girl looks at him and smiles faintly. "Fine! Trample my ego into the sand why don't you," she says laughingly. She looks down at her ditto again as it wobbles upright and wavers in a daze. "It's okay, I know how to lose graciously. I have to say that you two are just damn awesome. I can now see how you became the Pokemon League Champion." Red rushes to the boys cheeks and he uses his hat to fan his face. "Aww, stop it. Anyway we should be strong with the amount of training we do. Anything less would be embarrassing." Now's my chance! the girl thinks. Ask him to dinner! "Ah," she mumbles, "you wouldn't happen to be free for-" "Ash!" a pretty girl's voice shouts. "So there you are! I just got back from Cerulean City and I've been looking for you everywhere!" She looks up and sees a tall, beautiful girl with long red hair streaming behind her in the breeze as she runs toward them from up the slope leading down to the beach. Her eyes are as blue as the ocean and the sky and on her face is an expression of happiness ... love? "Misty!" the boy says excitedly as he stands up and begins to run toward her as well, his pikachu running by his feet. They meet together on the sand in a gigantic hug and the boy spins her around once in a circle. Happy laughter strikes between the two and then they kiss. The blue-haired girl watches silently, still kneeling on the sand. Inside her chest is the most agonising, burning pain she has ever felt, and she is feeling dizzy and disorientated. Is this how it feels to have your heart broken? She has never felt this way before, so maybe it is. Stupid, stupid! She should have known that the red-haired pony-tailed girl that was with him in the past would have probably snatched him up by now. She feels like the most stupidest person alive. Then the hugging boy and girl look back at her. "Who's she?" the girl asks in her pretty voice as she pushes a strand of long red hair from her beautiful blue eyes with a free hand. "I know I've seen her somewhere before." "Oh. You remember Duplica right?" <><><> Chanelle's silver eyes watched pityingly over the lying, writhing woman, crying softly to herself as she hugged her knees, prone upon her side on the ground. "You poor little girl... But perhaps you may be allowed to redeem yourself." The pale silver eyes flashed white once more. <><><> Ash awakened to the sound of someone stirring beside him. Misty! He opened his eyes and turned over to sit up on his sleeping bag. Sure enough, she was about to sit up and was rubbing her face with the back of one slim hand. "How do you feel?" he asked, immensely relieved that she had regained consciousness. He combed his fingers through his hair and examined her pallor. Her face had returned to its more healthy creamy tone and her eyes looked clearer and bright: a flawless aqua-blue which she blinked as she regained her bearings. She brushed some strands of long, red hair from the shoulder of her blue dress and looked at him. She licked her pink-tinged lips. "I-I feel alright." She noticed his tight study of her and blushed slightly. "Poison?" He looked away. "Yeah." Her voice tightened. "Who?" "AJ." He looked down at his hands again. Although he had washed them off from last night, he could still feel the itch in them; the stickiness of the blood that had covered his fingers like evil paint. "We don't have to worry about him anymore." She covered her face with her hands, shoulders shaking, like wild hilarity, but with grief. "This is all wrong. Wrong! How could we have degenerated to this? The world is already dead. Should we save it? It's like it's not even worth saving anymore." Ash grabbed her hand. "No. As long as there is still life we know we have to do something. Anything. This prophecy is a suicide, don't you realise that? And for whatever reason, suicide is always wrong. Life shouldn't be wasted like that. I've always believed in never giving up." He looked into her eyes. "If I hadn't, I'd probably already be dead." Then he quickly looked away as if her gaze into his eyes burned him to the core. "As for AJ ... the AJ we knew as kids was dead as soon as he failed at the Pokemon League. His hatred consumed him, leaving him an empty shell with nothing but a need to prove himself worthy of a worthless title." Something poked his finger that was grasping Misty's hand. A ring of some sort? He began to look down. But Misty pushed away from him. "But you gave up on me." He looked up, incredulous. "What are you talking about? If anything, you gave up when you went running over to Brock. Is that why you left on that day?" A cold, blue aura began to emit from her body. "What Brock said ... was a lie! I may have stayed with him, but that was only because he's always been our closest friend! I couldn't think of anyone else to talk to. There was never anything romantic between us." "It seems he thinks differently," Ash said grimly as he closed a fist and stared at it. She turned on him, eyes blazing in her fury. "Just like you say AJ turned into a different person, don't you see how Brock has changed also? For some ... some reason, he's become fixated on me. I don't know how, I always treated him as a friend, especially when we were kids. He never gave any sign that he thought of me as anything different. He was always after a different girl..." "He was hiding it ... and love doesn't have to have a reason to emerge," he said glumly. "If I knew how he felt back then..." "What? You would have stepped aside?" "Why shouldn't I?" he shouted back. "I've always placed my friends above myself!" "How dare you?" Astonishingly, she growled as she leaped on top of him, knocking him over on to his back on the stone-tiled floor. Her grip on his wrists was painfully tight and he could feel the coldness of her aura beat his body. "You would have sacrificed us, just to be some noble idiot? And wasn't I a *friend* too?" Her eyes blazed cold, blue fire down at him. But for some crazy reason, suddenly Ash could only think about how beautiful she was with her long crimson hair splayed over him, eyes bright with emotion, beautiful face heated with anger. "I-I, but you're more than a friend, you're just Misty," he said softly. "You've always been Misty." And then her fury transformed into another emotion, one just as hot and demanding as the anger that had spawned it. A confused expression washed over her face as if she couldn't decide what it was that she was feeling. "Ash," she breathed, almost like a whisper in the wind. Then suddenly and shockingly, they were kissing as passionately and with as much feeling as if they had never split apart - in fact it seemed as if their feelings had even amplified since then. Her skin felt as soft and as supple as velvet, and where their lips were united was as hot as the midday sun. Ash wanted to break away. He wanted to. This was the woman who could break him like a piece of fragile glass. She had already done it once. But he was just too weak. He needed this. He needed her. <><><> Erika and Pikachu quietly crawled over to the door in a bit of haste. They had been awoken by the argument and had silently stayed as still and as unnoticeable as they could. But now that the two people, oblivious to everything around them but each other, had begun tearing their clothes off, now was the time to leave them to their privacy. <><><> Later, all was silent as they lay next to each other except for the steady sound of their slow breathing. The room was still shrouded in darkness since the campfire had long since died out, but they were as aware of each other as only two people who had shared the closest act of all, could be. Eyes tightly shut, Misty tried to hold reality at bay. As she was doing what she had done, she had promised herself that whatever came, she could bear it. If only she could have that pleasure, she could bear anything. But now that her head had cleared from anger and desire, like an anaesthetic that had just worn off, the full force of her aching heart came back to greet her. Sitting up, she tried to locate her lingerie and dress. Probably the worst part of it was finding it next to her all ripped up, while she still wore a part of her skirt that had become caught between her bare legs. She felt like one of those easy women or an actor in a dirty movie. She reached over to her pack for a change of clothes and turned away from him, expecting nothing. It hurt too much to have your expectations dashed down a cliff. "We should probably go soon." After a small silence, he turned over toward her, whole body stiffening. "Huh?" Resolving herself against hurt, she pulled her bra and underwear on almost mechanically. "I've already slowed us down enough. We have to get to Indigo Plateau and somehow stop the full prophecy from unfolding before it's too late." "Damn the Pokemon League! You really want to talk about that at a time like this?" Ash said, glaring at her with those golden-brown eyes that she could so lose herself within. "We have to talk about the past and finally resolve this!" She narrowed her eyes. How could he pretend he not know? Abruptly, she just felt a pain in her head. A pain which blackened her vision for an instant before it went away. And suddenly she just hated him. A hate she remembered feeling just before she had left all those years ago. A hate that she had gradually lost afterward as she realised that it was her fault too but had now strangely come back. But what was the most unusual thing was that she also felt the same love for him that it seemed like she always had. The conflicting emotions felt as if they would tear her apart. She felt like her head would explode. And so she lashed out. "Just let it go, Ash! Maybe we were both looking for closure. Maybe it's now out of our system and after we stop this Armageddon mess we can both get on with our lives." He looked at her as if he could not believe what she had just said. Then his eyes narrowed to slits and he looked down, his black hair obscuring his upper face from her view. He began to jerkily force his long, loose-fitting black pants on and then tightened it at the waist with a draw-string which he tied in a bow. "Closure? Leave the psychiatric analysis to that damn Sabrina, but leave me out of it." His voice was as icy as any cold attack she had ever generated. After pulling on his shirt and boots, he stood up swiftly and avoided meeting her gaze. Dark shadows appeared by his feet and arose in a spiral fashion to generate his long black cloak. He pulled his hood over his head, rendering his face invisible in its darkness and stepped over to the door. Still not looking at her, he pushed the door open. "If that's the way you feel," he said unemotionally, "then after this, I never want to see you again." He stepped outside and slammed the old wooden door shut so hard, it split vertically down the middle. Misty stared at the door cracking, even as her spirit felt the same way. Then she collapsed atop her sleeping bag, face against the ground as she rolled herself into a ball. She cried. <><><> The group travelled on through the ruins in a silence as stony as the fallen structures around them, with both Ash and Misty walking as far apart from each other as possible. There was a tension to the air that seemed even more violent and powerful between the two than the utter gloom of the prophecy unfolding. Erika couldn't understand it. Where had they gone so horribly and tragically wrong? She looked to the front where Ash was leading the group, gravely quiet as he stepped over fallen boulders and rocks which regularly blocked the path they were following. He seemed to walk stiffly, artificially, as if he was an inanimate object incapable of emotion. Sinister clouds of black shadow hung around his cloaked form like a vapour of death. His lack of emotion seemed to be mirrored by the still black pikachu clutched to his left shoulder. It was eerie. It horrifyingly reminded her of his demeanour when he still shared allegiance with the Pokemon League and was their most dangerous enemy. Misty was much the same way, walking behind even Jessie, James and Persian at the rear, covered in her blue cloak. Her hooded head was casting her face in darkness, but Erika could still see the blank expression, like the beautiful face of an unliving china doll. Blue eyes seemed unblinking as glass beads. In total contrast to the two's emotions though, Duplica walked beside her with a face as sunny as a day on the beach. Shrugging off the cold wind that howled like a shrill banshee amongst the deserted wreckage and rubble of the once lively South Indigo City, she just wore the most scandalous short dress of black nothing that Erika had ever seen or imagined. Skipping along, occasionally running her hand through her long tealish-blue hair like an egotist, Duplica seemed to be having a lovely time. "What is your problem?" Erika finally said to her, breaking the group's self-imposed silence. She made sure to let her eyes flash green at the ditzy woman just to show that she meant business. Duplica just arched an eyebrow at her and tossed her long hair over a shoulder. It was as annoying an action as even Giselle could execute. "Well, excuuuuse me, Plant Girl, but unlike you spoilsports, I prefer to keep a happy composure." Then outrageously, her form blurred, grew taller, then smoothly transformed into an exact mirror image of her. Green-cloaked woman with grass-green eyes, shoulder-length black hair highlighted with blue and even the same red hair-band. Erika scowled, as Duplica-turned-Erika then stuck her tongue out at her and lowered an eye-lid. "Oh, look at me, I'm high-and-mighty Erika!" Duplica said in an exact replica of her voice and flashed her own green eyes back at her. "Always the perfectly-groomed beautiful princess!" She spun around and curtsied mockingly. Erika stopped walking, gaining everyone else's attention as they stopped too. Feeling angry as she had never felt before, even angrier than when her Gym had gotten burned down by Team Rocket and her Gloom had almost died, she lifted a hand that grew as bright as the sun with solar energy. "Why, you little..." "Duplica, you've gone too far," Bruno interjected before a fight could break out. "You should apologise. We can't afford any discrepancy within our group." The Erika clone laughed at him. "Oh bite me, Bruno-baby." She changed back to her original scantily-clad form and blew a kiss at him. "Besides, what are you going to do? If you try anything I'll change into you and kick your own ass." She laughed again. "Although I'd prefer not to change into an icky male body." Ash finally intervened, his voice in puzzlement now rather than unemotional. "Duplica, do you feel alright? You've been acting so odd lately." Erika paused. That was right. Yesterday Duplica had been moody, almost depressed. Now she was acting so annoyingly care-free and over-the-top; even more than her usual brand of silliness. From extreme to extreme: that wasn't normal. Perhaps she had been a little too hasty in getting angry. Duplica was probably heavily troubled. "Never better," Duplica then said, batting her eyelashes at Ash. "I guess I just feel a little hyped at the fact we're finally going to destroy the Pokemon League for good and stop their vile evilness from corrupting the innocent!" "I wouldn't say that," Ash said, still a little perturbed. "The League isn't evil. It's just that the current Master feels that he is in the right. Life should end so that it can start again." "We're all going to die?" James suddenly said in the background. "Shut up!" Jessie and Persian immediately said as they each smacked him on the head and scratched him correspondingly. "How do you know so much of what Lord Garick's plans are?" Bruno said questioningly. Ash looked away. "He told me himself. Remember, I *was* a Pokemon Master for the League." "You don't have to remind me," Bruno muttered. Misty frowned. "We should go now." Ash didn't look at her as he twisted back in the direction of the pathway through the ruins and the forest. He started their procession again. "Yes. The sooner we do this, the sooner we can get out of each other's sight." A cold gust of wind blew in front of them carrying a small tornado of leaves and rocks. The rocks were smashed to dust as they collided with a huge stone pillar. But the leaves floated away unharmed. <><><> Gradually, as they walked north through the weed-infested ruins, the pathway grew to better quality stone and the surroundings looked more and more preserved, with intermittent buildings that actually looked undamaged. The forest trees by the edges had begun to thin out as well, to shorter shrubs and grass and there was the light sound of streams flowing to mingle with the high voice of the wind. However, the horizon in front of them showed no sign they were nearing the edges of the Indigo Plateau, the heart of the Pokemon League. By now, the tops of the buildings of the capital city should have been in view over the top of the rubble and debris, but instead it was as a blank canvas with an artist that only used black paint. Ash stopped walking abruptly, causing everyone else to halt as well. "Not good," he said cryptically. "What is it?" Bruno asked, eyes narrowed as he folded his huge arms. "We'll have to find another way into Indigo Plateau. This way is blocked." James strode forward confidently, fiddling with the lowered, black ninja's veil beneath his chin. "Nonsense! Looks clear to me! Oof!" He smashed into something hard and fell unceremoniously on to his bottom on the stone pathway. "That's why the horizon is black," Ash explained, dusting off his night-dark long cloak from specks of dust that had arisen from James' collision. Erika took a cautious step past Ash and felt the air in front of her with a hand. "You're right. I don't see anything but there's a wall here." "How high does it go?" Bruno asked, looking up as if imagining the barrier that was there in his mind's eye. "Maybe we can go over it." Ash reached inside himself and prodded forward with his awareness. "No good. It's like a dome over a mile in diameter reaching over and protecting the whole of the Plateau. It goes underground too." "Can you break it?" Misty asked in a hard tone of voice. He suddenly punched forward so hard, a blast of air flailed the folds of everyone's cloaks and clothes back. Black sparks erupted from something in front of his fist with a small boom of thunder. Then he dropped his hand and shrugged. "It seems to be generated of Shadow type elements. So without doing anything short of cracking the planet, I don't think there's anything I can do to dispel it." "Pika," Pikachu agreed atop his shoulder. Suddenly he felt someone clutch on to his arm tightly. It was Duplica, light-brown eyes looking at him sweetly. "Come, Ash. Forget about this for now. Let's go over there behind that wall on the grass and have some fun." She pressed her soft body against him. Misty growled behind them and Erika gasped. Ash felt extremely disturbed. "Duplica-" Then he heard a twig snap and he realised that his senses were screaming at him when he had been distracted. A flash of silver was caught in his peripheral vision and reacting lightning-quick, he thrust an arm up to knock the arrow away that had been shot at him. From around the ruins surrounding their sides and back, over a dozen people in brown forest clothing jumped up from behind cover of boulders, walls and buildings, screaming battle cries and waving swords and shields. The ringing of steel drowned out the earlier silence of the area as weapons were drawn in preparation for battle. "Attack!" a man's voice cried from the direction that the arrow had come from. "Ambush!" Bruno roared as he threw off his hood and prepared to intercept his first attackers with hand and foot. Jessie and James instantly veiled themselves and produced their double steel sai knives, while Erika summoned her long ebony staff into her hands with a flash of green energy. Persian hissed as he crouched, white fur rising up on his back like sharp spikes. Behind them, a cold arctic glow surrounded Misty's hands as she created her twin ice blades. And then it was a general melee as the many attacking people reached them in a surrounding wave and there was a clash of hard sound and movement as blows were exchanged. "Remember, easy on the elemental attacks! And only knock them unconscious. These aren't League soldiers," Ash demanded as he let go of Duplica and prepared to join in, Pikachu's cheeks sparking black lightning as he growled roughly atop his shoulder. The archer that had shot at Ash earlier raised himself into view from behind the stone wall he was using as cover. He had long brown hair and was dressed in a green long-coat and silver chain mail. Surprisingly, there was something highly familiar about his facial features. "Pokemon Master scum!" the archer snarled as he lifted his large, ebony long-bow. "Men, get the black one first! He seems to be the one in charge!" And with that he shot forth another volley of arrows surprisingly skilful and quick. Ash twisted nimbly, dodging the arrows easily despite some of the shafts piercing through the loose folds of his cloak. A man roared from behind him, trying to take advantage of his apparent preoccupation, and swung a huge great-sword to cleave him vertically down the middle. Ash spun to the side and stopped the blade by grasping on to it with the forefinger and thumb of his left hand, and smoothly, flowed the movement into a rotating roundhouse kick, cloak flapping, to strike the heel of his right boot into the man's cheek. There was a crunching sound and a scream as the man flew away backward several yards and knocked into a nearby pole to fall over unconscious. To conclude, Ash spun the stolen blade around his fingers and then threw it slightly to grasp on to its hilt. Next, a woman with short, blue hair and amber eyes ran up to him, brandishing a rapier as she jumped over the fallen man. With her free hand, she threw a poke-ball at the ground. "Kabutops, Slash attack!" she screamed as the ball split open and released a large bipedal rock creature with a dome-shaped head and large scythe-like fore-arms like a praying mantis. It hissed, eyes glowing red, and leaped forward, both blade-like arms raised to cut him down. Without a sound, Ash skilfully blocked the slashing of its blades with the large great-sword and as it was off-balance, he kneed it in the chest with a cracking of rock and then struck it on the skull with the hilt of his weapon in bone-crushing force. While the Kabutops collapsed into unconsciousness, he threw Pikachu at the charging woman. "Pikachu, Submission ... but not too hard." The woman swung her rapier down at the leaping, black pikachu, but was too slow for the small pokemon's extreme speed and missed completely. Pikachu obliged the opening with a powerful headbutt into the woman's belly and she collapsed, coughing, as the pokemon returned to Ash's side with an agile backflip. "Melanie!" the brown-haired archer yelled anxiously, his hand outstretched in plea. He threw his bow down and drew a long-sword from a sheathe at his belt with a ringing of steel and leaped over the wall to charge him. "Bastard! Now you pay!" He raised the sword over his shoulder. Ash threw away the great-sword with a clatter and faced him directly, eyes glowing golden within the shadows of his hooded-cloak. "You attacked us first, so you should be prepared for the consequences of your actions." "Monsters!" the man accused, tears flying out of his brown eyes. "It's you Pokemon Masters that brought those, those black nightmares of shadow here! Now because of you ... most of my family are dead!" He slashed his sword diagonally. Ash dodged. He swung again, this time in the opposite direction. Ash dodged yet again. "We had no part with bringing the Forbidden Pokemon to this plane," Ash said, all the while dodging the man's skilful sword strokes. "Call your men off before any more get hurt." He nodded his head to the side where Bruno was nearby brutally hammering any man that unwisely tried to attack him with his huge meaty fists. Erika held at least four or more men and women to a standstill with expert defensive blocks with her staff. Misty had disarmed at least three men and knocked even more of them unconscious. Even Jessie, James and Persian kept more than their fair share busy while Duplica was playfully morphing herself into all manners of forms, annoying her attackers into a frenzy with her confusing style of attack. One moment, she'd be a growlithe, snapping at their legs, the next, a fearow pecking at their heads. "I saw you cloaked devils! I saw one of you with a whole swarm of them destroy my village! Burning ... and-and eating!" he sobbed, his attacks now weakening as he tired. Ash thought best to incapacitate this man and order the rest of his people to stop, using him as a hostage. He was about to streak forward and do just then when a young girl's voice interrupted them. "Big brother!" the girl cried. "Stop, I recognise that man you're attacking! H-He's not bad! He saved me!" He turned around and spotted a girl with dark hair running toward them from out of cover of the various ruins. He abruptly recognised her as the girl he had helped all the way back at the Pallet village. "Honey?" the man exclaimed, as he stopped his frenzy of sword slashes. "What do you mean?" The girl stopped by their sides, breathing heavily from her run and her panic. "Please, big brother ... stop," she sobbed, hands on her knees to support herself. "Remember when you were on your business trip and the settlement got attacked that first time? And we were saved by a stranger? This is him big brother! This is Ash!" "Ash?" the brown-haired man said in complete shock. Pikachu leapt up on to Ash's left shoulder and he threw his hood back to reveal his face. "That's right. Call off your people." "B-But, I know you!" the man burst out in surprised recognition. He rushed forward and hugged him tightly and warmly. "Remember me? I'm Snap!" A bit embarrassed, Ash groaned. "Um, your people, Snap? Call them off." "Oh, right. Sorry." <><><> It took some time before all the fighting ceased due to the confusion of the battle, but finally they all stood before the villagers and their apparent leader at their 'base' outside one of the large stone buildings that made up the ruins. Melanie was seeing to all the injured people they had beaten up after popping a stomach-ache pill for herself. She had complained that Pikachu's head was too hard. "I can't believe it's really you, Ash!" Snap was saying as he shook his head in wonder, long brown hair rustling on his shoulders. "And well ... on the side of 'good' if that beat all. Last I heard you were cheerfully working for the Pokemon League." "Likewise," Ash said, looking him over. "I thought you were a pacifist myself." Snap looked down at his feet, brown eyes suddenly sad. "In a perfect world I might have been able to stick with my beliefs, but you know that's only a dream with how things really are." He sat down on a small boulder and rested his forehead on a hand. "Still taking photos?" Ash asked, hoping to cheer him up with mention of his old profession which he knew he had loved. If it was possible, Snap looked even more depressed. "All my camera equipment was destroyed long ago. That or stolen." He sighed. "And now where in the world am I going to buy a new camera?" he laughed depreciatingly. Misty looked at Ash and shook her head. "Gee, Ash you're really great at cheering people up." Ash ignored her. He still felt all the pain resting upon an inner-barrier he had erected to ward off his emotions. It was like holding off an avalanche of stone boulders with a shield of wallpaper. Snap suddenly looked up at her, eyes widening. He jumped off the boulder, ran and crushed her in a bear-hug. "If it isn't Misty!" he cried delightedly. "You're so beautiful! I remember even having a crush on you back then." "Thanks, Snap," Misty gushed as she stepped back out of his embrace. "You aren't so bad yourself," she said, looking over his muscled body encased in the chain-mail and green long-coat. She tossed her long red hair over a shoulder and smiled flirtingly with exquisitely-shaped pink lips. "That long hair suits you." Ash growled deep in his throat. He was about to step forward and say something he'd regret when Duplica suddenly clutched on to his arm and rubbed her scantily-clad breasts upon them. He blushed. "Well, I think Ashy-boy is so much cuter," Duplica declared with a sniff of haughtiness. "I love his eyes, they're so beautiful and when they glow, doesn't it just make your lower body explode?" Now it was Misty's turn to growl. She jumped to Snap's side and clutched his arm to the man's complete surprise. "Well look at Snap's muscular body. More muscles means a sexier body. He looks so rugged and powerful." "Oh, please," Duplica scoffed, rubbing Ash's torso through his cloak. "I like them more athletically-built. Too much muscles are sickening. Besides Ashy-boy's face is a lot more handsome." She sighed as if weak-willed. "So bishounen..." Misty had no counter for that and scowled at Duplica, blue eyes shooting cold azure fire. Then she just stamped her foot and stalked away. "What was all that about?" Snap said a bit confused after Misty left. Erika was frowning darkly at Duplica. "Just a bitch-fight," she said, before turning around to catch up with Misty. Ash was combing his hand through his black hair in agitation. "Duplica, thanks, but can you like, maybe stop holding me so tightly now?" was all he said. "No problem, Ashy-boy," Duplica said, smiling as she stepped away and winked at him. <><><> Later, when certain hot-heads had cooled off, Snap, Ash, Misty, Duplica, Pikachu, Erika, Bruno, Jessie, James and Persian all sat in a circle making plans about the infiltration into Indigo Plateau. They had told Snap about their targets and what they had to do to stop the prophecy of death from finally executing its last phase. And then how the dome of shadow had stopped them from carrying out their mission. "There is a way into Indigo Plateau," Snap said excitedly, upon hearing of their difficulty in entering. "One of our spies saw some people coming in and out of there, so there is a breach in that barrier that people may pass." "And where is that?" Bruno said quickly, leaning forward, eyes glowing maroon in his eagerness. "You remember Victory Road, right? You were one of the original Elite Four, after all." Bruno leaned back, disappointed, and folded his thick arms over his muscular torso. "Impossible. The tunnels of Victory Road have long since collapsed during the Dark Pokemon Wars. Even a diglett can't dig through all that mess." "Bruno," Ash said quietly, as he brushed some long hair out of his eyes and behind his ear. "Victory Road was excavated and restored since then. The Pokemon League were using it for a secret escape tunnel just in case any large hostile force ended up threatening it like in the wars. In fact, it was how I managed to get out after I thought I killed Gary." Bruno leaned forward again, his rugged face lighting up in hope. "Then that's it then! We can get in if that's where the breach in the shadow dome is!" "B-But, a tunnel?" James suddenly whined as he clutched his head in worry. "Don't you remember last time we were in an underground tunnel?" "Perrr ... y-yeah," Persian agreed, white fur standing on end. Even Jessie looked more than a little scared, although she tried to hide it by hiding behind James back. "I have a phobia about tunnels," she said in a high voice. "But it's different now," Misty said. She glanced at Ash. "There won't be a Missingno in there." Ash didn't blink. "Wouldn't there?" she asked with a slight tremor in her voice. Finally Ash looked down at his hands and began to pull on his black, finger-less gloves. "I agree, it's unlikely. But with two levels of the Forbidden open, I can't guarantee that we won't meet one in there." "But, Missingno was a Master Pokemon," Bruno said. "There can't be more than one of a Master Pokemon can there?" "True ..." Ash considered, staring down at his gloves. "But do you know that the Astral Plane, or Hell as it's normally called, is full of Shadow Pokemon like Missingno? In fact, if I know correctly, the whole place is like one big Missingno." "What is a Missingno?" Snap asked. "You wouldn't want to know," Duplica said with a half-smile. "Basically, it's a killer black mist that consumes flesh," Bruno offered. Duplica stuck her tongue out at him. "Oh, you. You spoil all my fun." Snap was visibly shivering in his chain armor. "Then it's just as good that I'm not going with you then. After all, I have to take care of my people and my sister; and besides? I'm way too weak to compare to any of you Pokemon Masters, even Team Rocket." Jessie and James rapidly flashed a veritable mountain of sharp, wicked-looking knives in his face. "Hey! We resent that!" "No offense," Snap said, waving his hands in a gesture of surrender. <><><> Some hours after that, they were all laying down flat against the far side of a forested hill and observing the supposed entrance to the Victory Road tunnel. Pikachu was next to Ash, glowing softly with a dark light to help Snap point it out to them since he had terrible night-vision. Snap pointed at an old stone structure that looked like an entrance to a crypt by the ruins of pillars and buildings at the bottom of the incline. In fact, it probably really was a crypt; the place *was* a graveyard with many tombstones and cross-shaped stone markers littering the gloomy area like trees in a forest. There was a stale stench to the air that made one wonder if they were breathing in the air of the dead. It was a place of gloomy monotones, everything seeming to be either a shade of grey or black. Or twilight. "I'm sure you already knew where the entrance was, but just in case, I had to point it out to you," Snap stated. "Well, thanks for escorting us," Ash said absently as he scanned the area around the crypt and graves for any sign of movement. "No problem, man. Anyway, I have to go now. Maybe I'll see you guys afterward?" he looked anxiously at them with worried brown eyes. "A word of advice," Erika said softly. "I'd get your people about as far as humanly possible from the area around here. We haven't got a very good track record with keeping places tidy." "Well, thanks for the pointer, Mistress Erika," Snap said, smiling at her. "I do hope a beautiful lady like you makes it out alive." Tinges of red appeared on Erika's cheeks and she hurriedly hooded herself with her green cloak. "Oh, get out of here, flatterer!" Snap gave them one last smile, smoothed his long brown hair back, and then got up in a crouch to dash quickly back into the ruins and overgrown vegetation behind them. He was soon out of sight. "Okay," Ash said as he got up on one knee and adjusted the straps of his backpack. "There doesn't seem to be anyone or anything around." He hooded himself. "Let's go." Pikachu jumped up to ride on his backpack and he got up and began to run quickly and silently down the sharp incline toward the graveyard. The others followed in single file, Bruno and Erika next, followed by the old Team Rocket and their pokemon while Duplica and Misty brought up the rear. When they reached the bottom and the first of many tombstones scattered about the area, Ash slowed down to a more careful walk. No need to wake the dead, he thought silently, and with more than a tinge of discomfort. He wrinkled his nose. Down here, the stench of the dead was even more overpowering and intense. Not so much as the smell of decay but the smell of actual *death*. It had a distinctly unpleasant aroma and over the years he had learned to recognise it whenever it was present. Stepping past yet another gravestone, he was careful not to read the name upon it. Sometimes it was best to smother curiosity and stay ignorant. Pikachu tightly pressed his small face against the back of Ash's neck. Pikachu had never liked places like this either. The sound of a crow somewhere overhead cried out forebodingly and he sensed some of his companions jump as they were startled. "Oh ..." James whispered. "I hate this." "Quiet," Bruno shushed. Even the rugged Master of Power had a tremor of fear in his voice. Around them, dark mists seemed to be rising up from the ground around the perimeter of the cemetery. With a good imagination, one could call them spirits rising from the dead. Spirits that accused them of foul murder and promised revenge. Ash wished that he had a horrible imagination. Something suddenly hissed, a soft aggressive sound, and Ash immediately looked from left to right for the source of the sound. Twin points of red light flared and a sleek black-furred body hopped atop a tombstone about a dozen feet away from them. Its mouth was open and red saliva dripped from its many sharp pointed teeth like blood. It was a persian. And yet, not a persian either. "Stay back," Ash said as he halted their progress and carefully observed the hostile black cat with watchful, glowing red eyes. Jessie and James' Persian whimpered. "Gladly." "HSSSSSSS!" the black cat hissed. And then suddenly it just leaped down from the tombstone and silently scuttled over to the crypt whereupon it slipped within a crack in its slightly-open stone door and vanished from sight. "Damn," Ash said as he began to step forward again toward the crypt entrance. "I should have got it before it went in." "What if it attacks us down there?" Bruno asked doubtfully. "There may not be any room to manoeuvre." "We'll deal with it when it comes," Ash shrugged. Finally they reached the crypt door. Long black weeds and vines grew all around it like an infested hell-hole. On its stone surface there seemed to be some writing on it. Ash looked at it and frowned. "I can't read it," Misty said as she walked next to him to take a look. Ash looked at her, surprised. She had been avoiding him and he avoiding her ever since that disastrous reunion back at the edge of the Western Viridian Forest. She looked at him. "You seem to recognise it, Ash, can you tell us what it says?" She seemed to be shivering, although if that was from the cold or whether she was frightened was hard to say. Ash stepped up to it and dusted off the engraved markings on it with his hands. "Alright, here's what it says, "Wielder of Light, wielder of shadow. Eternally equal. But as thunder defeats water, and water defeats rock does rock defeat thunder? Or does change defeat all?" After Ash's recital, everyone fell to a tremulous silence. Then Misty broke it. "Is that a part of the prophecy?" "It seems familiar," Ash said, shrugging his black-cloaked shoulders. "But I'm not an expert on the old legends like Valdera is." At the name of her twin sister, Misty's blue eyes narrowed. "She used to be hooked on the forgotten myths and fantasies. Maybe that's why she's supporting the League now. After all, it plays up to her ideas about romance." "Romance?" "Believe it or not, Valdera was a real romantic. She's a lot like you, come to think of it," Ash said musingly. Misty looked like she was going to get angry, then she just looked away. "Well, when we were kids, we were kind of alike. But there was just something ... not evil ... but something that made her a lot different-" Then she just shook her head. "Just forget it. We should go now before the ghosts can get us," she said half-jokingly. "Want me to help pull that open?" Bruno asked, cracking his knuckles as he indicated the huge crypt door with a nod of his square chin. "No need," Ash said as he removed his hood and then calmly stepped over to it to pull the thick stone door open with a loud scraping and creaking noise. As soon as it was half-way open, a burst of screeching sounds came from within and suddenly there was a tight black cloud of scratching and biting zubats forcing its way past them, wings beating hard and painfully against their raised arms. Then they were just abruptly gone as the blood-sucking bats flew away into the twilight sky above them. "Everyone okay?" Ash asked. "Anyone bleeding?" After a few seconds of checking, everyone replied negatively. "Good. Zubats can transmit nasty diseases that rot your mind after all." They all checked again - carefully this time. <><><> Atop the hill overlooking the cemetery, a young girl in long, black robes and clinking charms watched the group of people enter the crypt - the entrance to Victory Road. Pale silver eyes set in an even paler face glowed eerily, as the howling wind blew her black-as-death hair around her head and jingled the various charms she wore on her body. She smiled with full red lips. All was going according to plan. "Right, Snap?" she breathed as she lifted the pathetic man's head up level with her white-hot eyes with a pull of his conveniently-long hair. Blood dripped from the corner of his mouth slowly, like raspberry jam. "Y-Yes, yes, Mistress," he blubbered like the wretched creature he was. He had been particularly easy to break. Chanelle reached down with her little finger and traced the leaking blood with her fingertip. Then she raised it to her mouth and licked it off her long fingernail. Sweet. <><><> About the only good thing about the dark, rocky tunnel so far was that the stench of death had seemed to dissipate soon upon entering the Victory Road. Not as much as the 'sense' of death though, as the smell of rigor mortis. Upon entering the crypt, they had soon discovered that one of the raised coffins against the wall had a false back and opened into a musty stairway. Of course, that was after opening many other coffins full of decaying skeletons before they found the right one. Since then, Ash had the uncontrollable desire to have a long immersive bath to wash off the feel of death. After following the stairway down several levels it ended upon a stone-walled tunnel about a dozen feet high and wide, such as that they were following in a northerly direction right now. Pikachu on Ash's shoulder was yet again using his flash ability to light the way forward - more for the others benefit than his own. He and Pikachu could see perfectly clearly on a midnight with a new moon after all. Misty was looking around and walking right behind him. Whether she didn't mind him any more or that she was desperately frightened and had to be near him was a fact he wasn't sure about. Probably the latter. From her actions he knew she hated him. Well, damn her. He didn't need this kind of pain any more. He had lived with it for over five years and he was sick of it. But why did he have this constant voice in the back of his mind telling him that he was lying? "Well the Victory Road sure has changed," Misty was saying as she looked around. "It was always meant to be the last obstacle to competing in the Pokemon League and to be a frightening place. But now ..." She shivered. "Ash, if it was like this back then, you probably would have won by default." Then she smirked. "That is, of course, if you wouldn't have been frightened off too." "Ha ha," Ash said with a high dose of sarcasm. "If I remember right, *you* were the one most afraid of ghosts." "Was not." "Was too." "Was not." "Please," Erika said. "You two are embarrassing." Gradually, the tunnel widened until it opened up into the more familiar large caverns, ledges and stairways. And pits. "Careful with the ground," Ash warned. "If the soil or rocks looks loose, then *don't* step on it." Persian sniffed the ground in front of him and was startled backward as it just suddenly collapsed into a black hole with a roaring avalanche of crumbling dirt and stone. Looking inside, it seemed bottomless; a never-ending pit of darkness. "Per ... You're da boss, Ash," he said frightened. "Excuse me?" Jessie and James said as they turned their heads back simultaneously. "Just kidding, you two are da bosses!" Persian thought about it for a while. "No, what am I talking about, I'm da boss!" he said triumphantly as he loped forward to catch up. "Whatever," Jessie said. They were about to climb a flight of stairs at a many-tunnelled junction when suddenly Ash heard something. He stopped and concentrated and Pikachu pricked his pointed ears upward. He looked to the east tunnel where the sound seemed to have come from. He couldn't see much though before the shadows rendered anything further invisible, even with his exceptional night-vision. "Did any of you hear that?" Duplica tilted her head. "What was it?" "Someone screaming." Bruno looked at him seriously. "You sure?" "Yes, I'm sure. My senses have never been wrong when I actually feel something." He turned to look at Pikachu who was now half-clutching on his left shoulder. "Even Pikachu senses the same." "Pika," Pikachu said, cobalt-blue eyes flashing. Bruno turned to walk past him. "Even so, it's none of our business. You know what our priorities are. One single life won't matter." James walked up to him, green eyes blazing, and reached up to grab his thick shoulder. "And I thought we were evil! We can't just leave a person to die if we can do something about it!" "Look, we don't have enough time to go chasing after every damsel-in-distress!" Bruno roared, looking down at him. His maroon eyes lit up his face showing all sharp-angles and planes. "Now let go of me, little man, before I break your arm off." James produced a long three-pronged sai knife from his sleeve and gestured threateningly. "You just try it, Mister Spiky-head, and you'll find something pointy up your bum!" Bruno looked about to lose control, but then suddenly deflated. He looked away. "Heh. Are you coming on to me?" James growled. "Why you-" Jessie put a hand on his shoulder. "Forget about it, James. We're not here for that muscle-bound moron, but to find those Pokemon League lackeys, Butch and Cassidy and maybe even that braided-blue-haired bitch." "Yeah," Persian agreed. James let go of Bruno's shoulder and adjusted the ninja's mask he wore. "Fine. But I won't be happy until I can wipe that smile off his hard face." Bruno shrugged. "We can have a Circle of Masters when this is all over. Even if you aren't a Master, I'll oblige you. But for now, let's just go." But then someone screamed again and it was loud enough to be recognisable to everyone. "That was Giselle's voice," Ash said darkly as he twisted toward the east tunnel. "What the hell is she doing here?" "It might be a trick," Bruno said sceptically. "No, I'm definitely sure. I just *know* it's her." He turned back to them briefly. "I'm going. You people can go on ahead, Bruno knows the way - Victory Road hasn't changed all that much in layout - I'll catch up later." He turned and sprinted off, black cloak gliding at his back. "Ash!" Misty yelled. She turned to follow him and ran quickly. "We'll go too," James said, pulling Jessie along. "C'mon, Persian!" "Now I know why we failed at being part of a criminal organization, James," Jessie said as she let herself get pulled along by her partner, long red ponytail gliding behind them like a banner of silk. "You're too much of a goody-goody!" Erika looked at Duplica, who strangely hadn't followed Ash, then at Bruno. "Maybe we should go too." Bruno avoided her gaze. "You all just don't have your priorities right. I *have* to destroy the Pokemon League. I have to." He looked down at his hand and closed it into a huge fist. "I have to..." Erika glared at him with her green eyes. "Is this a matter of personal vengeance or do you really want to save lives?" Shockingly, a tear appeared at the corner of Bruno's eye. "If it weren't for them ... Lorelei..." "Bruno," Erika said, sadly shaking her head. "I can't imagine what it feels like to have the love of your life taken away from you, but I know this. Personal vengeance will eat you from within until there is nothing left. Look at what happened to AJ. Do you want that to happen to you?" "And what if I do?" Bruno burst out in pain, hand threaded through his spiky brown hair. "After Lorelei ... nothing matters any more to me. NOTHING." "Not even your son?" Bruno collapsed against the side of the tunnel sobbing. "Junior... of course I care about Junior." "Then do what your late-wife told you to do and take care of him!" Erika said hardly, without remorse. "You've been a terrible father. I can't believe he didn't even know you were his father until he met his mother. Just before she died." Bruno fell to silence. Then he straightened. "You're right. When this is over I'll make it up to him. I will. But first we have to settle things once and for all. Or there will be nothing left to settle once the full force of the Death Prophecy kicks in. And that could happen any day now." "Good," Erika sighed as she brushed some strands of blue-black hair from her eyes. "That is a better reason to do this than an ugly revenge." Duplica started clapping. "Bravo, Erika. That was a real tear-jerker." Erika glared at the blue-haired woman, still in her outrageous black dress. "Duplica, there's something severely wrong with you. I noticed it just after Misty was cured from the poison." Duplica stopped clapping and widened golden-brown eyes at her. "Who? Moi?" She pointed to the tops of her breasts showing from her dress. "Yes. I know you're naturally the easy-going, laughing type person, but lately you've been going too far. It's scary. And you never used to interfere with Ash and Misty's relationship before - in fact I thought you wanted them two together even more than me - especially more than me a couple of days ago. Has anything out of the ordinary happened to you?" "I promise I'll have a full check-up with Doctor Giselle," Duplica promised, her fingers raised in a vow. "As long as Mistress lets her live of course." "Mistress?" Bruno and Erika said simultaneously. "Oh, silly me," Duplica said, smiling evilly at them. "I just gave it away." <><><> "Please," Giselle's voice drifted down to him from the depths of the rocky tunnel, "anyone, help me. It-It hurts..." Sounds of her crying, followed by more screams. Ash grabbed a loose flapping fold of his dark cloak and started to run even faster, his boots crunching the gravel beneath into dust and smoke at his speed. "Hold on, Pikachu," he said to the side. "Pikapi," Pikachu said determinedly as it clutched tightly on his shoulder. And then the tunnel opened up into a large stone-walled chamber and Ash stopped running with a screeching of rubber upon granite. He stared in appalled shock. Giselle was laying down in the centre of the chamber on her side. Horrifying streams of crimson red were pooled in a thick puddle by her body. Intermittently, she moaned in complete pain and agony, tears streaming down her beautiful face, pale with hurt. Her white-lab coat looked half-ripped up as if someone had been violent and taken advantage of her. Ash ran up quickly, feeling extremely sorry for her. He had to see if he could at least heal her. She wouldn't like the way he did it - his abilities were more suited to death than life - but it was a way to save her at least. He crouched by her side, Pikachu still clutched to his left shoulder and reached down to her. "Giselle, it's me, Ash. I-" Giselle looked up at him with surprisingly clear, brown eyes. Which then flashed white. "Why hello there, Ash," she said, her perfectly-made face smiling up at him. "I bet you didn't know I could do ... THIS!" Taken completely by surprise, Ash yelled as Giselle grabbed him by the throat and sent a painful burst of 'something' into him. It screamed through his nerves causing excruciating pain. Pikachu yelled too. What was it? Ash desperately thought. Ground-based elemental energy? From Giselle?? Giselle smirked red lip-sticked lips at him as she pushed herself to her feet and stood up, all the while clutching his throat with one hand. Then she lifted him up into the air, choking him as she looked up at him, long black-brown hair floating behind her as if coursing with power. "That was almost too easy!" she shouted with arrogant laughter. "Hard to believe you have an infinite level!" A short slender form of white materialised behind Giselle and rapidly gained colour. Ash choked in surprise upon seeing that girl he had saved back at Cinnabar Island take form. "Nice work, Giselle," the girl said, her pale silver eyes examining him like a toy she was playing with. "The League Master will be pleased." "Chanelle?" Ash coughed, as he clutched Giselle's wrist of the hand she was lifting him up with. "What's this all about?" The girl looked at him and chuckled in express amusement. "Don't you recognise me by now, Ash? Really now, I know you're obtuse, but you can't be that dense." He looked her over. Now that she mentioned it, she did remind him of someone, but who? He was sure that he had never met anyone who looked like her before. "Oh, I suppose it is sort of hard to guess who I am," the girl considered as she noticed that he still hadn't figured it out. "That was after all, an academy award winning performance I pulled," she said, fluttering her eyelashes at him. "Perhaps you'd recognise me with a few more wrinkles and white hair?" There was a pregnant silence. Then Ash roared, "AGATHA." "Finally," Agatha said as she played with one of the charms on her black robes. "I sometimes wonder why my dear grandson Gary needs you so." "You old bitch, what have you done to Giselle?" Ash shouted. Agatha's pale silver eyes shone in her deceptively-young face. "I suggest you speak more politely to your elders, young man! Giselle, seal his electric abilities and show him who's the queen bitch around here!" "Yes, Mistress," Giselle said, her brown eyes flashing a malevolent white. But before she could do anything an arctic flash erupted from the entrance of the enclosed stone cavern and a beam of cold shot into Giselle's arm. Giselle screamed as her arm froze into a block of ice and was forced to loosen her grip and elemental hold upon Ash's neck. Taking advantage of the situation, Ash elbowed her in the forearm and escaped her hold to drop on to the floor, coughing and choking blood. Pikachu similarly recovered himself as he felt whatever his master felt. Agatha turned to the cavern's entrance where a tall woman in a flowing blue cloak was still standing, her arms both still raised and steaming with coldness. Eyes shining as blue as the ocean, her long red hair floated in the air behind her. "YOU!" Agatha screeched. "You were supposed to be eliminated by Duplica by now! You and the rest of them!" Ash finished coughing and backflipped back to Misty's side. "Duplica? What have you done to Duplica you old ghoul?" Agatha looked at the two of them and then abruptly laughed. "Oh, how ironic is this? You dare to ask me what *I've* done to Duplica? You two? Excuse me if I laugh at the ridiculousness of the question!" "What are you talking about?" "Enough chatter, now-" She suddenly jerked her hand up, catching a knife that was thrown directly at her chest. She looked down at it and narrowed her pale eyes. She looked up. "WHO? Who would dare?" "Prepare for annihilation!" Jessie said as she stepped by Misty's side. "And make that double!" James said as he appeared by Ash's side. Persian hissed as it leaped out to land in front of their legs, vertically-slit eyes glaring aggressively. "For the crime of turning us into white-eyed slaves..." Jessie began. "We shall punish you!" James finished as he flashed a knife. Agatha had to physically restrain herself to keep from laughing. "Oh, it's just you two failures! When both of you head butted each other into unconsciousness back at Cinnabar, I just cracked up laughing! It was your fault that they noticed me and I had to go with you all in the first place!" Jessie's sinister, midnight-blue eyes darkened in fury. "How dare you, you little brat! I'll teach you manners your parents never taught you with a good spanking!" "BRAT? Brat am I?" Agatha screamed, a raw nerve rubbed by the name. "I'm more than half a century older than you!" She jerked her arms to the sky and there was a boom not quite unlike thunder. A wind began screaming around like a banshee and rocks and stones lifted into the air in a sudden mini-tornado. "Do you know who I am, little girl? I am Agatha, the third of the Elite Four! The Master of Spirits!" They had to step back at the massive elemental force that she had raised. "Jessie, you had to get her angry," James accused. "Oh, shut up James!" Jessie said, whomping him on the head. Agatha looked at Ash. "Just to make things a little more interesting, I'm going to summon back two of your friends! How about that?" Ash just rubbed his nose with the back of his glove and got into position. "Old Ghoul, Sabrina said that to stop the Death Prophecy from completing we had to kill the keepers of the gates. She mentioned you specifically. All I'm saying is that I'm not going to feel the slightest tinge of remorse when I take you out!" "Sabrina, ay?" Agatha growled. "That traitor! But forget her, you have to greet two of your old friends!" She began chanting, her girlish voice suddenly without emotion. "Night beyond light, Darkness beyond Twilight." The cavern fell to rapid darkness, even with Pikachu's Flash ability lighting up the room. "Death shall receive thy due." An appalling groaning and screaming sound such that they had never heard began clouding the air all around them. "With this crimson offering, I appeal thee." She slashed her arm with her fingernails and dripped long splashes of her own blood to soak the stone floor. "Bring thy tortured souls from damnation!" The stone before her feet exploded as two pairs grasping hands burst forth, both as pale as dead flesh. "UNHOLY RESURRECTION!" Ash and Misty stepped back in horrified revolt as the reaching hands grew into arms and then finally with an explosion that smelt of fire and brimstone, two figures in tattered purple cloaks and ninja-garb stood before them. Purple veins easily visible through their pale-white, almost transparent dead flesh with a stink of decay about them, Koga and Aya stood in silence, each brandishing long, curved silver katanas. "We'll take Giselle," Jessie, James and Persian hurriedly said. <><><> "Mistress?" Erika said as she stepped back, a green glow surrounding her hands as she summoned her staff and twirled it once, creating a gust of air to blow her black hair back from the side of her face. "Who's controlling you, Duplica?" Duplica stood at apparent ease, hands behind her back, long tealish-blue hair flowing over her shoulders. Her normally light-brown eyes had brightened to a silver-white colour. "Controlling me?" she asked in amusement. "I'm controlling myself." "Bullshit," Bruno said, his hands raised in a martial arts stance. "Who is it? We don't want to hurt you, Duplica. You're not yourself." "And who says you can even hurt me?" Her smirk grew wider. Erika decided to knock her unconscious and then find the reason for her mind-control once she had been incapacitated. As it was now, Duplica was too much of a threat to just let go free. She gathered feeling within her hand and then sent it surging outward from her palm directly at the blue-haired woman with a sparkle of powder. "Sleep Powder? Erika, you can do better than that," Duplica said patronisingly. She suddenly transformed into a pidgey, brown and white feathered wings flapping rapidly to blow her sleep powder back at her. Hastily, Erika spun her staff around to absorb the powder back into her body before it could affect Bruno by her side. The pidgey changed smoothly back into a five-foot-eight voluptuous, blue-haired woman. "Uh, uh!" Duplica said, with a shaking of her forefinger. "That wasn't nice." Faster than Erika could blink, Duplica flashed red into a large lizard-like charmeleon and backhanded her with its clawed hand, powerfully smashing her backward into the wall. Her jaw closed painfully at the impact and she crumpled to the ground in pain. Bruno stepped forward to combination punch the charmeleon, but missed when it changed into a humanoid-shaped hitmonlee with spiky feet which kicked him in the back, also sending him crashing into the wall. He collided into it face-first causing him to sickeningly bounce off with a burst of blood as a vessel on his cheek was punctured by a sharp edge in the rock. The hitmonlee changed back into Duplica with her arms folded. "Now do you understand the power of change?" she asked them with one brow lifted. Erika was hunched over on her hands and knees on the ground, blue-black hair covering most of her face. "Don't be so arrogant!" she cried as she leapt to her feet and struck forward with her staff, intending to knock her in the belly. She had to attack her while she was in human form! Maybe she was vulnerable! But Duplica didn't even attempt to dodge the blow as it struck her with the force of a tree falling down. To Erika's shock, it didn't even faze her, and worse, Erika's staff had gotten stuck in Duplica's belly as if it had glued itself on. "I think I should show you, just what being a Change Master entails," Duplica said as she twisted to the side, jerking Erika's staff out of her hands as it was still attached to her, and then snapped it in half with an impossible twisting of her stomach. Then she changed into the boxing hitmonchan and gave three swift punches into Erika's own stomach before finishing her off with a haymaker right. Erika landed hard on the tunnel floor on her shoulder, blood slightly leaking out of her mouth. She spat it out on the ground. This was utterly ridiculous! How was it possible to defeat someone who could change their shape to any form at will? Not only that, but manipulate her whole body like an expert so it was impossible for her to get hurt! Duplica changed back to her original woman's form and cocked her head to the side. "I think Mistress is in trouble. I'll have to kill you two off quick now." She looked down at them with her glowing white eyes. "Say goodbye." <><><> "I-I can't believe they died," Ash said, stepping backward in distress. Misty was still staring at the two slowly approaching dead Poison Masters, horrified. "They-They mustn't have gotten out of South Lavender Rebellion Base before the thunder struck." She swallowed in a throat suddenly gone dry as cardboard. Ash looked sharply at her, black hair whipping out of eyes abruptly glowing with an inner-light. "What do you mean, thunder?" She swallowed again. "I was going to tell you the truth but I must have forgotten in all the excitement these past few days. It-It wasn't Valdera and Brock who destroyed South Lavender ... it-it was you." Ash closed his eyes and Pikachu on his shoulder did the same. "I suspected as much but to actually hear the confirmation... I-I..." Then to Misty's complete distress Ash spread his arms wide in a gesture of surrender toward Koga and Aya. "Let them kill me, Misty." He swallowed. "I have to die," he abruptly decided in a voice blank of emotion. She thought she had lost the ability to feel anything for him, but at this blatant attempt at suicide she realised now that she had thought completely and utterly wrong. Because anger was stronger than sorrow, she clung to the rising waves of fury that rose when she thought of *her* Ash dying, clung to it like a lifeline. "How DARE you," she hissed. "How dare you throw your life away like it's a broken toy! You're nothing but a liar, Ashura. A liar and a hypocrite!" Ash looked at her with dull-brown eyes. "But don't you see? There's ... something about me. Something evil inside of me. I can feel it Misty. I can feel it! And it scares me... to know that I can be capable of killing you. Even you!" He looked away as if he was not worthy to look at her. "Best for me to die first." Misty could only shake her head, seeing and feeling tears cloud her vision despite the wave of fury that she clung desperately to. "You were the one who said that suicide was a waste," she whispered in a voice tight with accusation. "And I believed you. If you die ... then I PROMISE you Ashura, that I'll follow you to Hell straight after!" "What?" Ash said, whipping back to her. "I'll never let you die!" "Well then, you'll have to watch over me then, won't you?" "Damn you, Misty!" he shouted in frustration. He blew some locks of black hair out of his brightly-glowing eyes and turned back to the Poison Masters who looked just about to attack. Apparently they had been trying to wait for them to attempt the first blow for some reason, but had now given up and were now forced to do the bidding of their summoner. "Pikachu ... Shadow Blade!" Ash cried as he morphed his Pikachu into his long ebony katana just in time to block Koga's opening slash. Misty felt her heart explode in happiness. But that was short-lived as the tall, dead Aya, struck down at her with her own katana, tattered dark-green hair floating around her like a streamer. Misty dodged to the side and spun away, summoning her twin ice blades into her fists. Then deciding that range of weapon would better serve her against a Blade Master, she merged her two knives together at the hilt and lengthened each blade to form a double-bladed ice lance. Especially against Blade Masters who were also *Poison* Masters. Undoubtedly one little scratch or nick with either of their blades would result in a quick, painful death. The battle commenced. <><><> "They've finally started to defend themselves," James said gleefully as he spotted the once-unmoving Ash and Misty, now furiously locked in battle with the two zombie ninjas. "Eyes front, stupid!" Jessie yelled and James screeched as he jumped into the air, just narrowly getting missed by Giselle's Earthquake which zigzagged across the stone floor with earth-cracking force. Persian growled as he leaped up to knock the doctor over, but Giselle spotted him and erected a wall of hard rock in front of her with a raising of her arms. Persian harmlessly rebounded ineffectively off it. Then the wall of brown rock shattered as Giselle punched through it, sending a hail of sharp shrapnel over them in a painful, cutting rain. "I just hate Pokemon Masters," Jessie said as she desperately shielded her precious face with a knife. "She's a Pokemon Master?" James asked as he cartwheeled away, dodging as many rocks as he could. "Perrr.. you tell me what a human is, to be able to wield the power of the elements as well if not better than any pokemon can," Persian said matter-of-factly. "We're just lucky that she hasn't thrown out her own pokemon. Three against one Pokemon Master suits me fine!" "Marowak, go!" Giselle shouted. "Crap," James said. <><><> Agatha watched the battles raging in front of her with eyes like a hawk. She especially watched Ash and Misty's battle with the dead Koga and Aya. Any opening she deciphered and she would let loose a spell of death that would drop them like flies. Who cared if her grandson wanted him alive? She just felt like killing them all of a sudden. "What you have done is forbidden." Agatha rapidly spun around to find a tall woman in a twilight-blue cloak standing before her with long dark hair that sported a green streak through its length. "Why, Sabrina dearie," Agatha said airily. "Nice of you to teleport in just when I learned what a traitor you are." She raised her arms to the sides, palms face-down, and black spirits began rising around her like smoke. "For the crime of treason against your Lord, the sentence is ... well I'm sure you know what the sentence is." Sabrina lifted a fist from behind her back. It shimmered and glowed as a triangular blade of yellow psychic energy spewed forth from her knuckles. But then the half-foot-long psychic knife curiously darkened to a black colour. "So you want to play hard with me, girl?" Agatha said spotting the colour of the blade. "Well, I can play just as hard." She summoned her own black psychic blade within her left fist. "Now that I'm younger, I can finally play knives with you, dearie," she said, smiling girlishly. The two began their own dance of death, blades of psychic death stabbing and parrying. Except, while Agatha's face showed a depth of emotion, Sabrina's stony features offered none. <><><> "Butterfree, you hear that?" Laselle asked as she continued to forge her way through the dark tunnels. She had been wandering hopelessly lost now for quite some time so anything, *anything* that promised to be anything other than normality was excitement to her. Unless of course, the excitement happened to be ghosts. But now she had heard a rhythmic sound of cries and thumps like a huge battle going on, somewhere in the tunnel in front of her. "Free," the dark-coloured flying pokemon agreed as it flew slightly behind her left shoulder. It seemed kind of hesitant... "Well, then, let's go see what it is," Laselle said as she combed some long tendrils of brown hair from her face and then began to run, but carefully spotting for rocks and loose sand on the ground before her. She didn't want to make any noise *and* fall into a bottomless pit either. "Duplica, fight it!" Laselle's heart skipped a beat as she recognised Mistress Erika's voice. They were all down here? The tunnel she was following finally gave way to a more open area of the caverns with entrances of other tunnels and stairways going every which way upward. She slowed to a more cautious run and then pressed her back against the wall of the tunnel just before it opened up into the junction. "Quiet, Butterfree," she whispered as she carefully took a peek around the corner. A huge, red charizard was hovering in the air in the centre of the cavern with slow flaps of its huge demonic wings. White eyes flashed upon the face of its dragon-like head and tongues of flame were spitting from its nostrils. Its long powerful tail was snaking around in the air below powerful arms and legs, claws slowly opening and closing. Shockingly, the charizard spoke with Duplica's voice. "CHARR ... Fight it? I'd rather fight you," she hissed. Laselle quickly scanned the area. There, crouched on one knee on the ground by a stairway of rock that led up to the upper-caverns was a green-cloaked woman who looked horribly beaten up, shoulders rising and falling in deep breaths. Her shoulder-length black hair was mussed up and damp with sweat and blood as red as her hair-band was leaking out of her mouth. But her grass-green eyes still looked powerfully bright with her spirit. Mistress Erika! And over towards the eastern entrance of one of the many tunnels was a crumpled figure in a maroon cloak ... Master Bruno? "Duplica, you're not yourself! Please, don't do something that you'll regret ... or force me to do something I'll regret!" Mistress Erika shouted up at the huge charizard. Golden flashes of light were emitting from her fists and a green aura had begun to rise around her body. Duplica? Laselle thought again. It couldn't be! Why would Mistress Duplica be attacking Mistress Erika? It wasn't right! "It is to laugh!" the charizard snorted sarcastically. It reared its dragonish head back and inhaled swiftly causing a rushing of air in the room. Then it leaned its head forward and opened its fanged mouth. "CHARRRRRR!" There was a massive roaring of fire as a huge tongue of flame rolled down toward the crouching Grass Master. Then Erika powered up with a flash of green ki sparks and thrust her hands forward. "SOLAR BEAM!" she shouted, just as the green energy suddenly flared and a brightest yellow beam of sunlight flared from her palms. The red and yellow energy attacks collided in midair with an ear-deafening crack of sound. Laselle shielded her eyes as dust flew everywhere, clouding the whole huge cavern with a thick, acrid cloud of debris. Coughing, Laselle waved her hands to blow away the dust trying to get into her mouth and eyes with Butterfree helping with gusts of its wings. However, it wasn't until a few minutes later that the flying clouds of sand and dirt managed to settle enough for her to see. She gasped. The huge red charizard, that was apparently Duplica, still hovered in the air, flapping its wings lazily, unharmed. Mistress Erika on the other hand lay still on the floor, green cloak singed and some of it burning. "Charr ... fire defeats grass ... game, set and match," the charizard growled. She began to rear her head back again preparing to launch another devastating Flamethrower. "NO!" Laselle screamed, tears running out of her eyes. She got up and desperately ran toward them. "Duplica ... please stop! Please! Don't kill Mistress Erika!" The charizard stopped inhaling and then turned to look down at her, white eyes narrowing as it steadily beat its wings in the air. "Laselle ... what are you doing here," she said roughly. "Please!" Laselle begged as she stood in front of the fallen Erika. "I don't know why you're fighting everyone, but you have to know it's wrong!" "Wrong?" she growled, flames flickering from her snout. "EVERYTHING IS WRONG! Wrong for ME! For once I'm going to do what I want! ME!" "But you don't want this!" Laselle pleaded. "The Duplica I knew was friendly and always laughing! She was so nice and caring! Always sticking up for Ash and others!" The charizard closed its eyes and surprisingly, tears leaked from within them and steamed when they touched her blazing-hot skin. "ASH. You're right..." she exhaled softly. Then she opened them and roared a cry that echoed everywhere within the cavern. "It's why I'm doing this! The Mistress promised!" She reared her head back and began to inhale again. "I HAVE TO DO THIS!" "Duplica, no!" Laselle cried. "Free!" her Butterfree chirped as it flew above her head. Desperately she looked up. "Butterfree, you're my only hope! Please stop Duplica..." It looked up sadly at the charizard. Then to Laselle's utter surprise it landed and began to change shape, almost as if it was like Duplica transforming. Wait, it was transforming! The butterfree smoothly grew larger and changed colour until it had changed form to a large bipedal, turtle pokemon. A Blastoise! "STOIS!" the blastoise growled as it aimed its huge cannons on its shell and shot twin pillars of hydro pump. Duplica-Charizard screamed in shock and pain as the water attack smashed into her, knocking her back. "Butterfree???" Laselle exclaimed. "What's happening?" Duplica-Charizard was spinning crazily out of control in the air until she flapped her wings once to steady herself. "Char! So it is one of those!" She swooped to the ground and transformed into a spiky-backed, yellow dog-like jolteon. "JOLT!" she shrieked as she ran at them, sending a massive bolt of bright crackling thunder. "BLAST!" the blastoise cried in pain as the electricity smashed into it and electrocuted it powerfully. Then smoking, it fell backward and smoothly transformed into the spiny, sandshrew about to launch an earthquake. "SHREW!" it shouted as it smashed the stone ground with its claws and sent the earth attack onward. Laselle could only watch in surprised fascination as the two began a bizarre fight of transforming and attacking. It was a battle of type-advantage, each changing to a pokemon that was super-effective to the other. She could only say one thing. "Butterfree, what the hell are you?" <><><> Koga crouched slightly, long katana held to the side. His pale-white face had several slash marks on it from near hits by Ash's sword, but no blood flowed forth - his dead body had no blood within it. Clumps of spiky black hair regularly detached from his skull and fell to the floor with bits of decayed flesh clinging to them. Ash stood directly opposite about a dozen feet away upon a slightly slanted incline on the rocky floor of the cavern with his own black-as-night katana held behind his back by one hand. His dark cloak of equal colour wavered around him in the air by the unnatural wind that was blowing around them. "Koga, can you hear me? Is that really you?" he called out to the tattered, purple-cloaked ninja. A horrible moan came out of Koga's mouth in an appalling parody of speech. There was a tortured look in his red eyes as if he was constantly in pain from the fires of hell. Then with a flap of the tattered purple cloak, Koga grasped the hilt of his katana in both hands and began charging forward, point of the sword facing to the back at his side. Feeling overwhelming disgust at himself for defending himself against a man who should rightly be killing him, Ash correspondingly grasped his own long black katana in both hands and leaped down to meet him, black cloak gliding behind in his wake. Slash, slash, slash. Afterward, both Masters stood, slightly crouched both facing away each other, katanas held tightly. Then they turned around. Ash watched in pity as both Koga's arms abruptly detached themselves from his body, then his legs, and the torso fell to the floor, limbless. "I'm sorry, Koga," Ash said with a shake of his head. Suddenly the pieces of the body stirred and then reconstructed themselves back into a standing Koga. "Not good," Ash said as the ninja resumed his charge silently. Meanwhile, Misty and Aya were locked in a desperate battle of clashing ice lance and katana. For a while it seemed as a stalemate as Aya tried offensive strikes while Misty defended with her spinning double-bladed weapon. Then it changed when Misty twisted nimbly, avoiding a diagonal overhead slash from Aya's sword, but chopped off an inch off the side of her long red hair. Growling in anger, Misty continued on in a spin move, blue cloak flapping, and sheared through Aya's waist with the blade of her lance. Then after the spin, she roundhouse-kicked the torso from the bottom-half of the body, sending half of Aya flying away, dark-green ponytail gliding away like a kite's tail. Unfortunately, the lower-half of her body levitated after her and she rejoined in the air into a whole person. Executing a backflip, tattered purple cloak floating in the air, Aya then landed smoothly in a crouch and dashed forward to the attack all over again. Someone's back touched hers and Misty almost screamed in fright until she realised that it was only Ash. "This is getting us nowhere, Misty!" he said, his cheek touching hers. She felt overwhelmingly warm at the contact. He jerked his head in the direction of the far side of the cavern where that little bitch, Agatha and ... Sabrina? ... seemed to be locked in battle atop a raised area of flat rock. "See that?" he continued. "I'm guessing that if we drop Agatha, then her power over all the people she's controlling will get cut off. With Sabrina keeping her busy it should be easier to take her by surprise." "Good idea," Misty breathed, as she turned back to Aya who was leaping toward them. "But what should we do about Koga and Aya? We can't exactly get to her with these two slashing at us. Take our eyes off them for an instant and we'll be cut down by their poisoned weapons." She blew away a strand of red hair that had gotten stuck to her mouth. "Okay, here's what we'll do..." <><><> Agatha parried yet another blow of Sabrina's Psychic knife, sending black sparks everywhere, and spun and rotated into a revolving slash aimed for the woman's neck. However, before the knife could hit, Sabrina's cloaked form flashed white and she disappeared. Agatha shifted around with a clinking of charms, expecting her to reappear behind her back but only found air. She turned again and looked up. "Coward," she said softly in her girlish voice. "You should be scared of one of the Elite Four. You never even made it Sabrina, dearie." Sabrina floated in the air, a golden glow surrounding her form as she psychically held herself up, long dark hair wavering around her head as if she was underwater. "It was not my destiny to become one of the elite," she said without sentiment. "And it was not your destiny to reverse your age with the power of the prophecy." "Was it not?" Agatha said with false surprise. "Then how come I am standing here barely fourteen years of age?" Sabrina began to glow brighter, eyes flaring evilly. "And so destiny reasserts itself back to the path it once was. PSYCHIC!" She thrust her hands palm-first and sent down a blazing fireball of pure psychic power. "Darkness give me the power of LEVITATION," Agatha chanted and her long ebony hair floated around her head as dark vapour arose from the ground to lift her into air. The psychic attack missed and struck the rocky ground instead with the power of an avalanche. The whole of the cavern shook with violence and rocks began falling from the roof. "Your destiny is nothing but a meaningless shambles!" Agatha said as she prepared to meet Sabrina in the air, black robes floating around her like a clinging shadow. "I think not." A black shape reflected from Sabrina's twilight eyes. "What?" Agatha said in surprise as she twisted around in the air. Misty had just thrown her black Starmos pokemon to cut Koga and Aya in two and as it curved upward toward her, Ash had jumped to land on top of it, black katana held behind his back in preparation to cut her down. In panic, Agatha, threw her palms toward him. There was no time to chant an offensive spell before the Shadow Master reached her with his damn sword. Only one thing to do. Invade his mind. Desperately, she threw her consciousness forward to merge with his. It was like total complete blackness such as she had never seen before. Swirling shadows that seemed to not only absorb light but shun it. What kind of mind was this? She pressed her hands forward, frantically seeking an edge, any edge to pry up to get at the man inside. It was no use. She would have to go in blindly. Blackness. Darkness. Shadows. She found herself standing in a dark limbo. All around her was infinite darkness. Before her stood Ashura, covered in his black hooded-cloak, silent and still. Although who was to say it was him when none of his features were visible? And the eyes were an evil crimson red... "You want to violate our memories, bitch?" the cloaked figure suddenly growled, and Agatha felt frightened - more frightened than she had ever felt in her entire life of over a hundred years. She had to get away. Had to, the mind violation had gone all wrong! But when she tried to leave his mind, black steel shackles abruptly erupted from the ebony floor and shut around her ankles with a loud merciless clang. She screamed. The black-cloaked figure floated forward toward her and she screamed again as she tried to run away, forgetting about the shackles in her total fear. A hand as cold as death gripped her chin painfully and he jerked her face up towards his. Even at this close distance she still couldn't see his features, only the blood-red eyes that burned brighter than the flames of an active volcano. "You want my memories ... you got them." He lowered his head and forced her into a kiss. It was not a lover's kiss, but a brutal kiss of punishment. She screamed into his mouth but he only seemed to enjoy it as he thrust his tongue into her mouth. Shockingly she felt a hint of pleasure at this action and she didn't know if that terrified her even more than the man. Blackness. Darkness. Shadows. A memory. The little boy, two years old, cowers in the darkness of a basement, hands covering his cute face as he rolls himself into a ball. "YOU ARE NOT MY SON!" the blue-haired man screams in accusation. "Please, Daddy..." the little boy pleads. The man steps forward and viciously kicks the little boy. The boy shouts in pain but does not cry. Perhaps that fact is the one that enrages the man even more. A beautiful woman with long brown hair runs down the stairway and screams when she sees what the man is doing. "Please s-stop," the woman sobs. "P-Please, it's only been you!" The man rounds on her, hands in fists. "You are nothing but a whore," the man says in quiet anger. And that is worse because loud anger is quick to explode and dissipate, but quiet anger is the deadly anger, long to appear and long to take place. "Look at him. Where did he get that black hair? Not from you. Not from me. He is a bastard." He steps over to the little boy again and this time, jerks him up with his hand. Beautiful light-brown eyes the colour of brandy stare at him. They enrage him. A bastard should be ugly, he thinks. "You are not my son," the man repeats and then brutally punches the child in the stomach. The boy collapses but this time he does not cry out. His young face is calm as a still lake. "No, don't!" the woman shouts as she runs over to grab the man's arm. The man backhands her across the face and knocks her into the wall of the basement. "Whore. This has been a long time coming." He approaches the sobbing woman with tightly-clenched fists. The basement is filled with screaming. <><><> More and more dark memories savage Agatha's mind. Until she can no longer bear it. But still they loop and loop and loop and she gibbers mindlessly, shouts nonsense, saliva leaking from her mouth. The black-cloaked man with red eyes steps back from her with a smile on his face. He removes his hood and blows a strand of black hair from his crimson red eyes. "Death becomes her." He laughs long and hard. <><><> "No!" Misty screamed as she saw Ash suddenly fall off Starmos before he could cut Agatha down. Agatha began to fall down too, with him as she suddenly seemed to have lost her levitation spell. Misty dashed forward, blue cloak and hair streaming behind her and leaped just before Ash could strike the rocky ground. She grabbed him in both arms and then dived forward into a sideways roll breaking their fall. Agatha had no such luck and landed brokenly upon the hard rock, pale silver eyes open in death. It seemed as if she had died even before striking the ground. Misty desperately looked down at Ash. He was breathing slowly, thank the heavens. What had happened? What did Agatha do to cause herself to die and knock Ash unconscious? As Starmos hovered down over her head, red jewel flashing in worry, a crack of thunder by her side startled her. She looked over to see Pikachu reform back into a black electric mouse from katana form. It seemed that he was unconscious too, eyes closed as if sleeping. Sabrina landed to the side and watched them in silence. Then she shook her head. "There is no need to worry. He will just sleep for an hour. After that he will be awakened and fine." Misty looked over to the side where Agatha's body had landed. Her eyes widened as it suddenly began aging rapidly before her. The ebony hair faded to white, while the skin wrinkled and then she was the Agatha that Misty knew before in the Pokemon League. But the aging didn't stop there and the body yellowed and rotted until the flesh had gone and it was a skeleton which then just turned into dust. She sat up to look for Koga and Aya. Where she had last seen them were nothing but two piles of tattered clothing. Two white spirits blew past her, startling her, and she thought she heard 'Thank you' before they dissipated into the air. Jessie, James and Persian leaped up on to the large flat rock where she lay clutching Ash. James had Giselle in her arms, unconscious. "Phew," James sighed. "I'm glad you got her before she," He nodded down at Giselle in his arms, "could get us." Then at the far end of the cavern where the entrance was, she spotted a very tattered-looking Bruno, Erika ... and Laselle? all walking tiredly toward them. Bruno was carrying an unconscious Duplica. Sabrina walked up to her and dropped a letter. "Here, this is for you. And you'll also find two more of your companions trapped in the western cavern. Now goodbye." Her from shimmered white and then she was just gone. Erika and Bruno jumped up on to the rock, and after Bruno laid Duplica down next to them, he helped Laselle climb up. A curious black amoeba-shaped pokemon sat on her shoulder. For a moment they were all silent. Then Laselle said, "I'm glad that you managed to do whatever you managed to do, Mistress Misty. Mistress Duplica almost had us there. If it weren't for Butterfree - I mean, Ditorion - here to keep her busy, we might all have been ashes by now." Misty raised an eyebrow as she looked at the pokemon sitting on her shoulder. "Ditorion?" Laselle looked embarrassed as she rubbed the back of her head with one hand and played with a tendril of her long brown hair in the other. "Turns out that he's the seventh Master Pokemon and that he's been spying on us ever since the beginning. But uh ... he ended up liking me so he decided to join us instead." Misty shook her head in irony. Then she narrowed her blue eyes as she looked at the letter that Sabrina gave her. She unrolled it. Dearest sister, If you wish to learn the secret of our birth then come to the old League Housing at the Indigo Plateau City. Don't be late. And come alone. And don't show this to Ashura. ~ Valdera *** End of Part 11 Next Episode: Valdera VS Misty. Lance and the power of Dragons. Suzie and Brock finally reunited. Jessie, James and Persian VS Butch, Cassidy and a mysterious new pokemon. Ash and Misty's past revealed. And of course ... the revelation of Ash and Gary... And just who is the eighth Master Pokemon? Don't miss the final conclusion of ... Pokemon MASTER. _________________________________________________________________________ POKEDEX _________________________________________________________________________ SHADOW PIKACHU Type 1 - Shadow Type 2 - Electricity Attack : Lightning Boil Type : Electricity / Water Pikachu grabs on to the victim and begins charging up the victim with electricity. The heat then boils the victim from within. Attack : Electric Absorption Type : Electricity The power to absorb low-level electricity attacks into a pikachu's body for its own personal use. Attack : Lightning Slash Type : Electricity / Normal With a slash of its tail, the Pikachu can send a blade of electricity roaring through the air that may cut the victim into two if it so wishes. _________________________________________________________________________ Notes: Cheers again to Rhionae for pre-reading this monster and helping me out with the grammar and spelling! Gah. I never expected I would ever be writing 'Ash gets Misty', (or is it Misty gets Ash?) but it just suddenly came up and it just felt right to put it there. I'm sick of the two of them always getting interrupted after all ^_^;;. But now they can both suffer the consequences of their actions... By the way, some of you may have noticed a 'Todd' soldier getting brutally eaten by a Forbidden Sandshrew back in Part 9. He was meant to be the Todd Photographer guy that never existed on our network. Here he was called, Snap, so that's the continuity I used. Todd never existed here so he was just given a horrible, cheap death ^_^. Anyone notice Agatha's spell style? I sort of got it a bit from Lina from Slayers. Although I've only seen the first episode of that. I loved the way she casted, "Dragon Slave" though. Too much talking? Probably. Especially on the sappy conversations ^_^;; I know I can get carried away sometimes. But there *is* a lot of action in this one to make up for it. I hope. As always tell me your thoughts! Ace Sanchez Email: jsa@fl.net.au WWW: http://jsa.users.fl.net.au