"So let me get this straight, you want to go snooping round areas that are out of bounds to us?"
This question came from Autumn, who sat with her Pikachu in her lap gazing at Kevin and Marc as if they had just suggested trying to rob a bank. Candida, Kelly and Jeremy stood nearby - Sandra was currently in the arena pitting her Wooper against a boy's Teddiursa - and all of them appeared to be wondering the same thing. What could Kevin and Marc hope to gain by pulling such a stunt?
"Well, at least it'll give us a look at what goes on around this place," Kevin said, gesturing at the vast window nearby. This provided a panoramic view of the underwater world and the various Water Pokemon that ranged the deep - right now, a large shoal of Goldeen led by a Seaking was swimming past. "Think about it," he went on. "Have they told us anything about why we're here?"
"To find out if people can live under the ocean?" supplied Candida, who failed to see what Kevin was getting at and had accepted the fact that certain area of Aquarius were out of bounds as a matter of course.
"True," Kevin acknowledged. "But, I've been checking the maps we were issued when we got here - and around 50% of this place is marked in red, meaning it's off limits to us. So why would anyone go to the trouble of building this place and then place half of it out of bounds?" He paused and fingered his Poke Balls as the others looked askance at him, each of them clearly wondering where all this was leading.
"Unless Wilson and the other staff are plotting something," he went on, ignoring Autumn as she rolled her eyes and muttered "Boys!" under her breath. "Maybe they've got a secret machine room somewhere around here and . . ."
"It houses some device they plan to use to take over the world," filled in Jeremy.
"You watch too many spy movies, Jeremy O'Hare," Kelly said with a sigh. Her brother's fondness - nay, obsession - with action thrillers had often caused friction between the two siblings and they had had countless disagreements over the issue. Kelly considered such movies to be far-fetched, all special effects and no plot, and the last thing she wanted was to pander to Jeremy's fantasies. And, if Kevin was going to start encouraging him, she was going to leave Aquarius early and return to dry land to stay with relatives. There was no way she would put up with . . .
Her thoughts were distracted by what was going on in the arena. The boy's Teddiursa had just felled Sandra's Wooper with a Dynamic Punch and the two trainers were preparing to send out their next Pokemon. Sandra, of course, sent out her Dratini since she was her only Pokemon apart from Wooper and her opponent opened his next Poke Ball to reveal a Piloswine, a shaggy pig-like Pokemon with tusks only inches off the ground. Dratini slithered across the floor, ready to face her opponent . . .
"Who do you fancy this round?" Autumn asked the others, grateful to have an excuse to divert the subject in another direction.
Kelly frowned, trying to recall what she knew of Piloswine and Dratini and their respective Attacks. "A Piloswine is Ground/Ice - so it can have an advantage in battle against a Dragon Type," she observed. "On the other hand, Dragon Attacks can do some serious damage . . ."
Candida knew what she meant. Once, during a battle at Cherrygrove Bay, her Lapras had been hit full on the flank with a Kingdra's Twister - the Water/Dragon Pokemon had exhaled a small tornado out of its snout and blasted Lapras out of the water, depositing her on the beach. She had been out of action for a week afterwards and Candida had since made a point of teaching both her Pokemon how to block various Attacks . . .
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Eventually, the battle ended with Sandra calling on Dratini to use Dragon Rage at exactly the same instant the Piloswine's trainer called for a Hyperbeam. Every neck in the room craned to watch as the two Pokemon launched into the powerful Attacks. Dratini opened her mouth to send a hot blast of breath in the Piloswine's direction, but he moved a fraction of a second faster and a powerful blast of energy sent Dratini careering across the floor to land at Sandra's feet. She looked down at her Pokemon with a concerned expression on her face.
"Dratini, are you OK? Can you get up?" she asked.
"Tini," Dratini said as she forced herself upright and turned to face her opponent. Piloswine, meanwhile, was breathing heavily, exhausted by the physical effort involved in firing his Hyperbeam - if that move had one disadvantage, it was that it often left any Pokemon who used it too tired to launch a follow-up Attack immediately afterwards . . .
"Quick, before Piloswine gets its breath back!" Sandra ordered. "Use your Toxic!"
In response, Dratini again opened her mouth and proceeded to spray Piloswine with a poisonous purple goo; unable to move aside in time, the pig-like Pokemon took the attack full in the face and was momentarily blinded. His trainer, knowing there was no way to win now - even if he called for time-out to wipe Piloswine's eyes, the effects of the poison wouldn't go away without treatment at Aquarius' Pokemon Centre or at least a dose of Antidote - did the only thing he could. He pulled out a Poke Ball and recalled Piloswine.
"Piloswine is in no condition to fight!" the referee called from the sidelines. "Dratini is the winner!"
Sandra ran to Dratini and hugged the blue Dragon Pokemon round the neck. "You did it, Dratini!" she exclaimed happily. "And against a part-Ice Type as well!" She pulled out Dratini's Poke Ball and pressed the button to activate. "You've done me proud," she said as Dratini disappeared into the Ball's core.
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Over the next two days, Kevin, Jeremy and Marc talked of little other than what was in the areas of Aquarius that had been placed out of bounds. All three boys were totally convinced there was something untoward going on and no amount of arguing from the girls could convince them otherwise. Finally, Kelly could stand it no longer . . .
"Look, Jeremy!" she snapped one evening after he brought the subject up once too often. "There's nothing odd going on around here and, if you still don't believe me, I dare you to go snooping round and see what happens when they catch you breaking bounds!"
Jeremy looked his sister full in the face, scarcely able to believe what he was hearing; usually Kelly tried to order him about at every opportunity. "Cool!" he said, not noticing - or pretending not to notice - the sarcastic tone in her voice. "I'll go get Marc and Kevin - after all, it was their idea in the first place!" With that, he grabbed his Charmeleon's Poke Ball from his bedside locker and dashed out of his family's module without bothering to close the door behind him.
"Jeremy!" Kelly called as she dashed into the glass corridor after him. "Wait! I didn't mean . . ." But Jeremy had already disappeared round the corner and was out of earshot. Kelly sighed and rested her back against the transparent wall, folding her arms as she thought ruefully about how tiresome Jeremy could be. He could be extremely stubborn when it suited him, responding to attempts at reasoning with him by stuffing his fingers in his ears and singing loudly or, worse, doing what he wanted to anyway . . .
Kelly knew immediately what she had to do - find Autumn, Sandra and Candida and get them to help her find the boys before they got themselves into trouble by snooping around. Why, she asked herself, did boys have to let their imaginations run away with them all the time? What was it about being male that made them refuse point blank to listen to reason? She didn't know, but what she did know was that she had to try and keep Jeremy, Marc and Kevin out of trouble . . .
Since Sandra's family lived in the module nearest to her own, she elected to go there first and ask her to fetch Autumn and Candida with her. As she approached the front door of the Pitt family's module and rang the intercom, she hoped she and the other girls would be able to find the boys and convince them there was nothing going on.
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Sandra emerged from her module wearing a pink bathrobe and towelling her collar-length strawberry blonde hair. "Kelly?" she asked, draping the towel over her arm and looking at her friend out of puzzled grey eyes. "What's going on? I was just in the shower . . ."
"Get yourself dressed and come on," Kelly ordered, an urgent tone in her voice. "We've got to get over to Autumn's and Candida's as soon as we can - I'll explain on the way over."
Sandra rolled her eyes impatiently, guessing what was coming next; she had heard about Kevin's plan to break bounds and, like Autumn, Kelly and Candida, did not think it was a good idea. "It's those boys, isn't it?" she sighed as Kelly nodded reluctantly. With that, she turned to go inside, only for Kelly to grab her arm and hold her back.
"No, hear me out - I need the three of you to come with me and try to make them see sense."
"I suppose you're right," Sandra said, although she wished fervently that Kevin, Marc and Jeremy hadn't decided to be so nosy. In her experience, no good ever came out of breaking bounds - once, a group of students at her school had been caught loitering in the boiler room and wound up getting detention for a week. She did not know what would happen if the three boys were caught, but some instinct told her they would be in serious trouble. They had to be convinced the staff at Aquarius had nothing to hide, but first . . .
"Wait there while I get dressed," she told Kelly as she disappeared into the module.
Five minutes later, Sandra emerged wearing a red mini-skirt and black t-shirt and clasping the bag she used to carry her Poke Balls in her hand. She looked at Kelly and nodded decisively. "Let's go get Candida and Autumn and find the boys," she said.
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It did not take long to find Candida and Autumn - they were both in the Bensons' module playing card games on the computer in Candida's room. When they heard that the boys had done what they had been threatening to do and gone snooping round private areas of Aquarius, they reacted much as Sandra had done with a mixture of concern and annoyance. "Why do boys never listen to reason?" Candida asked as she and the others headed in the direction Marc, Kevin and Jeremy were most likely to have taken. This was a long winding corridor that led deep into the bowels of the undersea city, to the real powerhouse of the operation.
"Why don't you tell me," Kelly replied as the four of them rounded a corner, their movements tracked by the closed-circuit camera on the wall. But they paid it no heed; the need to find the boys and get them out of trouble was uppermost in all their minds and they would worry about what the staff might have to say later. Even though Jeremy annoyed her like hell at times, he was still her brother and there was no way she was going to let him do something as foolish as what he and the other two boys were doing now . . .
Eventually, they saw the boys at the far end of the corridor, outside a grey door which had the words NO UNAUTHORISED PERSONNEL BEYOND THIS POINT painted on the front in vivid red. And, just in case that wasn't enough to get the message across, the door was security locked with a keypad on the wall beside it for those who did have a right to be there to enter their PIN numbers and swipe their cards.
Needless to say, neither Kevin, Jeremy nor Marc had such authorisation, but they were not about to let that stop them - not when they were so close to uncovering what was going on. They had tried entering various combinations of numbers, only for the words "insert card" to be flashed each time, and knew time was running out fast. They had to get through that door before someone came along and caught them.
"Any ideas?" asked Marc as he leaned against the wall and exchanged glances with Kevin and Jeremy.
Jeremy nodded and smiled to himself as a plan occurred to him and he pulled out his Charmeleon's Poke Ball. "We'll have to blast that door down," he told the others, pressing the button on the front of the Ball as he spoke. "Charmeleon, I choose you!" he added as his Charmeleon emerged in a flash of light. "Use your Flamethrower on that lock!"
"Meleon!" Charmeleon snarled as he opened his mouth and sent a jet of flame in the direction of the keypad, which slowly began to melt in the heat as the three boys stood back out of range of Charmeleon's flames. Even then, it became hot enough to cause them to sweat and Marc eventually had to take his t-shirt off and drape it over his arm. If there was one problem with using Fire Pokemon in confined spaces, it had to be the heat their Fire Attacks generated . . .
All the while, Kevin kept his hand on his Houndour's Poke Ball, ready to call on the Dark/Fire Pokemon if Jeremy's Charmeleon showed any sign of tiring. But it turned out that wasn't necessary as the keypad finally melted and the door sprang open. Without realising it, Jeremy had been exploiting the one weakness in the undersea city's security system - all the doors with keypads had been designed so they would open automatically should the keypad fail for any reason. The desingers of the system - widely used in banks - had been thinking along the lines of electronic failure or, possibly, an errant Porygon, and hadn't considered the possibility of a Fire Pokemon melting the keypads.
Nonetheless, Jeremy wasn't about to question their good luck. He recalled Chameleon and turned to Kevin and Marc. "Let's get in there before . . ." he began, only to find himself cut off in mid-sentence.
"Someone spots you?" Kelly asked archly as she appeared on the scene, followed closely by Sandra, Candida and Autumn. The latter's Pikachu was perched on his trainer's shoulder and the other three girls all had their Poke Balls with them.
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"Oh . . . Kelly," Jeremy said, trying his best to look innocent as his sister strode over to the three would-be trespassers. "This . . . this isn't what it looks like, honest."
"It looks like three immature boys who couldn't mind their own business," Kelly said, folding her arms and giving the boys a penetrating stare. "Look, if I've said it once, I've said it a million times - there is NOTHING odd going on here. And just you wait till Mum and Dad hear about this. When they find out you've sabotaged a security system . . ."
She was cut off abruptly by the sound of footsteps pounding down the corridor and voices that sounded distorted as if the speakers were talking into communication devices. It was impossible to hear what was being siad clearly, but the youngsters managed to catch enough to know that the speakers were Aquarius staff and were heading in their direction. And, since the corridor they were in was so long, there was no way they could get clear of it before they were caught.
Kevin ducked through the door. "In here - it's our only chance!" he told the others as Marc and Jeremy followed him and the girls hung back. "Look," Kevin said when he saw their hesitation, their reluctance to follow his lead, "those staff members will be here any second so, if you'd rather get caught . . ."
Hearing this, Kelly knew she and the other three girls had no choice in the matter - pandering to the boys' fantasies seemed to be the lesser of two evils right now. She sighed and, as the oldest of the girls, gave her decision. "All right, but on one condition," she said in a firm tone, her eyes fixed on Jeremy as she spoke. "If we don't find anything odd, will the three of you give it a rest?"
"Just get in here!" Marc said impatiently as the footsteps pounding along the corridor grew louder and louder . . .