Well, this one is almost as long as the last one. And you can expect quite a lot from it. And just for the record, yes, Sheridan is completely delusional and insane.
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Chapter Twelve
Day four of freedom
“Fish and biscuits.” Sighed the girl sitting across from Tyler. She poked the food with her fork, then looked up at him. “Again.”
He rolled his eyes, then sighed, chewing a mouthful of his own. “Look Clair, just eat it. I know that you’re not used to it, but we don’t exactly have the most extensive menu here.”
“I don’t like fish.” She scooted it across her plate.
“You haven’t ever gone without food, have you? See, here’s the deal. You eat when you can, or you go hungry. If you don’t like it, tough. Eat it anyway, hold your nose and choke it down if you have to, because keeping your stomach full is important.” He took another bite of fish and after swallowing, continued. “Besides, it’s the best breakfast I’ve had in a while, you have no idea how long it’s been since I had ocean fish.”
She just stared at him, then, after poking it a few more times, took a bite. She sighed, then looked down at the fish. “You know Tyler, I freaking hate it when you make sense.”
“MORNING!” Shouted Vincent as he walked into the room.
“Be quiet!” Hissed Kelly as she put some more fish in the oven. “Jenna is going to wake up again if you keep that up.” She glared at him, one of her fangs showing.
“Sorry.” He whispered, then grinned. “You know, every time I see you, you get more beautiful.” He wrapped his arm around her and planted a kiss on her forehead.
“Well, I’ve officially lost my appetite, I’m going to train my Bayleef up on deck.” Clair pushed her chair out and stomped up the stairs.
“What’s on her nerves?” Asked Vincent, watching her.
“She got seasick, and doesn’t like fish.” Growled Tyler, rolling his eyes at her retreating form.
“How could she not like fish?” Vincent stared at the plate on the table.
“Beats me, she said that she was a good traveler, but apparently she knows absolutely nothing about traveling on the sea. So much for bringing people who know what they’re doing.” he sighed, then stood up. “The other two got done a while ago, with the rest of the crew, they insisted on being taught everything possible about boats.”
Vincent laughed. “Everything? Good thing that they’re going to be here for a while!”
“There’s more fish, if you want it.” Said Kelly, smiling as she walked over to Vincent.
“No thanks Kelly, I’m going to go hang out in the rigging for a while.” He walked up the stairs, then turned around. “Do you mind if I barrow the spyglass?”
“No, go ahead.” Vincent began chewing a mouthful of fish.
“Thanks.” Tyler ran up the rest of the stairs and disappeared.
“Those two have been driving me insane all morning, I swear, if I hear that girl say that she doesn’t like fish one more time I’m going to shove one down her throat.” Kelly looked like she wanted to pull her ears off, this was more evident as her fingers began to twitch.
“You should get some sleep this afternoon, you were up most of the night with Jenna and I’m sure you’re tired. I’ll take care of those two and I’ll make sure that Jenna gets her bath.” Vincent stood up and wrapped his arms around her again, this time kissing her on the lips. “Relax and get some sleep.”
“Okay, are you sure?” Kelly leaned her head on his shoulder.
“Of course, you need more sleep, don’t worry about a thing, I’m sure that the crew will be fine without something to eat every hour, you worry about us all to much.” Vincent let her go and smiled at her. “I promise it’ll be okay.”
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“So, are you going to join her?” Cella watched as Rose flapped her wings, cutting the air and sending ripples across the lake.
Star shook his head. “No, if I fly right now my wings will freeze.”
“Her wings aren’t frozen.” She chided. “You’re just making excuses.”
“Her body temperature is at least five degrees higher than mine, her wings wouldn’t freeze unless she were flying in a snowstorm. Mine is not. Mine is closer to the temperature of a humans, maybe lower.” He unfolded them for a second, then quickly snapped them against his back again, as if this proved his point.
“Whatever. I’m going to go bug Bolt.” She stood up off the cot, they had moved it outside so that they didn’t have to sit on the ground. The tents were packed, and they were ready to leave as soon as Bolt came back.
“Please don’t, you’ve already feinted once on this trip, we don’t need him knocking you out.” Star stared out at the little island in the center of the lake.
“If he doesn’t come back soon I’m going to chance it.” She said, sitting back down.
“You never had much patience, did you?” He sighed.
“No.” She turned around to look at the trees, but quickly turned around to look at the lake.
Rose landed in front of them a second later. “It looks like someone is living in that cave, there’s a couple cots set up and a place for fires, we should probably leave whoever it is alone.”
“Sounds good to me, no need to upset some poor hermit or something. They’re probably just trying to live in peace.” Star moved over on the cot to make room for Rose.
“You stink, we should build a raft and go out there and find out who it is, I bet that they’re wanted criminals or something!” Cella jumped up and Rose quickly filled the spot.
“No, if it is a wanted criminal they don’t need any trouble from us, and what would we do? It’s not exactly like the police are an option, I’d like to see the looks on their faces if we tried to tell them anything.” Rose smiled. “They’d probably have a heart attack!” She laughed.
Star smiled, then turned to look at her, she was facing Cella and he looked at the smooth curve of her jawbone, the way some of her hair lay across it, the dark brown against her skin. She turned to look at him, and her eyes instantly dominated his attention. He stared at them, like he was seeing them for the first time, each thin line of color, tiny emeralds planted in the color of evergreens. “Star?”
He blinked quickly. “Yeah, what?”
“Bolt has been gone for a long time.” She turned to look at the woods, then spread her wings out.
“I know. I wonder what he’s doing. I don’t want to disturb him, but he’s been gone for at least an hour.” He stood up.
“You said that we shouldn’t go looking for him!” Growled Cella.
“No, I said that you shouldn’t go bug him. I’m immune to electricity, I’ll go see what he’s doing.” He stood up and hurried off into the woods.
“Darn it!” Cella stomped a foot and growled. “He should have stayed here!”
“What?” Asked Rose, turning to look at her.
“Nothing, I just mean that we should have all gone together, if he gets lost in there, he doesn’t have the map.” She said, pointing at his backpack. She sighed and walked over to the bank, then crouched down and ran the water through her fingers.
“He won’t get lost, if he has to look for him further than where our camp was then he’ll come and get us.” She stretched her wings, then shut them again.
“Bolt?” Star called as he searched for the Luxray Morph. “Where the heak could he have gone?” He asked himself as he looked around the clearing.
“Sorry!” Star looked up and saw Bolt, sitting in one of the trees. “Wanted to climb a tree.”
“Did you get stuck?” Laughed Star, flapping his wings slightly.
“No,” he growled, baring his fangs.
“Then what’s been taking so long, you’ve been gone for at least an hour.” Star smirked, at the look on Bolts face, he looked as if he’d been caught doing something wrong.
“I must have been daydreaming, sorry.” He climbed down slowly, sinking his claws into the bark of the tree. He wasn’t lying entirely, he had wanted to climb a tree, and he was dreaming during the day. He smiled and began walking towards the lake.
They reached the lake to find Cella chewing idly on another granola bar, and Rose messing with the flame on her tail.
“Hey, daydreamers back. Apparently climbing trees can take you to different worlds.” Star laughed as Bolt rolled his eyes.
“I wish it could, then we wouldn’t be in the situation we’re in right now. Come on, we should go.” He pulled on his backpack and began walking through the snow.
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Thomas tapped on his keyboared, responding to an e-mail from Giovanni.
“There is no way in hell I’m coming back.” He muttered as he pressed the send button. He knew that Giovanni was waiting for the message and that he would get a reply soon, probably only reading the first three sentences first. He suddenly heard a tap at his door. He immediately shut his laptop and turned off the lamp on the small desk. Thomas took a deep breath and walked over to the door and looked through the peep-hole.
“Open the stupid door, I’ve already been all over the rest of the ship looking for your sorry ass, so I know that you’re in there.” Ashley had her hands on her hips and was glaring at the door. “I’m going to count to three, then I’m going to wake up every damn person in this hallway and tell them who you are.” She began counting.
“Relax! I have to get the latch undone and turn off the security system!” He began to struggle with the lock.
“How the hell did you get a security system?” She growled.
“Really? Did you listen to what I said yesterday? If I created your blueprints I can set up a temporary alarm system. Now give me a few seconds, this stupid thing is touchy.” He pressed a combination on the small keypad, then unplugged two if the wires. He sighed and pulled open the door.
Ashley stomped in and shook her head, she was soaking wet. She glared at him, then pulled the chair out from the desk and sat down. “Right, I’m not happy about this, and both of us are going to have to freakin deal with it.”
Thomas sat down on the bed and stared at her, confused. “Look, I have no idea what you’re talking about and it’s six in the morning, so could you please tell me what you mean and why you’re soaking wet?”
“How about we start with soaking wet? I told you I looked all over the ship for you, well, since this is unpleasant, I decided to draw it out for as long as possible. We just missed a huge storm, but it’s raining pretty hard.” She smirked, then swung her tail around to get some of the water off.
“Right, and what is so unpleasant about talking to me that you would stand in the rain for extended periods of time just to avoid it?” He was beginning to get annoyed, he glared at the dripping wet morph who was slowly soaking the ugly red carpet in his room.
“The fact that I have to travel with you, whether I like it or not. Oh, and there’s the fact that I have to find a nice strong magnet and make sure you don’t have a chip, that wasn’t in the instructions, but I’m sure Andrew and Tyler would appreciate it if I checked. I could just run a light static over your body, but it might mess with the chip and that could kill you.” She just sat there, with an arrogant smile on her face.
He nodded, realizing what she was talking about, and feeling a little bad about going through her e-mail. “Fine by me, I’d prefer not to die though, so why don’t I just get a magnet out of my bag. If we find one I can throw it in the ocean, I was going to look for one after I got some sleep, make it look like I committed suicide. The team has already found out about me rerouting the signal in my laptop, Giovanni’s been so stupid to inform me, so I’m going to send him a lovely suicide note. I have enough reason, and since they’ve taken Bolt I’ve tried repeated times. Of course, it’ll be a huge surprise to him when I join you and your friends in getting Tilla and the rest of the morphs out of that hellhole in Hoenn.” He smiled at the surprised look on her face, then laughed as she grew angry.
“So should I just kill you know or would you prefer it if I waited until they could find your rotting corpse.” She snarled at him.
He rolled his eyes and figured that as long as she was threatening to kill him he could afford to be reckless. “Yeah, and what if Sam wakes up and sees you? That sure as hell wouldn’t set well. I’m positive that you could lie your way out, but she’d never see you the same way again. Many of the morphs from that attack are still alive, four of them escaped with a group of others from one of the bases in Johto.”
“How the hell!” She let electricity run up and down her arms and let out a deep ferel snarl from her chest.
“I read through your e-mail. After my lovely bout of stupidity I decided that it would be a good idea to go through all the laptops on the ship and take a quick look through any file that had been used in the past two months. I went through your mail, then I sent a virus to a rocket I found. He’s on vacation, but that’s not my problem. After that I went through my mail.” He watched her. He knew that he was either going to end up dead or alive at her hand, and he was surprised to find that he didn‘t really care.
“Who the hell is Tilla, and I want to go through all of your personal files.” She growled, she sent some sparks off that landed on the carpet.
“Tilla is, Bolts friend. Bolt and Tilla practally grew up together, they were born, well, Bolt wasn’t really born in the proper sense of the word, but their birthdays are on the same day. Mine is too, which is honestly creepy, but getting back to Tilla, I want to find her, then my son, and see what happens after that. I know she’s in that base because I examined her files until I had practically pulled them apart.” he smiled for a couple of seconds, then frowned at the celing.
“Wait a second, your son was a morph?” She began twitching her tail and had her claws extended.
He shrugged. “The DNA has to come form somewhere, he’s the only one related to me at all though.”
“Why the hell would you do something like that? You knew that he would end up like everyone else! And you did it to your SON! No wonder you want to die you stupid ass.” She snarled, staring daggars at him.
“Do you want me dead or alive? I know what I did, I was younger, stupider, when I made him. I still love him though, and every day I wake up and can’t know that he’s safe or alive, how the hell do you think that makes me feel? I wake up every morning sick to my stomach, especially since he left that base, I can’t even keep tabs on him anymore. All the ones that escaped from that place, they had simple chips. I just disabled them with my laptop, Bolt never had one though, so I couldn’t even switch the signal to only transmit on my computer. They operate under simple sound functions, if I have a chip I can disable it with one noise, kill myself with another, one sound actually wipes memory if they placed the thing properly.” He stared at his computer, then turned back to her.
She looked interested and after she didn’t respond for a minuite he went on. “They don’t know about the kill and memory functions, I added those for my own purposes, like what happened to Tillas father. Those are only for extremes. There’s a pitch that every living organism makes when it is in so much pain that if it lives after the incident it will never be able to live properly. I installed it because the morphs would be killed anyway, and this would just do it quickly without pain or fear.” He stared down at his feet, then looked up to see Ashley glaring at him.
“So you put these things in them so that they could be tracked? And what if they lived in the wild, and didn’t want to die even after using that pitch? You’re playing a game I don’t like.” She leaned back in her chair, and flexed her claws.
“I disabled all of the chips in morphs that are free, once a chip has been shut down you can only turn it back on from the outside, sounds don’t have any affects on it. You could play the pitch for hours and it wouldn’t do anything. The reason I haven’t done this to mine is so that I can play dead for a while. The chips aren’t affected by the elements, so I figured that throwing it in the ocean is a good idea.” He smiled, and watched as she fidgeted with her tail.
“What happened to Tillas Father?” She asked, turning to look at the computer. “Did you just kill him?”
“No, he used to belong to a community of other morphs, humans started getting involved, like with yours, and he and Tillas mother were captured. He was tortured, they were trying to find the rest, and he died, I‘d disabled his but they, aren‘t the best at Pokemon biology. I disabled the chip in her mothers, never got to learn her name, and she died giving birth to Tilla.” Thomas looked out the small window behind his bed, he was standing, pacing now.
“Who took care of her?” Ashley had moved the chair over to the desk and had his computer open.
“I have three e-mail adresses, you can find them and the passwords under file one, it’s easy to find, just type in ‘default four’ for the password, it should let you right in. One of the nurses took care of Tilla until she was ten, then she left. No one would take care of her, so I did until she was forteen. Not really a big deal, they each had their own room, Bolt loved her with his life you know, you could tell by how he looked at her, he practally worshiped her.” Thomas walked over and watched as she wont through the files on his first adress. Mostly stuff to his mom, a few letters to people he’d met while doing field work, innocent enough. She moved on to the second one, where she paused and read through more of the messages.
“You designed the release balls for Silph?” She turned around on the chair.
“Yeah, for the ranger union actually, Silph just developed them, I also upgraded the Pokenav for Devon, and sold Silph blueprints for an improved item minimizer.” He took the mouse for a second and popped open a couple of files, showing her the blueprints, then went back to the mail.
“So, I’m guessing that the rockets didn’t know about this?” She went back to clicking through his information.
“Hell no, if they knew that I could do anything but biology and the most basic electronics they would have killed me by now. No, they want me alive, which is why I want to play dead. I already have two other identities set up, forging a trainers license shouldn’t be hard.” he watched as she went to the third one, half holding his breath.
“Dear lord, did you actually send this to them!?” She was reading through the most recent message.
Thomas laughed. “Probably a bad move on my part, but yes, I did. I figured that as long as I was stealing all of their files and sending an irritating virus to them, I may as well add insult to injury, although I think the virus is probably already doing that.”
“I don’t even want to know, you‘re forty something right? What the hell did you do to your life… Actually, don’t answer that. Right, so I don’t think that there will be any issue with you betraying us or anything, kinda sounds to me like you’ve gone completely against them.” She went to another file, and couldn’t get into it. “What’s with this one?”
“None whatsoever, when we get to the base I’m going to make it completely invisible, and set up a camera system if they let me.” He smiled, then reached over and typed in a separate password for the file. “This one is different, I haven’t let anyone see this ever, mostly because I would be killed. I started it two years ago.”
Ashley stared as a website opened on the screen. “You run this?”
“Yeah, for two years. It’s by invite only, anyone registered as a rocket can’t get in, no matter what, just me. I’ve just started communications with several morphs, and helped some set up security systems, at least the ones with computers.” The page was dark blue, white text was shown under a bar with the word ‘news’ across it.
“So you made this to advertise a war on team rocket?” She clicked on another page.
“No. It’s more like a place where people can post their stories, anything to do with a war wasn’t my idea, it was mostly Andrew who started that.” He sat back down on the bed while she went through the pages.
“How to identify rocket activity? Wow, you weren’t joking around, so when are you going to tell your human members about us Morphs?” She skimmed through the section.
“Most of them know already, and are probably part of Tylers club, I recently made a section on it if you’d like to read it. I also have a section on how most of the bases function and how to get in, and what you can expect to find if you run an attack on one. Andrews idea, I just sent him the information, he wrote the article. I think the kids really got it out for revenge, I don‘t want anyone to get hurt, but a lot of others are very open to his ideas.” he was laying down now.
“It’s probably the same guy that works in communication at the base. I can’t right now, Sam is waking up and I have to go. You get that chip out of you and throw it in the ocean or whatever, we should be in the port around four today, I’ll meet you there.” She stood up and walked over to the door.
Thomas was digging though his bag on the floor. “Sure, we’re docking in Slateport, so I’ll meet you at the lighthouse. Make sure you tell Sam that I’m going to be there. And don’t worry, I won’t touch any of your mail anymore.”
Ashley nodded as she walked out the door. She walked into her room, shut the door, and quickly laid down on her bed. “Right, I completely believe him now. It’s stupid to, but I do. Who couldn’t after that, and then that website, I’m sure it’s the same Andrew, I should tell him, but I think I’ll just wait and see how it plays out.” she yawned and shut her eyes.
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“Great! Now finish it off with thunderbolt Pikachu!” Ash smiled as Pikachu let loose a bolt of electricity that sent the Aggron they were faced against crashing to the ground.
The Pokemon trainer recalled it and glared at Ash. “You know, all I ever run into these days is Ketchum wannabes.”
Ash shrugged. “Sorry?”
“Whatever, I’ve got to go heal Aggron.” The kid ran off towards Pewter city, the direction they were going.
“Wow. He was tough.” Jimmy was sitting on the grass at the edge of the road.
“Yeah, that was fun. My Pokemon don’t get a workout like that every day. He took out Charizard too.” He released the fire type and gave him a revive and sprayed him with a hyper potion. He growled and puffed smoke, glaring at the place where the trainer had been.
Mew floated above them, watching as Ash healed the Pokemon. He smiled to himself, remembering how he used to always be over excited and how Charizard would set him on fire. He let his mind run along the link between his and Mewtwos minds. “Anything new?”
“Some morph called Ashley, Thomas is checking for some sort of tracking device. The group he’s looking for, they’re going to break into a team rocket base that’s near Fortree and get everyone without a uniform out. The Boat docks in Slateport at four. I’ll speak to him later tonight, then I’ll be back.” Mewtwo sat in the cargo hold, he’d gotten tired of swimming and figured that if anyone came down there he could just teleport out.
“Alright, that can’t be good, you have to get back as soon as possible, you’re the only one who can give those memories back, and explain to him what’s going on. Make sure you get to speak to him today, then get back, we can’t let it happen.” Mew floated quietly through the trees, watching as Ash scratched Pikachus head.
“I know. Has Arceus figured it out yet?” Mewtwo poked through one of the boxes, then sighed as he placed the lid back on the package, it was just a bunch of Pokéballs.
“Yeah, but he seems pretty content to just let us do what we want right now. To be honest I don’t think he likes or cares about the morphs much.” Mew said, landing in a tree for a second.
“He doesn’t like or care about me much either, we’re freaks remember, we’re not natural. The only reason I think he puts up with anything I do is because everyone else backs me up.” Mewtwo opened another box and sighed, toothbrushes.
“Maybe. Of course, you do belong with the rest of us, weather he likes it or not.” Mew hummed a tune quietly to himself.
“Thanks. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Mewtwo cut the connection and went through more boxes. “Who the heak has ever needed a ten pound bag of confetti?” he muttered as he placed the lid back on a box. “Really?”
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“This is insane!” Shouted Rose as she pushed against the wind. “We are not stopping until we get out of this mess!”
“I second that!” Yelled Cella, getting a mouthful of snow.
“Where did Star go!” Bolt looked around, all he could see was white. They were connected by ropes, as soon as they had left the lake they had run into roaring winds and flying snow.
“I’m over here! I can see Roses tail!” He was off to her left somewhere.
“How!?” Yelled Cella, scanning the area.
“Has anyone but me noticed that it’s on fire!?” He yelled back. Everything sounded muffled, he just kept his eyes focused on the small glowing light a couple of feet to his left.
“Sorry!” Cella yelled. She stopped for a second and was nearly blown over by the wind, suddenly she caught sight of a feint glow a few feet to her right. She quickly walked over to it.
“Right, this isn’t getting us anywhere. If you can see my flame get over here!” Rose blew a flamethrower into the air and got a puff of steam in return, it was quickly blown away as she felt something grab her wing.
“Gotcha! I swear, we’ve been out here for at least two hours, and I don’t even know what direction we’re going!” Cella Shook her head to get some of the snow off and only managed to get some in her ear.
“I’m right behind you, don’t swing your tail. I never thought I would be glad to have fuzzy ears, of course, I never though I would be stuck in a snowstorm, so there you go.” Bolt moved to his left a little, he could see Cella now too, and stayed where he was.
Rose jumped a little as she felt something grab her hand. “Star?”
“Yeah, it’s me! We’re going to have to find someplace to stop, I don’t want to, but this isn’t going to let up! I think it’s gotten worse and the route is too long, there’s no way we’ll be out of here before night!” he stared down at her hand in his, it was so much warmer than his own. His heart skipped a beat as she twined their fingers together.
“How would we tell!? With all this snow it could be midnight for all we know! Hey, that rhymed!” Cella pointed up at the sky, a motion that no one saw because of the flying snow.
“Lets just keep walking, if we find something we can stop, but I’d rather not! I really just want to get out of here as soon as possible!” Rose began walking, the rest of the group moved with her. She held tight to Stars hand, hoping that she didn’t have to let go soon.
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“GET DOWN!” Vincent yelled, holding onto Jenna, as a bolt of electricity came dangerously close to the boat.
“I’M STUCK!” Tyler shouted down from the netting, thunder rumbled straight overhead. The storm had hit without warning, dark clouds rolling in suddenly as if a hand had suddenly been placed over the sun. Tyler tried to pull his foot out again, twisting his ankle and failing for the third time, he began to chew on the rope.
“Hold Jenna, I’m going to go and get him!” He placed her in Clairs arms, she was the closest person, and began to climb. Clair just stood there and looked lost.
“Vince, no!” Kelly Screamed, she was helping tie down a sail, she stared wide eyed as her mate climbed up, he was soaked and there was lightening out.
CRACK! The lightening finally hit the main mast, it shuddered and split straight in two, the wood splintered and cracked, as it fell it burst into flame, the net and Tyler came down. Tyler heard a quieter more muffled crack as he landed on the deck, he screamed as pain shot up his leg, the net landing on top of him.
“Tyler! Are you okay!” Clair ran over, holding Jenna, she moved her to one arm and tried to pull the net off. She swore and pulled a knife out of her pocket and flipped out the blade.
“NO! God, I think it’s broken, my ankle is BROKEN!” He screamed as a wave ran over the deck, moving his foot. His head spun, the boat moved and his ankle was twisted by another wave. He screamed, his head was pounding, his ankle felt like it was on fire, like someone was ripping it off, he screamed again, and blacked out, the wind howling in his ears.
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“I think I just ran into something!” Shouted Bolt, he reached up and felt the large wall that had come out of nowhere.
“What is it?” Cella asked, she walked over to where he was standing and saw something solid and white appear inches away from her nose, she barely stopped in time to avoid it.
Star walked straight into it, Rose with him. “It’s a wall. A WHITE wall, in the middle of a freakin snowstorm!” He yelled, aggravated.
Rose was being more logical. “Why don’t we try going around it? There were houses on the map, and I honestly don’t care if anyone lives here, this stupid storm has been getting worse and worse by the minuite.” She began to feel her way around, and soon found another side. A few minutes later they were inside.
“Oh thank goodness, a fireplace, and wood!” Star said as he looked around the small house.
Rose quickly bent down and pulled off her boots, releasing his hand. “I’ll start a fire in a minute.” She smiled at the small house, without the wind it was warmer.
“Great, I guess that it’s just your typical house, not bad.” Said Cella as she wandered around, there were only five rooms if you counted the living room/kitchen. “Bathroom, a bedroom, computers….. Hey! Come in here, there’s loads of food!” She called.
Rose joined the other two in fallowing her call, and soon found herself in a room overstocked with cans of ravioli and boxes of cerial. She turned around and saw something taped to the door. “There’s a note.” She pointed it out to the others.
“ ‘To all travelers’ Well, we fit that category. ‘You may use anything here, please just make sure to leave everything as you saw it before entering, and do not download anything on the computers. Take your trash with you, or burn it, and make sure that all fires are out when leaving. Take no more than you need though, keep in mind that others will be coming this way and may need a place to stay when the snowstorms get bad. From a friend.’ Whoever owns this house is extremely considerate.” Star read through the note again, then nodded. He was slightly suspicious of this friend.
“Look at this, someone must have started something a while ago.” Bolt was looking inside of a large empty can, there were envelopes inside.
“A lot of them have names and dates on them, look.” Cella picked up one of them. “Erik Hendricks, January third, two-thousand… something, I can‘t read the rest of the date.” She read the front of the envelope. “That means that no one has been out here for a while. Look at these, some of them are from even earlier. Who just buys a random house and leaves it open to travelers?” She asked as she went through the envelopes.
“This one is open, I’m going to read it.” Bolt pulled out one of the envelopes and pulled out the letter before anyone could stop him. “Relax, it’s meant to be read, says so in the first line.” He scanned the paper.
“What does it say?” Rose asked, watching him.
“For all to read. Dear friend, I found this place by chance, and am extremely grateful, I have been wandering around outside for hours. I stayed here for a week, waiting for the snowstorms to subside, and left with a new outlook on life. I believe that if more people in this world could trust others as blindly as you have, it would be a better place. I have included money for what I used, and I have given a list of what I used so that you can purchase more when you need to. To all who have read this, if you would like to write a thank you note, while I was returning from Snowpoint I dropped off three boxes of envelopes and some paper, they’re behind the cereal, along with a box of pens. I know that not everyone who stops here is going to be honest, but I hope that they at least know that they should be thankful. From a grateful traveler.” Bolt looked up, and shook his head. “This was written ten years ago.” He folded the paper back up and placed it into the yellowing envelope.
“Yeah, but whoever owns this place has been back, none of this is past it’s expiration date.” Star had been going through the food.
“Then why haven’t they read the letters?” Rose asked, going through the sealed envelopes.
“He hasn’t been back, someone else is stocking this place, or he doesn’t like thank yous.” Cella grabbed a can off the shelf. “Either way, why don’t we start a fire and eat something, I’m starving.”
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Sheridan watched them, from behind a window, on the one side of the house that blocked the wind. “You are soft.” He laughed, knowing that nothing could hear him over the wind. “You make some friends and you forget how to watch your back.”
He dug his claws into the windowpane, growling as he watched a morph he hadn’t been told about begin to make one of those little camp popcorns over the Charizard Morphs tail. He pressed harder into the wood, splintering it, as they all laughed. “I’ll have to get you alone then, that will be the easiest way. Maybe tonight, when they’re all asleep, I’ll kill you quick, quiet, and they’ll find you laying in a puddle of your own blood.”
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Thomas poked at the embers of the fire with a stick, causing tiny sparks to fly into the air. He was sitting on a log outside a tent, his sleeping bag was laying on the ground a couple of feet away. When they had arrived in Slateport he’d gone and bought and a sleeping bag for himself, the tent belonged to Ashley and Sam. They had walked along route one-hundred-ten for a while until Sam was tired and Ashley couldn’t carry her anymore, she wouldn’t let him touch her. He stiffened as he heard a rustle, this was a clearing that had been used by trainers often, the logs and fire pit made that obvious, but right now was the off season for travelers in Hoenn, right now Kanto and Johto were the hotspots. “Hello?”
Mewtwo watched Thomas, staring at the sparks he sent flying. He knew that if he was going to talk to him, he had to do it now. He took a deep breath and took a step forward, he winced as a branch brushed against him and the man in the clearing called out. Mewtwo carefully stepped out into the small clearing, and locked eyes on the man sitting there. “You know me.”
Thomas was barely able to spit out a “yes.” He stared in shock at the Pokemon that was standing in front of him, one that he’d thought he’d have to search for for months before he’d even get a trail.
“You were looking for me.” Mewtwo said, watching Thomas. He could feel what was going through his head right now, mostly shock, excitement, one that surprised him and Thomas was jealousy. Mewtwo walked over to a log across from the fire, and sat down. “So, camp counselor, creator of morphs, and son of the crazy guy that made me.”
Thomas blinked a couple of times, ran a hand through his graying hair, then laughed. “I’m not fit to counsel a Pichu. I was looking for you, looks like you found me.”
“Yes. I thought that it would be interesting for both of us, you know more about me than any other human, and you created the morphs in quite a similar way to how I was.” Mewtwo was still carefully keeping tabs on Thomas feelings, and found that slight pang of jealousy again.
“What do you want? Your blueprints? It’s not like they really exist anymore.” Thomas was slightly confused, and still couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that he was having a conversation with this Pokemon.
Mewtwo shook his head. “What I want, what a question. I don’t honestly know. You were the one looking for me.” He truly didn’t know anymore, he knew that there wasn’t anything that Thomas couldn’t tell him that he hadn’t seen in the quick scan of his thoughts and memories. His need to find and talk to the human in front of him suddenly seemed like an extremely useless and unnecessary waste of time.
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Star sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, staring out at the mass of white. He was in the room that had a couple of computers in it, they looked like the kind of old PCs that Pokécenters used to have, other than the computers there was a window, a few chairs, and that was it. He stood up off of the floor and walked out into the living room with a sigh, as long as he couldn’t sleep he could at least go talk to Bolt. He was awake in the room where they had found the food, he’d said that as long as he wasn’t going to sleep he would write a letter. Star yawned and walked over to the window that was over the kitchen sink, the only thing that separated the living room and kitchen was a table that they had dragged closer to the fire. He stretched his wings, then sighed. “I get to sleep in a house for once, and I don’t get an ounce of sleep.”
“Hey Star, me neither.” Rose said from her cot, she’d insisted on using it and staying in the living room by the fire. She was sitting on it, her elbows on her knees and her hands on either side of her face, he fingers strung through her hair.
“Hey, I was going to talk to Bolt, since he said he’d be awake. Why can’t you sleep?” He walked over and stood behind the cot, watching her. She was flicking her tail back and forth and staring at the fire.
“Bolt is the only one asleep, Cella came in here a minute ago growling about people and emotions, then she looked at me for a few seconds and stalked off. Bolt is asleep with four pieces of paper stuffed into an envelope, apparently writing puts him to sleep, or he’s just being irritating.” She sighed and removed her fingers from her hair. She turned and looked up at him.
“Mind if I sit down, since Bolt ditched reality and Cella doesn’t sound very sociable.” He motioned to the cot.
Rose nodded and moved over, letting her tail swing down, automatically turning it up so that it didn’t set the floor on fire. “Go ahead, it’s not like I’m sleeping on it.”
He sat down and sighed, staring into the dying embers. “So why can’t you sleep?”
“I think all of everything caught up with me, now that it’s had time to. My parents are dead Star, and I’ve killed people. I’ve been ripped away from my home, thrown into what is basically a prison, electrocuted for telling a joke, and escaped in a plane. I didn’t even know what a plane was, and I still don’t really have any clue. I’m inside a house. I hadn’t even seen a house before except once, and we flew over it, in the plane. When did the world get so freaking messed up?” She leaned against him, and just stared at the glowing embers. She wondered if he was okay with her there, and shut her eyes, just thinking about him.
Star instinctively wrapped an arm around her shoulders, just above her wings, and was surprised at how natural it was, then worried that she would be uncomfortable with it. He turned his head slightly to look at her, and she had her eyes closed. He ran his hand through her hair, then let it rest between her wings. “I don’t know, and it’s going to take a lot to fix it.”
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Sheridan watched from outside as Star wrapped his arm around the Charizard morph, keeping low so that he wouldn’t be noticed unless someone looked directly at him. He just glared with pure hate at this movement of affection, his wings went rigid and he began to ruin the siding by sinking his claws into it, dragging them through the white painted metal. He ground his teeth at him, this child who had taken everything from him.
“Fine, I’ll wait.” He growled, a new plan forming in his head. “I’ll wait, and then, then I will kill her, and you will watch. Then, I will hurt you, and leave you bleeding.” Sheridan smiled, removing his claws from the siding, and walking around the house. He moved into the woods just a few feet away, they were shelter enough from the wind. He pulled off his pack, it was small, he didn’t need much, and he unzipped it. Inside he found what he would need, it was small, but accurate. The black metal shone for a second, then disappeared back into the bag. “I will leave him bleeding.”