Life Goes On

Chapter 2
       Ash fell onto the sandy ground with a thunk that was drowned out by the whipping winds.  Near him, Misty, Brock, Gary and Sabrina lay, along with Clair, the dragon trainer, Falkner, the bird keeper, and Blaine, the riddle master.  The sand blew into Ash’s eyes as he struggled to wake them up without losing his hat or his Pikachu.  Wind screamed in his ears, blowing him off balance. 
       “Pikachu!!!!!  They aren’t waking up!!!!!  What now?!!!!”
       “Pika!!!!!”
       “Try to shock them awake!!!!!”
       “Pika?!!!!!”
       “I said, try to shock them awake!!!!!!!”
       “Pika!!!  PIKA-CHUUU!!!!!!”  After that, they woke up very quickly.
       Ash yelled at Brock.  “Brock!!!!!  What do we do now?!!!!”
       “We should go toward the mountains!!!!!!!!!”
       “What?!!!!!!!”
       “THE MOUNTAINS!!!!!!!”
       “How?!!!!!!”  Ash asked.  Brock shielded his face so he could think a little better.  He had an idea. 
       “Onix!!!! Come out!!!!!!”  He released his giant Rock Snake and gave him the orders.  “Dig under the sand!!!!!  Make a tunnel towards the mountains!!!!!”  The Onix hurriedly obeyed, seeing the obvious pain everyone was in.  Onix didn’t really understand those soft, water-loving little human things, but hey, he got good food from them, so the arrangement worked for him.  He forced his head into the sand and found a hard-packed layer underneath.  After ten minutes, he had dug his own length underground.  By then Ash and Brock had conveyed the message to the others that they were going by tunnel rather than over the desert.  The mountains were clearly visible if one squinted through the sandstorm, and it was the only thing that they could see other than endless desert, so it was a pretty good landmark for now.  After a half hour, everyone was within the tunnel, with Onix pressing on ahead.  They were all exhausted. 
       Ash reflected on the events of the day.  The day!  That whole thing had happened in barely forty-five minutes!  Yet it was now the middle of the night.  He remembered Lance announcing the start of the meeting, and then the Mossdeep Gym Leaders from Hoenn, Liza and Tate, had teleported into the hall and begun yelling about their dream.  “Everyone has to listen to us!”  Liza had begun.
       “Yes, it’s very important!”  Tate had continued.
       “We had a dream~”
       “More like a vision~”
       “That there is a bomb here!”
       “In this very room~”
       “Powerful enough to~”
       “Crush this whole building into dust!”
       “And everyone in it!”
       “Team Rocket is behind it!”
       “If you try to leave, they will~”
       “Hunt you down and kill you!”
       “There is only one safe place!”
       “We know where it is.”
       “They have no idea where it is.”
       “Which of your Pokemon~”
       “Knows the move Teleport?”
       “If they find out that you’re alive~”
       “After the bomb~”
       “They will make their takeover that much more horrible!”
       “The leader of Team Rocket, Giovanni, is dead!”
       “Cassidy has taken over.”
       “She has all of his power~”
       “And more!  You are not ready~”
       “To fight back!  The bomb will go off~”
       “In ten minutes!”
       “Decide what you will do.”  Liza had finished.  Lance had made another announcement telling everyone to pack everything that they had with them.  Bugsy had volunteered his PC space to all who wished to take a few more Pokemon with them.  Ash and Gary had called Oak to transfer some over to his laptop, and May and Steven called Professor Birch.  It was chaos as everyone tried to get everything they needed to get done finished before the explosion.  They hadn’t gotten much more information out of Liza and Tate about where they were going, and Sabrina was meditating quietly in a corner as Will gave Xatu a pep talk, more for his own benefit than for the unfrazzable Xatu.  At the one minute mark, Liza and Tate spoke with Will and Sabrina, the only others who had a Pokemon with Teleport.  They were a little worried, because neither Will nor Sabrina had been to said ‘safe haven’ before, making it almost impossible to Teleport there. 
       “You will have to trace our teleport,” Tate said.
       “It will be difficult,” added Liza.
       They organized the people into groups of eight, with four Teleporting Pokemon: Liza’s Lunatone, Tate’s Solrock, Will’s Xatu and Sabrina’s Alakazaam.  The groups were to all Teleport to the place they called Paluz, where they would ‘be safe from Team Rocket.’  It was supposedly extremely far away. 
       At the ten second mark, Ash was still talking on the phone, and Lt. Surge was getting panicked, along with everyone else.  If they were able to Teleport away, then what were they waiting for?  They all crouched on the ground, covering their heads, and when there was about half a second to go, Liza and Tate, followed by Will and Sabrina, gave the order.  Everyone in the room was spirited away to a far-flung place called Paluz.


       ‘We may be safe from Team Rocket,’ Ash thought, ‘but it doesn’t seem like the safe haven those twins were making it out to be.  And where is everyone else?’  After five hours of rock-crushing, with the group following closely behind, Onix had come to a hard rock in the way.  He tried to break it, and on the fifth try it cracked a little.  After a few more blows, it was nothing but gravel.  Behind Onix, Brock was taking care of the food problem.  He had, as always, a pretty large stash of necessities stored in his brand-new laptop.  Sleeping bags, food, toilet paper, extra water, toothpaste, a first aid kit, matches, you name it, he had it. 
       According to his watch, it was nearly midnight when Brock stopped Onix for the night and suggested that everyone release their Pokemon to get them acquainted with the new environment.  Falkner’s birds and Clair’s dragons didn’t seem thrilled to be underground, but the others were a little more accepting of it as they munched on their food.  Misty finished her sandwich in one large bite.  “Well what now?  I can’t exactly release my water Pokemon in here.  How will they get their food?”
       “I hadn’t thought of that, Misty.  When’s the last time they ate?  And which ones are you worried about?”
       “I have Togetic, Gyarados, Vaporeon, Golduck, Starmie and Seaking.  Gyarados and Seaking can’t live on land.  Oh yeah, and they all ate this morning.”
       “I don’t think you should have to worry about Gyarados.  Since he’s so big, he shouldn’t have to deal with any danger of starving.  Seaking is who I’d worry about.  Since there’s no water around here, we’ll have to rely on the fact that a Pokemon’s metabolism slows when in a Pokeball, meaning he’ll need less food.”
       “Well, how long do you think we’ll be underground?”
       “If I judged my distances right, the mountains were about fifty miles away.  Now if there’s a desert on this side of the mountains, I’m guessing that there’s a beach on the other side, or at least some other big body of water.  The desert is in the rain shadow, that is, the mountains block the rain clouds.  We need to get not only under the desert, but under the mountains as well.”

       Sabrina was sitting on her sleeping bag very quietly, without moving.  She had said earlier that she would try to contact the others to find out why they hadn’t teleported together, and to find out where they were.  <Will, Liza, Tate, can you hear me?> she called.  <Can you hear me?>  There was a faint reply. 
       <This is Will, who are you?> 
       <This is Sabrina.  I am with Brock, Falkner, Claire, Misty, Ash, Gary, and Blaine.  Who is with you?>
       <I’ve teleported with Lance, Chuck, Jasmine, Agatha, Koga, May and Whitney.  We’re in the middle of an ocean, but we can see land in the distance.  Do you know where the others are?  I can’t seem to find them.>
       <I’ll search.  Be ready for a response.>  Sabrina searched again carefully and found two familiar psychic energies, but they weren’t near each other.  There were also a few other unfamiliar ones, including a gigantic power.  She tried the closer familiar one.  <Hello?  This is Sabrina, who are you?>
       <Sabrina?  Liza isn’t here!  I’ve never been apart from her!  I can barely hear her!  There is a huge psychic energy around Paluz that fractured our teleport here.  Can you hear her?>
       <Tate?  Calm down.  Who do you have with you?>
       <Huh?  Oh.  Solrock teleported me, Bruno, Karen, Pryce, Phoebe, Norman, Janine, and Wattson.  What about you?>
       <Alakazam teleported our entire group safely, if not smoothly, straight into a desert.>
       <I’m on a snowy mountain.  Try to contact Liza now.  I can barely hear her, even though she’s yelling.>
       <I will.>  She shifted her attention toward the other energy.  <Hello?  Liza, is that you?>
       She answered, almost frantic.  <You talked to Tate, didn’t you?  He did sound okay, right?>
       <I talked to him, and he sounded fine.  He teleported with his whole group safely, and so did Will and I.  How’s your group?>
       <Our-my group is fine.  I have Steven, Erika, Bugsy, Morty, Roxanne, Flannery, and Lt. Surge with me.  We’re in the middle of a forest.  We—Tate and I—have been here before.  Maybe we can find our friend here.  She can help.  Oh, this is scary.  I’ve never been away from Tate in my life!  Are you absolutely sure he’s okay?>
       <Yes, he’s fine.  He’s on a mountain.  Work on finding that friend of yours and keep your group safe.  Until we meet again, anything could happen.>
       <Got it.  As soon as I find Joyah, I’m going to Glitter Gorge and finding Tate.>
       <Glitter Gorge?>
       <That’s the village in the mountains.  Joyah lives in Backwood, to the southeast in the forest.  Right now you’re in Desert Abyss, directly to the east of where Tate is.  But if you’re going underground, you probably won’t see him.  Just continue west like you’re going until you get past the mountains.  Come up and look for the village of Glenshore.>
       <All right.  How long do you think that will take?>
       <If you continue at that speed, I’d say that on day 8 or so, you should come up from under the ground, and continue west to the village.>
       <Fine.  I’ll see you later.>  Sabrina was slightly surprised.  It appeared that they were on another continent entirely.  It seemed odd that this continent could have stayed hidden for so long.  Oh, well, she’d ask the others about it later.  She contacted Will and Tate and told them that everyone was accounted for.  Then she recalled Alakazam and went to sleep.

A/N:  Thank you for reviewing, you know who you are!  To anyone who hasn’t yet, I’d like to hear from you!