***
A quite discombobulated Blaine sat down in a desk in what he presumed were Ash's quarters with apparent wonder. Ash could have turned on the lights, but he didn't. All he did for Blaine to see was shine a flashlight on the desk. On the desk there was a pad of paper, 3 pokéballs, and a silenced pistol, all of which Blaine presumed were the property of Ash, so Blaine didn't touch any of them. The 3 pokéballs made Blaine remember when his own fire and rock types abandoned him to serve Mewtwo. Ash sat down on the chair with dignified calmness.
Ash had told Blaine about everything that had happened to him, from the time that IR or Mewtwo had made him somehow pass out, to the time that Ash woke up in the base to discover just what happened to him. Blaine was explaining his story to Ash. It was very hard for Ash to believe but for some reason Ash trusted him nonetheless. All Ash really could believe from Blaine's story was that the League were after him because his former rival made him look bad.
Ash picked up his three pokéballs. "Blaine, these are my last pokémon. I have not used any of them in about 15 years, but in a pokéball a moment and a millenium seem the same to them. They are Snorlax, Muk and Golem, all very powerful. I don't know why, of all people, I chose you, Blaine, to own them, but I already told them all to trust you as their new trainer. Perhaps it's because you are the only gym leader or former gym leader here... Take them before I change my mind."
Ash gave Blaine his pokéballs, leaving Blaine wondering about the attacks of Ash's pokémon because none of them were fire type, but he knew some rock and ground attacks so he could control Golem easily enough.
"What attacks do Snorlax and Muk know?"
"Muk will do minimize, poison gas and sludge. Snorlax will do double-edge, hyper beam and rest."
Blaine nodded and accepted the three pokéballs, letting them fall into the palm of his hand. Ash shined his flashlight to the left of him, where there was a door.
"This place is the closet," Ash stated, "you can hide there and sleep until dawn."
Ash picked up his pistol and waited for Blaine to open the door and close it behind him. Blaine was in the closet, and there was where he would stay until the morning. Blaine could hear Ash's quiet patter of feet as he unexpectedly left.
***
~28/37 year old Ash Ketchum walked up the wide hallway with his flashlight, face intent on something nobody but him could understand, carrying his silenced pistol in his other hand. At night the cool air seemed to cancel out the usual dusty smell of the area, Ash noted, as he himself had never walked around much of the base before. Finally the hallway came to an end when Ash shined his flashlight at a wooden door with a visible metal padlock holding it. Ash knew what to do perfectly well now, as he shut his left eye closed, staring one-eyed at the lock. Carefully, Ash aimed his pistol at it, holding his right arm with his left hand.
Bing!
Nobody else but Ash heard the silenced pistol fire. The padlock clattered to the ground as its hinges were interfered with a bullethole. Ash opened the metal door now that it was unlocked, swinging it behind him to reveal a small airlock-like space. Ash's flashlight uncovered a gray metal door, 'conducting' the cold outside it. Ash put on his padded jacket's hood and looked around for a trigger mechanism to open the door.
Looking to the left of the door... Nothing here. Looking to the right... Ah! Ash found what he wanted. A black pad, most likely a fingerprint scanner. Ash touched it, and was surprised at how cold it felt when a green light shone, scanning his fingers.
The metal door opened (it would allow access to Ash Ketchum, as it would anybody registered as a community member of base B8), to reveal a wall of snow blocking the door. So, Ash mused, it's snowing today, but that doesn't matter now... Ash ducked down, backing a few steps and leaped in the air, bashing through the snow with his head.
Ash emerged in the outside area, gliding past the snow wall to a cold, dark outdoors. Ash landed in the snow without falling any distance whatsoever, crashing into the cold head-first. The cold stinging his eyes to the point of nearly losing his vision, Ash staggered up to see a snowstorm. Snow was everywhere, in the air, on the ground, on his face, irritating his skin, cooling the weather to a strong windchill and little flecks of the burning cold were going everywhere.
Squinting, Ash could find no horizon, just falling snow and darkness. It's time, Ash thought, bringing up his pistol. Swallowing hard, Ash closed his eyes as he aimed the barrel of the weapon to his temple. And so the saga concludes, Ash thought, with Ash dying of mysterious speedy old age right after battling Mewtwo. Call it "unnatural causes". The end.
Blood merged in with the snow as the bullet had made its passage through Ash's head. His lifeless corpse fell down on its own weight, still holding his gun as blood splattered into the snow from one end of the bullet's passage and spraying into his weapon's smoking barrel through the other end.
League Main Base-about 7:00
However, suicide wasn't that simple. What Ash didn't know when he killed himself was that at that point the League had floating cameras monitoring the area on different areas of the Indigo plateau, looking for Blaine. One camera was fixed at that one particular spot, where he sight of a man coming out into the cold and commiting suicide was a tad startling to the league, to say the least.
Shock Lt. Lily of the League looked at the projection with apparent surprise, staring at the screen she was looking at with everyone else in the large room that she was working not twitching, not moving a muscle as they were deep in concentration at what they were seeing through their floating camera's monitors. The man did not look like Blaine to Lily, so they had stumbled upon what they found in complete coincidence.
"I never heard of something like that!" Lily blurted out, breaking the silence, voice echoing throughout the room. Several people stood up from their screens and looked at Lily and her monitor with surprise, but they were too late to see the most intresting part: the door opening and closing as the man came and shot himself. Lily got up from where she sat and ran off to her boss.
Minutes later
Lily was sitting in a chair on the side of the table opposite to where her boss, Cdr. Koga, questioned her in his office about what had happened right there.
"A door, are you sure?"
"Yes, quite sure, there was a door, and the man seemed to have burst through a wall of snow, too. Do you want me to get the camera's recorder tape? I'm sure it's here somewhere..."
"Here it is," Koga confirmed, suddenly bringing a tape up to the desk. Koga laughed heartily. It was the first laugh she had ever heard from Koga. "Yes, I have seen it. Just testing your endurance. Yes, that place is unknown to us, and may have some suspicious activity. You can go now, we'll see if we can get you there later with some troops."
Lily got up and walked out of the office, dumbfounded by how Koga suddenly brought out the tape.
Outside the Community base-about 7:15
Lily of the League Shock team seemed immune to the cold in her heavy padded suit and glistening red riot gear, making her look like she was evading chemical weapons (but that wouldn't be right, as it had air holes), as was the same to all of the other junior Shock troopers, holding their machine-guns with intent. Lily was constantly reciting in her head her instructions from Shock Cdr. Koga, "plant a bomb under the ground, right under the place the door leads to." The bomb was huge, held by her next in-command, Hairnes.
((|\/\/~Here's the bomb\/\/|)) Hairnes radioed Lily, handing Lily the bomb in the snowstorm.
Lily held the bomb up, quivering under its weight. It was a 'sufficent' amount of TNT, Lily noted. In other words, there was about 85Kg of the stuff, enough to blow through a thick concrete wall from a fair way under it.
((|\/\/~It will be set to 30 minutes when armed, I hear\/\/|)) Hairnes continued, picking his machine gun back up and also holding up Lily's to let her carry the explosive around.
Someone appeared from behind Hairnes, but Hairnes seemed to be expecting him, and indeed he was in padded clothing and in riot gear like the rest, armed with a light machine gun and carrying a shovel. A few people like him came from behind him with shovels as well.
((|\/\/~Where shall we dig?\/\/)) The first man that had appeared with the shovel asked Lily. Lily backed off a little to the edge of the plateau, where she stomped on the snow once.
((|\/\/~We'll dig right here. Just 10m under, then I'll shove the bomb into the ground. I'll then send out an Abra which will teleport us all back into the surface\/\/|))
Lily's instructions were heard loud and clear by the men, who started digging into the ground as Lily was in the center of it, moving as the men dug where she was about to stand, and the area where she was waiting got steadily lower in altitude. Hairnes waited above.
Meanwhile, at about 7:30...
((|\/\/~That's it. We made 10m, now I'll shove the bomb in and we'll all teleport just outside this hole so we can get inside\/\/|)) Lily confirmed, placing the bomb into the area in front of her, followed by her pressing a button on the bomb, arming it.
The clock ticked away. "Abra, go." Lily's command was only heard by her Abra in the snowstorm, and indeed, a cozy, padded Abra came out of the pokéball. Everyone stayed close to the Abra, and just then he didn't need a command to teleport.
Community post B8 under Indigo Plateau-about 8:00
Now everyone was awake in the comunity base. Nobody knew why a sudden blast of cold wind was in, which had woken many people up, but they had dismissed it as nothing serious. Many people were eating in the large mess hall, recieving canned foods and drinks, talking to eachother in the tables they were sitting in, sometimes of days gone by, of fresh food not in tins and sometimes of good-looking people.
Typical conversation echoed throughout, except in the case of 3 people: 30 year-old Misty, 35 year-old James and 79 year-old Dr. Westwood V, talking about Ash's condition.
Dr. Westwood was shaking his head. "I'm dumbfounded. Ash is definitely dying, but I don't think there's anything we can do."
James asked, "where did Mary find Ash?"
"Right outside his room. He woke up and we seen him, that's all we can say."
Misty held her head in disbelief. "Let me get this straight: Ash confronts Mewtwo and hours later, he wakes up here."
The expression of Dr. Westwood didn't change. "That is correct as far as I'm concerned," he replied, "I can't find a better explanation."
29 year-old Samurai walked by where Misty, James and Dr. Westwood were eating, rubbing his belly after a reasonable meal, when he was stopped by Dr. Westwood, halted with the force of Westwood's hands at the collar of his shirt. Misty didn't know why Dr. Westwood had halted Samurai, but he had answered that when he asked Samurai, "I have a request for you..."
Dr. Westwood held the collar of Samurai, who was looking quizzical as Westwood brought out a blue tray from under the chair that he was sitting on. The tray contained plenty of cream containers, capsules and hypodermic needles.
"...Be a good officer and take these to Ash, won't you?"
Samurai nodded, discombobulated but somehow sure of what to do, walking off and holding the tray in his arms.
***
Samurai quietly walked down the hallway with the tray in his arms, wondering about what happened to Ash Ketchum. There were several rumors, some that he has a terminal illness, some that he was already dead, and some that say that nothing really happened to Ash and that someone had started it up as a cruel joke. Samurai opened the door to Ash's quarters, bringing in the tray and seeing what had happened to Ash for himself.
"Ash?" Samurai put down the tray and walked around the room.
"Ash."
"ASH!" But nothing happened, nothing stirred.
Samurai started looking, walking around and looking around Ash's quarters. Samurai thought to himself, would it be... Under his bed? No. In a cupboard? No. In the closet?
***
Blaine had been awake for a long time, but he felt a bit scared to come out at that point in time. He cautiously waited for something to happen when he heard someone open the door to the closet. It was Samurai of the community, not Ash like Blaine expected. Samurai was very surprised to see someone with a league shirt, but he still accomplished the gut reaction of taking out his pistol and aiming it at the person's head.
"Well, well, who do we have here?" Samurai asked, closing his left eye and perfecting the aim.
***
Misty and James looked quite quizzical and confused after Dr. Westwood had sent Samurai out.
"What were those things?" James asked, "I mean, on the tray."
Dr. Westwood leaned back on his chair. "Ah, those are Ash's new perscription hormones. Supresses the aging process somewhat with the hormones draining back the years. Scientifically proven, you know!"
And suddenly, Misty, James, Dr. Westwood and everyone else in the mess hall were interrupted when a huge explosion ripped one of the walls of the mess hall apart.
***
Lily and Hairnes watched a bit of the hidden wall explode, spraying pieces of concrete all over the snow which lain on the ground. They brought out their machine-guns with apparent expectation as the concrete gray wall crumbled apart and the mountain's dirt flew all over the place.
Several troopers were right behind them, guns at the ready, while the riot gear's hard glass shields which they held in front of them were glistening in the light of the explosion. None of the people right outside with the riot gear were recognisable because of their helmets covering their faces.
((|\/\/~Right\/\/|)) Lily confirmed, ((|\/\/~let's see just what's here...\/\/|))
Wait for Ch.3! Sorry about the climax:P