Lisa the Legend: Chapter 82 - Last Night on Earth now up! (24th June 2013)

[Karania]

I'd have to agree with mr_pikachu as well with the fact mainly being that when the story began all aspects of the story were at best a complete mystery until the gist of the story began to work itself out over the course of many chapters, and I must say that I've enjoyed reading it greatly. This is the treat I look to to give me a boost when I can't do anything else, so keep up the good work!

[Gavin Luper]

I have an exam tomorrow.

mr_pikachu: Thank you. Lol - that's all I can really say, because you made sense of everything I was worried about: that this wasn't good enough anymore, that it had lost it's essence ... but, well, everything you said was awesome. Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MTR: Good Lord, I thought you had evaporated! Hehehe ... thanks for replying. And thanks for the compliments/feedback.

Karania: Ditto.

Thanks guys, I knew it was stupid to be asking you guys stuff like that, but what you've said has pretty much been enough stimulus to motivate me again with this entire fic.

THANK YOU.

Cheers!

- Gavin.

[Chris 2.1]

Whoa I'm here.

I saw Ch54 but for some reason told myself I'd read it. But I hadn't.

Whoa. I'm losing it.

Anyway great chapter Gavin. One reason it really worked was because you kept the writing ability as sharp as ever throughout the chapter. Sometimes I've seen the content completely collapse during a chapter which is based purely on information. But the consistency was excellent.

You also managed to keep it interesting, which is a difficult feat considering so much is new information. I (and I think everyone else) managed to digest all the facts well.

Oak's story was interesting, and everything folding together is starting to excite me. Excellent work, once again!

[Gavin Luper]

Chris 2.0: Hi again. Great to see you back ... after you have tripped out ^^. Thanks for reading this anyway. It's good that you still liked the chapter despite all the content ... that's what I was worried about, that it would collapse because there was so much in it ... but it must have worked out all right.

Mwahaha ... yes, everything is coming to plan! Next few chapters should be fun ... next book will be even better.

Oh, and history exam just finished an hour ago - and it was poo, pretty much. Now - English study!

Cheers!

[Chris 2.1]

Gaaah History's a gash subject anyway.

Gash = crap/pointless/rubbish etc.

English? Now there's something we can all enjoy (Shows off his marks for GCSE English: A* Language, A Literature)

[Karania]

I for one am really interested as to how exactly Lance ties in to the story as far as the Union is involved. My guess is that since he was a member of the G-Men in the cartoon series that might have something to do with it at least in some way. But I don't really know what exactly is going to happen, except that you're killing me since I can hardly wait to see what's going to happen since I really like Lance. So please don't make me die of anticipation, and while I know that you have a lot going on, I can't help but be anxious. Looking forward to an update! See ya around.

[Gavin Luper]

Chris: Agreed completely! Had English this morning, which is my strong point ... I reckon it went really well, which is always a good sign.

Karania: Ah, Lance's involvement, you ask? Not telling, of course! But don't die of anticipation, all will be revealed ... well ... not for AGES yet ... but a little bit will be revealed at the end of this book, at least.

Cheers!

[Karania]

Oh goody, can hardly wait.... If I sound sarcastic its because I'm sick with a cold I can't for the life of me seem to shake off.... Loking forward to seeing how Lance ties in to all this. It looks interesting so far. See ya round!

[Gavin Luper]

Hey everyone!

Well, I am officially back now! I've returned after Leavers (which was awesome) and I'm ready to begin writing Lisa the Legend once more. Chapter 55 is looking good already, it should be quite an exciting installment for everyone!

Back to writing ...

Cheers!

- Gavin.

[Gavin Luper]

Hey everyone!

As usual, I just sat down today and finished the chapter ... go figure. Anyway, here it is, only a couple of months wait this time ... I'm getting better!

I enjoyed writing this chapter. I really like this one, something about it just works, and it feels good.

Cheers!

-----------------------------------------------------

Chapter 55 – The Deceiver.


Lisa awoke to the muffled sound of somebody crying. She didn’t realise at first what the noise was; she emerged from her sleep slowly, her mind woolly. Before she could open her tired eyes, the sound caught her ears, jagged them almost. It was a jerky, wet kind of a cry: a helpless, desperate, exhausted sob that struck a chord within Lisa herself. She could almost feel what the person was feeling. Surrounded by the unwelcoming darkness of the cave, she propped herself up on her elbow. Her first thought had been Professor Oak, but slowly she realised the sobbing was coming from someone much younger, someone deceptively vulnerable, someone who had been through more than she could even begin to comprehend.

“ Gavin?”

The pitiful sobs stopped suddenly, catching in the throat of their owner. He coughed. Silence reigned for just a moment. “ Lisa. You’re awake.” His voice was unnaturally deep and raw.

Torn, Lisa didn’t even bother asking if he was okay; she began to grope along the rock floor of the cave in the direction of Gavin’s voice, until finally her hand found what felt like his knee. There was a sudden, sharp intake of breath from Gavin. He said nothing. Lisa searched for the right thing to say, the right balance of openness and restraint, but she couldn’t strike it. Instead, she said, “ You’re scared the Union are going to torture you again, aren’t you?”

Gavin’s leg seemed to contort violently. “ How did you know?” he said rigidly, and, without waiting to hear Lisa’s response, he collapsed on top of her, his head finding her shoulder as he shook with tears.

Alarmed, Lisa let him hug her; she had never felt more unlike herself, more strange, than she did now, but she knew she had to be there for him. So she stayed there for what seemed like ten minutes, as Gavin – strong, funny, sarcastic, good-natured Gavin – sobbed unrestrainedly on her shoulder. She patted his back weakly and told him it was okay, until eventually he stopped crying and just stayed there, hanging onto her as if for life itself.

Abruptly he said, “ Don’t tell anyone. Please don’t tell anyone.”

Lisa couldn’t even begin to think who she was ever going to tell that Gavin had been brutally tortured at the hands of a subversive organisation, but she complied. “ I won’t say a word.”

He finally pulled away from her. “ How did you find out?” he asked, wiping his tears from Lisa’s arms; his voice had returned to normal now.

“ Believe it or not,” Lisa said. “ I had a dream. Last night. And I saw it happen … I don’t know how I knew but I knew that it was real. They beat you. They gave you that scar …”

Gavin made a noise that was somewhere between a choke and a laugh. “ And you know, no matter how much vitamin E cream I use, it won’t go away!”

They both chuckled. Lisa bordered on asking Gavin whether he would like to talk about it or not, but she stopped herself: although they had said precious little, it felt like everything had been dealt with adequately.

She shifted away from Gavin slightly so that they were no longer touching and pressed the green button on her pokégear. It lit the cave up very slightly as Lisa checked the time: it was eleven-thirty p.m.

“ We should have used that to light the cave up before, …” said Gavin, still sniffling slightly. “ What’s the time?”

“ Half past eleven,” said Lisa. “ Do you think that Derek and the police lost the battle that was happening? Nobody’s come to get us yet and it’s been a couple of hours.”

Gavin was silent in thought. “ I dunno … we’re still safe here, aren’t we, so who knows … maybe someone’s still coming?”

“ I hope so,” said Lisa softly, “ I don’t like the idea of fighting the Union off by ourselves.”

Gavin chuckled weakly again. “ I know this sounds really naïve, but do you reckon we could keep the Union off? I mean, if we really had to … and if there weren’t too many of them. I’ve thought about that kind of scenario a lot since … well … they got me. What d’you reckon?”

Lisa paused. “ Well, me and Marina didn’t do too great when they attacked my house … although me and Jessica kind of held our own in Valeo … although there was fog everywhere … and that time we set their jeep on fire was pretty cool … but they couldn’t see us then either. You know, in all seriousness, I think we could fight them off if we had to …” She chuckled softly. “ Just as long as they don’t know we’re there.”

There was a silence and Lisa sensed Gavin was about to respond, but before he could, there was a sudden noise from outside the cave. Lisa felt herself tense up immediately. There were people walking around outside, thrashing through the underbrush without a care as to the noise they were making. They were yelling to one another, too.

“ Take them to safety, I’ll handle the rest if anything else should happen!” cried one male voice.

“ You have to let that go!” demanded a female. “ The Second Key clearly isn’t here. Joseph said he’d been misinformed. There’s a mole in the group!”

Lisa’s tiredness didn’t prevent her from recognising the name of the Union’s Leader, Joseph Sterling.

“ I’m no idiot!” roared the other voice; the two people were painfully close to the cave now; as far as Lisa could tell, they were mere metres away from the entrance, still thrashing through the foliage as they charged onwards. “ Something doesn’t add up about all this …”

What it was exactly that didn’t add up, Lisa didn’t find out; the voice halted and the sound of the people continued as they passed by the cave; eventually, even the sound of their movement faded into the night.

A few minutes later, Gavin breathed, “ Union agents.”

“ Yeah,” Lisa muttered. The prospect of the two of them having to fight the Union was becoming more or a reality now.

They stayed silent for a minute or two more, too afraid to go on speaking, when they detected noise outside once again. This time, however, the approaching person was much more discreet about their movements; it was not until they were a couple of metres away from the cave entrance that Lisa heard a very quiet footstep. She sat in silence, holding her breath.

“ Lisa, Gavin, are you in there?” called a confident man’s voice; he sounded amicable.

Feeling it would be useless to pretend, Lisa cried, “ Yes, we’re all here. Who are you?”

“ None of your business,” came the reply, only half-jokingly; however, this time there was something in the man’s tone that reminded Lisa of somebody she had met once, though she could not think who.

“ I’m here to protect you from the Union,” the man called down the tunnel. “ I’m your way out of here.”

Nothing had ever sounded so inviting to Lisa in all her life. “ We’ll be out there in a moment,” she said fervently. The possibility of escaping all of this seemed like a dream come true. “ Gavin, can you help me with Professor Oak?”

In a matter of minutes, they had woken up the frail professor and led him through the tunnel, Gavin first, followed by Oak, with Lisa bringing up the rear. It was a tight squeeze, as before, but this time it seemed to be a much easier journey, perhaps because they were headed for escape rather than entrapment.

“ Quickly, now,” urged the man who had come to pick them up as Lisa finally emerged from the opening of the tunnel. In the couple of hours that they had been in there, the moon had risen higher, so that it now shone very weakly through a break in the canopy of the forest, shedding very limited light on the clearing. It was still impossible to see very far, but the moonlight was sufficient for them to see silhouettes and shadows, which were enough for them to negotiate their way around without stumbling into obstacles.

“ Where are we going?” Gavin asked, putting his arm around Professor Oak’s shoulder to support him.

“ To a rendezvous point,” said the man. “ But we must all be careful, because the Union agents are everywhere now.”

“ And whom, then,” chimed Professor Oak, “ do you represent, if you are opposing the Union?”

The man who had come to pick them up was quiet for a moment. “ This is not the time to be giving away details like that,” he said, after a moment’s indecision. “ Not when so much is at stake. Follow me now.” He fumbled with something at his belt, before holding up a dark orb against the frail light of the moon and pulling it open. White light exploded from the pokéball. A dark shape appeared, hovering in the air.

“ My Haunter will lead the way,” said the man. “ Come now.”

With that, he began to stride through the underbrush, following the floating shape of his ghost-type pokémon. Lisa stared after him for just a moment: this was all happening so fast; after hours of waiting, they were suddenly being led away from safety by someone who definitely seemed to be on their side, but was he really protecting them by plunging them into a forest filled with Union agents?

Gavin seemed to have picked up on the vibe too. He had regained composure from his breakdown earlier and was now taking charge once again. When Lisa offered her arm to help support Professor Oak, Gavin shot her down at once.

“ I think one of us should have free hands,” he whispered seriously. “ Just in case this guy isn’t who he says he is.”

Lisa glanced ahead at their saviour, whose outline was charging upwards to the path that Lisa, Gavin and Derek had travelled earlier. “ Fair enough,” she said, checking that all three pokéballs were at the ready before she continued onwards.

It took them ten minutes to reach the trail. Finally, the full glow of the moonlight was on them and they were able to see clearly once again. Lisa’s eyes fell on the bare face of their rescuer: sharp eyes, jagged, wild hair, thin lips. The double realisation crashed down on her like a tonne of bricks. This man was her informant, the man who had kidnapped her from the Fairfax Inn last night and warned her about the Union. But she had not seen his face last night … and now she could.

“ Morty!” she cried in utter astonishment.

The Ecruteak Gym Leader, Tom’s boss, paused in the cerulean-tinged moonlight. An unmistakeable expression of anger crossed his face.

“ Not so loud, Lisa,” he said acidly. “ Follow me now.”

Morty trudged further upwards without another word, leaving Lisa, Gavin and the Professor to their bewilderment.

*********

Perched atop the highest spire of the famed Tin Tower, the great Phoenix stirred in its sleep. It shifted its golden wings to a more comfortable position, but nothing seemed to help its state of anxiety. The Phoenix was not foolish: it could sense impending danger a thousand miles away. Although the creature, dubbed ‘Ho-oh’ by humans, had scarcely ventured down to the world of humans for months now, it knew something terrible was coming. Its intuition told it something was approaching. For nearly a year now, the feeling had been there, and growing stronger all the while: someone knows … someone is coming after it … Danger was everywhere, building all the time.

The Phoenix opened its deep, crystalline eyes and stared at the star-studded sky. Oh yes, something was happening … something was happening tonight.

Regal and pure, the Phoenix rose from its nest and soared away into the night.

*********

Lance, Grand Champion of the Elite Four, and Morty, esteemed Gym Leader of Ecruteak City …

Lisa’s mind churned like a washing machine. There was too much to take in, too much to even begin to comprehend. What had once been ‘quite involved’ had now become immensely complicated, so much so that she no longer had a clue what on Earth was happening. What was the Union doing? How did Lance and Morty come into all this?

Just focus on getting out of here alive, she told herself. Worry about everything else later …

Morty had now led them a fair distance up the mountain. Lisa had remained a few steps behind Gavin and the Professor the entire time, in order to be able to protect them if she needed to, but as they progressed, she discovered she had gradually overtaken them. They were now a few steps behind her.

Abruptly, and apparently in the middle of nowhere, Morty stopped. The rest of them followed suit.

“ What is it?” Lisa called gingerly.

“ This is where we wait to meet the others,” Morty explained. He glanced around the edges of the trail for a few seconds, apparently checking to make sure they were truly alone, before turning to the three of them. “ Sorry for being blunt with you earlier. I just wanted to ensure we were here on time – and we are. Lisa, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you who I was the other night, but there was no place for that kind of admission.”

“ That’s OK,” said Lisa honestly; she was feeling safer now, knowing that the man who had informed her of the Union and was currently protecting them from the Union was a Gym Leader – trustworthy and dependable.

“ I can’t fill you in right now,” Morty said, brushing some flyaway hair out of his eyes. “ All you need to know is, there is a team of us opposing every step the Union makes. We’re here to help.” He paused. “ It will be explained to you later.”

“ Thanks,” said Gavin uselessly.

“ We probably couldn’t handle an explanation at the moment, to be honest,” said Lisa frankly. “ We’ve learned so much tonight and I don’t think we can make sense of any of it.” She sighed heavily. “ I want to ask one thing though, how does Lance come into all this?”

It was the briefest of all things – fleeting and momentary – but Lisa noticed it. The moment she mentioned the word Lance, Morty’s ears pricked up, his eyes glowed suddenly, the corner of his mouth twitched slightly. Then his brow furrowed and his eyes narrowed: he was confused. It was as if he had never heard of Lance’s involvement before.

But he said simply, “ Not now. Just wait now.”

It wasn’t anything huge, but something told Lisa that this didn’t add up. Morty had looked confused when Lance was mentioned – as if he didn’t know Lance was a part of all this. But Derek had made it quite clear that Lance was somehow involved in opposing the Union … and surely, if Morty was on that team, he would know Lance was also?

But he hadn’t seemed to. He didn’t seem to have a clue.

Lisa wanted to whisper to Gavin, to discuss her suspicions, but Morty was only a couple of metres from them in the clearing, watching them. Lisa began to feel uneasy under his gaze. The hope and warmth that had come from knowing who he was had all but dissipated now, leaving an icy sensation in the pit of Lisa’s stomach.

The silence of the night was now more chilling than calming. Lisa shivered. A lone Noctowl hooted suddenly and flapped its wings wildly as it rose into the sky, causing everyone except Morty and his Haunter to jump with fright.

Finally, after what seemed like an hour standing in the cold air, there were footsteps from above. Lisa jerked her head upwards to see three dark figures, wearing civilian clothes, trudging down the track to meet the four of them.

“ About time,” said Morty, apparently to himself.

As the dark figures came closer, Lisa looked hard at their faces. She didn’t know what she was expected – perhaps an army of well-known Gym Leaders from across the country – but what she discovered shocked her – and disturbed her – far more.

The first person was a brown-haired woman Lisa didn’t know. The second was a bald man with bushy eyebrows that were visible even from that distance. When Lisa’s eyes fell on the third person, however, her heart skipped a beat. He had long black hair that was slicked back in a ponytail. His features were Mediterranean-like, almost Hispanic. He had a black moustache and his eyes were black. The only thing that Lisa recognised about him, though, were his teeth: they were unruly, all of them somewhat yellow and at strange angles.

They had met before.

He was the Union agent who had stolen her Electabuzz in Port Valeo a week ago.

Lisa felt the adrenaline pulse through her. She unwillingly broke out in a cold sweat. She wanted to believe anything else, anything at all, but there was no other possibility: these people were Union agents. They were not here to protect them. They were here to capture them.

Morty’s tricked us … Morty’s tricked us … Lisa panicked. She plunged both her hands into her pockets and felt the left one close over the Buzzball, the other hand grasping a pokéball. She remained frozen, hoping that she somehow looked casual.

Meanwhile, Morty was greeting the three newcomers. “ Is everything prepared?” he asked them.

The woman nodded. “ We’re ready,” she replied efficiently. She caught Lisa’s eye. “ Hello, Lisa,” she said amicably, but Lisa wasn’t taken in; she smiled falsely and held her tongue.

“ Lisa, Gavin, Professor …” Morty said. “ Meet Celice, Roger and Anthony.”

Gavin and the professor greeted them all vocally and quite warmly; Lisa smiled weakly but said nothing. When Anthony, the Hispanic man she had seen before, made eye contact, she tried her hardest to act as though she had never seen him before, as though she did not remember him. It must have worked, because his eyes did not linger on her, and he instead spoke: “ Well, come with us then, we will have you out of here in no time.” His voice was heavily accented but very smooth. Had Lisa not known him, she would have been utterly convinced that he was there to help.

Gavin immediately began to shuffle forwards with the Professor. Lisa hesitated. For a moment, her feet were rooted to the ground, her hands immobile. She could not move an inch. Gavin took another step. Anthony and Celice moved in closer to help him, their arms outstretched.

Once they’ve got us … we’ve got no chance.

“ ELECTRIFY!”

Lisa was sure she had never yelled so loud in her entire life. Everyone on the track froze in surprise as she screamed and a bolt of blue electricity burst wildly from her left pocket, streaming through the air and striking Celice, the nearest of the Union agents; she screamed and fell to the ground as blue energy coursed through her body, leaving her twitching uselessly on the dirt.

“ What are you doing Lisa?!” bellowed Gavin, amongst the cries of the Union agents and Celice’s choking screams.

Lisa didn’t listen; she had already launched the pokéball into the air and was hunting wildly for a second one. Morty, Roger and Anthony were completely taken aback, glancing at first Celice and then each other: it seemed that, of all the possibilities they had expected, Lisa fighting back wasn’t one of them.

Vulpix emerged from the pokéball and growled viciously at Celice’s twisting body. Lisa threw out her other two pokéballs before grabbing once again for the Buzzball. Glancing down, she saw that the streamer of electricity had burnt a hole through her jeans, though that was the least of her problems. The Union agents were responding now: Morty was yelling at Haunter to attack and the other two men were fumbling with weapons and pokéballs.

“ Fire Blade, Vulpix!” Lisa cried.

“ Haunter, Shadow Ball!” commanded Morty.

There was a blast of light from Lisa’s left but she didn’t register; after yelling “ INFLATE!” at the Buzzball in her left hand (to protect herself), she ordered Fiskmire and Aipom to take down Roger and Anthony. Meanwhile, Vulpix and Haunter were facing off viciously: the violet ghost growled and launched a sphere of melanine energy at Vulpix, who dodged the ball of energy skilfully and roared louder than Lisa had ever heard him.

“ Fire again!” Morty yelled.

Haunter shot out another orb of black energy, which curved wildly in the air; Vulpix dodged it once again but the ball kept going, smashing into Fiskmire, who was in the process of aiming a Bubblebeam at Roger’s Weezing. Fiskmire was sent sprawling to the ground and the Bubblebeam missed completely, soaring off into the darkness of the foliage.

Lisa spun back to her own battle; over the noise of the fighting, she heard Vulpix give a determined cry of “ Pix!” before inhaling deeply and breathing out a thin ribbon of vermilion flames. The ribbon of fire snaked out of the vulpine pokémons mouth, swirling towards Haunter’s hovering form. The purple spectre tried to move from side to side to avoid the crushing attack, but it was to no avail; the thin blade of fire reared backwards for a second, gathering momentum, before smashing against Haunter’s torso. The ghost went spinning to the ground, which it hit with a loud crack.

“ Vul!” cried Vulpix triumphantly. The fire evaporated, leaving Haunter on the ground, battered and bruised, a black mark across its face.

“ Great, Vulpix, now headbutt!” Lisa cried.

Vulpix put his head down and ran at Haunter, building up speed and energy all the way, until he reached Haunter’s side and charged. Lisa waited for the moment of impact – but it never came; Vulpix ran onwards, straight through Haunter’s body and through the other side, leaving Haunter completely unaffected and Vulpix very confused.

“ I thought you were clever, Lisa!” jeered Morty. “ Normal type moves on a ghost, really!”

Lisa felt her face go red, with embarrassment as much as fury and exhilaration. “ Vulpix, recover from that and try to Ember!”

“ Haunter, Night Shade!” cried Morty.

Lisa was dimly aware of Gavin and Professor Oak yelling, as well as Roger and Anthony as they battled. She watched Vulpix and Haunter intently. Her crimson fox was shooting a spray of sparks at Haunter, but the ghost was dodging most of them. Abruptly, the ghost opened its mouth, and a wave of blackness poured out like a blanket unfurling. Lisa was about to order Vulpix to use Agility, but before she could, there was a blinding bolt of green light and she was knocked off her feet. She opened her eyes to find herself on the ground. Stunned and confused, she pulled herself up to see Morty with a Stunner in his hand, grinning vindictively.

“ How dare you!” Lisa shouted at him, brushing the dirt off her and standing up again; apart from the fall, the bolt of energy had delivered no pain, just knocked her over. “ That’s underhanded!”

“ What are you going to do about it?” sneered Morty. “ If I were you, I’d be more worried about your Vulpix, myself.”

Lisa wheeled around to see Haunter mercilessly pounding Vulpix with waves and waves of Dark energy – a continuous Night Shade. Vulpix was wincing, crumpled up on the ground as the energy slammed into him; he was helpless.

“ Why you –” Lisa grabbed for another pokémon, but she suddenly realised they were all out fighting already. Helpless, she thought of the Buzzball, but out of nowhere, a beam of lilac light speared the air, colliding with Haunter and sending him flying into the ground. The Night Shade stopped, revealing a severely damaged Vulpix.

Lisa spun on her heel to see Gavin standing nearby, fighting off Anthony’s Vaporeon with Skarmory. Girafury stood beside them, the node on its head still glowing after firing off a psybeam at Haunter.

“ Gavin – Girafury – thanks,” Lisa muttered, before turning back to face Morty.

The Ghost Gym Leader scowled at her; Haunter had fainted. He altered the setting on his Stunner and pulled the trigger, but this time Lisa was prepared. She positioned the inflated Buzzball in front of her just in time; there was a sound like a laser being fired, and something hit the Buzzball, throwing Lisa backwards, however she regained her balance in time to witness the reflected bolt of blue light strike Morty in the heart. He stood there for a moment, frozen, before collapsing, still as a stone statue, to the ground beside Haunter.

Lisa barely had time to register her victory: a stray Sludge attack from Roger’s Weezing caught her off-guard, knocking her to the ground once again and spattering all over her face. She spat the disgusting liquid out of her mouth, but there was no escaping the smell of it – it was like rotten eggs and every other disgusting smell combined into one. She dry retched.

“ Fiskmire, help her!” came Gavin’s not-so-distant voice. Seconds later, a wave of clean, fresh water washed over Lisa’s body, rinsing her face and clothes of the Sludge. Lisa clambered to her feet miserably, still feeling ill, though glad that the stench was gone.

“ Thanks …” she said weakly.

A fresh night wind blew through the track just then, clearing her nose and mind of the fumes. She took stock of the situation; Roger and Anthony appeared to be on the back foot now – despite having Stunners with them as well as pokémon, they were finding it impossible to juggle both of them, which was making it easier for Gavin and, surprisingly, Professor Oak (who was standing quite resolutely beside Gavin) to use the pokémon to defeat them. Gavin’s Skarmory had been an early casualty, but Vulpix, Fiskmire, Aipom, Girafury and Natu were holding their own against Weezing and Vaporeon.

“ Stomp!” commanded Gavin.

Girafury raised its two forelegs and brought them down on the top of Vaporeon’s head. The Ultramarine Eevee-lution squealed loudly, emitting an apparently accidental jet of water from its mouth as it went sprawling on the dirt, knocked out.

Anthony looked undeterred. “ Return, Vaporeon! Go, Espeon!”

Oh no, thought Lisa, not one of THOSE trainers.

She watched as the Union agent threw out a Fast Ball and revealed a sleek mauve Espeon, its tail flicking around cheerfully. “ This could take a long time …” she mused. “ Gavin!” she called loudly. He turned momentarily, as Professor Oak took the initiative and bellowed, “ Zap Cannon, Aipom!” (Lisa couldn’t think how he knew Aipom knew Zap Cannon; moreover, she couldn’t believe Aipom was obeying him).

“ What is it?” Gavin asked.

“ Don’t worry about making it a fair battle … don’t fight the pokémon, fight the Union agents!” she stressed. “ We need to get out of here before some kind of back-up arrives, then we’re screwed!”

Gavin nodded vehemently. “ Good call – OK guys, aim your attacks at them too!”

Roger and Anthony squirmed uncomfortably.

Her mind racing, Lisa left Gavin and Professor Oak to continue to pokémon battle while she ran to find the Stunner that Morty had been holding when he fell. However, before she reached it, Roger gave a guttural cry and there was a piercing laser-like sound once again. Somehow Lisa felt she was ready for this: she dived to the ground, landing awkwardly and somewhat painfully on her hands; her body moving faster than her mind, she propelled herself into what could only be described as a backflip crossed with a cartwheel; in any case, she went spinning through the air, away from the bolt of green light that Roger had sent at her; it speared the night air and disappeared into the foliage beyond.

Lisa landed roughly and painfully on her side, but at least she had averted the beam of paralysing energy. She crawled to Morty's side and wrenched the Stunner from his hands, which were still clasped firmly around the weapon, although he was unconscious.

“ FIIIIISK!”

Lisa spun around: Roger’s Weezing had just collided with her Fiskmire, knocking him out in a swift Take Down attack. Fury rose in her. She gripped the Stunner and, not taking the time to care what setting the weapon was on, she pointed it at Roger and pulled the trigger.

Unlike a conventional gun, there was no recoil with the Stunner. Lisa stood firm as a bolt of blue light burst from the end of the Stunner, spearing the air and striking Roger in the face. Like Morty, he froze instantly and collapsed to the ground, rigid.

Lisa turned to Anthony, who seemed to know his time was up. In between shouting an attack to Espeon, he pointed the Stunner at Lisa and fired an emerald bolt of energy at Lisa, but his aim was poor, and it missed by feet. Vaguely aware that Vulpix's Flamethrower had just taken Weezing out, Lisa pulled the trigger again, her Stunner aimed at Anthony’s heart. However, he dove to the ground as she fired; instead of striking his chest, the jet of blue light connected with his thigh; nevertheless, he hit the ground with a resounding thump and didn’t move.

“ Go Lisa!” cheered Gavin, a smile across his dirty face; it looked like he, too, had been sent sprawling to the ground several times in the last few minutes.

The fighting had ceased. Anthony’s Espeon, with its trainer fainted, stood there for a moment, confused, before simply pelting off into the darkness of the shrubs on the side of the track, apparently glad to be free. Vulpix shot a half-hearted Ember in its direction, but there was no anger in the attack. With Espeon gone, the pokémon who were still conscious – Aipom, Vulpix, Natu and Girafury – let off a collective cheer of victory.

Professor Oak, too, looked rather exhilarated. His lined face was alive with the feeling of battle. “ Lisa, I must ask you, how did you know those people weren’t who they said they were?”

“ Anthony,” Lisa said. “ The guy who had the Vaporeon. He attacked me and Jessica in Port Valeo, as a Union agent. I recognised him … that’s how I knew something was wrong.”

Gavin nodded slowly. “ I didn’t even think of that … I just followed your lead and hoped you were right.” He sighed heavily, staring around at the scene before them; three fainted pokémon and four humans. “ Morty, a Gym Leader … was a Union agent … I can’t believe it.”

“ This runs deep,” agreed Lisa.

Oak was quiet for a moment. “ That is concerning,” he said. “ Who can be trusted, if people like that are corrupt?”

A pressing silence lingered.

“ Well then,” said Gavin. “ You reckon we should just go back to hiding, then?”

Lisa snorted derisively at the thought. “ And let them catch us? No way! If Morty found us, that means the Union knew where we were all along …” She shuddered.

“ I didn’t think so either,” said Gavin. “ You want to find the rest of them, don’t you?”

“ Yep,” admitted Lisa. “ That’s how I am I think … I’d rather be fighting them than hiding from them. Of course, we’re going to have to be really strategic about all this … but we have to do something.”

“ Agreed,” said Gavin.

“ Yes, I agree with you also,” said Professor Oak, who, despite everything, was looking quite capable of fighting now. “ And I know where the rest of the agents are … or at least, where they were. When I was brought up to the cave, they were at the foot of the hill, fighting the police who had arrived. If we go there first, we can approach them from there.”

Lisa exchanged looks with Gavin, who nodded. She nodded her assent too; if there was any strategy they could take to fight off the Union, then this would have to be it. In any case, even if they weren’t going to fight, the only way to escape, and hence bring help from somewhere else, would be getting off the mountain. There was no choice about it: they were going to have to descend.

She pressed the green button on her pokégear and the screen glowed again; it was one o’clock in the morning, but Lisa felt more awake than she had in hours.

“ Return, guys,” she said, holding out three pokéballs at Aipom, Vulpix and the fainted Fiskmire. The two conscious ones called out tiredly but happily as they disappeared in a glow of red light. Beside her, Gavin returned his three pokémon also.

Lisa bent over, picked up her almost completely deflated Buzzball and pocketed it, this time in her undamaged right pocket.

“ D’you wanna take these?” Gavin asked, gesturing to the Stunners that had been left behind by Morty, Roger and Anthony.

“ I suppose – they can only help,” sighed Lisa, taking the weapon Gavin handed her and slinging the sash over her shoulder, along with her backpack.

Professor Oak took the Stunner and he, too, slung it over his shoulder; Lisa nearly laughed at the curious expression on his face as he fiddled with the various switches.

Gavin bent down and examined Celice’s body. After a moment’s fervent sifting through her pockets, he retrieved a sleek black pistol. He held it in both hands, staring at it, before looking up and catching Lisa’s gaze.

“ Just in case,” he said grimly, pocketing it. Lisa wasn’t sure whether to be concerned or not, but she supposed he was right; they had to be prepared – the Union were anything but civil or friendly.

“ Here we go, then,” said Gavin, more cheerily. He had already trudged down the track a few metres, stepping over Morty and Celice’s bodies. Professor Oak followed, slowly but determinedly. Lisa paused for a moment, surveying the scene of destruction they had left in the middle of the dirt track – four unconscious humans, an unconscious Weezing and dozens of battle-marks all over the place. She grimaced and about-faced, to see Gavin and the Professor standing next to each other down the trail. Her grimace turned into a true smile. Here they were: an old, frail Professor, a scarred, tired teenage boy and her, a fourteen-year-old girl from Ecruteak City. They were planning an assault on the Union. The very thought of it brought a smile to Lisa’s face; there was nothing else she could do but smile.

“ Hurry up!” Gavin called, clutching his Stunner tightly with one hand and sweeping his black hair out of his eyes with the other.

The reality of the situation set in, and Lisa’s smile faded. She gritted her teeth and steeled herself for the unknown.

“ I’m coming,” she said.

[Kinglerlord2]

Holy poop on a stick I've got some catching up to do here @_@. Honestly! I'm absent from the board for like 2 years and you go ahead and write some 40 odd chapters. So inconsiderate Gavin :p

I haven't read chapter 55 yet, i'm trying to find my place way back in the 10 to 20 area but a quick re-read of the first few chapters reminded me of this fantastic piece of work and I'm looking forward to catching up.

[mr_pikachu]

Awesome, a new chapter! You got me all excited a couple of hours before when the "Who's Online" thingie said you were posting here, but I guess you had some last-minute editing to do. Still, I'm glad to see another chapter of this fic today!

Very nice description to kick off the chapter. I was a little surprised by it, but I suppose I should've expected Gavin to need something like that. I really liked that opening, though; it definitely set the tone for the beginning of this update. Good battle description overall, too. It was fairly easy to picture most of the action thanks to your explicit portrayal. Nice work. And good closing as well... even if it was yet another classic LTL cliffhanger. *glares*

A little more editing might have been beneficial, though. I saw a few grammatical flaws that were far more blatant than the insanely obscure stuff I usually have to dig to find. There were a few possessive words that were missing apostrophes ("Mortys" and "Vulpixs") as well as a quoted sentence which was inappropriately broken in two by a period (the first period in “ Believe it or not,” Lisa said. “ I had a dream.” should be a comma). Also, there were a couple of sentences that I thought could have been a little more concise for more emphasis, but that was merely an aesthetic concern. I was a little surprised at the outright grammar issues, because it's unlike you to have such problems in your writing. ...And that's actually a compliment, not an insult. You're usually great at detecting these things yourself.

But even with points like that, this was still a great chapter. The emotion you conveyed early on between Gavin and Lisa was superb, and while I caught on to the surprise before Lisa was certain of it, your narrative still made the turnaround quite exciting. I was highly impressed by the passion which was evident throughout this chapter. You did a great job with this one, and I look forward to seeing what lies off the edge of this, your latest cliffhanger! Until the next chapter!

[Chris 2.1]

Excellent work. I loved the fight against the Union members, and the sudden realization that they can't spend their time hiding. I wonder who the mole is that the Union members were discussing? A much-needed ally for the next chapter?

Keep it up

[Karania]

looks good, can't wait to see what happens from here on now that it seems that you can't trust those you thought you could trust... This is getting complicated... I might have to start making a chart to keep track of whose bad and whose good... I hope Lisa didn't give anything away by mentioning Lance's name to Morty, that wouldn't be good if the Union found out. Hope to see more, see ya around.

[Gavin Luper]

Gday.

Kinglerlord2: HOLY POOP ON A STICK x2. I thought I'd never see you again! Welcome back! Lol ... it's really good to see you back! Hehehe ... have fun wading through 40 odd chapters

Thanks for coming back, hey, and I hope you can catch up soon. Oh, and please repost Silva! That was one of the best fics here, back in the day (well, in my opinion, anyway).

mr_pikachu: Hey. Thanks for reading so quickly (as always). Hurrah, I'm really glad you liked that kind of opening for the chapter, because I spent ages agonising over how this chapter was going to begin, and in the end I spontaneously wrote that, without even thinking about it, and when I sat back and read it I thought, "Yes, that's it, it needs to happen." And it worked. Yay. I threw in a bit more description in this chapter as opposed to the last couple, mainly because the battle gave me the chance to do so. And I think it was that that I really enjoyed: I haven't written a decent battle since ... oh ... the last crossover, or maybe even further back ... so this was well overdue.

As for the editing, I'm so annoyed about that! I was extremely tired as I wrote it, and I actually had the correct grammar there (ie Morty's and Vulpix's) but then I thought "no that's not right" and removed them. ^_^ I've fixed it now anyway. And yeah, that other mistake was pretty obvious too, I usually would pick that up ... ah well. Thanks for the comments Seeya next chapter!

Chris 2.0: Thanks! I loved the fight in this chapter too, it was the most fun to write! The next chapter will bring the mole back into the fold and should see even more action than this chapter. As the closing of this chapter probably indicated, the end of the book is nigh. Lisa, Gavin and the Professor are charging into action, into the unknown. And most importantly, as you mentioned, we got to see Lisa realise that running and hiding isn't going to work: she's going to have to steel herself and rush in headlong at the challenges she faces.

^^ Wow, can I harp on about my stories or what?

Karania: Hi! Yes, deception is beginning to be revealed at last! Heh, I hope it's not getting too complicated for you to enjoy it still! As usual, I'm saying nothing about Lance.

Thanks again everyone for reading. Next chapter coming soon.

Cheers!

[Blademaster]

Hey, Gavin.

I'm a new guy at TPMF and writer of the new YGO fic 'Yu-Gi-Oh! 3.0, Next of Kin,' the sequel to ark Sage's YGO Junior fics; I first heard about you and your fic when reading Dark Sage's 'Pokemonese,' and seeing that you had a long Poke-fic going as well, I decided to check it out.

I've read all 55 chapters over the past few weeks, and while I think it may be a bit dark and non-Poke-oriented for a Pokemon fic, I will say that it is a deep and damn-good plot; I'll read it until the end, which I thought was a while ago; I never knew this fic was three-in-one! Still, this is quite an interesting story, albeit the chapters are kind of long, but they're also very descriptive. And your last chapter went up on my mom's birthday, which is a cool coincidence. I like all the made-up Pokemon in your fic; I've had made-up ideas, too, but alas, I've no fic to put them in.

Anyway, I'm rambling like I usually end up doing, so I'll jusyt be on my way now. See y'all later.

-Blademaster

[Gavin Luper]

Hey Blademaster! Welcome to Fanfic (I know you've been around for a while now, but I've yet to say hi). Thanks so much for reading - all 55 chapters must have taken a helluva long time ^^

I took a look at the beginning of your fic the other day, and it looks good at a glance; I've yet to read it because I'm sure I'm out of my depth plot-wise, but I'll definitely give it a go.

I'm glad you like the LTL's plot. ^^ You're spot on by saying it's not very pokemon-ish ... after the League battles back in chapter 36-37, I more or less began to phase out the focus on pokémon in the fic, purely because I'm not into pokémon anymore and it was becoming too difficult to keep writing about it. But after writing the cool battle in Chapter 55 I think the pokémon aspect will be making a bit of a comeback in future chapters (yay). And there will be one or two new pokémon also!

Geez, I can ramble on about nothing.

Also, about chapter length, I am trying to keep them generally shorter now; as in, mostly under 5000 words (except last chapter ^^). I used to aim for 3000 max, but that kind of went out of the window as I began putting in more description ...

Yes, anyway *cough* I've crapped on for long enough now. Thanks very much for reading Blademaster, and I really hope you like the next chapters! I've already begun Chapter 56, which is surprising in itself, and it's coming along nicely.

I don't know how many chapters I'm going to draw this finale out over, though, it just keeps going!!

Cheers!

- Gavin.

[pokemasterfrank]

Hehe. I was worried that I'd have a pile of chapters to read since I last visited TPM.

Very sweet. The plot is unraveling quite nicely. I think I'll have to reread LTL again because after reading the new chapters, I've realized that I don't remember the earlier stuff as much as I'd like, hehe.

Awesome chapters, btw. This fic hasn't lost any steam since the start :)

[Gavin Luper]

Hi Pokemasterfrank, good to see you back here again! Thanks for reading these latest ones. I'm glad you think the new stuff is as good as the old stuff, because I was a bit worried about that a while ago. Hope you can stick around for the next installments.

Thanks muchly, and seeya next chapter! Chapter 56 = good so far.

Cheers!

[Blademaster]

Okay, Gavin, thanks.

I forgot a few things I wanted to mention, though:

1. I suggested this to Dark Sage in response to Pokemonese (And STILL haven't gotten an answer...grr...), but it'd be kinda cool for any Poke-fic to have at the end of the chapter that a made-up one appears in a Pokedex entry, y'know?

Name: Fiskmire
Type: Water/Ground
Species: Mudskipper
Height: 4'9" (1.4 m)
Weight: 132 lbs. (58 kg)
Data: Capable of burrowing through the ground and swimming through the water, this Pokemon is adept in and out of water. It can draw up to 5.5 gallons (20 L) of air or water into the spiked protrusions across its body, then expel them with surprising force.

There! Now, that's a good feature to add, huh?

...Well, maybe not, but it couldn't hurt...

2. Not to be rude, but I'm American, what do you expect? :biggrin:
Your screen name-Gavin Luper-if it's just regular words, is not a phrase I'm familiar with, and if they're names, I've never heard them in this country. Where'd 'Gavin Luper' come from, pray tell?

3. Aipom is a spastic little troublemaker and a Pokemon I personally don't really like; he should evolve in the future, y'know? It'd be cool to see him as a sharp-toothed purple gorilla smacking the crap out of everything! It'd probably have a cool name, too...

...Like Maungatan.

Anyway, I'm sorry; I'm...spamming...or something, aren't I? I'm rambling, too; I'm spambling. :p

Anyway, I'm outta questions, so I'll be leaving, now. Later.

[Gavin Luper]

Hi everyone! :biggrin:

Blademaster: Heh. Damn Americans (that was a joke!).

1. About the made-up pokédex entry thing, I've vaguely thought about doing them for myself before, but I couldn't be bothered. Knowing me, I'd forget something I'd written in the pokédex entry and it would clash with the chapter content, causing a marvellous plot-hole!

... okay, maybe not ... it's not a bad idea, I might do one for Lunanine, Fiskmire, Issechu (ah, Issechu) and the others at some stage. Not at the end of a chapter though, but in some random post when I'm stuck on a chapter.

Nice pokédex for Fisky, btw.

2. Gavin Luper, as you might know, is the full name of the character Gavin in LTL. I always had liked the name Gavin for a character ( ), and I had used it once before in my fic Pokémon Kohtu, which I posted back in 2001 a few days before I posted LTL. When I kind of stopped writing that fic, I moved on to LTL and introduced Gavin into the story in chapter 5. I chose the surname Luper, because I like the latin term 'Lupe' which refers to a Wolf, and since 'Lupin' had already been taken by JK Rowling, I made up "Luper".

Thus, I my screen name came from the character Gavin Luper: needless to say, Luper is not my real surname. ^_^ So yeah, it's just a name: have you never heard the name Gavin before?

3. Lol ... I really have a soft spot for Aipom, I always have. His annoyingness is just part of him. I don't see him evolving at any stage in this fic. If he did evolve, Aipom is the kind of creature who would spontaneously de-volve back to his original form, or something ridiculous like that. So, no evolution for Aipom - at least, not yet.

Thanks for the reply!

Everyone: Well, I just thought I'd reply today to say that today is the 4th Anniversary of the first time I ever posted Lisa the Legend on TPM, or anywhere for that matter. December 1, 2001, was when I first posted the Prologue! And here we are on December 1, 2005, and the fic's still going strong!

So yeah, just thought I'd mention it, today is the fic's 4th 'Birthday' so to speak (technically I started writing it earlier). In any case, it's been FOUR YEARS today!! So I'd just like to thank all readers, posting readers as well as closet readers, for reading all these years and for helping to make LTL the great story it is now (well, I think so ). I hope there's more 'anniversaries' to come for this fic, too!

Happy Fourth Anniversary, Lisa the Legend! :biggrin: :smilie:

Cheers everyone!

- Gavin.

[Blademaster]

WHAAAT!? How dare you insult the almighty Americans?! We're the biggest country on Earth!

...Well, actually, that's Russia.

Okay, we're the most populous country on Earth!

...Oh, no, that's China.

Well, we're the most technologically advanced country on...

...Or, maybe not-that's Japan.

Well, we've got the coolest history...

No, that's Egypt.

Uh...the most class?

No, that's England.

We're the...rudest?

No, France is ruder than us.

...We're the most rich and famous?

YEAH, WE ARE!

...But no one else cares...



Anyway, thanks dude.

Hmmm... Gavin, huh?

...Ah well, odds are you've never heard a lot of the crazy names in this country; I honestly know I dude named Chadozion, and that's probably the wrong spelling! :smilie: Ah, well...

And hooray for Lisa the Legend! Hooray for Gavin!

(runs off to find Australian-American-Japanese cake)

[Gavin Luper]

Hehehe, good call Blademaster.

Well, I've been writing away at the next chapter, it's action-packed at the moment and very fun to write. Quite dramatic ... ah, it brings a tear to my eye.

Yes, anyway, should be finished very soon. It's going very well. Now I must return to writing it.

Cheers!

[Gavin Luper]

Who says you can't do something useful with half a day?

Ta-da! Chapter's finished! Dramatic, action-packed, thrilling, and chunkier than I expected, but hey, length is never a bad thing! I hope everyone enjoys this one - it's kind of part of the finale sequence of Book Two, which is really exciting for me to do, because Book One didn't have a proper finale, just a sudden conclusion that was neither climactic nor conclusive in any way, nor did it have much of an indication of what was going on. Well, this one does/will. The book's not over yet, but the end is in sight - it's very close now.

This chapter was enthralling for me to read and very, very enjoyable to write.

So, here it is! Cheers!

-------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 56 – The First Battle.


‘ Fourteen-year-old renegade fights off criminal siege.’

Lisa chuckled mildly to herself as she walked down Mount Fairfax. There was nothing to laugh at but the absurdity of the situation. Here she was: A pokémon trainer, a daughter, a member of the under-15’s Emeralds Basketball Team – charging down a mountain en route to neutralise an evil organisation’s attack on a mountain.

Her smile faded as she brought herself back to the present. There was no time for reflection – that, assuming they all survived the siege, would come later.

Two hours had passed now; two silent, resolved, steeled hours. Lisa had not spoken to Gavin or Professor Oak since they left Morty behind. All three of them, even the old Professor, seemed to have accepted their lot; at least, Lisa knew she had; the Union’s impact on her life was not going to cease if she ran away or hid – it was time to begin fighting.

Behind her, Professor Oak suddenly began to hum – at least, it seemed sudden; the noise seemed to creep up on Lisa, so that she hadn’t even noticed it begin. Before long it was all that she could hear, and Lisa didn’t want their movements on the mountain to be too obvious.

Finally, she said, “ Professor, what are you doing?”

He stopped abruptly and glanced at her with wide eyes. “ I’m humming,” he said, as though it was perfectly normal. Lisa’s raised eyebrow apparently suggested otherwise to him. He coughed. “ I find it soothing. It relaxes me. Helps me think more clearly in difficult situations.”

Lisa recalled how he had been humming when he was dragged into the cave a few hours ago. The concept sounded ridiculous, however, trying to be diplomatic, she said, “ I see … but we need to be discreet from now on.”

Gavin nodded nearby. Professor Oak conceded. “ Very well, I will stop,” he said, quite cheerfully, “ I understand it is not the time now.”

He placed a hand on the Stunner slung over his shoulder, just as Lisa and Gavin had, on guard, ready to fight.

And the time to do that came sooner than expected.

It was ten minutes past three a.m., when they were only a little over half way down the mountain, that Lisa heard the sudden sounds of battle. The foliage on the side of the descending track was thick, but Lisa knew that the sounds were coming from somewhere to their immediate left. She spun on her heel; Gavin and Professor Oak both cocked their heads intently, listening for another indication of battle – and it came; a massive, ear-splitting crack rent the air.

A woman shrieked as another gunshot was fired nearby.

Lisa caught Gavin’s eyes and knew that he was as petrified as she was; nonetheless, they simultaneously took hold of the Stunners in their arms and pushed roughly into the thick underbrush.

Lisa’s skin was covered in goosebumps as she ploughed through the scrub, the others following her; apparently she was now leading the charge. She gulped and pushed on. Sticks cracked under her shoes and leaves scraped at her arms and face, but she ignored the mild pain. The darkness of the night prevented her from seeing anything very far ahead, but she knew they were getting closer.

People were screaming now and the sounds of fights – pokémon and human – were quite close by. Lisa swept aside the branches of a Screen Tree and stopped short in sudden shock. She had expected to see more bush, but there was nothing: she had stepped blindly into a vast rocky clearing, upon which a chaotic battle was raging. A hundred shadowy figures were duelling fiercely; bodies were strewn across the ground. A fire raged on the far side of the clearing. A metre in front of Lisa, a tall man wearing black had a screaming woman pinned to the ground, apparently unaware that three people had just burst into the clearing.

Lisa heard Oak sigh softly as she opened fire, pulling the trigger of the Stun Gun; a bolt of green light issued from it, striking the back of the man. He crumpled at once. Lisa lunged to help the woman, but she was on her feet already, looking somewhat bewildered as she whipped out a pistol and charged further into the melée that filled the huge plateau.

Quite forgetting to pray or hope for luck, Lisa followed the woman’s lead, levelling the Stunner and charging blindly into the crowd of duellers. She immediately lost track of Gavin and Professor Oak – in the dark, it was only possible to see shadows, silhouettes of people.

“ Help me! Help! Somebody help!”

A man was begging for mercy nearby; Lisa barely heard his pleading voice over the mayhem around her. Ducking around a man wearing a Police Badge, and dodging a stray Vine Whip purely by luck, Lisa weaved through the throng.

“ Please! Someone help me!”

“ I’m coming!” Lisa bellowed. “ Where are you?”

There was no response. Lisa took a tentative step forward before something heavy struck her head. Splitting pain blinded her vision; she spun on the spot and fell to the ground, losing her balance. Dirt went up her nose, and once again it began to bleed. She crawled senselessly, grabbing the ground for some kind of direction. Someone kicked her in the side, winding her; she collapsed to the ground again, her lungs clutching for air.

“ GET – OUT – OF – MY – WAY!” A completely unfamiliar voice shouted; Lisa dimly registered it. There was a muffled cry and a thump. A moment later, someone grabbed Lisa’s hands and hauled her roughly to her feet. Blood dripped into Lisa’s mouth as she opened her eyes; through the silver stars that clouded her vision, she managed to identify a rugged male face.

“ Where the hell did you come from?” He asked gruffly. A beam of black light whizzed past his head; he noticed it but didn’t even flinch. “ Listen, girl, get out of here – this isn’t safe!” And without another word, he let go of her arms and plunged back into the darkness.

Lisa wiped her nose on her sleeve and tried to regain her bearings. Looking up, she could see a high rock wall that framed the plateau, but otherwise, there nothing to indicate her position.

“ HELP ME – PLEASE – ANYBODY – ”

The panicked voice was painfully close now; it was coming from directly in front of Lisa. This time, however, Lisa heard another man’s voice, deeper and almost inaudible; it was demanding something. Tensing herself, Lisa pushed past a Police Officer locked in a struggle with a Union Agent dressed in the old Team Rocket Uniform. Her veins pulsed. Any second now and she would find the person pleading for help –

“ ANYBODY – HELP – AAAAAGH!”

The man let out a bloodcurdling scream, right beside Lisa. She turned her head a fraction too late; a solid, shadowy figure was bending over a writhing body. As Lisa levelled the Stunner her eyes fell on a small creature perched behind the large figure: a Murkrow was on guard. It had fired a jet of black energy before Lisa had even pulled the trigger. The Stunner recoiled and Lisa lost her grip on it; it went spinning away into the darkness.

Lisa whipped the Buzzball out of her pocket. “ ELECTRI –” she began, but the command caught in her throat; the dark figure had moved on from the man who had been crying for help, and with him, the Murkrow had used a Faint Attack and disappeared from sight.

Nervous about what she was about to see, Lisa stepped forward and bent over the now still body of the man. She recoiled in horror. He had two deep gashes down either cheek; dark blood covered his face. His pupils were not visible: his eyes had rolled back in terror, leaving the whites gruesomely exposed. Lisa clutched the man’s flannelette shirt in frustration. ‘If only I could have got here sooner,’ she thought weakly. But even so, she realised it would have been of little use – the Murkrow would still have staved her off, whether she had reached the man earlier or not.

“ LOOK OUT!” someone screamed.

Lisa whirled around, only to be blown to the ground by a blast of hot air; a hundred metres away, something had just exploded in a massive fireball, illuminating the entire plateau for a few seconds; dozens of people were sent flying into the air. Lisa felt her head slam into the ground for what felt like the umpteenth time that night. The pain this time was sharp, but fleeting; it felt like her skull had already taken all the punishment it could. As the fireball disappeared, Lisa noticed a deep laceration across the chest of the man she lay beside. A silver necklace was strewn over the bloody fissure. It looked like someone had ripped something from the end of the chain, leaving it broken. Lisa touched the man’s forehead and ran a hand over his eyelids, closing them as gently as she could. She felt it was the least she could do.

She stood up, now grasping Vulpix’s pokéball in the absence of her Stunner. The chaos around her was still raging; if anything, it had intensified since the explosion. Lisa had never known or imagined mayhem like this: even with the light from the fire, it was too dark to see who was fighting whom. There were at least a hundred people on the plateau, fighting a wild, unruly battle. People were swiping wildly at anyone around them. Pokémon stumbled in the blackness, many of them bleeding. Lisa caught sight of a Charmander crawling along the ground weakly, its eyes streaming with tears of terror.

She reached out a hand to help the tiny creature, but there was a loud war cry beside her. A woman with platinum-blonde hair leapt out before Lisa, eyes ablaze.

“ I knew you’d escape,” she spat venomously; Lisa recognised her as Veronica, the woman they had encountered the night they freed Marina. “ I told them you were too resourceful, but they didn’t believe me –” Without warning, she lunged at Lisa in fury. Lisa tried to throw the pokéball in her hand, but Veronica had a hold of her arm; she dropped the ball.

There was a flash of light as Veronica’s nails dug into Lisa’s arm. Lisa screamed involuntarily; her arm burned with pain. With a shriek she raised her free hand and managed to hit Veronica between the eyes; at the same moment, Veronica jerked suddenly, her body rigid. She released Lisa’s arm, and Lisa took the opportunity to wind up her good arm and deliver a punch to Veronica’s nose. With a loud cry of pain, the blonde woman keeled over, her eyes streaming.

Lisa glanced down at the ground to see Vulpix grinning and baring his teeth: he had clamped sharply onto Veronica’s leg, which was what had caused her to collapse.

“ Thanks, Vulpix,” Lisa said quickly. “ Come with me. And stay close,” she added sharply, remembering the lost Charmander she had just seen, which had now disappeared from view.

Vulpix on her tail, Lisa weaved through the duellers. The image of the dead man was still clouding her mind; it was as though it had been permanently imprinted on her memory.

In the shadows to Lisa’s right, somebody was bellowing loudly at their foe: “ Take – that – you – bloody – Mexican!”

Lisa caught the man’s face in the faint glow of the firelight – it was the man who had helped her up earlier. To Lisa’s amazement, he held what must have been some kind of Buzzball in his hand, though it was black; at each word, a burst of purple light speared the air, aimed at the man’s opponent. Lisa squinted her eyes and realised, with an unwelcome jolt, that the opponent was none other than Anthony, the Hispanic-looking man she had Stunned more than two hours ago. He had an Eevee at his feet, which was maintaining a translucent brown shield around its trainer – a strong Reflect; the jets of purple light were not penetrating it.

“ Vulpix, Flamethrower!” Lisa yelled.

Apparently neither Anthony nor the other man heard her in the ruckus – at least, Lisa assumed as much based on the total shock on their faces as a stream of vermilion flames burst forth into the battlefield, consuming Eevee at once. A tinkling sound indicated that the Reflect had finally shattered.

To Lisa’s surprise, the man she had helped didn’t even turn around to see where the flamethrower had come from, nor did he break for a moment in his attack on Anthony. He held the black orb before him and fired off three purple jets of light. Unprotected, Anthony was exposed, taking all three blasts of energy to the chest. He crumpled as though he was made of paper.

The man holding the black orb snorted. “ Well … who knew?” Now assured that the battle was over, he turned around to see Lisa standing beside Vulpix. “ Thanks, chick,” he said gruffly. Then he raised an eyebrow. “ Aren’t you the girl I helped before?”

Lisa nodded.

He deigned a kind of half-smile, as though he was suitably impressed with her. “ Good job,” he said. “ Now seriously, get going, you can’t keep hanging around here – ”

“ I’m not going anywhere,” Lisa said defiantly, looking the man straight in the eye. “ I’m fighting the Union.”

He held her gaze for ten seconds, then, still not looking away, said, “ You’ve got character.” A genuine smile crossed his rugged face. “ That’s rare these days.”

Lisa smiled uncomfortably. “ I just want to know – what’s going on here?”

He shrugged. “ Bad guys are trying to siege the mountain for some reason. So we’re stopping them. That’s about it.”

“ Are you with the police?” Lisa asked him, as there were loud gunshots amongst the roar of the nearby inferno and the ongoing battle.

“ Are you kidding? The bloody cops are useless.” A few metres away, a Growlithe went soaring through the air, barking wildly and angrily as it did so. The man stopped short. “ Oh **** – I think that’s mine –” He made to leave.

“ Wait,” Lisa said, “ What’s that thing in your hand?” She gestured to the black orb that she assumed was some kind of modified Buzzball.

He shrugged again. “ Haven’t the foggiest. Just picked it up off the ground a minute ago – ” The Growlithe barked in pain somewhere in the distance. “ Better go –” And with that, he ran off.

Lisa stood there alone for a second. The battle was still raging around her, and although there didn’t seem to be quite as many battlers as there were when they first entered the clearing, chaos still reigned. People were still fighting and screaming. Checking that Vulpix was still at her feet, Lisa began to search for another Union agent to take down.

She had taken maybe three steps when there was a loud yell from across the plateau: “ CHARGE!” At once, the cry was taken up by dozens of others, and suddenly the crowd of people and pokémon in the clearing were rushing towards the far side of the area like water being sucked down a drain. Lisa followed with the crowd, vaguely aware that right beside her was a Union agent, running alongside her as if an ally. She resisted the urge to hit him and let herself be carried by the flow of people –

“ Ouch!”

Her foot caught something and she tripped; accustomed to falling over by now, she put her other foot out deftly, breaking her fall, but it jarred painfully on the dirt. She winced but hobbled onwards, attaining incidental blows to the head from other people as they passed in a rush.

Lisa went on following them. They were leaving the plateau in droves, eagerly descending into a patch of thick foliage, Lisa didn’t know why. She jogged along, panting heavily, wedged between a Union agent and a galloping Ponyta.

A branch scratched her face as she plunged downwards, but it was the least of Lisa’s injuries. Up ahead, the sounds of battle had suddenly recommenced. Sure enough, a second later, the foliage yielded to another rocky plateau, this one quite a lot bigger than the last. Lisa spilled out into the clearing, only to discover that Vulpix had disappeared.

“ VULPIX!” Lisa bellowed in panic; she had seen what the Union did to stray pokémon – the image of the flying Growlithe was still in her mind.

As if in response to her yell, the Union agent beside her, a man, swung his fist at her. Surprising herself, Lisa threw up her arm and deftly blocked the punch, but she was too weak to hold the man off. He pushed her aside and ran off to join the melée further down.

Now that they had all made the descent down the mountain slightly (Lisa still didn’t know why), there was no fire raging to shed light on the area, other than the blasts of light from Stun Guns and pistols and pokémon attacks. Lisa suddenly noticed a faint glow coming from her left and spun to see the Ponyta pawing the ground anxiously. She sighed. It seemed that almost every pokémon had been abandoned or lost in the battle.

An idea suddenly struck her. She approached the Ponyta gently, patting its beautiful off-white coat. If she could just get it on side, perhaps it could help her.

Lisa was about to put a leg over the flame-horse, but she never made it. A voice rent the air behind her, overpowering the noise of the battle:

“ FREEZE!” The person screamed, then, before Lisa had time to register or to even turn around, there was a loud gunshot – and a bullet drove its way into her back.

Unlike the stories Lisa had heard in her life of people who claimed not to notice they had been shot, she felt the pain at once. It was like a hot poker piercing her skin, burning her flesh. The pain came in an almighty tidal wave, flooding Lisa’s senses. The realisation of what had happened was just as terrifying. Lisa’s head swam. She fell to the ground, her breath shallow, the knowledge worse than the pain: I’m going to die.

Her vision was fading. All she could hear was a pounding in her ears. A massive, heavily-built man suddenly appeared above her, glaring at her, watching her writhe in pain with some kind of sick hunger in his eyes. He raised a boot-clad foot and placed it on her neck, pausing a moment before pressing down, crushing Lisa’s airways.

Just do it, Lisa thought, gasping for breath and finding none. The pain was infinite; it was all-encompassing. The wound in her back burned. Her trachea was collapsing. She lost her vision and her hearing; the world was pain. Kill me, Lisa begged him, just make it all end.

And then it did. Everything disappeared. The pain. The terror. There was only blackness. Lisa waited for death to strike her – but nothing happened. Then, very suddenly, the pressure on her neck lifted. Her airways opened and oxygen seeped in. The pain came flooding back in another wave. The aches and pains of battling returned. The bullet wound sizzled. Death, if it had been approaching, had been frightened off by someone.

Light and sound returned abruptly; still immobile on her back, Lisa heard a boy’s voice scream, “ ANOTHER THUNDERBOLT!” A bright burst of electricity flashed. The ground shook slightly.

Then the boy’s voice came again, “ Oh my God, it’s Lisa.”

Still gasping for a proper lungful of air, Lisa spoke with difficulty. “ G – av – ”

“ It’s Daniel,” said the voice in a panic. “ Are you alright? Can you breathe?”

A girl’s voice nearby gasped. “ Oh my God, it’s that girl – is she OK?”

Lisa tried to say “ I’m fine”, but the fact that she couldn’t seemed to prove her wrong. Daniel’s voice and another continued rattling on for another minute, during which Lisa very gradually began to find her breath, though each breath felt like needles stabbing her throat. Lisa began to panic again, her heart racing. She lost control of her breathing; it became impossible to grasp more precious air when she was panting so heavily from that pain.

Daniel started. He turned to the other girl who had travelled with him. “ Is she … humming?”

The brown-skinned girl nodded, her eyes wide.

Lisa hummed for as long as she could, then took a sharp, painful breath and kept going. She hummed the same note – there was no tune – she was simply forcing air past her vocal chords as best she could. Each breath she took became a little less painful, a little less difficult. She took in lungfuls of air and kept humming. Her heart slowed down. She was still in a great deal of pain, but her mind was clearing. She felt as though her energy was converging, meeting at a focal point around her forehead. The screams and blasts around her seemed to fade away ever so slightly.

She opened her eyes and stopped humming.

“ You’re OK, Lisa!” Daniel’s petrified face swam into view.

Lisa opened her eyes fully, pain still coursing through her body; the wound in her back scorched her with pain.

“ Daniel, listen, I’ve been shot,” Lisa said as slowly and clearly as she could.

He blanched. “ Oh my God, where?”

Mustering all her energy, Lisa rolled herself over slightly, leaving the right side of her back visible for Daniel. He squinted and then gaped, his face a mask of utter horror.

“ Is it bad?” Lisa asked him seriously.

“ I don’t know,” Daniel spluttered back. “ There’s a lot of blood, some of it’s dried I think, or maybe that’s dirt, I don’t know …”

“ It’s too high up to hit your lungs,” chipped in the girl, his companion. “ It’s probably more of a flesh wound, I’d say.”

Her methodical approach was a pleasant surprise to Lisa. She twisted around awkwardly and tried to face the girl, whose name she still didn’t know. “ Are their any first-aid people – paramedics – still around? They had some posted on the mountain for the Contest before …”

As she rolled back onto her back, Lisa saw Daniel and his friend exchange a very significant glance.

“ Lisa,” Daniel said, “ don’t you know what’s happened?”

His face was pale.

“ What?” Lisa said.

“ They rounded up everyone hours ago. The contestants, the helpers, the paramedics, Paddy – whoever got in their way. Only the people who were leading in the race didn’t get snared … until they got to the top. We teamed up with another team, Mike and Reggie, but they disappeared. When we got to the top some woman – we thought she was a helper at first – grabbed Nova’s arm and wouldn’t let us go any further, she told us the race had been cancelled and that we had to go with her downhill – but we were already pretty suspicious by then – and she didn’t count on Nova knowing karate.” The brown-skinned girl beside Daniel winked at Lisa. “ She pulled out a gun – a rifle – and tried to shoot at us, but she missed … we took off, we got away from her –” There was a note of pride and exhilaration in his voice.

“ We made our way down the mountain,” Nova continued, “ and we came across a few contestants we recognised, tied up in some bushes. We let them free – and that’s when we realised what had been happening …” She trailed off, jumping as a Sludge Bomb exploded on a nearby tree.

“ We think it’s Team Rocket,” Daniel said in a rush. “ I know that sounds stupid, because they’ve disbanded – but we saw some people wearing the uniform.”

Nova nodded vehemently.

Lisa paused, trying to think up a way to agree casually with them, but with a bullet in her back she hardly felt like it was the time for cover stories. “ They didn’t disband,” Lisa said simply. “ They reformed. They’re part of an organisation called the Union. They’re here tonight, attacking the mountain …”

Their reaction was predictable.

“ How – how do you know that?” Daniel asked, bewildered.

Lisa winced. “ I just do. I’ll tell you later, OK?”

Nova, however, seemed to be deep in thought. “ Why are they attacking the mountain?”

Lisa sighed; if there was any one question that had puzzled her more than anything that night, it was that. Why? Of all places, why were the Union attacking a mountain? “ I don’t have a clue.”

She surveyed the vast plateau. The fighting continued, as intense as ever, but there were far fewer fighters now and quite a number of shadowy bodies strewn across the ground – many of them, Lisa feared, more than just unconscious.

The pain built up again as she watched the rest of the battle helplessly, like some kind of powerless spectator. Nova and Daniel did their best to protect her, dragging her behind a few bushes so that she was not visible from the plateau, although, in the darkness, it was doubtful that anyone would have seen her anyway, it was so dark. Nova tore the sleeve of her jumper and held it to Lisa’s bullet wound, trying to stem the flow of blood. Frustrated, Lisa watched through the leaves of the bushes. It was impossible to tell from the silhouettes which side was who, but it was clear now that, after the long battle, one of the sides had gained a clear upper hand.

Bursts of fire and electricity and beams of all colours exploded throughout the plateau as the losing team attempted to make a final stand, but they were defeated. It was half a dozen people onto at least ten. Lisa watched the shadows dropping to the ground, Nova and Daniel by her side. She hoped against hope that the triumphant team contained Gavin, Professor Oak, Derek and the man who had helped Lisa. It took all her energy not to leap up and help them fight, but she knew she was in no condition to walk, let alone battle. Restless, she looked on as the fight raged. After an agonising few minutes, Lisa heard the terrified scream of defeat as the final member of the losing team collapse to the ground in a flurry of green light from two Stunners. She tensed herself. Please … please …

A triumphant cheer went up from the remaining people and pokémon in the clearing. Lisa saw one or two of the silhouettes hugging each other; they clearly knew one another. A few of them were still guarded.

And then Lisa heard Gavin’s voice: “ Yes!”

Relief coursed through her like an electric current. Gavin’s team had won! Sure enough, she listened to the whooping and cheering of the people still standing and picked up Derek’s voice and – she was sure of it – the voice of the man with a Growlithe. But she heard nothing from Professor Oak.

“ They won!” Lisa grinned, looking from Nova to Daniel in excitement. They had actually defeated the Union’s agents! “ Go meet them!” Lisa urged. “ Go tell them we’re here!”

After everything that had happened that night, Lisa had steeled herself for the inevitable – that they were going to be defeated, that the Union was going to triumph, that she would die fighting them. But she had survived it all. It was all over.

She peered through the foliage, watching happily as Daniel and Nova burst forth from the hiding place that was the bushes and sprinted across the clearing. One or two of the people held up weapons and called their pokémon to attention, but Lisa heard Gavin’s voice:

“ It’s OK, they’re on our side – they were contestants –”

Daniel and Nova were welcomed excitedly into the fold of the victorious team, the team that had defeated the Union. Over the ruckus, Lisa thought she heard Gavin’s voice, suddenly anxious. Had he realised she was missing? Did he know she was alright?

‘ He’ll have to wait,’ Lisa thought, feeling a renewed surge of pain from the bullet wound in her back. There was no way she could walk all the way into the clearing in her condition.

She reclined slightly, perching herself against a strong branch for support, so that she could sit up without expending her energy. She contented herself with gazing, in a surreal haze, over the dozen weary revellers in the middle of the plateau, clustered at the base of the sheer rock wall that rose above them. Lisa smiled softly. It was so surreal – they had survived, they had made it –

And then she froze.

Twenty metres above the group of people, something had caught her eye. She glanced up to the top of the rock wall and gaped in horror. Even in the weak moonlight, she could see the shadows. There was one person at the front, holding something in their hands that was giving off a faint glow. Behind that person, there was a cluster of no less than a dozen people, all perched on the clifftop, as if waiting for something …

Lisa’s heart thudded heavily. She returned her gaze to Gavin, Daniel and the others – they were still rejoicing, unaware of anything around them. Now that she was on alert, Lisa noticed more shadows on their level, multiple shadows – there must have been at least another hundred again, all lurking silently in the darkness, hiding in the foliage that surrounded the clearing. The hair on the back of her neck prickled. It was the situation at the summit all over again … the Union had them surrounded.

And they didn’t know it.

The pain nearly crippled her as she hauled herself directly into a standing position. Her spine seemed to crumble at the very implication of motion, but this was no time for weakness, Lisa knew. She shook off the shooting pains throughout her torso and took a very painful step forward. And another. She glanced upwards. The cluster of Union agents atop the cliff wall were moving towards the edge – they were going to throw something down, or drop it onto the unsuspecting people below.

Lisa clutched Aipom’s pokéball; he was the only pokémon she had left. She hesitated – opening his pokéball too early would cause a flash of light that would attain the interest of the Union far too quickly. She had to act fast. Holding the red-and-white pokéball to her lips, Lisa whispered, wincing with the burning pains of her flesh grinding against the bullet, “ Aipom, you have to do what I say, alright? As soon as I throw your pokéball, you have to attack the people on top the cliff, OK?” There was no response; she had to trust that Aipom had somehow heard her and would obey.

Stumbling wildly, blood now dripping down her back, Lisa manoeuvred herself around the large bush and stepped onto the hard, rocky ground of the plateau. The shadow of the bush was still upon her; she could not yet be seen, and yet she had full view of the cliff.

Metres away, Gavin was speaking to Daniel and Nova anxiously, “ … but where is she now?”

Lisa knew she had no time remaining; the element of surprise was all she had; gritting her teeth against the intense pain, she gripped Aipom’s pokéball tightly, wound up her right arm and, with all the energy and force she could muster, hurled the ball into the open air of the plateau.

“ AIPOM! SPEED STAR ATTACK, NOW!”

[mr_pikachu]

I need to be studying right now. I have an exam tomorrow, so I need to study. And yet I couldn't help but read this chapter straight through.

Wow. What a battle, first of all. Wait - who am I kidding. That wasn't a battle. That was a war. You really gave a clear picture of the chaos and confusion surrounding that fight. It was especially evident when Lisa ended up running right next to a Union agent without him knowing. And having it at 3 in the morning certainly wouldn't have made things any easier. Very nice use of the setting, both in terms of the physical setting and in terms of the time of day. You portrayed it beautifully. And yet you still managed to leave us with yet another cliffhanger. But somehow this one seems a lot more hopeless than the one leading into this chapter. Just when the survivors thought they had pulled off the win, the real force has arrived...

I did see a few very minor and very isolated points that could have been better. A typo here, a comma there, but nothing major to comment on overall. (I did have a question to ask about one term in your chapter, though; what's a "Screen Tree"? I've never heard of that before. Is it some sort of product in Australia?) For the most part, this was very well-written.

This chapter was nothing but raging chaos, and you conveyed it beautifully. Even the transitions in the chapter - from the quiet hike down the mountain to the fight, from the apparent victory to the renewed conflict - were done sharply, giving a further sense of the tangled confusion. Very nice work. I'm going to have a heck of a hard time focusing again on studying after reading this chapter! Excellent job here, Gavin. Superb. I look forward to seeing the continuation of this in the 57th installment of this fic! Until then!

[Blademaster]

Yeah, what he said!

Man, everyone does something better than the Americans, huh?

China manufactures stuff better.

Japan builds electronics better.

India makes clothes better.

And now, Australia has better writers!

...Oh, the shame...

...Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh...

So, the second book is nearly through, eh? Well, that leaves the third book, still...

This is gonna be like 80 chapters, I know it...

...And I'll be reading all of 'em.

-Blademaster, the Dark Scorpion Duelist

[Master Kirby]

Wow. When they finally seem to have won the battle, a hundred more enemies surround them, about to drop a bomb, or something like that, on top of them... and they don't even realise it. .......and Lisa is the only chance of them realising their danger before it is too late. You really left us hanging there.

You really showed the realism of the battle. It wasn't just "I's gonna KO yur pokemans so u runs away feeling yur shame!!!". It was more like "I will destroy your pokemon , AND you too, and I don't care if your pokemon never wakes up! AAAAGGHHHH! BANG! BANG! BANG! THIS MOUNTAIN WILL BE MINE! <laughing like a maniac while lashing out at all who he doesn't recognize> That is not a place I would like being, unless I had crazy pokemon or robot powers, where bullets couldn't hurt me. The Union must really want something badly to go through all this to take hold of a "mountain".

I guess Lisa can understand now why Proffessor Oak was humming before. Its a good thing to keep your emotions from taking over when you are in such an intense situation as that.

You said that Aipom was the last pokemon she had left. I'm guessing you are just talking of the ones conscious, since Fiskmire and the others were fainted during the fight against the three union members in chapter 55.

I can't wait for the next chapter. With finals this week, Christmas break will give me a lot more free time for reading.

[Chris 2.1]

I'm exhausted. I'm directing a play (I'm only 16!) and ammateur dramatics is DIFFICULT and exhausting work :-/

So I got confused. Did Lisa find Vulpix or not?

Apart from that - excellent chapter. Loved the chaos, the uncertainty, and the feel of "who can you trust?". There was also that element of community when the innocents beat the Union members, and then the "fly in the web" twist where it transpired they were trapped.

But where next?

Excellent work.

[Master Kirby]

Lisa lost track of Vulpix when she charged, with the Union members, into the second clearing.

Seeing as the good guys are probably outnumbered ten-to-one, this would be a good time for a Legendary such as Ho-oh to come to their aid. It wouldn't be the first time Ho-oh helped Lisa. Around the time when she saw Entei "die", Ho-oh flew her across the continent. In chapter 55, Ho-oh sensed that something was wrong, and left its perch atop the Tin tower. I think its time for a little super-power intervention!

[Gavin Luper]

Replies!

mr_pika: Heh, even with an exam tomorrow, I can still count on you to read the latest chapter. Thanks very much! I don't know what else to say ... thanks so much for all your compliments/criticisms of this chapter. And yeah ... it was very much like a war, or certainly a Battle from a war ... hence the title. I'm very glad you thought it was so good, because, for me, this chapter was really a stand-out one for me in the entirety of Lisa the Legend, so it's good that you thought it was "superb".

I noticed a typo or two when I read it yesterday, and fixed it in my document. Simple mistakes like "their" instead of "there" ... which is probably indicative of how tired I must have been by the end of the chapter ... or something.

Oh, as for the Screen Tree, I thought I was making it up - I meant it to refer to those trees that have thin leaves that seem to form a screen so you can't see anything beyond them. I've heard the word screen tree used to describe them. And I did a search after you asked and they do in fact exist - not as a species but as a general description, I believe.

Once again, thanks very much for reading, and I hope you enjoy the next chapters!

Blademaster: Hi again, thanks for reading! Lol ... thanks for the compliments. Yep, the second book is just about over - for real this time. The first time I tried ending this book, it was way too sudden, but this time it's working out fine. Just a few chapters left now. And yeah ... the entire thing is going to be huge ... 80 chapters would be a good approximation. Thank you for promising to read all of them! Cheers!

Master Kirby: Hey, thanks for the reply. Heh ... yes, the usual twist at the end of the chapter. Lisa is the only one who can help them now. Thanks - I tried to make the battle/war real. How I wrote it was mostly how I saw it unfolding in my head, although through Lisa's eyes. In any case, like you said, this stuff is for real now, and as you can probably tell, the Union aren't to be taken lightly.

Yes, I meant Aipom was the last usable pokémon Lisa had left - Fisky had fainted, Vulpix is still lost ...

Next chapter hopefully soon.

Chris 2.0: Egad ... directing a play!! Good luck with that.

As Master Kirby said, Lisa didn't find Vulpix. She's still coming to terms with the battle, the near-death experience and the bullet still in her back. In her present state, she hasn't yet thought about her lost Vulpix, and it will be a little while before she remembers properly, as she's now faced with the Union all over again.

Thanks muchly.

Master Kirby 2: Correct, thanks for that.

Hehehe ... I'm saying nothing.

Everyone: Chapter 57 will hopefully be written soon, I've yet to start it but I have some time on my hands for the next week ... I hope. I hope to have it done by Christmas!

Cheers!

[pokemasterfrank]

Seeing as the good guys are probably outnumbered ten-to-one, this would be a good time for a Legendary such as Ho-oh to come to their aid. It wouldn't be the first time Ho-oh helped Lisa. Around the time when she saw Entei "die", Ho-oh flew her across the continent. In chapter 55, Ho-oh sensed that something was wrong, and left its perch atop the Tin tower. I think its time for a little super-power intervention!

Wouldn't that be a bit deus ex machina?

Anyway, woo for new chapter. I don't really have much to say that I haven't said already...can't wait for the next chapter (though I've probably said that a couple of times already, too ).

[Gavin Luper]

Pokemasterfrank: Thanks very much for the read - hopefully you won't have long to wait for the next chapter!

Haven't started Chapter 57 yet, but at work today I had a deluge of ideas for the rest of Lisa the Legend - from plot ideas for Book 3 to the very end of the entire story. I couldn't be happier. I know where all this is going now ... so I can't wait to get stuck into it.

Cheers!

[Kinglerlord2]

Hey Gavin, just letting you know that I'm still reading, trying to catch up. I'm at chapter 13 now I think... i just read the chapter heading but forgot it...

*Anyway* I'm still with it and loving it all over again.

[Gavin Luper]

Kinglerlord2: Wow, you're making your way through this pretty quickly. Well done is all I can say. And thanks muchly for reading and replying, of course; I hope you like the later chapters as well.

And I'm going to reread Silva tonight. Or tomorrow. And reply to it. Just haven't had time yet, what with Christmas shopping and work and stuff.

Chapter 57 has begun and is looking pretty good! Although, perhaps not for Lisa herself ...

Cheers!

[Gavin Luper]

Okay, well, I'm seriously doubting I'll have Chapter 57 up by Christmas, considering that is tomorrow and all. However, I have done quite a large chunk of the next chapter, more than half (about 3,500 words so far) and it is looking good. I can't say I like this chapter very much, because it's not easy to write or very ... normal ... it's very overwhelming, at least, the way I look at it it is, it seems quite surreal that things like this are happening to Lisa. But I think the story is unfolding as it needs to. The things in this chapter really do need to happen and the time has come for them to happen, so I'm forcing myself to write them.

Anyway, I'm guessing I won't be done by tonight/tomorrow, and I'll be away after Christmas for a few weeks, so I'd like to take this opportunity to wish all my readers a very Merry Christmas and a safe and happy New Year.

Cheers!

- Gavin.

[ZeldaFan20]

Sorry I didn't reply to the chapter before this, but finals have been nerve-wracking.

So Morty joined the enemy? That certainly was a shocker. I also thought that the battle was quite intense - especially when Lisa got shot. I only hope she manages to stop those guys from doing something really bad...like throw a bomb or something.

Oh well, don't leave us hanging for too long.

[Gavin Luper]

Thanks Zeldafan20 for the reply! I don't have enough time to make a proper response - I'm at an internet cafe thing in Sydney airport, it's 7.30 am and I did NOT sleep last night. Anyway, just dropping by to say hi to everyone and that I obviously have not forgotten about LTL.

Time's running out so i g2g.

Happy New Year everybody!

Cheers!

- Gavin.

[Gavin Luper]

Hi everyone!

I'm back, Gold Coast was a blast, but it's great to be back of course. I'm continuing Chapter 57 but it's difficult to do so - I don't have writer's block, but it's just difficult to write because I think what I have done so far is not quite right. It doesn't have the right feel about it. So I might be rewriting it, or at least some of it.

Will be done soon, hopefully! Thanks for your patience everyone!

Cheers!

[Gavin Luper]

G'day.

Well, I have finally finished Chapter 57. It is, more or less, the chapter I have been dreading writing for a couple of years now, because I don't like the things that finally have to happen in this chapter, but the time has come to make them happen. Certainly, I have stalled for far too long. You see, this chapter is entitled 'The Beginning' for a reason, because it is a goodbye - or, at least, a beginning of a goodbye - to the delusions that Lisa has been living under all her life, and I'm sad that she has to go through this ... but what must happen, must happen.

I won't say anything more about this (incredibly long) chapter; I'll leave it up to you guys. Despite everything, I did enjoy writing this chapter in the end, though I agonised over it for many, many, many hours.

I hope you enjoy this - one of the final chapters of Book Two of Lisa the Legend!

Cheers!

--------------------------------------------
Chapter 57 – The Beginning.


With a speed that belied his temperament, Aipom burst forth from the pokéball in a blinding flash of white light. A spinning ball of purple and white fur, he flew high into the air above the group at the base of the cliff. Instantly, three golden stars materialised around him, one star much larger than the other two.

“Aim them at the top of the cliff!” Lisa screamed, thinking that Aipom had forgotten her earlier instructions, but apparently he had not: The stars were already soaring up as Aipom directed them skyward with his mind. The first two stars, the smaller ones, collided swiftly with the shadowy figures on the clifftop, sending them flying; however, the foremost figure relinquished their hold on the device in their hands a moment before they were bowled over by the Speed Star; Lisa shrieked in terror, but the third, larger star was approaching deftly from below. It connected squarely with the falling object –

BANG!

A fireball illuminated the plateau as the object exploded abruptly, ten metres above the ground. Daniel, Nova, Gavin and the others screamed in terror and shock, throwing their hands up over their heads and scattering from their position at the foot of the cliff. Simultaneously, there were loud shouts of fury from the Union agents stationed in the underbrush. They began to charge the plateau.

Lisa saw Aipom land deftly on the ground, his attack completed. She held out his pokéball to return him to safety, but she never got the chance: someone yelled out and grabbed her around the waist, tackling her to the ground. She landed on some sticks and felt them scratch her skin, but that was the least of her pain; the adrenaline was passing now – the agony of her bullet wound, and the other injuries of the night, were flooding back. Lisa gave herself to the pain. She had no energy left to fight the man who was now pinning her to the ground roughly. She knew she had probably saved the lives of Gavin and the others, but she didn’t feel as though she had achieved anything. For how long had she stalled the inevitable? Though she was blinded by pain, Lisa knew that the Union must surely have the others surrounded by now too … they were caught …

“This won’t hurt a bit,” said the person holding her down. There was a flash of green light, but he needn’t have bothered Stunning Lisa; she had already passed out from the pain.

*

Footsteps on rocky ground reverberated in the cave. Distant voices murmured to one another. Somewhere nearby, a fire crackled. Elsewhere, a long way away, a liquid sloshed against the walls of its prison, awaiting its moment.

Lisa woke up. She was slumped against a rock wall. A handful of black-clothed figures surrounded her, none of them yet aware that she had awoken. They were perched on a small landing in what seemed to be an ancient stone staircase, roughly hewn out of the side of a massive cave. The steps ran along one side of the cave, bordered on one side by rock and on the other by an intricate web of stalactites and stalagmites. The Union agents around her were leaning against the web of stalagmites, staring as if mesmerized at something that was happening in the main body of the cave.

Above Lisa’s head, a torch was fixed in a bracket against the wall. There were torches throughout the cave, casting an ethereal light upon the proceedings. The cave was a world away from the events that had taken place on the plateau earlier; it was as though that had been a former life.

Lisa suddenly realised that her back was no longer paining her, at least, not nearly as much as it should have been; there were constant needles of pain in her back, but they were completely bearable, particularly after the agony she had gone through earlier. She reached around to her back and discovered, where the bullet had previously been lodged in her flesh, there was nothing but a raised lump of bandages. Lisa traced her fingers across her back and examined them in the flickering torchlight. To her amazement, there was no blood at all; it had all been cleaned up. Astonished, she looked at her forearms that Veronica had scratched earlier. Sure enough, her wounds had been cleaned, her arms bandaged well.

Her mended injuries momentarily forgotten, Lisa became aware of what was happening in the cave. Through a gap in the stalactite-stalagmite web that bordered the staircase, she caught sight of dozens of people – maybe even hundreds of people – all seated on the ground, like schoolchildren, almost. They were all gazing ahead, at someone who stood in front of them all, delivering a speech in a loud, powerful voice.

She took a detailed glance around the landing, just in case she had overlooked some nook or cranny, but she had not; her backpack was clearly missing, evidently taken by the Union.

Unable to do anything else, Lisa wriggled slightly to her left, in order to get a better view through her ‘window’. A black-clothed man beside her looked at her, kept his eye on her for just a moment, and then refocussed on the going-on in the main chamber of the cave. Heartened, Lisa left her station by the wall and crawled towards the small ‘window’. As she moved, several pairs of eyes were on her, but nobody motioned to stop her.

She settled herself down by the ‘window’ and watched intently. There were hundreds of people seated in the chamber, a small army. They were all staring at a tall man who stood on a raised platform, a natural dais made of red rock. He stood in the middle of two large objects: On his left, a large metal cup, filled with oil and burning with a bright orange flame, illuminating him; on his right, a thickset wooden stand, which had on it a small collection of items, including a small, dark-wooded box. Lisa took a closer look at the box and recognised it: it was the ebony box from her dream last night. Lisa took a closer look at the objects on the stand and realised there was another box, the rosewood box from her dream, right beside the ebony box.

She tried to look at the other objects on the stand, but her attention was suddenly stolen by the man speaking to the crowd. He was tall and well-built, his short hair as dark as pitch. He spoke with authority, waving his hands and gesticulating to emphasise his points. His eyes were black and hard, but blazed as if they were on fire.

“And now, as we progress to the advanced stages of our great plan, we can take heart in the fact that we have, once again, displayed our supreme power to the world!” The man was saying, slamming his fist onto the palm of his hand. As if on cue, the crowd of people roared in support. Even the agents around Lisa were shouting out their agreement.

“I have brought you all here with me tonight,” declared the man proudly, “to prove that there are no secrets kept from anyone. I have heard of rumour mongers among you who have been spreading insidious lies that I have kept secrets from you all, that I have not been honest and upfront with you, my followers and friends, in detailing my plans.” He paused purposely; there was a sudden outbreak of whispering across the cave; the man standing nearest to Lisa was muttering vehement denials under his breath. “Nothing could be further from the truth, my friends!” declared the man standing on the dais, and here he slammed his fist down on the wooden stand. “Contrary to what some may have told you, I have no hidden agenda when it comes to this organisation! I keep no secrets from those I choose to be my allies! No secrets!”

“No secrets!” echoed hundreds of agents.

The man at the front smiled at them graciously, and Lisa was beginning to get a very shrewd idea of his identity. “As such,” he continued loudly, “I have gathered you here to witness the magnificence of my plans. You see, tonight’s operations were three-fold. Firstly, we sought to finally reveal our true colours to the world, which we have succeeded at – the Police have fallen to our ranks! Incidental deaths are but a natural by-product of our mission. Tomorrow, the world will awaken to a new era, an era of the Union’s Supremacy!”

On cue, an almighty roar went up across the cave; all the agents on the staircase raised their hands to the air and cheered in unison.

The man on the dais smiled once again and waited for the noise to die down before he continued.

“Secondly, we sought to fulfil the next step in the Great Legend.”

Lisa’s ears pricked up at the mention of the word ‘Legend’. Despite everything that had happened, she had not forgotten what Professor Oak had told her earlier: “Lisa,” he had said softly, “the Legend involves you.”

She listened intently to the man’s words, however, she was quickly disappointed; he was not going to elucidate anything about the Legend.

“Which we have also succeeded in!” he continued bravely, his voice almost too confident. He was met by a collective roar from the Union agents. Lisa shivered; the fanatical yells were beginning to truly frighten her; these people seemed to be almost brainwashed into supporting the man at the front, their eyes trained on him as if their world depended upon what he said. Yet, even as Lisa surveyed the mass of black-clothed people, she could detect the occasional person who did not scream maniacally at the man’s impassioned speech, people who seemed in control of themselves.

On the dais, the ringleader reached over to the wooden stand and placed his hands on the ebony box. He deftly undid the silver clasp and swung the lid back on its hinge. The crowd of Union agents leaned forward curiously. Lisa’s senses tingled with anticipation; she poked her head through the ‘window’ through which she was watching the curious proceedings.

Wearing a genuine smile, the man on the dais held the base of the box and lifted it up to the rest of the chamber.

Glittering in the flickering torchlight, ancient and resplendent, were two silver keys.

Amid the almighty, deafening roar that went up among the crowd, Lisa suddenly understood why the Union had sieged the mountain.

Over the cacophony in the chamber, the man on the dais was saying, “We did it! We have the Second Key at long, long last!” There was another cheer. When it had died down, the man spoke again, more calmly. “Tonight was a joint effort. As one, we defied the authorities and acquired the Second Key!”

Once again, the organisation revelled as one, but Lisa was deep in thought. She remembered what Derek had said to her and Gavin earlier that night: “Tell Lance and only Lance that I know where the Second Key is,” he had said gravely. Lisa saw now what he had been doing. He had hoped to somehow prevent the Union from succeeding in their siege on Mount Fairfax by finding the Second Key first –

But Derek himself had failed: The Union had still obtained the Second Key. Lisa still didn’t have a clue what the keys meant, but she knew that a Union success wasn’t good.

She watched the man on the dais intently as he closed the ebony box and placed it on the wooden stand again. There was something curious about the way he was talking – something that seemed out of place. Lisa had always understood the Union to be a fierce, aggressive organisation, ruthless in achieving their evil goals. Yet the ringleader of the group was speaking to his agents like a teacher to a student, not like a master to a servant. He presented himself as approachable, despite clearly being the one in the position of power. His speech seemed to be evoking a sense of community among the agents, a sense of triumph and togetherness that wouldn’t be out of place in a Kindergarten.

Before Lisa could comprehend this, the man had begun to speak again, and there was a sudden hush over the congregation of Union agents.

“The third prong of our operations tonight,” he said, a good deal louder than before, “Has yet to be completed, and we cannot succeed fully tonight without the help of an outsider.”

Lisa realised a moment too late what was happening; the agents clustered on the rock staircase around her had suddenly converged on her, two of them clasping her under each arm and hauling her to her feet without any warning. Flanked on all sides by burly, black-clothed agents, Lisa was led down the last few steps and onto the mostly flat surface of the main chamber. The security of the stalactite-stalagmite web gone, she was now exposed to the entire cave.

“Behold,” bellowed the man on the dais, sweeping his hand in Lisa’s direction, “Our unwilling helper, Lisa Walters.”

Hundreds of bodies twisted to face her; the eyes of everyone in the room were suddenly on Lisa. She stared out at them blankly, fighting the urge to flee. One of the men escorting her suddenly gave her a gentle shove in the back, barely an inch below her bandaged bullet wound; Lisa winced, the pain rearing its head like a serpent. Tears sprang into her eyes reflexively but she swiftly blinked them away. Reluctantly, she acquiesced to the man’s shoving and began to approach the front of the cave – alone; the agents who had been flanking her left her to make the approach by herself.

As she trudged down the makeshift aisle down the centre of the torchlit cave, Lisa became acutely aware of the crowd’s reaction to her entrance. Many of them were glaring at her venomously, hissing out of making grotesque faces at her as she passed them. The agents sitting on the edges of the aisle tried to grab at her feet as she passed, however, when one finally did and Lisa shrieked in fright, the man on the dais spoke out deafeningly:

“Nobody is to touch her!” he roared, though his voice was still controlled.

Barely heartened, Lisa walked on. She had no idea what was going to happen when she reached the dais, but she wanted to face it as quickly as possible. If there was one thing she hated, it was waiting in fear.

The rest of her approach was easier only in that there were no hands clutching at her feet, as if to trip her up, but she was still being glared at, hissed at; she was still being watched by hundreds of foes in a kind of silent nightmare.

After what seemed like an age, she reached the dais, upon which were the wooden stand, the cup filled with burning, scented oil and, of course, the man who had been speaking to his followers.

Lisa stared him straight in the eye as she stepped up onto the raised rock platform, and he mirrored her. She had never expected to encounter Joseph Sterling, resurrector of Team Rocket and now leader of the Union, and yet here she stood, a metre from him, their eyes locked.

“Lisa,” he said, his voice smooth as honey, his arrogant smile exuding falseness in all its glory. “Always a pleasure.”

“Not for me,” she said loudly.

For a moment, for the most infinitesimal fraction of a second, Joseph Sterling’s face fell: the flagrant superiority behind his irises flickered; his eyebrows, so expertly lowered in a forced expression of power and knowledge, rose ever so slightly; and his smile, sly, exultant and brimming with deceit, wavered. Lisa had never met him before, she had never come face to face with this man, and yet all at once, inexplicably, she knew his kind, she knew who he was and what he stood for.

Joseph Sterling was responsible for everything that had happened tonight – the deaths, the battle, the terror. He had manipulated – brainwashed, even – hundreds of agents to obey him fanatically. It was on his orders that the Union had sieged the mountain. It was on his orders that the Union had invaded Lisa’s home and attacked her and Marina. It was on his orders that Gavin and countless other prisoners, innocent or otherwise, had been brutally beaten and tortured into submission. It was on his orders that three Union agents had been sent to kill, to destroy, Lisa herself. Joseph Sterling had sanctioned every foul, evil action imaginable, and yet here he was before an assembly of followers, all of them in thrall to his every deceitful word, worshipping him as a hero and his praising his ideas as paragon.

And Lisa despised him with all her heart.

The assembly of Union agents below had fallen into a deathly silence at Lisa’s words. Joseph Sterling eyed Lisa closely, surveying her with those hard black eyes as though she was some kind of species he had never encountered before.

“Your bluntness surprises me,” he said at last, his voice as controlled as ever.

Lisa didn’t say anything in response; she had surprised herself. She remained taciturn.

Sterling looked away from her and faced his army once more. “Lisa Walters is here tonight,” he declared, “to enter the Sepulchre of Entei!”

Amid the renewed roars of support, Lisa felt her stomach turn violently. Of all the things she had been expecting, this was most definitely not one of them. She had never heard of the Sepulchre of Entei, but whatever it was, it didn’t sound inviting.

The assembly settled down as Sterling turned toward Lisa. “Will you help us out, Lisa?”

He was facing her, asking a direct question. Lisa didn’t know what to do: why was this happening to her? Not so long ago she had been rejoicing, jubilant that the Union had been defeated – and now everything had taken the most bitter turn possible – she was trapped, with the Union asking her to do their bidding.

She steeled herself, looked Sterling in the eye again and said stubbornly, “No.”

He looked unabashed; in the crowd, the agents were jeering at Lisa unrestrainedly, calling her names that she couldn’t distinguish from the deafening apprehension in her head. Joseph was no longer ordering the agents to leave her alone.

“I will ask you just once more,” said Sterling, in a booming voice, raising himself up to his full height. “Will you enter the Sepulchre of Entei?”

Lisa tried to think of the best response, but her mind was no more than a useless clutter of jangled nerves. “What is the Sepulchre of Entei?”

A broad smirk spread across Sterling’s face. “I don’t think I will be telling you anything like that,” he said smugly. “No use giving you any information you might be able to use.”

Lisa frowned; he was depraved but undeniably sensible.

“Now give me an answer. Yes or no.”

“Never,” said Lisa defiantly.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, he raised his arm and brought it crashing down on Lisa’s neck; Lisa heard her own squeal of pain as if it was coming from somewhere a very long way away. She reeled back as her bullet wound stung violently, but she did not fall.

“You don’t say no to Joseph Sterling,” said Sterling, so quietly and calmly that only Lisa could hear him. “I believe,” he said, raising his voice now so that his supporters could hear him, “you will be entering the Sepulchre tonight.” He glanced up to the side of the cave that was bounded by the roughly hewn staircase. “Dennis, now please.”

And, before Lisa had realised what was happening, there came the sounds of a man struggling with a load, and then something began to protrude through a ‘window’ like the one Lisa had looked through. It was a person. Lisa caught a glimpse of the face, covered in dried blood.

It was Gavin.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to lunge at Joseph Sterling and tear into him, hurt him in any way she possibly could, just as long as he felt some of the pain that she was enduring now, some of the terror. The night was nothing more than a nightmare that wouldn’t end; one terrible shock followed another. And now the Union had her pinned, they had her defeated. She had no choice but to acquiesce – they had Gavin.

“Two bullets in his brain is all it would take,” Sterling said casually, “if you defy me again. Now, your answer … will you do what I command?”

Her eyes prickling with fury, Lisa nodded.

“No, no, no, Lisa,” Sterling laughed mirthlessly, as his army echoed him, “I want to hear you say it. I want to hear you submit to me.”

Don’t do it! screamed something deep within Lisa, but she slowly opened her mouth and said, “Yes.”

Victory flashed across Sterling’s face. “That is pleasing to hear,” he said simply, as though he had only asked her once, and had not just struck her and threatened to kill her friend. “Then you will go in immediately.” He raised his voice again. “Veronica!”

Lisa knew who to expect; moments later, a woman with platinum blonde hair rose gracefully from among the rest of the assembly; she was seated importantly in the third row.

“I am ready, boss,” she said in a low but confident tone; Lisa noticed a sizeable lump on her forehead where she had struck her earlier.

“Veronica has volunteered her services tonight,” Sterling announced to the rest of the Union. “She will guard Miss Walters as she ventures into what is known as the Sepulchre of Entei!”

Veronica strode up to the dais, hobbling slightly, a tear in the lower half of her black pants exposing a vicious bite mark. She made eye contact and Lisa did her best to glare at her – it felt like the last kind of defiance she could afford.

Sterling surveyed Veronica intently for a moment. “Good luck,” he said quietly, in a rare moment of concern. He pulled out a small leather bag from his coat and handed it to her; there were no words exchanged, though, Lisa thought, Veronica must have known precisely what she had been given, because her eyes glimmered and she bowed her head slightly, as if in reverence.

“Now go!” Joseph Sterling roared abruptly, raising a fist into the air above his head; the Union began to clap and cheer Veronica on. “And make haste, for the police will soon bring their back-up forces!”

It was in these kinds of situations that humans reverted to their most basic instincts – the primal fight-or-flight mechanism – however, Lisa stood rooted to the dais, unable to make herself move. She could not fight such a contingent, nor could she flee from them – the cave offered no escape routes except the high staircase, and that was blocked by agents. To resist would not only be futile, but it could provoke Joseph Sterling into ordering Gavin’s death.

Lisa gulped, feeling a knot building in her throat. She was left with no choice: she had to do what the Union wanted.

Veronica crossed the dais and reached Lisa. With a vile smirk she grabbed hold of Lisa’s right arm, her nails digging in far more than was necessary. Needles of pain began shooting up Lisa’s arm, but she gritted her teeth and did her best not to show it.

The least I can do, she thought, is to be brave.

Amid a cacophony of combined cheering and jeering, Veronica swept Lisa with her to the back of the dais. Sterling fixed Lisa with a victorious grin as she passed. Mustering all her strength, she kept her expression calm and unfazed, despite the lurch of terror within her.

Behind the dais there was a short series of rock steps, roughly hewn from the rock, much like the larger staircase. The steps were quite invisible from the other side of the dais, where the Union sat in assembly. Indeed, Lisa had not even realised that there was anything behind the dais at all.

“Down here,” Veronica said roughly, her hand still clasped around Lisa’s arm.

Lisa felt her stomach turn with a sense of impending doom: At the foot of the short flight of steps, at the point where the floor met the back wall of the massive cave, was a small, dark hole.

Veronica released her. “You go in first, girl,” she sneered, pushing Lisa towards the tiny opening.

Lisa obeyed, as she knew she had to. She sat herself down on the edge of the hole and poked first her feet, then her legs, into the unknown. The hole was so small in diameter that Lisa’s hips nearly caught on the sides. She eased them through gingerly.

“Hurry it up,” snapped Veronica, prodding her back.

Obediently, Lisa squeezed her torso through the gap and, without warning, she felt her foot touch something in the darkness – and it moved.

“Eugh!”

Closing her eyes in fear, she used her arms to propel the rest of her body into the hole. At once, darkness closed in around her – and something furry touched her face. She shrieked and flailed around in the dark hole, until suddenly she realised that whatever floor there had been was now gone. She was falling through the darkness, falling through thick spiderwebs and slimy objects …

“OUCH!”

Something unexpectedly soft – and squishy – broke her fall; her face was pressed into a slimy substance, the nature of which she could only imagine. The huge thing she had landed on began to move slightly, almost pulsating … She clutched for her Buzzball, but it was gone, as were her pokéballs: she had no weapons … there was nobody to help her …

There was a stifled cry of shock as Veronica came falling from the hole above and landed with a soft squish right beside Lisa. The woman struck a match and a tiny orange flame appeared, as if levitating itself, in the darkness. A second later there was a whooshing sound – Veronica had lit a wooden torch, which cast a strong light around them.

Lisa took stock of her surroundings. They were in a long, sloping tunnel, which was large enough for the two of them to walk down side-by-side. Thick, silver spiderwebs lined the sides of the cave, but otherwise, it was quite bare.

“Augh!” Veronica cried suddenly. She threw her arms up and began to scramble away from Lisa. Her eyes were fixed on the thing that the two of them had landed on; Lisa followed her gaze and nearly retched: the thing looked like a massive pulsating blob. It was the size of a car, half-buried in the rocky ground, and it was covered in thick, sticky web, so that it was impossible to see what was inside …

Shrieking, Lisa kicked her way off the blob until finally she fell a few inches onto the solid rock floor. She breathed a sigh of relief.

“What IS that thing?” she gasped, quite forgetting that Veronica was her enemy.

Veronica too, it seemed, had momentarily forgotten their enmity, for she replied, in a clearly flustered voice, “I don’t know …” She shook her head and shifted the torch to her right hand. “Never mind – we must go on,” she added, much more business-like. She jerked her head to tell Lisa to follow her and began to stride down the sloping, torchlit tunnel.

Lisa didn’t need to be asked twice – she would take a dark, winding tunnel over a mysterious pulsing blob any day. Without a look back at the foreign-looking thing behind her, Lisa got to her feet and hurried after Veronica, keen to remain within the bounds of the torchlight.

The tunnel led onwards for a considerable distance, winding constantly in a downward direction. For twenty minutes, Veronica and Lisa negotiated the downward path, ducking through cobwebs when necessary. Lisa said nothing to Veronica, and the Union agent said very little either, other than occasional jeers or commands to “Hurry up”.

Lisa’s mind wandered to what was happening on the surface of the mountain. Would the police’s back up forces have arrived to save the day yet? Was Gavin going to be all right? And what had become of Daniel, Nova, Derek, the Professor, and the others?

“Girl,” said Veronica sharply.

“I have a name, you know,” Lisa said irritably.

Veronica ignored her. “Spinarak web,” she said shortly, waving the blazing torch before her. Lisa peered a few metres ahead: sure enough, the tunnel was completely blocked by a massive, ornately spun Spinarak web. On the sides of the web, clustered in the shadows of the crags and rocks jutting out from the tunnel’s walls, were several large Spinaraks.

The web reminded Lisa very much of the one she and Gavin had blasted their way through in the forest several days ago.

“You go first,” said Veronica sleekly.

“What?” Lisa demanded. “But – but I’m needed … aren’t I?”

“So it would seem,” Veronica replied lazily. “It’s not dangerous work, just break down the web for me – a Spinarak bite won’t kill you …”

“A dozen might!” Lisa shot back grimly.

Her face lit eerily by the flames of the torch, Veronica scowled. “You’d better not argue, girl, and just do what I say.”

Lisa glanced at the thick web and knew she wouldn’t make it – the Spinarak were converging on the edge of the web now, waiting for an intruder to attempt to break it down.

“Don’t you have pokémon to use for this kind of thing?” Lisa asked her as politely as she could.

A flash of anger crossed Veronica’s face. “Unfortunately, no, not one that could break down this web,” she said. “Your friend Gavin saw to that … knocked out my –” She stopped herself, not wanting to lose face. Lisa, on the other hand, felt a burst of pride that Gavin had managed to take out some of Veronica’s pokémon … however, Gavin’s victory was their loss – they had no way of cutting down the web without sustaining dangerous injuries, no pokémon, no tools at all …

… or did they?

Lisa felt as though a light bulb had switched itself on spectacularly inside her head.

“The torch,” she said. “We can set the web on fire, just like we did in the forest, and then just jump through.” She turned to Veronica, who looked unconvinced. “Just hold the flame to the web, it should take hold,” Lisa said, stepping away from the web so that Veronica would be closest to it … but she, too, backed away.

“You do it, if you’re so convinced,” said Veronica in a haughty voice, though Lisa could see that she was actually quite afraid of having to put herself at risk.

“Well … I don’t know,” Lisa said slowly, aware of the advantage she held. “If you don’t want to do it, I’m not going to … maybe we should turn back.”

Her words, far from forcing Veronica into turning back or even setting fire to the web herself, caused the Union agent to whip out a black pistol that she had hitherto concealed. She pointed the gun at Lisa and smiled confidently. “I don’t think so,” she said, her voice much more confident now that she held the weapon. She thrust the torch forward. “You will do it.”

Of course, thought Lisa. They wouldn’t send her in here unarmed …

Reluctantly, Lisa took the torch; strangely, it did a great deal to settle her jangling nerves. She now felt as though she had just a little control over the situation. She spun around and took a few steps toward the web. The spiders clustered at the edge moved in a little closer, clicking their pincers threateningly, ready to strike.

Lisa moved forward gingerly. In the forest, she had had Vulpix’s flamethrower to blast through the Spinarak web … now, however, she merely held a burning torch …

A couple of feet from the web, she realised that it wasn’t going to work. The web wouldn’t ignite quickly enough, and by the time it did, the spiders would be all over her.

She turned back to Veronica, who merely cocked her pistol and sneered. There was no compassion to be found there, Veronica was not going to bow to Lisa’s appeal. There was no way out.

Wheeling back to the gigantic web, Lisa held the torch in her right hand and thrust it mightily into the centre of the web. At once, the Spinarak clicked their pincers gleefully and began to charge toward Lisa, clambering over each other in their eagerness. Lisa wasted no time: she swiped a large, methodical ‘X’ in the web; the fire burned through the thick web, weakening it, but the silvery string was too sticky … it refused to ignite at all …

“Hurry up, hurry up,” Lisa urged the web under her breath, holding the torch to the web, but it scarcely charred the web at all. The spiders were close, now, barely a metre away …

Lisa stole a hurried glance at her ‘X’ – it was not deep enough, it had not destroyed the web itself, but made a weak opening. She slashed wildly at the hole she had made, tearing the web apart slowly … wispy pieces of web began to fall to the ground …

Thwap! Lisa’s arm was pulled back as a single thread of white string wrapped around her arm – and then another – the Spinarak were using their String Shots to immobilise her … they were on her now, grasping at her shoulders …

“No!” she cried. Holding the torch before her, she wrenched herself free of the String Shots and, with a gargantuan effort, pushed herself through the weakened web; for a second, it seemed that it would not give way … that she would be trapped there, entangled in the web for the Spinarak to attack … but then, with a sound like material tearing, the web broke along the ‘X’ that Lisa had burned into it; she went sprawling through the thick barrier to the other side, hitting the ground with a thud.

She whirled around, holding the torch aloft; the Spinarak were not coming after her, even though she was barely a metre on the other side of the web … they remained on the web, clicking their pincers furiously as they spun more thread to cover the gaping hole Lisa had made.

Lisa panted heavily, her breath gone. It had seemed impossible, and yet, she had survived, she had made it through … alone. Her heart leapt: Veronica was still stranded on the other side of the web. Could she possibly venture on alone, and even find a way to escape the Union?

She had taken only a few steps forward when she heard Veronica’s shouted order through the web behind her: “Don’t go on!” she called, trying to maintain the strength in her voice, but she was clearly afraid without her torch. Lisa intended to go on regardless, but all of a sudden, shots rang out in the tunnel behind her; she dived to the ground in panic, but there were no bullets zinging through the air around her … yet, the shots were still ringing out …

Lisa suddenly understood: in her desperation, Veronica was firing at the Spinarak, trying to take out enough of them for her to charge through the gap in the web before it was too late …

Lisa felt a pang of pity for Veronica, that she was so desperate, but she knew better than to turn back and help her out. She stood stock-still, facing the web uncertainly, as another round of gunfire issued from Veronica’s pistol … but no Veronica came.

Without warning, there was a gigantic burst of vermilion flames; the huge Spinarak web, metres in diameter, ignited at once, scorched fiercely by the blaze of fire; Spinarak flew through the air as though they had been hit by a small shock wave –

“Augh!”

With a loud cry, Veronica charged through the smouldering remains of the web, one hand above her head, the other, clutching the leather bag that Joseph Sterling had given her; even in the light of the blazing web, Lisa caught sight of a bright red glow coming out of the bag, though she could not see what was causing it …

Veronica reached Lisa’s side. “Come on, girl!” she commanded fiercely, stowing the leather bag and producing the black gun once more, levelling it at Lisa. All around her, stray Spinarak were scuttling hurriedly back to where the web had previously been, apparently intent to build a new one; remarkably, they did not even try to harm either Lisa or Veronica now that they were on the other side of the web.

“I said, come on,” Veronica snapped, all traces of desperation gone now that she was safe. Without another word, she swept onwards down the ever-declining tunnel, allowing Lisa to keep hold of the torch. Lisa followed her once more.

Another five minutes on and the exhilaration of the incident at the web was quite a thing of the past; the tunnel was as bare as ever, and now quite free of any cobwebs, though Lisa had a nagging feeling that, somewhere ahead, there was something more frightening than spiders.

“Ah, we are nearly there,” said Veronica calmly, as they descended two natural steps. Lisa could not see how she knew this, for the tunnel seemed as bare as ever, but sure enough, a few moments later they rounded a twist in the tunnel and entered a sizeable chamber. Standing before them on a huge rock altar, like an old sentinel, was an ancient golden statue, hewn in the majestic shape of an Entei. Its entire body, six feet tall, glittered in the torchlight; its eyes were large rubies.

“Oh my God,” said Lisa, breathtaken in spite of herself.

“Ah … the Sepulchre,” murmured Veronica.

Behind the statue of Entei, on a thin rock ledge, was a grand archway; it held an arch-shaped oak door, the doorframe of which was laced with gold and encrusted with all kinds of colourful gems. The door itself had a short series of runes carved into it, which looked unsettlingly similar to the ones Lisa had seen higher up in the mountain.

“Amazing,” Lisa muttered, touching the golden statue of Entei; it was covered in dust and dirt but it still maintained a certain grandeur.

“No time for dawdling,” said Veronica harshly, prodding Lisa in the back (thankfully not in her bullet wound). She snatched the torch off Lisa. “Follow me,” she growled, leaping up onto the thin rock ledge and walking along it until she came to the huge oak door. It had no lock, but appeared firmly in place. Veronica pushed the door, gently at first and then with all her might, but the door did not move. Finally, her face red with exertion, she whirled around to Lisa, who was still standing beside the statue of Entei.

“Girl,” she said again, “come here. Now.”

Lisa took her eyes off the statue and jumped up onto the rock ledge and approaching the oak door. Veronica handed her the torch and grabbed her impatiently, jostling her around on the ledge until Lisa stood squarely in front of the door.

“Now stand there and wait.”

Lisa obeyed. She stood, silent and still, for a full minute. Nothing happened. The door remained immobile.

“Try to push it,” Veronica suggested shortly.

Lisa complied, pressing her hands against the wooden door – and, instantly, she pulled them away, shaking her hands wildly. “It’s hot!”

Beside her, Veronica flicked her blonde hair indignantly. “What do you mean?”

“The door!” Lisa insisted, her hands cool now. “It’s scorching hot – I couldn’t hold my hands there long enough to push it open!”

Veronica looked bewildered; clearly, Joseph had not told her to expect this. “Well then, kick it!” she snapped, flustered.

“I don’t think that’s a good –” Lisa began, a sense of foreboding rising within her.

The gun was out already. “I said, kick it!”

Steeling herself, Lisa raised her leg and, with the strength born of her ballet years, she delivered a sharp kick to the right hand side of the door.

As though there were nothing holding it back, the door flew wide open, despite its size and mass. Lisa garnered a fleeting glance of an absolutely massive chamber filled with thick smoke, steam and what looked like lava before an almighty blast of hot air sent her and Veronica flying backwards onto the ground below.

“What the –” yelled Veronica, her voice barely audible over the mysterious roar within the Sepulchre.

“I told you!” Lisa cried back, covering her face with her hands; the heat was unbearable, scorching her skin. Steam was gushing out of the doorway to the Sepulchre now, filling the antechamber in which they stood. Veronica writhed on the floor, her face covered, pistol forgotten.

A burst of foul-smelling gas and dust burst from the door, narrowly missing Veronica; at the same time, with a wave of horror, Lisa saw thin, red-hot lava churning about in the chamber, flowing rapidly towards the door.

Whatever was meant to happen, Lisa thought briefly, this most definitely wasn’t it.

She assessed her options and knew that there was no chance of charging through the Sepulchre itself; her only chance of escape – or survival, even – was back up the tunnel from which she and Veronica had come. She retrieved the mercifully still-alight torch, which had gone flying when the door opened, and made a dash for the tunnel.

As she passed the statue of Entei, Lisa remembered Veronica; spinning on her heel, she caught sight of the Union agent several metres behind her, clutching at the walls of the chamber, her eyes screwed shut against the ash now suspended in the hot air. Lisa teetered uncertainly. A part of her longed to leave the Union agent there, to be consumed by the fire and smoke: Still facing Veronica, Lisa backed slowly away, returning to the entrance tunnel … she deserves it, let her die …

Abruptly, the earth shook wildly; it felt as though the rocks below were sliding haphazardly over each other. Lisa stumbled and fell, losing the torch again. Struggling to her feet, she saw a small wave of red-hot fluid cresting in the doorframe, flowing directly for the blinded Veronica. Her conscience took hold of her like as though she were a fish snared by a hook – she couldn’t just stand back –

Lisa raced forward, one eye on the approaching lava flow, and grabbed Veronica by the underarms.

“What are you doing?” screamed Veronica wildly, her eyes blinded by the ash: she was resisting, apparently taking Lisa’s assistance as some kind of an attack. She kicked out at Lisa as molten lava oozed through the doorframe, into the antechamber. Lisa threw her arm up over her face as a gust of hot air exploded from the chaos within the Sepulchre and grabbed at Veronica’s arm again.

“I – I’m saving your life,” Lisa muttered back sharply. “And if you don’t come with me, you’ll be killed – come ON!”

Blinking foolishly, Veronica stumbled to her feet, ready to run. Lisa grabbed the torch in one hand, clasped Veronica’s wrist in the other and ran for her life: past the doorframe, through which she could see the Sepulchre of Entei blazing with fire and lava; past the statue of Entei, out of the antechamber and into the entrance tunnel …

The earth was rumbling as though it was ready to explode. The ground of the tunnel shook from side to side as Lisa sprinted back up towards the surface, her enemy clinging to her arm all the while. Lisa’s mind was working overtime: lava, inside Mount Fairfax? Just how far had they descended?

The answer, it seemed, was very. Lisa lost her breath after just a few minutes – her heart was thumping, her lungs grasping for air that was rapidly becoming contaminated with foul-smelling gases that were rising up from the Sepulchre below; her legs, already put under tremendous strain that evening, were ready to collapse; and her injuries from the battle were beginning to rear their heads – it felt as though somebody was twisting a knife in her back.

“Keep going, keep going,” Lisa chanted to herself, rounding a bend in the tunnel only to be faced with another stretch of bare rock; she had not even reached the Spinarak web yet. “Keep going, keep going, keep going.”

They had just rounded what felt like the millionth corner when Lisa saw something further up the tunnel – a bright speck of light, hovering off the ground, speeding toward her and Veronica. Lisa paused apprehensively, but she had no option but to let the thing meet her – she had no tools to help her.

The speck of light became a beam of light, and as it came closer, Lisa saw that it was in fact a powerful electric torch, held by a person on the back of a large, flying creature. The flying creature approached swiftly, until Lisa had to avert her gaze to avoid being dazzled by the bright light. The creature reached Lisa and Veronica at last, landing softly on the quaking ground. Lisa squinted her eyes to determine whether the newcomer was friend or for …

“It’s Lisa!” said a jubilant voice abruptly. “Dad, it’s Lisa!”

The wave of relief that swept over Lisa in that moment was so tremendous that she almost felt giddy. There were in fact two people on the back of the pokémon, which was a strong, rose-gold Dragonite – one was a man, seated comfortably with his legs squeezed around the creature’s middle; the other person, who was holding the bright torch, was a teenage boy.

Lance Hudson and his son Darius both wore broad grins, despite the fact that the tunnel around them was beginning to crumble. Lisa grinned back at them in disbelief: how the two of them had come to be here she didn’t care, all that mattered was that she was saved, not just from the volcano, but from the Union, too.

“You’re alive!” Darius burst out incredulously, his dimples pronounced.

“I know!” Lisa replied, equally astonished that she was going to be all right. She glanced from Darius to his father, however, Lance’s expression, though jubilant, was also anxious.

“Lisa,” he said, concerned, “What happened here?”

“It was the Union,” Lisa told him, gesturing to Veronica, who had her hands to her ears, trying to block out the roar of the Sepulchre below. “They attacked the mountain contest, and they fought us, and brought me down here, to the Sepulchre of Entei –”

Lance nodded patiently. A few metres away, a section of the tunnel’s ceiling collapsed to the ground. “Lisa, I want you to tell me about it all later. Right now, you have to get out of here.” As he spoke, his son produced a small red-and-white orb. He held it outstretched to Lisa. “Take Darius’s Stantler and escape,” Lance said firmly. “I will explain everything to you later, Lisa, but there is no time now, you understand?”

“Yes,” Lisa said quietly, taking the ball from Darius, “but where are you two going?”

“To the Sepulchre. You see, Darius needs to go there.”

“But it’s dangerous!” Lisa protested. “There’s a volcano!”

Lance shook his head. “It is not a volcano. We are in no grave danger. Please, Lisa, run!” And with that, his Dragonite kicked off from the ground and flew further down the tunnel, back towards the Sepulchre, leaving Lisa in the weak light of her burning torch.

For the first time in minutes, Veronica was showing signs of life – she was mumbling furiously to herself, apparently unaware that Lisa was still beside her. “We got the wrong one … of course …” she muttered bitterly, her hands clenched.

Without warning, the earth shook violently. A cascade of rocks and dirt fell from the ceiling. Lisa turned on her heel and threw the pokéball Darius had given her. It bounced once on the rock floor before exploding with white light, which rapidly took the shape of a creature. The Stantler had brown fur flecked with white and dark brown, it’s intricate antlers causing it to look much taller than it perhaps was. It reminded Lisa very much of a reindeer.

Stantler fixed her with a kind but urgent look. Lisa nodded compliantly. “All right. I’m coming,” she said. She turned to Veronica. All the venom, all the fight, seemed to have left the Union agent since she had been injured in the antechamber. Lisa grabbed her arm firmly and led her to Stantler’s side. She surveyed the situation, wondering how on earth she was going to lift Veronica’s useless form up onto the deer, but Stantler gently lowered its body to the ground, so that, with a rather forceful prod in the back from Lisa, Veronica obediently seated herself. Lisa followed suit. Stantler stood up, snorted slightly and set off at full-pelt back up the tunnel.

Lisa’s hair flew back as Stantler ran. She had not expected a deer to be so fast, but Stantler ran with extreme pace. Her arms around the deer’s neck, Lisa felt the ride re-energizing her like some kind of magical tonic. The cold air rushing at her face was especially welcome – it was a soothing change from the blasts of hot air down in the antechamber.

Stantler took a hairpin bend at great speed but remained perfectly upright; it wheeled around and began galloping down the next stretch of tunnel. Peering ahead, Lisa saw it: the Spinarak web, still frayed but bordered with dozens of Spinarak.

“Be careful!” Lisa called out.

Still running at full speed, Stantler turned its head to face Lisa and gave her a shrewd, almost cheeky look, as if to say, “Please, as if I need to be told.”

The deer faced ahead again and, lowering its head, sent forth a broad beam of crimson light, which spread to fill the entire width of the tunnel. The beam hit the clusters of Spinarak, so that, by the time that Stantler passed through the web, the arachnids were dazed, turning on each other in their confusion, allowing the deer and its passengers safe passage.

Stantler sped on, bounding up the tunnel with the grace of a mountain gazelle, dodging the rocks that fell from the ceiling as the mountain shook; it was truly a spectacular beast. Upon rounding one particularly nasty turn in the tunnel, Lisa’s torch sideswiped the rock wall, sending the light flying out of her hand and into the passage behind them. Before the light had quite faded, Lisa thought she caught a smirk on Stantler’s long face.

In no time at all, it seemed, they were galloping up the final stretch of the tunnel. The hole through which Lisa and Veronica had first squeezed through was no longer a tiny gap – it had been blasted wide open (for Dragonite to get through, Lisa thought) and now light poured in from the massive cave without. The hole, Lisa saw as they approached, was about two metres above them. Below it, the strange blob was still pulsating; Lisa felt Veronica squirm uncomfortably behind her as she caught sight of the blob, however, Stantler was not intending to make contact with the thing. Instead, the deer increased its speed and, with a spring that Lisa had not expected, Stantler bounded up, soaring into the air and through the tunnel opening, landing heavily on the flat rock floor behind the dais.

“You did it!” Lisa exclaimed, another wave of relief sweeping her, combined with an overwhelming sense of gratitude to Stantler, Darius and Lance. “Thank you! You did wonderfully, girl!”

Stantler swivelled its head around to face her again and fixed her with an incredibly disgusted and affronted look. Lisa realised her mistake at once. “Boy!” she corrected. “Well done, boy!” The deer dropped his sneer, though he still looked quite insulted. Without warning, he jerked his body wildly; Lisa clung on tightly – surely he wasn’t bucking her for her mistake? – but then there was a scream and a thump behind her, and she understood. Turning around, she saw Veronica sprawled on the ground between Stantler and the opening to the tunnel. The woman was breathing but was otherwise quite still; the mountain, it seemed, had defeated her. Stantler’s intelligence startled Lisa: it seemed he had taken Veronica to safety, on the orders of his trainer, but he had dropped her like a hot coal the moment he had the chance.

“Awooo,” he called urgently.

Lisa was dismounting when she understood what he meant; she suddenly became aware of the noise reverberating around the chamber, the flashes of light and shouted commands …

Stantler beside her, she ran up the steps that led to the dais and reached it, obtaining a clear and sudden view of the massive cave.

A battle was raging in the chamber, but it bore almost no resemblance to the battle Lisa had been engaged in earlier, in that the Union was, quite clearly, being defeated. The enemy were in mass-retreat: In the well-lit cave, Lisa could see the hundreds of Union agents scrabbling madly for the staircase that lined the chamber, many of them tripping over as the ground beneath them shook wildly. Several black-clothed agents were falling down the rock staircase, put off balance by the tremors.

Lisa surveyed the dais quickly: there was no sign of the keys or any of the other objects Sterling had placed on the stand earlier, nor was there any sign of the stand, or of Sterling himself; it seemed he had fled the chamber. The oil-filled goblet, which had been burning earlier, was now overturned, lying abandoned on the dais.

In all the commotion, Lisa could see very few people who were not black-clothed; she scouted about the chamber and spotted Derek, several pokémon ranged beside him, warding off a cluster of Union agents. Nearby, a woman Lisa had seen in the clearing earlier was engaged in a fistfight with a female Union agent. Lisa peered through the crowd of fighting or fleeing people, none of whom seemed to have noticed her and Stantler enter. Near the centre of the cave, two people stood back-to-back, a dozen pokémon surrounding them, all simultaneously issuing various attacks to knock out enemies. One of the people, a tall, blue-haired woman, had among her pokémon a Starmie, which was emitting Psychics and Water Guns simultaneously, without any verbal commands from its trainer; a wave of psychic energy slammed into three nearby Union agents, throwing them all to the ground, whilst a jet of water knocked a young red-haired woman off her feet.

Lisa gazed around her quickly, in case there was an enemy approaching, but the section of the cave closest to the dais was rapidly emptying now; indeed, some Union agents were sending out their flying pokémon to make a faster getaway; the entire cave was a scene of desperation. A powerful tremor shook the cave once more.

The woman with the Starmie was still taking out agents at will, as was the black-haired man standing behind her – his Heracross was hurling a burly Union agent into the air, where he collided with several others, sending them all toppling to the ground like skittles.

And all of a sudden, it seemed that the action was over; the last of the Union agents still able to stand were fleeing up the staircase (and for some reason, those who were fighting the Union allowed them to escape), while those who had been injured were strewn across the floor of the cave – like Veronica, they were utterly defeated. Starmie shot out one final Water Gun, sending a man to the ground, and then there was a sudden calm; a near-silence fell over the chamber for just a moment, punctuated by the sound of footsteps sprinting up the rock staircase.

Before there could be any exchange between those who remained conscious, the ground gave an almighty lurch. Lisa felt her feet leave the ground as the earthquake struck with mind-blowing force; she was catapulted into the air, landing roughly on the dais again, Stantler beside her. A second later, there was a deep, terrifying ROAR that came from somewhere deep in the mountain – it sounded as though the Sepulchre was making its final stand – and then, all of a sudden, the quaking finally stopped, and there was silence; the mountain was appeased.

For a very strange moment, nothing happened. Then the people still standing – Derek and the others – began to look around and congratulate each other, calling out compliments and words of praise wearily, great smiles on their faces.

And then somebody cried, “LISA!”

Lisa whirled on the spot. She recognised the voice instantly (how could she not?); something inside her leapt with joy; she had not expected this, of all things … her eyes darted around the massive, almost empty chamber – and then she saw her:

Lisa’s mother, Maria Walters, stood near the far corner of the chamber, tears pouring down her grinning face.

“SHE’S ALL RIGHT – RYAN, SHE’S ALL RIGHT!” She cried, ecstatic, more tears running down her face.

Lisa stood rooted to the dais in utter shock. The man who had been fighting the Union, with his Heracross and five other pokémon, turned around to face Lisa, and she gasped. Her father, Ryan Walters, stared back at her.

“Lisa,” he said, very quietly.

At a loss of anything else to say, Lisa said softly, “Hi Mum. Hi Dad. Fancy meeting you here.”

And then, at long last, she collapsed from exhaustion.

[mistysakura]

I really liked that chapter, it's good that things are progressing a bit quicker and the plot's being pushed forward. I'm intrigued by Darius, and the fact that he knows, and his father knows, that he has to go to the Sepulchre. My impression of the legend was that it would act itself out, with the participants not knowing about the existence of a plan. I guess it has something to do with Lance being his father, and Lance somehow being a part of the anti-Union society, but still the certainty those two have surprises me. And I wonder if the blob-thin Lisa and Veronia landed on has any significance. If it doesn't, it seems rather strange to mention it twice. I hope it's not just something put into the chapter to break Lisa's fall.

What bugged me in this chapter was the lack of credibility of the moral situation Lisa was facing (you know what I think about this already). I don't think readers would believe for a moment that Lisa would actually leave Veronica there, which takes away all the tension of the moment. I myself was waiting for the decision to be done with so that we could get on with the rest of the chapter. I guess it was necessary to explain Lisa's decision, but it was still the weak point of the chapter.

This was a great chapter; it didn't feel massively long at all. And now that there are more mysteries to explain, I'll be waiting for the next chapter.