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

[mistysakura]

Argh, every time they're talking about going to Jack's place, I want to scream warnings at them... just like talking to the TV It's really scary how much Lance knows, and the spin he's putting on it. It's also interesting to see how the parents are reacting -- Ryan seems like such a yes-man... The whole bit with the trio doing karaoke and scoffing huge burgers seemed a bit weird, given that they still weren't completely safe -- I guess they just went delirious with 'freedom'? Looking forward to the next chapter!

[Gavin Luper]

Argh, every time they're talking about going to Jack's place, I want to scream warnings at them... just like talking to the TV It's really scary how much Lance knows, and the spin he's putting on it. It's also interesting to see how the parents are reacting -- Ryan seems like such a yes-man... The whole bit with the trio doing karaoke and scoffing huge burgers seemed a bit weird, given that they still weren't completely safe -- I guess they just went delirious with 'freedom'? Looking forward to the next chapter!

Thanks, Ada! Hehehe ... yeah this is one of those cases of dramatic irony, isn't it, where the readers know just a little more than the characters. Or is that the case? You shall soon find out. Yeah, I agree Lance is a powerful character and with that comes the inevitable corruption that power brings, to an extent at least. I think the dynamic between Ryan, Lance and Azura is an interesting one: you're right in that Ryan will generally be closer to Lance's point of view and echo him, while Azura acts as this fierce voice of reason and, sometimes, passion. And yes, the bit with them celebrating was a bit out-of-kilter, but I tried to think about the adrenaline of freedom and escape from near death/capture, and there would be a dizzying elation that comes with that, I think, maybe slightly inappropriately, I don't know.

Here is the next chapter. A whole lot of stuff is about to go down.

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Chapter 78 – Underneath.


Lisa hung up the dirty, cream-coloured receiver of Jack Criddle’s phone and sighed. Had it been the right thing to do, not telling Lance the whole truth? She had omitted any mention of the fact that the text she had found was her grandfather’s secret diary, lying further by telling Lance she had lost the text while escaping from the Sepulchre, but that she had memorised the key locations; likewise, she had said nothing about Marina’s fragment of the Sixth Key.

She stared blankly through the tatty flywire that covered the enormous window of Jack’s kitchen. Though the sun was not quite up yet, and the sky still a deep umber streaked with orange in the east, the old sea captain, Frank, was sitting on a deck chair among the enormous mess of junk, rubble and curios that comprised the back yard of Jack’s beachside hut, smoking tobacco from a smooth wooden pipe.

Lisa regarded him with mild amusement. He had sung his bizarre sea chantys throughout their voyage from the mainland, where Jack had picked them up, to where they had moored the boat, just off the beach near the hut. Lisa watched as he puffed little white plumes of nonchalance into the crisp morning air, his eyes knotted over a crossword puzzle that he could surely scarcely see in the half-light. Was it really possible that there sat before her a man in his sixties – seventies, even – who was apparently completely carefree and content, while there she was in the kitchen, a stressed teenage girl of fifteen who, she knew, had already experienced more pain and seen more terrors than most people would see in a lifetime?

Life didn’t seem to make sense.

She turned away from the window and, tucking a tendril of newly-black hair behind her ear, she located the least grubby glass on the stainless steel sink and poured herself a glass of water. After they had arrived on Red Rock Island, she had asked Jack to buy her a black rinse from the all-hours deli beside Shane’s Shark Shack: the crimson bob was just a little too attention-grabbing, especially as the Union had now seen her new look. While Marina, Gavin and Jack had all collapsed wearily into bed when they returned to the hut an hour ago, Lisa found the prospect of sleep impossible, not least because she had slept for the entire naval voyage. Moreover, she had been too keyed up to rest; after dying her hair back to its old black (it felt odd to return to looking like herself) and showering, she had decided not to put off the phone call she had to make to Lance, and had dialled him at once.

Was it a mistake? Lisa felt oddly empty at having brought the Guard back into her loop – displaced, even. In just a few days of independence, she had learned to live, more than ever, without parents, without the Guard, without rules. It had been exhilarating. To think that, according to Lance, her parents and most of the Guard would soon be descending secretly upon Jack’s little hut made her suddenly regret her decision. It felt as though she had discovered a world and a life of her own, and then sold them for a price she wasn’t even sure she cared about.

At least she still had some secrets. The diary and Marina’s fragment. There was no way she was ready to part with them yet.

She was glad that Marina and Gavin had agreed to the decision. Just after they boarded Jack and Frank’s fishing vessel, and the night waves battered the craft as it sailed for Red Rock, she had explained her fear of the Guard being infiltrated and suggested that they not mention Marina’s fragment but, rather, hide it somewhere themselves.

“Fine, whatever,” Marina had muttered sleepily, trying to curl up in her bunk; she was still half-asleep, it seemed.

“Sounds good,” Gavin had said, pulling his grey beanie tighter over his shaved head. He reached into the pocket of Marina’s jeans, which lay on the floor of the below-deck cabin, and removed the tiny, glassy fragment, handing it to Lisa. “The question is, where the hell do we hide it?”

Lisa had struggled with the same question for some time. Even the hot spurts of steaming hot water rinsing the tides of purple from her hair had not cleansed her mind enough for her to make a decision on where to hide the fragment. Part of her wanted to hurl it into the ocean and simply lose it forever, or, similarly, bury it in a patch of salty scrubland and forget where it was. But her mind looped back to the scrawled text in her grandfather’s diary and his description of the power behind the Iron Lock. The fire of the Phoenix. Eternal life. If Lisa lost the key forever, the secret of the Iron Lock would be lost, too. Maybe she would be better off hiding the key somewhere it could be found if needed? Would it be too much of a risk to hide it, say, under one of Jack’s splintery floorboards?

She checked her watch and sighed. She would have to make a decision within the next twelve hours. According to Lance’s rigidly-spoken words on the telephone, that was when the Guard was to descend on Red Rock Island – on Jack’s little hut – and prepare for the invasion of Silver Rock Island.

Lisa was surprised that Lance’s stern words had cut her.

“We will attack the Union’s base. You kids will stay put on Red Rock Island. No arguments.”

Even as she absent-mindedly poured herself another glass of tap water, Lisa found her face screwing itself up in contempt. Did Lance think she was some kind of idiot? She smiled savagely. He had no idea what she had lived through … what the three of them had experienced together. They had escaped the Union yet again; they had found and retrieved keys. Didn’t that prove their mettle?

Lisa remembered something Jamie had said while he helped her bleach her hair.

“My ex-mum always said bleach damages your hair. You’re meant to use some wanky dye.”

He had taken a sip of lukewarm beer and locked eyes with Lisa’s wide-eyed reflection in the mirror.

“I’ll tell ya one thing I’ve learned, girl padawan. Adults are fucken pussies when it comes to their kids.”

Lisa smirked. For all his obliqueness, Jamie was right in that regard: adults seemed to have developed a collective habit of treating their teenage children like incapable infants. Her parents had done it, keeping her in the dark for so long. And now Lance was doing the same, cloistering them in Jack’s house while the adults – who, from what Lisa could see, had never had as much success against the Union as she, Gavin and Marina had – played the starring roles.

Indeed, as Lisa unwrapped one of Jack’s high-protein muesli bars from the peeling, faded green cupboard, she realised exactly what bothered her. Not Lance’s disregard for her achievements – after everything, she wasn’t sure she cared what anyone except Gavin or Marina said anymore – but the pragmatic thud in her soul: she was going to sit on the sidelines while the war was finally – maybe – won.

For the millionth time, the old fear returned to Lisa: had she become a crazed adrenaline junkie? Why did she even want to fight? The jets of deadly light sizzling the air, screams and explosions of gunfire, blurred vision and heart hammering … it was terrifying, not exciting … but her body seemed to feel otherwise.

Suddenly, the urge to run overcame her. Gulping down an arid ball of muesli (how did Jack manage it?), Lisa double-checked that Frank wasn’t on sentry duty (he was now draped over the deckchair, eyes closed and the steaming pipe lolling dangerously close to his collar) before reaching for her backpack, scribbling a note for Gavin and Marina and bounding toward the front door.

Jack, Gavin and Marina would only be asleep for a few more hours. She couldn’t bear the thought of not making the most of her last few hours of freedom; the last few hours of being alone.

She had to breathe.

*

Larry O’Brien sprinted down the spiral stone staircase, his heart pounding. The torches were already burning in the sconces on the walls: was he too late?

He reached the small cavern he needed to visit and turned the corner to where the cell was located. Behind a series of ceiling-to-floor iron bars, crumpled in a corner of a bare cell with just a bed, toilet, sink and desk with texts sprawled across it, was Professor Geoffrey Westwood. The man was a shadow of his former self: he had lost a great deal of weight over the past four months, and was now skinny and more wizened-looking than ever before. His eyes drooped with weariness as he gnawed on a slice of bread.

“Geoff,” Larry said.

“What is it?” Westwood asked tiredly. “What do you people want from me now?”

“I only have a few minutes, and I can’t be seen leaving here. You must do exactly as I say. My name is Larry O’Brien. I am a double agent working for Lance Hudson and the Guard, sabotaging the Union from the inside.”

A flicker of hope crossed Westwood’s face.

“You’ve come to rescue me!”

“In a manner of speaking,” Larry said matter-of-factly. “I’m not here to bail you out myself, but I’m here to help you get free in the end. Listen: the Guard is leaking false information to the Union that the Fourth Key has been discovered near Azalea Town. Sterling will come and ask you if this is congruent with the texts before he takes any action. It’s imperative that you lie to him and confirm the bogus info.”

Westwood looked bemused.

“But to what end is all this?”

“We are luring the Union’s forces away so that the Guard can attack this base. I have already told the Guard your location. They will liberate you when they get here. But you have to promise me you will do this. Tell Sterling that the Fourth Key is indeed somewhere on the coast of the peninsula, west of Azalea Town, and only when he asks you, which he will.”

Westwood nodded sharply.

“I will do it, I give you my word,” Westwood said.

“Thank you, Westwood – now, I have to get out of here before he comes …” Larry paused, teetering on the cusp of doing something before deciding to go through with it. “Listen, Westwood,” he said solemnly. “I think Sterling is onto me, and what I’m going to try to do tonight might be my death.” He removed a silver chain from around his neck and passed it through the bars of the cell; Westwood took it soberly. “If I die tonight, please give that to my wife, Esther, and my daughter, Jenna.”

Westwood’s eyes were wide as he curled the chain into his hand and placed it securely in his pocket.

“I will,” he said.

Larry nodded curtly, and turned to leave, but Westwood called out:

“Thank you, Larry. And good luck.”

Larry turned and deigned a troubled half-smile.

“Thank you, Geoff. You too.”

*

The office was lit by a single candle placed on the corner of the polished granite desk. It burned not with a yellow-orange flame, but of a deep, bloody vermilion hue.

His dark eyes burning in the eerie illumination Joseph Sterling picked up his mobile telephone and dialled a number while Veronica Stawell took a long drag on a cigarette in the seat opposite.

A voice answered through the receiver of Sterling’s mobile.

“Sir.”

“I have just received intel that the Guard has located the Fourth Key. Is this true?”

“Y-yes, sir.”

“Where is the key located?”

“We haven’t been told exactly, but it’s somewhere on the coast of the peninsula, west of Azalea …”

“Tell me everything you know.”

“They haven’t said much yet – we were only just informed – but we’re all converging in Olivine, it’s the closest to all the teams’ locations, and then we’re taking boats or something from Olivine to the key. Scheduled to arrive at 2am.”

“All of the teams are involved?”

“Yes, sir. Everyone who can help. It’s all hands on deck. Probably close to a hundred agents. You should send maximum force.” The voice suddenly rose an octave. “I-I m-mean, if you should decide, sir, it’s your deci-”

“Yes, it is. Don’t remind me of the extent of my power in the same breath as displeasing me,” Sterling hissed. “Now tell me, how is it that I learned of this mass movement via an intercepted communiqué, rather than from you?”

“S-sir … please, we were only just told …”

“I hope you haven’t forgotten our arrangement, maggot. I don’t need to remind you of your wife Natasha’s beauty. I’m sure neither of us wish for her to be … damaged.”

“N-no, please sir …”

Smirking, Joseph Sterling hung up.

“What a pussy,” Veronica snarled, blowing a ring of smoke into the air.

Sterling stood up abruptly.

“Assemble the best of the best on the floor of the cone in twenty minutes. I’m going to pay our mate Westwood a little visit.”

*

For the first time in Lisa’s memory, Red Rock Island was waking up to a gloomy sky and an aggressively cold zephyr. Reeking of dried salt and Seaking scales, she wrapped Jack’s wool-lined jacket around her and pulled Gavin’s grey beanie further over her short hair. As she hurried along the coastal promenade, she wondered if she might be mistaken for a boy, at a distance.

Her destination was mercifully a long way from the well-policed main mall. As the sun finally crested over the misty horizon, Lisa located the ivy-choked two-storey brick bungalow and pressed the doorbell.

There was a scuffling behind the white door, and then several seconds of silence. Lisa knew a bleary eye was scanning her through the peephole. Shaking her head, she removed Gavin’s beanie and her aviators.

A latch clicked and the white door swung open.

Jamie stood there, naked except for a pair of black-and-yellow beer-branded boxer shorts, his bleached hair sticking up like a Nidorino’s spine.

“Lisa. Hey,” he said simply, his deep voice muffled by the smouldering cigarette that dangled from his mouth.

“Hey Jamie,” Lisa greeted, stepping inside quickly. “Didn’t wake you did I?”

“It’s seven a.m.,” he grunted, locking the door behind them. “Haven’t slept yet.”

Without waiting for Lisa, he trudged through the corridor that led to the rest of the house.

“I’m in my room, dude,” he muttered.

Lisa couldn’t help but smile to herself: Jamie was supremely unconcerned by her appearance.

She picked her way carefully through the rubble strewn through what remained of his ‘ex-mum’s’ house. Lisa was flabbergasted by how much filth had accumulated since her visit just a few days previous. Clothes, empty cans of beer and cornflakes formed a steady track from the entry to the kitchen to the living room. The kitchen sink was dripping. Most of the lampshades were shattered; a golf club, a baseball bat and a pair of tennis rackets lay on the torn linoleum beside a collection of small rocks and cricket balls. A smorgasbord of bottles of spirits and ales – all empty – lined the full length of the half-wall in the dining room, like some kind of victory parade.

Lisa nearly jumped out of her skin as she passed through the living room: what she initially believed to be a pile of clothes on the futon suddenly moved and groaned, and a pair of arms stretched out from within the mess, followed by a second, hairier pair.

Lisa scuttled into Jamie’s bedroom and instinctively closed the door behind her.

“I thought you told me you don’t live here anymore,” she said. “Who are the people on the futon?”

Jamie was sitting cross-legged on his bed, unabashedly poring over a glossy magazine emblazoned with pictures of topless women.

“Rod and Amy? They’re boss. Let ‘em crash for the night. We had a wicked rave last night.”

Lisa screwed her nose up at the smell emanating from every corner of the room: it was an acrid mixture of sweat, alcohol and something pungent that she couldn’t quite identify.

“No kidding.”

“And not that it’s yer business, but I’ve been here ever since you made me come back. I felt like I owed my ex-mum somethin’ in return for all her good work, so I redecorated.”

He took a long drag on his cigarette before returning it to its at-ease position between his lips, his blue eyes fixed to a pair of printed breasts.

Lisa hesitated to sit down on the bed, but, to her surprise, Jamie obliged her, wordlessly moving his dirty jeans from the foot of the mattress and gesturing for her to sit. She did.

“So did you get your key then?”

He looked up from his dirty magazine, his pallid, malnourished face and bloodshot blue eyes suddenly keen with interest.

“Yeah. Yeah, I did.”

“Destroy it?”

Lisa tilted her head and grimaced.

“It’s indestructible.”

Jamie regarded her blankly for a moment.

“Flush it down the dunny then.”

Lisa almost laughed. For the millionth time, she recalled the words in her grandfather’s diary. The fire of the phoenix. Eternal life.

“I would – if it wasn’t so much more complex than that …”

She fell back on the bed and sighed, her eyes falling on the lurid yellow-and-black poster that she had woken up to four days ago:

SO YOU’RE JUST GONNA ROLL OVER AND GIVE UP LIKE YOU ALWAYS DO? OR ARE YOU FINALLY GONNA GET MAD AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT?

Enormous globs of putty attached the poster to the wall.

A smile curled Lisa’s lips, replaced immediately by a sense of dread.

“Can I say something?” she said abruptly, staring at the poster with a swirl of something akin to affection in her stomach.

“No,” Jamie said dully. He guffawed suddenly and took a quick drag of his smoke. “Haha. Kiddin’. Yeah, what?”

“I know I’ll sound like an idiot but … I’m scared of this all being over,” Lisa said, forcing herself to say the words as her face flushed red.

“What d’you mean?” Jamie asked, saving a page of his magazine with his thumb and closing it, as though he detected a serious conversation in the air.

“I mean … I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life after this is all over.” Lisa felt the words tumble from her mouth, allowed to flow for the first time. “I was washing the dye out of my hair this morning … back to black … and I was just thinking, like … how boring my life will be once the war is over. The last six months have been the most horrible and exciting months of my whole life, and – okay, this is gonna sound kind of emo, but … it’s pretty much the only interesting thing that’s ever happened to me. I don’t want it to end.”

Her chest tightened as she disgorged her ugly truth. She winced, waiting for Jamie’s reply.

“Guess that’s fair enough,” he mumbled.

Lisa’s eyes moved from the broken lampshade on the ceiling to Jamie: he had reopened his magazine and was ogling a nude woman who appeared to have clambered out of a very cold lake.

“You don’t think that’s ridiculous?”

Jamie’s slate-blue eyes looked up briefly from the dirty magazine.

“What’m I, yer shrink?” He smirked, not unkindly. “I dunno, I get where you’re coming from. Life is boring as batshit.”

Suddenly, his expression became deeply serious: he removed the cigarette from his mouth as his forehead creased with sincerity.

“Look, the night we met at the Colosseum was the fucking best my life has ever been,” Jamie said flatly. “Running. Getting attacked. Getting my knee fucking blasted by an Ice Beam! Dude, it’s not ridiculous. I was fucking shitting myself the whole fucking time but it was fucking rad. I’d give good money to do that shit again.”

Lisa gave up trying to count expletives.

“You really feel the same?”

“Shit yeah!” he cried. “Rad enough for me to stay here at my bloody ex-mum’s place for the last four nights, hoping you’d come back.”

Lisa felt a shiver course through her skin: his utter vulnerability raised almost frightened goosebumps all over her body. She waited a few seconds for him to laugh, or say that he had been joking. He didn’t.

The silence stretched on as Lisa’s thoughts raced. Had she given him the wrong impression? Was he infatuated with her? Was that why he’d waited for her to come back? Or was it just because he wanted another glimpse of a life of danger? Lisa regarded him as he flicked nonchalantly through the pages of his porno magazine, completely unfazed by her presence. Certainly, he was attractive: his torso was slim but sinewy, and even with his bloodshot eyes and pallid skin, he had a handsome face and a strong jawline. If anything, the dark circles around his eyes gave him a rugged, dangerous appearance. Lisa watched him stub out his cigarette in the smoked-glass ashtray on the bedside table. Nothing about him was conventionally likeable. Indeed, everything about him was repulsive in her eyes: he swore, he drank, he smoked, he looked a porn in front of a girl he barely knew and he was clearly involved with some kinds of drugs. The image of Darius drifted across her mind’s eye and she felt her heart glow at the thought of his dimples. Her breath became shallow as she thought of his voice, his laugh, his attitude. She was attracted to him: a hopeless crush. But her feelings toward Jamie were different. She wasn’t sure she even liked him, but she found some kind of convergence with him. Perhaps it was the fact that he was someone outside the insane world of the Guard and the Legend: someone from the real world. A teenager who was actually allowed to be a teenager. Someone she could actually vent to about how she felt. She knew her friendship with Gavin and Marina was infinitely deeper, and yet both of them were embroiled in the same chaos as she: they all faced the same hell together, they shared every moment of fear and pain. But if she had told them how she felt about the war ending, would they have felt the same way? And if they did, would they have admitted it to her, for fear of, like her, being thought ridiculous by the other?

There was no such fear with Jamie. What did Lisa care if he thought she was ridiculous or selfish? Whatever his perception of her was, she didn’t care.

For an infinitesimal moment, the image of the two of them kissing flitted across her mind’s eye as her brain sorted itself out, sliding shards of confused light over one another. She grimaced in disgust.

“I don’t want to go out with you.”

The words leapt from her lips before she could lasso them back.

Jamie’s dark eyebrows shot up toward his peroxide-blond hairline. He burst into a fit of deep guffaws.

Lisa’s cheeks burned.

“That’s good,” said Jamie eventually, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. “I don’t do relationships, full stop. Only sex.” He crooked his head. “We can do that if you want.”

A wave of horror crashed over Lisa.

“No! No way!” she cried hastily. “EW. No. No no no. God no!”

“Okay, chill out dude, I was messing around …”

She shuddered. “I’m only fifteen anyway!”

“Big deal, I did it when I was thirteen.”

Lisa stared at him blankly.

“My dad would kill you if he knew what you’d just said to me,” she said haughtily.

Jamie put up his hands as a sign of non-violence.

“Okay, I misread my audience. Sor-ry, Prudy McPrude. You can go back to your meltdown if you like. You don’t know what you’re going to do with your life after the war, etcetera …”

Lisa scowled at him.

“I wasn’t melting down,” she snapped. “I just don’t know what to do next.”

“The war isn’t won yet, is it?”

“No, but the way Lance was talking on the phone … it sounds like he’s putting everything he has into this ambush we’re doing on the Union’s base tonight.”

The magazine slid from Jamie’s lap to the floor.

“You’re what?!” he almost yelled. “I’m coming with you!”

“You can come with me all the way to Jack’s hut,” Lisa said shortly. “That’s where I’ll be. Sitting pretty while the grown-ups fight …”

“Laaaaaaaame,” said Jamie.

“We’ve spent all this time fighting, so much time scared that the Union will win and we’ll be screwed. And now, it sounds like we’re the ones who are probably going to win somehow, judging from what Lance has planned, and of course that’s what we’ve fought and some people even died for. I’m not saying I’m not happy about it. But it’ll be all over, this whole thing will be over and everything will go back to normal, and I don’t even know what normal IS anymore. Normal to me is being with Gavin and Marina – and running away from people and searching for things and fighting the Union. That’s what I’m used to now.”

She sighed heavily and covered her face with her hands, massaging her temples.

“Seriously, what am I ever going to do with my life that’s, you know, as real as this?”

“Well, what did you used to wanna do?”

“Be a pokémon trainer,” Lisa answered at once. “I started out on my journey but didn’t really get far before I got more interested in the Legendary pokémon. I thought maybe I could study and be an expert on Legendaries and their myths, or something …”

“Not being a dick, but is that even a real job?” Jamie asked.

Lisa threw her hands up in despair.

“I don’t even know,” she sighed. “I worked part-time at a pokémon centre last summer. I suppose I could go into nursing or something … my mum would be happy, she’s always saying that I should become a nurse.”

“Mothers should be banned from telling their kids what to be,” Jamie said, a little too venomously.

Lisa hesitated, before her curiosity overwhelmed her.

“What did your mum want you to be?”

“My ex-mum, you mean.”

“Okay. Her. What did she want you to be?”

“You can’t laugh.”

“I promise.”

“She wanted me to be a priest.”

Lisa couldn’t help it: she snorted loudly.

“A what?!” she said, fighting off a smile by opening her mouth broadly, as if in shock. “She has met you, right?”

“Oh yeah,” Jamie scowled, his face darkening. “She’s a lovely piece of work, is my ex-mother.”

He reached for a green pack of cigarettes from the bedside table, withdrew a smoke and torched the tip with a white disposable lighter.

“What did she – I mean – well … yeah, what did she do to make you hate her so much?” Lisa asked in a hushed tone. She was suddenly gripped with the urge to leave the room, to escape Jamie and all his grievances, and at the same time, she found herself transfixed.

“Hate isn’t the word,” Jamie glowered, blowing an aggressive plume of smoke into the air with unrequited force. “I loathe her.

“She was a fucking cartoon. She still is. Fucking sweetness and light. Rabbiting on at community bake sales and bullshit like that. Seriously, people like that still exist. ‘My Jamie’s going be a deacon. My Jamie’s gonna be a priest. My Jamie absolutely adores Bishop Harding.’ Fucking crazy bitch. Couldn’t hear anyone but herself.

“When I told her I hated religion and think it’s all a load of bollocks, she went fucking apeshit. Screamed the house down. Said she didn’t have a son.” He chuckled suddenly, mirthlessly. “The next day she checked me into a Catholic Boys’ Wellness Centre.”

“Oh,” Lisa said. “That’s kind of … hardcore, isn’t it?”

“It was a fucking prison, and this was a year ago. I was sixteen,” Jamie snarled, his eyes flashing. “A prison where they indoctrinate you to be like JESUS.” He nearly yelled the name. “Fuck that. It was me, some heroin addict dude, and a bunch of closeted fagboys who were being ‘cured’.”

His voice was rising in pitch and volume now; his face was scarlet.

“So my ex-mother, bless her fucking soul, is gonna come home from prayer camp to find her Mary statue no longer has a head and her bible’s soaked in my piss.”

He took a long, violent suck on his cigarette.

“I need a beer. I’ll be back in a bit,” he said abruptly, suddenly embarrassed-looking. Not making eye contact with Lisa, he stole from the room, slamming the door.

Lisa found herself transfixed on the spot where he had been sitting, her heart thudding even though she had been still for some time. She wasn’t sure whether to feel sorry for Jamie, or to be utterly repulsed by his vitriolic revenge.

Perhaps she didn’t like him after all. Perhaps he only made her feel better by comparison.

Opting to distract herself from the misery of Jamie’s life, Lisa’s eyes moved to the poster on his wall. She had assessed it while he spoke. She knew it was right, even poetic.

Crawling over the mattress, Lisa removed the tiny fragment of transparent glass from her pocket and, checking the door to make sure Jamie wasn’t returning, she peeled the poster from the wall and pressed the key into the largest glob of putty. It was small enough to be completely consumed by the soft globule.

Heart racing, Lisa reaffixed the poster to the putty and regarded it from every angle, her smile broadening with each second.

Marina’s key fragment was now invisible.

[Gavin Luper]

Hey guys,

It's been a month and I can't wait any longer to post this - I'm too excited for the epicness to begin. Enjoy!

Cheers!

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Chapter 79 – The Gathering.


The scrape of knives and forks on plates amid the noise of a jovial conversation wafted down the corridor as Lisa strolled back into Jack’s hut. She emerged in the kitchen to see Jack, Frank, Gavin and Marina clustered around the rickety old dining table, plates loaded with baked beans, fried eggs, pillars of toast, rashers of bacon, and chipolatas.

“Speak of the devil!” Gavin said, not humorously, as Lisa appeared on the threshold. “Oh, so that’s where my beanie went!”

“Hey, everyone,” Lisa called.

“Leese! We were jus’ wond’rin’ where yeh were! Help yehself to some brekkie!”

Judging from the white and yellow spray that flew in Lisa’s direction, Jack’s mouth was stuffed with eggs and toast.

“I’ve just been for a nice morning walk down on the beach … thanks, Jack.”

Lisa ladled some beans, bacon, tomato and chipolatas onto her plate and grabbed a slice of toast before taking the empty seat between Gavin and Marina. They both fixed her with deeply quizzical looks as she sank into her chair and poured a glass of mango juice: Marina mouthed, “Where have you been?”; Gavin looked murderous.

“So what have you all been up to so far this morning?” Lisa asked cheerily, knowing full well that neither of them would grill her in the presence of Jack and Frank. “It feels like a real indoors day, doesn’t it?”

Gavin’s fork skidded off his plate.

“Not fer me ‘n’ Snowy,” Jack declared, shovelling bacon into his gob. “We’re goin’ on a little fishin’ trip to a lagoon off Blue Rock Island. Beach is mint there. You three can come along if yeh want.”

“That actually sounds so nice,” Marina said, her face lighting up. “I could have a nice swim, my pokémon could get some fresh air – or some fresh water, I guess. Although it’s salt water … anyway, you know what I mean. Leese, Gav?”

“Oh, does it matter what we think?” Gavin said, his voice rising an octave as he sawed through a greasy chipolata. “Apparently these days we just leave the group of our own accord and come back when we please.”

“Fair enough, then,” said Jack, completely missing the sarcasm in Gavin’s tone as he tucked into some more baked beans. Frank, too, nodded vaguely; Lisa had the lingering suspicion that he was too deaf to hear the majority of most conversations.

“That’s interesting,” Lisa said testily, meeting Gavin’s gaze. “I remember sitting by that hotel pool in Silver City for hours, wondering if you were gonna come back.”

Quite at random, Frank seemed to jolt back to consciousness.

“Oh, bin to Silver Rock have yeh, Linda?” he asked Lisa eagerly, a stray baked bean tangled in the wisps of his wiry white beard.

Gavin and Marina snorted loudly before both shaking with repressed laughter; Jack seemed completely oblivious to anything that wasn’t coated in a thick ham sauce; Frank, meanwhile, was waiting quite intently for Lisa’s reply.

“Um, no, sorry,” Lisa muttered, as politely as she could, before turning pointedly to face Gavin, who was sniggering openly, and Marina, was had turned a slice of charred toast into a shield so that Jack couldn’t see her giggling at Frank.

“Okaaaaay,” Marina said at length, after taking a few swigs of mango juice to calm her down. “So, Gavin-and-Lisa-bickering aside, I’m assuming we’re gonna go to the lagoon with you, Jack. Thanks for the offer.”

“No worries.”

“What time will we get back here, Jack?” Lisa asked.

“’Bout two this arvo.”

“Perfect.”

Gavin’s chestnut brown eyes probed Lisa’s honey-coloured ones. Perfect for what?

“I’ll tell you when we’re alone there,” Lisa whispered, tucking into her grilled tomato.

*

The pastel blue sands of Blue Rock Island clashed horribly with the crystalline azure waters of the lagoon, but Lisa couldn’t have cared less. She was sprawled on the fine sand, drawing a small circle with her big toe and listening to the soothing sound of the waves foaming and hissing on the shore, just five metres away. Gavin and Marina lay around her, their heads all resting against one another’s. Shaded by a chair-sized leaf that protruded from a tropical fern a little further up the beach, Lisa closed her eyes, revelling in the relaxation.

“Okay, girl, spill!”

“Ouch!”

Marina jabbed her index finger into Lisa’s rib.

“What was all that about, Leese?” Gavin asked, his soft voice indicating that his anger was clearly tarnished by the serenity. “Where the hell did you go? We freaked out!”

“More accurately,” Marina chimed in, “Gavin freaked out. I saw your note.”

“Gone for a walk, be back soon is NOT a note,” Gavin said swiftly. “I mean, it is, but come on … where’d you really go?” He lowered his voice. “Did you hide the key?”

“Why are you whispering?” Marina muttered. “Jack and Frank are like a mile away, and this part of the island’s deserted.”

“Answer the question, Leese.”

“Yeah, I hid it.”

“Hid it?” asked Marina. “Or did you … like, get rid of it somehow? Throw it into the sewer main or something?”

Lisa tapped her teeth with her tongue. She hadn’t yet shown Gavin and Marina her grandfather’s diary. Would they understand her reticence to dispose of the key fragment if they knew how significant it might be? Or would they chide her for not ending a gang war when she potentially could have?

“I hid it somewhere safe.”

“Whereabouts?” Gavin asked quickly.

Lisa decided to bite the bullet. She sat up.

“Okay, I’ll start from the start. After you guys went to bed, I called Lance …”

*

The mobile telephone vibrated on the granite desk. Joseph Sterling downed the last of a scotch on the rocks and answered it.

“Yes?”

“The Guard is mobilising now, sir. We’re flying to Olivine in five minutes, ETA 3pm.”

“Good. My first wave is on its way.”

Sterling clapped the mobile shut and licked his lips, savouring the taste of the bitter drug.

Game on.

*

“It’s bullshit, though!” Gavin cried hotly.

“I know that!” Lisa countered. “Don’t shoot the messenger!”

Gavin was on his feet, his hands behind his head as he paced aggressively along the shoreline, seafoam playing across his bare feet.

“Lance is so … arrrrgh!”

In frustration, Gavin kicked up a lump of periwinkle-blue beach sand; it sailed through the air, showering Lisa’s leg.

“It’s not really surprising for me,” Marina said seriously, rubbing suntan lotion on her arms and chest. “You should’ve seen him ark up when Mum allowed me to come to Red Rock on that mission with Giles and Gideon. He went the Lance equivalent of apeshit. He nearly swore.” She giggled; Lisa cracked a smile. “And he’s completely forbidden Darius from basically doing anything other than sit at the Safe House forever. Darius is so pissed off, I’ve never seen him so angry as when he came back from talking with Lance. He snapped at me, even. But it’s ridiculous, honestly, the way Lance treats him … it’s like Darius is ten years old or something.”

“But dear old Darry’s his son,” Gavin argued, excavating the beach with his big toe. “We aren’t. Why does he get a say in who gets to fight and who doesn’t?”

“He’s still the leader of the Guard. I spose no-one can really challenge him,” Marina shrugged, slopping half a litre of coconut-scented oil over her midriff. “I don’t think it’s fair though.”

“They’re being overprotective,” Lisa contributed, nodding to Marina’s wordless request to rub the lotion over her back. “Like my Mum and Dad were before. They don’t want us to get hurt. Or die.” She sighed. “I mean, duh, obviously I’m scared of that, too … but it’s kind of like – a detached worry. Like I can’t actually feel scared of dying because everything else outweighs it. And I know I’ve fought before, I know I can do it again.

“Plus, I really don’t think they get how involved the three of us are in this,” she added, tapping Marina on the shoulders to let her know she was done. “Lance said they need all hands on deck for this. We’re as good as three Guard members. We’d be a massive help. And if this is really the end of the war …” She felt a flame reignite in her. “Then I want to help them end it. I wanna do my part. I wanna fight.”

“Me too,” said Marina.

“Exactly!” Gavin cried, pacing toward them, his sodden boardshorts sliding down and revealing the white band of his underpants. “I don’t wanna just sit around and wait for them to get back! What if they all get blown up and die, and if we were there we could’ve saved them, hey? That’s it, I’m fighting. Even if they don’t admit it, they need us!”

“Good luck getting Lance to agree-ee,” Marina almost sang, standing up and brushing sand off her bare leg. “Alright, I need to de-stress, and my pokémon do, too … youse coming in for a dip?”

“Yeah,” Lisa said, readjusting Marina’s spare bikini. The thought of some cool water was promising, especially as the water in the lagoon was so clear and pristine.

They swam in the shallows for a good hour, and during that time, the topic of the Guard and the war was never mentioned. They instead frolicked with their pokémon: Lisa released Kingler, Cubone and a revitalised Altaria out to play with Gavin and Marina’s pokémon. Among all the others, Marina’s pokémon appeared the most relieved to be in the ocean again: Starmie performed an ecstatic series of cartwheels, which were eagerly mimicked by Gavin’s Staryu, who was graceful, and Marina’s Mudkip, who was much less so, and ended up tangled in Tentacraw’s ghostly tentacles; Herby, Marina’s water-loving Bayleef, began shooting off a series of small water cannons, which amazed Gavin as he had never seen it before; and Golduck, after treading water beside Gavin’s seel and Lanturn, decided to come over and braid a small section of Lisa’s hair, an action which made her decidedly uncomfortable; she was still not quite over her childhood fear of Golducks.

“That’s another thing,” Lisa said pensively, after managing to palm Golduck off onto the two Kinglers. “How do I know whether the Guard’s going to be able to retrieve my pokémon for me? I bet it’s not high on their priorities. I have to be there. It’s up to me to get them back.”

Gavin bounced Natu into the air and drifted over toward Lisa, his pale, slim chest glistening with water in the high noon sun.

“It’s final, then,” he said. “We talk to Lance and demand that he lets us go, too.”

Marina plunged underwater suddenly, re-emerging a second later with her cerulean-blue hair matted to her face.

“It won’t happen,” she said. A slightly devious expression stole over her face. “If we want to go – if we’re seriously gonna do this – then we have to do it ourselves. Secretly.”

“Tu!” Natu cried in the background, as Golduck and Altaria batted him between one another like a volleyball.

Lisa recalled how Gavin had once used her Magneton as a volleyball and felt a distinct pang in her chest, mostly of how negligent she had once been. She had thought of her pokémon so much over the past week, and despised the fact that she felt so limp, so incapable of doing anything at all to bring them back to her. Were they still the same as before? Had the Union performed Lenina-like experiments on them, transforming them into fighting machines? Lisa winced. She thought of Dratini, ever calm and serene, always the peacemaker of the group. There was Vulpix, with her sweetness and temper and battle ferocity and utmost loyalty; Lisa grinned at the memory of Vulpix biting down hard on Veronica. Even Elekid, with his rogue disrespect of Lisa’s authority … somehow, with distance and her changed perspective, Lisa didn’t feel quite so frustrated by him. And Fiskmire, the stoic battler and recreational clown … Lisa frowned. Her perception of Fiskmire was marred by what Suicune had told her in the Sepulchre. Was Fiskmire still a Sentry? She shook her head vigorously. Suicune had insisted that Fiskmire had been unconscious of his use. Lisa fought valiantly to think of him as the same lovable creature she had been friends with for so long.

And Aipom. Lisa had felt her heart shatter in Larry’s office, when he had refused to tell her the location of her pokémon. She would have liked to say that she loved them all equally, but it would have been a distinct lie. Certainly, she loved and liked her full team immensely … but Aipom had been there from day one. Through the beginning of the lonely summer holidays, they had enjoyed each other’s company, mucking around in the backyard or training against weak Rattata in Ecruteak’s parks. Aipom had stuck by Lisa’s side from the debacle with Suicune to gorging on maple syrup in countless grimy diners to her first major pokémon battles. His humour and hyperactivity energised her constantly, and she liked to think that her strength and skill kept him balanced. And his loyalty to her was and always had been remarkable; she owed him the same in kind.

“There’s no question,” Lisa said vehemently, as Natu continued to squawk as he was bounced around. “I need to get my pokémon back myself. Above and beyond the war, they deserve a trainer who would fight for them, and I have to do it.”

Gavin grinned excitedly.

“So how do we do this?”

Marina looked thoughtful, but just as she appeared ready to speak, the dull chug of an engine broke through the sounds of waves breaking and pokémon cheerfully splashing.

“What’s that?” she asked, peering toward the deeper water.

Lisa turned. The lagoon was quite secluded, cordoned off from the Cianwood Sea by natural groyne made entirely of pastel-blue rock. At the entrance to the lagoon, they saw a white vessel slowly drifting toward them, reflecting the brilliance of the sunlight.

“It’s just Jack and Frank,” Lisa said, squinting. “I can even see Jack – he’s waving to us.”

The vessel drifted closer and the distant sound of the motor seemed to amplify – and yet, it sounded more distant than just twenty metres away from them.

“That sound …” Marina said, slowly. “It’s not coming from Frank’s boat.” She whirled around to face them. “Why’ve they cut the engine?”

“I don’t think Jack’s waving,” Gavin said suddenly, wading toward the shore.

Lisa squinted again. Jack Criddle stood at the stern of the white fishing vessel, frantically waving his tanned arms in a frantic gesture for them to get on board the boat.

“Oh my God … what is it?” Lisa wondered aloud.

“You don’t think …” Gavin muttered.

The vessel bayed closer to them, just ten metres away from them and the shore; finally, Jack was within earshot.

“Pirates, fuckin’ pirates, get on the bloody boat!”

The motorised throb growing ever louder, Lisa, Gavin and Marina scrambled wordlessly for the shore. They hoisted their backpacks over their bare shoulders; the discomfort of the strap on skin was meaningless as they each hissed, “RETURN!” to their pokémon, and Lisa cried, “Retrahere!”

Altaria, along with the other pokémon, had an expression of utter bewilderment as it disappeared in a flash of translucent red light.

“Hurry!” Jack hissed.

Double-checking she hadn’t left anything behind on the blue beach sand, Lisa pelted for the water, led by Marina and followed by Gavin, who muttered behind her in a guttural voice, “D’you reckon it’s pirates, or …”

“Definitely ‘or’,” Lisa breathed back.

Jack’s thunderous right bicep hauled each of them aboard, his face panic-stricken.

“Keep yer mouths shut, don’t make a sound,” he hissed.

The boat gently drifted further, so that it was mostly concealed from view by the natural groyne. Nevertheless, the groyne was low enough for Lisa to see directly out to sea, which meant that anyone passing would still be able to glimpse enough to know that a vessel was in the vicinity.

“Frank an’ I spotted ‘em a few minutes ago,” Jack explained, throwing them a single, grubby towel that reeked of Seaking. Marina and Lisa both declined the offer with outstretched palms; Gavin, on the other hand, nodded at Jack by way of thanks and began roughly towelling his head. “Comin’ from Silver Rock d’rection, by th’ looks of it. Don’ reckon they’ll come in ‘ere, it’s jus’ a lagoon, no-one but fishermen around ‘ere. We should be right. Reckon they’re probably that gang o’ pirates from out near Tokor. Bastards, comin’ inta our waters. Fuckin’ Tokorese scum.”

“Uh … Marina’s from Tokor,” Lisa said.

“Oh shit – sorry, Marina … Jus’ meant the pirates, not you … no offence, ay …”

“None taken, Jack,” Marina shrugged.

“We should be right anyway … they’ll pass us by hopefully …” Jack added, folding his arms and gazing out to sea through his reflective wrap-around shades. His tattoo stretched with the bulge of his bicep; the instinctive quiver of his lip, however, betrayed his macho presence.

Lisa, Gavin, Marina and Jack watched silently, in mingled fear and awe, as the mechanical roar became a series of differently-pitched cacophonies, a veritable soundstorm that finally broke as the vessels flew past the entrance of the lagoon from west to east.

The first ones were speedboats, cutting the ocean at full-pelt and sending seaspray cannonning into the air, the water around them visibly churned and opaque. Even at a distance, the roar of their motors dug at Lisa’s ears. It was a veritable fleet of motorboats: Lisa lost count somewhere in the twenties, distracted as she tried in vain to identify the occupants of the vessels. They were definitely Union agents, there was no doubt about it: four to a boat, most wore dark jackets and pants in the trademark Union style, although Lisa spotted several men wearing flanellette shirts and denim, and still others in army-style fatigues and bandanas. More than ever, the Union members looked like dangerous guerrillas, most agents manned with rifles and AK-47s.

Lisa heard Jack cursing underneath his breath as the convoy of speedboats flashed by in a total of perhaps sixty seconds; and then the larger craft came. Gavin swore and Marina gasped. There were half a dozen boats about double the size of Frank’s, each armed with a mounted machine gun and ten or so (armed) Union agents on each side. They passed by almost as fast as the speedboats, chugging past the right side of the lagoon and into the distance.

And then came the mothership. Flanked by four more speedboats, it was a monstrous black warship, surging with deadly purpose through the water. Lisa had never seen anything like it: the deck was crowded with wooden crates and several Jeeps. Union agents clung to the deck like bees on honeycomb, shouting out excited whoops and exclamations among themselves. One or two of them faced the lagoon at various points, pointing at their visible boat. Lisa’s heart stopped. Machine guns lined the port and starboard sides of the ship. There was a moment of intense, unspoken panic on board – oxygen was a lost luxury – and then, the warship passed on by the lagoon, the deep throb of its engines reverberating into the air.

A thirty-second silence ensued.

“Holy crap,” Lisa gaped.

“Don’ think they’re pirates …” Jack muttered, bounding toward the bow of the boat, ostensibly to consult with Frank.

Once he was gone, Lisa faced Gavin and Marina, each of them pale despite the day in the sunlight.

“So that’s what Lance reckons is half of the Union’s force,” Lisa said breathlessly.

“So the same amount again is still on Silver Rock Island,” Marina breathed, still staring blankly at the place where the largest warship had been.

“Excellent,” Gavin muttered sardonically.

He threw the towel to the floor and sniffed curiously.

“Have they been cleaning fish here or something?”

Lisa and Marina exchanged a mildly amused glance, but it was impossible to laugh. Lisa wondered if the other two were thinking the same thing she was: the Guard was at a gross disadvantage in this battle.

“What is Lance thinking?” Marina wondered aloud, her face panic-stricken. “Does the Guard even have a single boat?”

“They have choppers,” Lisa pointed out.

“They do have some boats in Olivine,” Gavin chipped in, smelling his armpits with a look of dismay. “Before I went to Cianwood, Lance offered me a boat and stuff. I went with Jack instead. He’s easier to … well … trust than anyone else.”

Lisa frowned at him.

“No, I’m not saying he’s an idiot, I’m just saying he’s loyal, y’know? You know where you stand with him.”

“I spose it’s time to test that loyalty,” Marina said seriously, hunting around on deck for a cleaner towel. “We’re gonna have to tell him about the Guard taking over his house, right? Or will we just wait until Lance knocks on his front door?” She grinned. “I’m sure it’s an everyday occurance to have the League Champ rock up on your doorstep.”

“That would be easier than actually telling him about all of this,” Lisa said wryly. “He’s been so nice to us … I feel bad asking for another favour from him.”

“Especially ‘cause we’re not so much asking as telling,” Marina pointed out.

Gavin scratched his shaved head.

“I’ll tell him, then,” he shrugged, moving toward the bow of the boat. “I need to ask if I can borrow his deodorant, anyway.”

*

“Reckon we should’ve prepared something for ‘em?” Gavin asked, carrying his clothes into the spare room that he, Lisa and Marina were sharing. “A block of beer or something?”

Marina snorted.

“Yeah, cause that’s what we want, Gav, a load of drunk people rushing in to save the day.”

“It would probably help with their confidence,” Gavin shrugged.

Lisa listened to their conversation as she buttered their sandwiches on the kitchen bench, glad to have some normality abounding when such a terrifying event loomed before them all.

She glanced at the wall clock as she slopped mustard pickles onto Gavin’s sandwich. It was close to seven in the evening; the sun was low, painting the sky and the inside of Jack’s hut an overbaked orange colour. According to what Lance had told her in his most recent call at 3pm, the Guard would be arriving within the next couple of hours.

“We’ll get there just after nine,” he had said, the roar of an aeroplane screaming down the phone line, almost drowning him out. “Is Criddle in the loop?”

Lisa had hesitated to answer.

“He – he is,” she had said. “He agreed to it, but he’s not thrilled, to be honest.”

She didn’t relay to Lance what Gavin had told her: that Jack had initially refused point-blank to house any kind of rebel gang in his house. Gavin had eventually managed to convince him by telling him his efforts would mean the guerrilla war would be brought to an end tonight – and that Lance would generously compensate him for his help.

“I’ll talk to him, I’ll sort something out,” Lance said distractedly, as a voice called for him to get into a ute. Lisa quietly hoped that Lance would offer some kind of remuneration to Jack of his own accord: she didn’t exactly fancy telling him that it had already been promised on his behalf. “Have to go, Lisa!” Lance cried. “See you in a few hours!”

Lisa pressed the slices of bread together and lumped them onto three separate plates.

“Grub’s up, guys!”

“Thanks, Mum!” Gavin joked, taking the china plate from Lisa and sitting down at the dining table.

Marina wiped her hands on Jack’s grubby dishtowel and took the plate.

“Thanks Leese.”

They collected around the table and began to eat in silence, watching another repeat episode of The Goldeen Girls. Lisa tried telling herself how important it was to eat proper food before they went to fight, but her stomach wasn’t in agreeance: she had never felt less hungry in her life. Looking at the others, she noticed that they, too, seemed unable to stomach the food: Marina was nibbling feebly at the crust, and Gavin had pulled his sandwich apart, shoved the slice of ham into his mouth and was now picking at the remains with mild interest.

“Should we run over the plan again?” Lisa suggested eventually, after her attempts to soak her mouthful of food with mango juice and then swallow it failed to make eating more appetising.

“If we run over the plan again, I think I’ll scream,” Gavin said flatly.

Marina nodded. “I think we’ve got it down pat.”

“… you definitely got your Buzzball, right?” Gavin asked apprehensively.

“Buzzball, check. Pokéballs, check. Poképort, check. Diary, check. Third Key, check.”

“Did you tear the page out already?”

“Of course.”

Lisa hadn’t forgotten to be attentive to the details of her lie. She had torn page 62 from her grandfather’s diary and meticulously copied almost every detail onto a page of old yellowed paper to turn over to Lance, keeping the original for herself.

“All the pokémon are healed, right?” Marina asked nervously, taking a sip from her glass of mango juice; Lisa wasn’t sure if she swallowed anything but air.

“Done,” Gavin said. “The Nurse Joy was a bit of a hippie though. They’ve decked that place out with yoga mats and like, Caribbean music. It’s wicked.”

Lisa smiled briefly.

“And your Guardian Butterfree’s ready to go?” she asked.

“Totally,” Marina replied.

Another long period of silence followed; one of the Goldeen Girls announced that she had fallen pregnant at fifty-two years of age.

“Gav,” Lisa ventured. “If we get into real trouble – how much psychic power can we, I dunno, expect?”

“No idea, really,” Gavin said blankly, scratching his scar. “Little things I can do, I reckon. Like a little beam or a reflect or something … teleporting would be a big risk …”

“Right,” said Lisa.

“I’m shitting myself,” said Gavin.

“Me too,” said Lisa.

“Me three,” Marina added.

The sound of the front door slamming made them all jump. Glances of anticipation were exchanged frantically as a pair of heavy footsteps clodded down the hallway – and Jack Criddle emerged in the dining room.

“Ayyyyy,” he boomed, grinning broadly.

He swayed into the kitchen, grabbing himself a stubby from the fridge and almost tripping over the power cord to the TV before taking a seat at the head of the table.

“Sorry ‘bout before, mate,” he muttered to Gavin, his words slurred. “Jus’ had t’ get me head ‘round it all, y’know? So me ‘n’ Frank bin down at the pub – ‘e’s still there – an’ I had a good think an’ it’s all good, y’know, mate? S’all good, y’know?”

“No worries, mate,” Gavin said bracingly. “I know it was a lot to ask.”

“We really didn’t mean to make an imposition, Jack,” Lisa gushed; she felt bad about not having broached the subject with Jack personally. “It’s all out of our hands – Lance Hudson made the decision, not us.”

Jack shrugged his muscled shoulders.

“S’alright, Leese,” he insisted, and Lisa smelled the pungent odour of beer on his breath before he even took a swig from the new stubby. “I look up to Lance Hudson. Always have. What a fucken legend. Best trainer I’ve ever seen on TV. Saw him in person in ’96, he came t’ the Cossoleum – uh – the Cosso – y’know the place … yeah … He was fucken wicked, mate!” He slammed his fist down onto the table, almost sending the stubby flying. “DESTROYED Clair, assbolootly – absa – absolutely flogged ‘er. Fuck me, I wouldn’t mind floggin’ ‘er meself, ay …”

“Don’t think we have a problem after all,” Gavin winked at Lisa.

Jack belched loudly.

“Tell ya what, would love t’ flog that bird down at the pub. Little blonde thing, from Kanto I reckon …” he took a hearty swig from his stubby; the amber liquid bubbled as it gushed into his mouth. He paused for a moment, his face slightly green, and then he said, matter-of-factly to the table at large, “Gotta chunder.”

He bounded from the room toward his bedroom, slamming heavily into at least two doorframes before they heard the distant sound of retching.

Marina winced.

“I think that’s enough evidence against the beer-for-the-Guard plan.”

“I’ll go check on him in a minute,” Lisa said slowly. “This is good, though … if he’s passed out for the night …”

“… then it’s even easier for us to sneak out,” Gavin finished.

It was dark and close to nine o’clock when Lisa finished helping Jack into his bed. Leaving a glass of water on his bedside table and a plastic bucket beside him (just in case), she was about to leave him to snore away when she heard the front door creak open and Marina’s muffled voice, followed by several pairs of footsteps creeping into the house.

“Sweet dreams, Jack,” she whispered.

She closed his door and crept out into the corridor before entering the large dining room, her eyes immediately falling onto a teenage boy now seated at the table.

“Lisa!”

If she had expected anyone to be there less, it was Darius Hudson.

He leapt from his seat beside Marina, eyes shining, and jogged toward Lisa.

“Hey,” he said simply, smiling broadly at her.

Hello, dimples! “Hey, Darius!” Lisa grinned, before throwing her arms around him; he reciprocated the gesture with gusto.

They broke apart.

“Wow, you look good with short hair!” he exclaimed, gently taking hold of a tuft of her hair.

“You too,” Lisa muttered stupidly.

She felt instantly moronic for saying it: Darius’ dark brown hair was longer than she had ever seen it, shaggy and almost Beatles-esque. Indeed, he looked like he could’ve been in some kind of indie band. Lisa let her eyes play over his face – his deep brown eyes, his rugged jawline, and now, for the first time, the hint of stubble that was growing on it – and his then his body. Perhaps doing all the outside chores at the safe house had paid off: Darius now looked considerably stronger than the last time they had met: his shoulders were squarer and he was barrel-chested; his white T-shirt fitted him snugly, as did his dark denim jeans.

Something inside Lisa’s chest was excitedly doing somersaults.

“So, Marina was just trying to explain to me and the others what the hell got into you guys,” Darius smiled, holding out one of Jack’s old vinyl chairs for Lisa.

Lisa wheeled around and, to her utter surprise, realised there were several other people now in the room besides Darius, clustered around the kitchen bench. There were three men and two women, all of whom appeared to be in their late twenties and thirties and all of whom were strangers to Lisa.

“Oh, hi,” Lisa said nervously, waving to them. The full meaning of Darius’ words suddenly weighed down on her: she had forgotten that most of the Guard would still be furious about her, Gavin and Marina’s disappearance.

“Oh yeah – should do intros again, I s’pose,” Darius muttered, sweeping his fringe from his eyes. “Everyone, obviously you know who Lisa is. Lisa, this is Julia Thorne, who does all the legal stuff for the Guard –” A brunette woman in a business-like pant-suit smiled politely. “– and Stephen Wendt, the best welterweight in Blackthorn City –” A man with a shaved head and almost spherical muscles bulging from his tank top gave Lisa a warm grin. “– and Owen Carmichael, who takes care of weapons and stuff for the Guard –” A young, blond man wearing blue jeans and a leather jacket gave Lisa the thumbs-up. “Annette Flank, she does loads of field work around the place –” The youngest of the group, a purple-haired woman in her early twenties, waved jovially. “– and last but not least, Jason Firth, Olivine’s top police officer and an awesome guy to boot.” Jason, a bearded man in his late thirties, nodded in Lisa’s direction courteously; of all the Guard Members present, he seemed the only one outwardly disapproving of Lisa’s rogue quest.

“Nice to meet you all,” Lisa said meekly, taking her seat eagerly as Darius mirrored her. She looked at the group of five. “I thought Lance said the whole Guard was coming together, though?”

“We’re the early birds,” Annette smiled, happily sipping at one of Jack’s stubbies. “We came in on an earlier flight. Or an earlier Lapras, rather. The others are due pretty soon.”

“We were the only Guard members based at the safe house when Lance’s message came through,” Owen explained. “He said to bring all available manpower.”

“Which is why I’m here, too,” Darius beamed. “I don’t care what Dad says, I’m gonna fight this time.”

Lisa noticed the mood intensify among the five Guard members: Annette, Owen and Stephen looked supportive; Julia, on the other hand, looked quietly sceptical, and Jason’s face visibly darkened.

“You’ll have to respect your father’s orders,” he growled, his gravelly voice almost akin to the strum of a bass guitar.

“Yeah, well,” Darius shrugged defiantly. Lisa felt a sudden surge of attraction toward him, and instantly felt foolish that she was excited by his rebelliousness.

“I was saying, Darius,” Marina said, keen to defuse the situation, “that basically we were all sick of being attacked and chased all the time by the Union. It’s as simple as that. Lisa explained it all to Lance on the phone. We took matters into our own hands for once. I’m really sorry that I worried you.”

“It’s all good,” Darius shrugged, although there was a certain dignified angst to his tone; it looked like he was restraining himself from saying what he really felt about the matter.

Gavin regarded Darius for a moment, his expression one of mingled curiosity and distaste. Lisa rolled her eyes: she knew Gavin was in some way jealous of Darius.

“So when –” Marina began, but before she got any further, the old front door creaked open and the sound of muted footsteps – many more than before – carried down the corridor. “Never mind …” Marina muttered, exchanging an apprehensive glance with Lisa as the first Guard members entered the dining room.

Lisa couldn’t believe the sheer number of people who flooded into the room: the stream of Guard members, stranger and unknown, poured into the wood-panelled house, all of them greeting their fellow Guard members warmly while Darius introduced them all to Lisa and Gavin.

“And this is Natalie –” Darius began, as a blonde woman walked over the threshold.

“We’ve met before, in the ward at Mt Fairfax,” Natalie gushed to Lisa, before nervously double-checking her pokéball belt – it was loaded with six Ultra Balls – and rushing over to greet Stephen.

“And Marco – one of Dad’s oldest friends –”

Lisa recognised the handsome Italian man at once: he had dropped the bombshell about the Legend on her at the Fairfax Inn a month ago. Clearly embarrassed, he gave a brief nod and a fleeting smile to Lisa and Darius before moving to speak with Julia.

“And Lauren, she’s from the Orange Islands –”

A tall, big-boned woman charged into the room, her tanned face drawn in a serious expression.

“Hello, Lisa,” she greeted, shaking Lisa’s hand forcefully.

Taking in her gigantic frame, Lisa’s memory triggered.

“You’re Christina’s sister, aren’t you?”

Lauren’s frown broke for a brief moment.

“That’s right. She mentioned me?”

“In Redwood Hospital, yeah. Before …” Lisa paused; Lauren’s face had cracked and she looked almost ready to burst into tears. “Um … how is Christina?”

Lauren closed her eyes, straightened her face with what looked like a gargantuan effort and, with a mildly apologetic look at Darius, she moved further into the room to speak with the other Guard members, completely bypassing Lisa.

Lisa looked desperately to Darius.

“Christina’s still …”

“The Union still have her, yeah,” Darius said. “Not your fault, you couldn’t’ve known really.”

Gavin and Marina drifted over from the table to join them in greeting the Guard members. Lisa found that their welcome was mixed: some members were simply glad to see them all alive and well; others were distinctly cold and disapproving.

It was just after Jim Donovan entered the already-crowded room – which, Lisa thought, was taking on almost a party atmosphere, with everyone chatting excitedly and several members helping themselves to Jack’s beer – that Lisa felt two plump arms sweep her into a tight bear hug.

“Lisa!”

It pronounced in the Italian way, which made Lisa sure of one of two things: either her mother was so glad to have her back in her arms that she had become emotional, or she was about to ground Lisa for life.

“Mum!” she spluttered, through a mouthful of woolly jacket. “Hi!”

“Sono stato preoccupato, Lisa! I was soooo worried!” she gushed, kissing the back of Lisa’s head. “What happened to your hair?!”

Emotional, Lisa thought gratefully.

As her mother’s arms worked harder and harder to cut off the supply of air to her lungs, Lisa saw her father enter through the door. For a second, his black eyes were hard and unyielding as he surveyed her. The ability to speak precluded by her mother’s grip, Lisa mouthed to him, “I’m so sorry.”

Dad’s face broke into a soft, lined grin.

“The important thing is that you’re safe now,” he said, his voice sonorous.

Finally, the intensity of Mum’s grip lessened. Lisa gulped gratefully at oxygen before her mother turned her around and hugged her face-to-face.

“Yes, you’re safe now!” Mum gushed. “And how could we be mad at you, Lisa –” Lisa was relieved to notice she had reverted to pronouncing it the English way. “– you got us the Third Key!”

Her words were loud enough for the Guard members nearest to them to overhear; suddenly, there were scattered cries throughout the crowded dining room.

“Where is it?”

“Show us the key!”

Dad’s face was a mixture of alarm and delight. He turned to face the rest of the Guard.

“Please, everyone, try to keep it down, we’re supposed to be hiding here,” he said soberly. “As for the key, Lisa’s hidden it somewhere safe until this whole event is done and dusted!” he declared, prompting several groans of disappointment and at least one spirited, “Boooooooooo!”

Dad turned back to Lisa.

“You’ll show me later, of course,” he said under his breath with a mischievous grin. His eyes fell on the others standing beside Lisa. “Gavin, m’boy! Good to see you! Marina!”

Mum gave Lisa a final, bone-crushing squeeze for good measure and scuttled along to sweep Gavin into a similar embrace.

Lisa had barely re-oriented herself, taking in the cacophonous chatter of the surrounding Guard members and swapping glances with Darius, before another voice cried, “Lisa!”

If Darius had bulked up over the last month, he must have been taking instruction from Lisa’s elder brother, Tom. Typically weedy throughout his teenage years, he now looked almost as toned and heavy-set as their father, his chest visibly broadened beneath his polo shirt.

“Tom! Oh my God!” Lisa cried.

They embraced.

“How do you manage to do this all the time?” Tom whispered in Lisa’s ear. “It’s like drama follows you wherever you go …”

Lisa shrugged lightheartedly. “What can I say, I’m a magnet for the limelight,” she joked, finishing the quote from a TV show they’d watched obsessively as children.

Tom laughed.

“I’m so glad you’re okay.”

“Me too,” Lisa said, grinning. “How have – oh my God, Miki!”

Tom’s fiancée, a pretty Asian girl named Miki, stepped over the threshold and into the dining room. Lisa ran toward her and hugged her enthusiastically: they had always had a great rapport.

“Thanks for squishing the life out of me, Leese!” Miki gasped, coming up for air. She stepped back, putting her hands on Lisa’s shoulders and looking her up and down. “Far out. It’s good to see you in the flesh again. Short hair works on you.”

Lisa laughed; Miki had a way of making the most serious of situations seem normal.

“So, how do I look?” she asked, gesticulating to her clothes.

She had opted for practical black leggings and a flowy, red silk top, adorned with countless black rhinestones; a pokéball charm in her resplendant black hair held, Lisa knew, her high-level Umbreon.

“I swear I didn’t have a clue what you’re meant to wear to, you know, a war, so I figured if I’m gonna get taken out tonight, I’ll go out in style. This top was like two hundred bucks from Macy’s.”

She laughed lightly, though Lisa knew from her face that she was petrified.

“You’re not going out, period,” Tom said seriously, pulling her nearer to him.

“Excuse me, could I see you for a minute, Lisa?”

A young girl with sleek brown hair and rust-coloured eyes appeared beside Miki. Unlike everyone else in the dining room, she wasn’t equipped with weapons or pokéballs: rather, she held a clipboard and pen, tucked under her left arm.

“This is Sarah Venner – she’s Dad’s assistant and receptionist and coffee-maker – pretty much everything,” Darius explained, in response to Lisa’s puzzled look. “Hey, Sar.”

“Hey, Darius,” Sarah smiled politely. “So, Lisa – a moment?”

“Oh – sure,” Lisa agreed, nodding to Tom and Miki. “See you guys in a minute.”

She followed Sarah down the dingy corridor and into the spare room in which she, Gavin and Marina had spent the night. Closing the door as they entered, she found the pandemonium from the dining room was nothing more than a distant murmur.

“I suppose this will do,” Sarah said, brushing off Gavin’s quilt before setting herself down squarely on the foot of the mattress. “Do you want to take a seat?”

“I’m alright standing,” Lisa shrugged. “What’s this all about?”

Sarah tapped her clipboard nervously.

“Lance wants to see you privately,” she said anxiously. “He should be in any minute, he was just finishing up with the boats, making sure they were all ready.”

“Okay …” Lisa said slowly.

Sure enough, a moment later she heard the front door creak open and several pairs of footsteps thudded down the hallway.

“What do they think they’re doing, making so much noise? You can almost hear them from the beach! Take care of it, Azura.”

“On it,” came Azura’s sharp cry.

The door of the spare room swung open and Lance entered. In the dim light of the single, dangling light bulb, his face looked much older than the last time Lisa had seen him: there were dark circles around his eyes and his forehead was particularly creased. Nonetheless, there was no denying the palpable aura that surrounded him as he entered: Lance Hudson, League Champion. His black cape billowed slightly as he closed the door behind him; his black hair was spiked up sharply, and he wore what looked like custom-made gear beneath his cape: black pants and an orange vest, completed with a pair of extremely durable-looking steel-capped boots.

“Hello, Lisa,” he said regally, extending his hand.

Lisa shook it back.

“Hi.”

“You’re probably wondering why I asked Sarah to cordone you off here,” he said curtly. “First things first: do you have the Sceptre of Suicune with you?”

Lisa blinked.

“It’s in my pack,” she said, gesturing to the three backpacks lined up in a row against the wall – Gavin’s, Marina’s and hers. She fervently hoped the arrangement wasn’t too obvious.

“Please get it for me,” Lance said swiftly.

Lisa fished around in her pack and unfurled Gavin’s old yellow shirt that she had wrapped around the sceptre after emerging from the Sepulchre of Suicune. It was still slightly bloodstained; the tip still glowed with an icy, cerulean light.

“That’s … perfect,” Lance said, open-mouthed; Sarah, too, looked entranced by the object.

“Perfect for what?” Lisa said, handing him the sceptre gently.

He took it by the handle, regarding the sparkling sapphires encrusted in the silver weapon, his fingers running over the handle and dangling dangerously close to the glowing, bloody blade.

“Perfect for … what I need,” Lance muttered enigmatically.

Without wiping the blood off it, he opened a hitherto invisible pouch in his black-and-orange vest, securing it tightly within, before nodding cryptically to Sarah, who jotted something down on her clipboard, and turning to Lisa with a blank face, acting as though nothing had happened.

“Let me explain the other reason I called you here,” he said sleekly. His voice was sharp and humourless. He regarded her sternly. “I appreciate what you have gained for the Guard and I trust that you will keep the Third Key safe for me until I return tomorrow. Nevertheless, as I said on the phone, I am deeply disappointed in your actions and I cannot reward your defiance.”

Lisa’s skin tingled; she suddenly understood where this was going.

“I know my son has mistakenly been brought here tonight, thinking he will fight with us, and judging from your past actions, I can anticipate a similar sentiment from you,” Lance growled. He looked Lisa dead in the eyes, his golden eyes meeting her honey ones. “This is not going to happen. Nobody under the age of eighteen will be fighting. You, Gavin, Darius and Marina – and Sarah –” he added, flicking his head toward her. “ – will wait here tonight. Is that crystal clear?”

Lisa fought to hold his gaze.

“No,” she said, with a great effort. “We want to fight. You told me you need all the manpower you can get. Well, you’ve got four of us right here, ready to help you out – five, even, if you let Sarah come …”

“Oh, I’m staying here,” Sarah said swiftly.

Lisa scowled at her.

“Fine, four of us. But we’ve fought before, we can do it again, we can help you.”

Lance massaged his temple.

“This is NOT a negotiation, Lisa. My word is final. Your parents have agreed. Azura has agreed. You are teenagers. We are not risking your lives in this fight. You will stay here until morning.”

“I can’t believe this!” Lisa cried. “I got the Third Key for you!”

“I don’t CARE!” Lance roared, agitatedly pacing. “I am telling you this now, Lisa, so that you can relay it to my son and the other kids. I am not having this same argument with him again. You must understand that, as your adult guardians, we’re just protecting you!”

“We don’t need to be pro–”

“You will stay put.”

“We want to fight –”

“ENOUGH!” Lance roared.

Lisa stood opposite him, seething, filled with the urge to punch him or push him … just to express her fury …

“There. Is. No. Argument,” Lance said, jabbing his finger at Lisa. His face was bright red. He turned to Sarah. “Sarah, take the information about the key locations that Lisa said she has and make a copy for us to take with us,” he said, abruptly resuming his usual, calm voice. “If you’ll excuse me, both of you, I have to go tell an army that I’ve lied to them.”

Without another look at Lisa, he swept from the room.

Lisa glared at the door for a moment, her fists clenched and her teeth grinding in rage.

“I understand you’re angry,” Sarah said gently.

Lisa fixed her with the dirtiest look she could muster.

“Some help you were,” she scowled. She pulled out the piece of paper, where she had dutifully copied the details from page 62 of her grandfather’s diary, while carefully eliminating the time-applicable references he had made; she was not ready for the Guard to know that she knew anything about her grandfather, or the theory that Suicune had told her about in the Sepulchre; she had copied the key locations in a way that made it seem that the text could have been a hundred or more years old. “Here, take it!” she snapped, hurling the page at Sarah’s clipboard before running from the room.

A few faces turned as she stormed into the packed dining room, but most people were focused on Lance, who had taken up a position at the far end of the room, standing on top of a couple of milk crates and loudly pontificating.

“What’s wrong?” Gavin whispered, as Lisa squeezed past Lauren to join Gavin, Marina and Darius.

“Tell you in a minute,” Lisa hissed, still fuming.

“ … ask for your co-operation and your dedication, as always. I know we can win this tonight!” finished Lance.

“Hear, hear!” someone cheered in a sarcastic whisper; clearly they had been chided for being too noisy earlier.

“There is a final point that I must mention before we take off,” Lance said. He checked his wristwatch. “It is nine-thirty right now. Several hours ago, the Union deployed half of its number to the coastal cave west of Azalea Town. They are anticipating our arrival at two in the morning.”

There was a collective gasp of horror and dismay throughout the room; Lisa, Gavin and Marina, however, listened attentively.

“So they’re onto us, fuck!” someone cried; Lisa thought it was Stephen.

“Yes,” Lance said. “Fortunately, the intel we told you about the location of the Fourth Key was a decoy.” There was a collective intake of breath. Lisa watched Lance closely, wondering how he would word his bombshell. “For some time, we feared that the Union had managed to intercept our communiqués. Tonight is the proof. Fortunately, we have used this to our advantage, sending them to the wrong location to make our job a little easier.”

Guard members were exchanging delighted glances around the room, as a murmur of excitement began to build. Lisa realised with a jolt that somewhere among them, someone – the mole within the Guard’s ranks – was probably sending a frantic text to Joseph Sterling.

“The great thing about this is that, even if Sterling were to find out our change of plan now,” Lance continued delicately, scanning the faces of his subordinate agents; Lisa wondered if he was trying to pick out the rogue agent, “it would be too late to stop us with full force. Half of his army is more than four hours away. For now, then, our aim is to retrieve the Fourth Key. We will surf to its location, about twenty minutes away. It is located within the Union’s base on Silver Rock Island.”

Cries of shock and dismay replaced the buzz.

“WHAT?”

“Nooooo …”

“You’re fucking kidding me, Hudson …”

“This is bullshit!”

“The team leaders,” Lance pushed on, apparently oblivious to the chorus of dissent below. “Are already aware of this plan, and we agree that the element of surprise will be key to our mission. The volcanic cone at the centre of Silver Rock Island provides the Union with protection, but it also makes it far easier for us to smoke them out.

“Your team leaders will give you exact details, strategies and co-ordinates once we are en route,” Lance continued hastily. “So, without further ado, move into your teams and let’s move! We can do this, guys!”

Lance stepped down from the milk crates and was immediately obscured from view by the nearest Guard members, who had risen to their feet to argue with him. Lisa noticed that her parents, Azura, Donovan and Alison were attempting to get a round of applause happening after Lance’s speech, but nobody was having a bar of it. There was utmost dismay on every face: everyone looked enraged.

“What, does he think we’re gonna fight half the Union on our own?” Lauren spat, exchanging an incredulous look with Natalie. “Why not just tell us to point a bloody gun to our heads and cut to the chase?”

“And why didn’t he tell us before?” Natalie demanded, though her soft voice did not lend itself to anger. “Why tell us twenty minutes before we land?”

She looked as though she were about to hyperventilate.

Lisa, Gavin, Marina and Darius stayed standing, pressed against the wood-panelled wall of Jack’s dining room as the throng was ushered out toward the corridor by a much-abused Lance.

“This is bull,” said a man with salt-and-pepper hair that Lisa didn’t know.

“We’re mad to do this, we’re fucking mad,” added Owen, walking alongside him.

As the crowd thinned, Lisa spotted Mum and Dad near the door, apparently searching the room for her, too. Abandoning the others, she raced over to him.

“Dad!” she cried. “Lance won’t let us come with you to fight! He practically yelled at me!”

Dad’s face creased painfully.

“Lisa, you know what my answer will be. Don’t make this any more difficult than it already is.”

“But you need us! You need all the help we can get, and we’re good for it!”

“The important thing,” Mum said passionately, pulling Lisa into another tight hug and kissing her on each cheek, “is that you’re safe, Lisa. Knowing that will get me through this. We’ll take care, we’ll be alright.” She gave Lisa a final kiss on the forehead. “Take care, Lisa. Love you.”

“I love you too,” Lisa said despite herself, returning the embrace.

Apparently overcome with emotion, Mum bustled toward the corridor, joining a red-headed woman along the way.

“Dad … come on …” Lisa pleaded.

“It’s final, honey,” he sighed, hugging her tightly and kissing her on the forehead. “Stay safe and we’ll see you in the morning. Love you.”

As he moved to go, Lisa struggled with herself. She wanted to scream “I hate you!”, but the fear of her parents being killed in the fight and her last words with them being something as detestable as that made her feel sick to the stomach. Choking down her anger, she hugged him back tightly and said, “I love you too, Dad. Good luck.”

He winked at her.

“She’ll be right,” he grinned, jogging down the corridor energetically.

Even though his back was turned to her, Lisa waved to him until the old front door creaked to a close. She sighed and turned back to the dining room to find it almost deserted: only Gavin, Marina, Darius and Sarah were left.

“Wow …” Lisa muttered.

The dining room had filled and emptied so quickly that it almost seemed as though it had all been a dream. The empty beer bottles and general clutter of left-behind backpacks were the only evidence that some kind of mass migration had just taken place.

“Here’s what I don’t get,” Gavin said, leaning against the kitchen bench and regarding Darius. “Lance has just told everyone – including the mole – that they’re heading to Silver Rock. What’s stopping the mole from calling Sterling and warning him? The Union will have twenty minutes to prepare.”

Darius shrugged.

“Don’t look at me, he doesn’t tell me anything.”

“Forethought,” Sarah answered abruptly.

Everyone turned to face her: she was seated on one of the torn vinyl chairs, jotting something down on her clipboard.

“Care to elaborate, Sar?” Darius asked.

“I guess it’s okay to tell you guys,” she said. “Lance and I organised something with Albert Cripps – you know old Albert, Darius. Telecommunications across the Island will be down for the next twenty minutes, as a precaution.”

Lisa gaped.

“The Guard can do that?”

Sarah swept a strand of hair from her face.

“Albert can, yes. We’ve got quite a few really well-placed contacts. They might not be fighters, but they’re useful in other ways.”

“Clever,” said Gavin. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced, by the way. I’m –”

“Gavin Luper, I know,” Sarah finished smoothly, a small smile on her face. “I’m the one who organised your mission to Cianwood. And got you and Lisa those hospital beds in Redwood City. I’m Sarah Venner, by the way, Lance’s assistant.”

She held out her hand professionally and shook Gavin’s with considerable force.

“Ah right,” Gavin muttered. Lisa chuckled to herself. She had a feeling he had been about to flirt with Sarah but had realised that she was a little too high-flying for him.

“Not meaning to be rude,” Sarah added, “but Lance wanted me to read over a few things before I relax for the night, so I’d better knuckle down to it.”

Lisa stepped in quickly.

“Not a problem,” she said, flashing Sarah a brief smile to repair any damage done by her earlier spat. “We were actually just going to go out onto the deck and watch the Guard take off if we can see them … We’ll see you out there?”

“Sure,” Sarah nodded, before her rust eyes refocused on the clipboard. “Nice to meet you guys, by the way,” she added, frantically scribbling on the page.

“You too.”

Lisa motioned to the others to follow her onto the decking, closing the flywire door behind them. Unconvinced that they were out of earshot, Lisa led them down into the dark backyard, amongst the mess of old wooden crates and car bodies and boat bodies and rope and other curios that had accumulated over the years.

“Did you know she was coming?” Lisa shot at Marina.

Marina’s eyes widened in the moonlight.

“How the hell could I have known?” she protested.

“She seems a bit … straight-laced …” Gavin muttered darkly.

“Sarah’s a nice girl,” Darius chipped in, tapping Lisa’s shoulder. “What’s going on?”

“We’re going to Silver Rock anyway, without permission.”

“What? MAD!”

“It’s awesome, isn’t it?” Marina grinned.

“But I’m guessing Sarah won’t have a bar of it …” Lisa added.

“So what?” Gavin said. “I’m going, end of story. I say we give her the choice to stay here or join us.”

“Hear hear!” said Marina.

“You guys are really doing this?” Darius muttered excitedly, his eyes aglow.

“For real,” Lisa said.

“Let me talk to Sarah, then,” he said. “We’re friends, I might be able to persuade her. She knows a lot of secret stuff, too, she could be really useful.”

“Deal,” said Lisa.

Darius scrambled back up toward the deck, almost tripping over a blown tyre in the process.

“You ready, Marina?” Lisa asked seriously.

“I think I can do this,” she said. “Well, I’ll have to. We just need to be far enough behind them to not be heard.”

“Which is why I want to get some kind of visual on where they’re leaving from and where they’re heading,” explained Lisa. She clambered up onto the decking and peered out in the direction of the coast, but she couldn’t see anything through the nearest row of screen trees.

“Try the roof,” Gavin suggested. “I have a pair of binoculars in my pack, actually … gimme a sec …”

“Get our packs, too, while you’re there, Gav!” Marina called.

“Pfft!” muttered Gavin, though Lisa knew he would probably do it nonetheless.

Lisa and Marina stood in the darkness outside the wooden shack for a couple of long, silent minutes. At one point, Lisa thought she heard the front door creak open and a couple of male voices mutter to one another, but before she could listen in, Marina spoke.

“This could be it,” Marina said solemnly. “Tonight. Us, them. It could finally be over.”

“I know.”

“I don’t know what I’m more scared of: the war not ending tonight, or the war ending tonight. Does that kind of half make sense, or have I finally lost my mind completely?”

Lisa’s lips curved in the dark.

“Nope. I feel the same way.”

The sound of several pairs of footsteps approaching reached their ears. Lisa and Marina looked up to see Gavin emerging onto the decking, laden with their three backpacks; behind him was a teenager with peroxide-blond hair and studded wristbands; and trailing them was Darius, looking excited, and Sarah, still clutching her clipboard, her face a pale mask of terror.

“Lisa, did you invite this clown over for drinks?” Gavin demanded hotly, hurling the three rucksacks to the wooden deck.

“Don’t call me a clown, fuckface,” Jamie snarled.

“Don’t start fighting, for God’s sake!” Lisa cried. “I just mentioned to Jamie that we were gonna be stuck here tonight …”

“Yeah, fuckface,” Jamie snapped, eyeing Gavin with immense disdain.

“Fuck up,” Gavin growled back at him.

“There’s been a change of plans, Jamie,” Lisa explained. “We’re – um – we’re going to fight the Union after all.”

“Wicked. I’m coming.”

“What?” Gavin cried. “Mate, you’re not invited.”

“Gavin, knock it off,” Marina said swiftly, rolling her eyes.

Sarah followed the exchange in the dark, her eyes bewildered.

“Okay, everyone stop talking for a minute!” Lisa cried.

Silence fell.

“Let’s get this cleared up. Gavin, I don’t care if you like Jamie or not, the fact is, we need as many people as we can get to fight the Union and get my pokémon back.”

“I thought you didn’t have any pokémon, though, Jamie,” Marina’s voice floated through the cold night zephyr.

“I don’t,” Jamie said flatly. “I got a good right hook though.”

“We can share our pokémon around,” Lisa said seriously. “Darius, did you bring a full set of six?”

“Yeah. I guess I can share one.”

“Great. And Sarah, I’m assuming Darius has brought you up to speed, otherwise you wouldn’t be out here, right?”

Sarah’s voice was surprisingly calm and professional, despite her frightened stance.

“I don’t agree with what you’re doing, Lisa,” she said at length, “but if you’re going to do it anyway, I’ll be able to help. I helped Lance plan this mission, I know where they’re leaving from and where they’re arriving. I will help you, but please don’t ask me to fight.”

Lisa raised her eyebrows.

“That actually – I mean – that sounds fair to me. So, if everyone’s got their crap together, let’s get this show on the road before we miss the party!”

“Woooo!” Jamie cheered, scrambling down the steps from the decking to the dirt.

“Alright, let’s do this!” Marina called, hoisting on her backpack before jogging toward the path that led from the back of the house to the beach. “Here, Jamie, you can borrow my Golduck if you want …”

Darius and Sarah clattered down the steps behind them.

“This is gonna be awesome,” Darius said, his grinning teeth sparkling in the moonlight as he jogged past Lisa and tapped her on the shoulder energetically.

Sarah followed beside him, still looking thrown by the sudden turn of events.

Gavin slung Lisa’s rucksack toward her; she caught it easily – they had packed light, taking only the bare essentials – and used the momentum to swing it over her shoulder.

“This is it, Leese.”

“I know,” she said heavily.

“Scared about going back?” he asked, his tone serious.

“Petrified,” Lisa said baldly. She fiddled with the strap of her rucksack. “Even more than I’ve ever been before. I’m not even sure if we’re doing the right thing …”

“You did a good job of sounding convinced,” Gavin said simply. His chestnut-brown eyes met hers gently. “The others believed you. I would have, too, if I didn’t know you better.”

Lisa’s forehead creased.

“What if one of us gets killed, Gavin?” she said, her voice brittle. “This was all my call. I could never live with myself.”

Gavin shook his head vigorously.

“Lisa, buck up,” he said, not unkindly. “You can’t psych yourself out like this. Not before a battle.”

He took a single step toward her.

“This battle is going to happen whether we’re there or not. You didn’t force anyone to come along. We all made our own choice; I know I did.”

Lisa dug her fingernails into the durable strap of her rucksack, losing the fight against the apprehension building in her chest.

“What about the Guard?” she said. “They’re just following Lance’s orders. If I’d never told Lance about the Fourth Key location – if I hadn’t gone into the Sepulchre of Suicune – then we wouldn’t be here right now.”

“Leese, I already said –”

“I know, I know what you said, Gav!” Lisa interrupted. “But it’s easier for you to say that. I can’t help the way I feel.” The reality struck her like a thunderbolt. “People are going to die tonight. Union members. Guard members. Even one of us. It’s all on me.”

She half expected Gavin to roll his eyes and chide her for being ridiculous; to her mild surprise, he cocked his head to the side and regarded her with pity.

“The way you feel accountable for everyone else in the world … I don’t think I’ll ever get that,” he grinned. “But I kind of like it.”

Lisa met his smile with a questioning look.

From the far side of the yard, Marina’s silhouette waved wildly to capture their attention.

“Hurry up, you two!”

“We’re coming!” Gavin called back.

He turned back to Lisa.

“Lisa, Lance is the one who made all this happen tonight. Whatever happens, it’s on him, do you hear me?”

She winced against the intensity of his gaze.

“Yeah … yeah, I guess so.”

His chestnut-brown irises softened.

“If it helps, Leese, just forget about the Guard. Forget about the Legend. You know the reason I’m going? Revenge.” His voice bubbled with latent anger as he spoke the word. “The Union has fucked up our lives for months. They’ve tried to kill us, they cut my face open –” He jabbed his index finger at the scar on his face. “– and they kidnapped you and stole your pokémon.”

He suddenly took her hand in his and squeezed it gently; his palm was sweaty.

“This isn’t about the war, Lisa. It’s personal. It’s time we paid them back.”

[Chris 2.1]

OH GOD ITS ACTUALLY HAPPENING

I was so excited reading this. I feel like I'm watching an episode of 24; the suspense, the sneakery, the fact that so many characters' lives at stake (don't make Lisa an orphan, please!? And Tom's girlfriend seems nice too...)

I like the little gang Lisa formed, also great to see Jamie back (found that guy hilarious). I just don't know how this is all going to pan out. Excitedly awaiting the next instalment Gav.

Descriptions were brilliant, loved reading the trio in the lagoon, and the description of the Union's boat drifting past.... that was chilling.

See ya!

[Gavin Luper]

Chris: Thanks for reading and replying mate. Hehehe I know, it's all coming together! Glad you like the gang ... it has been a really long time since I sketched that out so it was nice to share it, at last. More on that front now.

Stoked that you liked Jamie, too.

I waited so long to post again because - well, I know I have to do some brief editing and spellchecking for each chapter, so I put it off and procrastinated. But I just forced myself to do it and it took all of ten minutes.

More importantly, I think I'm going to post chapters up weekly now, otherwise I'll never finish posting this. I simply hope that you guys can keep up, but if not, reading two or three recently-posted chapters at once would be no different to how you would read a book, so I hope it doesn't put you off.

So I'll be committing myself to weekly chapters now, each Sunday. Stay tuned!

On that note, here's Chapter 80! Boom! It's all happening now!

Cheers!

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Chapter 80 – The Midnight Armada.


Shrouded by darkness, the six teenagers sprinted through the salty scrub, bashing sticks and leaves out of their way as they hurtled toward the beach.

“Look out, sleeping Ekans ahead!” Jamie shouted.

“Cheers!” Lisa cried, looking down at her sneakers just in time to see a thickly-coiled mass of purple only a foot ahead of her. Throwing all her weight forward, she leaped over the snake, clearing it safely, her sneakers landing with a thud on the dirt on the other side, her legs crunching slightly with the shock.

“Gav, look out for the Ekans!” Lisa called over her shoulder.

“Cleared it!” he bellowed back, grunting as his shoes landed safely on the other side.

Barely twenty metres past the sleeping Ekans, the box-thorns, blackboys and saltbushes began to dissipate, until the sound of breaking waves tugged at Lisa’s ears and the strong scent of salt teased her nostrils.

Lisa slowed herself down to a halt, as Jamie, Darius, Sarah and Marina were doing before her. The bush cleared completely: they were standing on fine beach sand, the coastline spreading out either side of them. Straight ahead, in the distance, Silver Rock Island glinted in the moonlight.

“Oh wow,” Lisa gaped.

Her eyes had fallen on the dark, tiny dots that seemed to be floating in the distance, close to Silver Rock Island. There were dozens of them, barely visible except when a moonbeam fell upon them.

Gavin came jogging to a halt beside Lisa.

“Gav, let me borrow your binoculars,” Lisa asked him.

He handed them over – a sleek, metallic silver set – and she pressed them to her eyes, gazing out at the tiny dots near the island. Sure enough, the dots were boats – fishing vessels and speedboats and pleasure craft – all of them crowded with tiny figures that must have been Guard members.

“It looks amazing,” Lisa breathed. “It’s like a silent armada.” She grinned. “The Union won’t know what hit it.”

She removed the binoculars from her eyes and handed them to Gavin, who eagerly took them and gazed out at the sight before them. Sarah, meanwhile, was pointing out to the others a small headland about a hundred metres to their left.

“That’s where the Guard left from … there’s no rips there, no dangerous current. We should leave from there.”

“Just as well you’re here, then,” Marina said dully. “Because our plan A is a no-go.”

She gesticulated to the old wooden jetty that jutted into the Cianwood Sea, about three hundred metres to their right. It was completely abandoned; a loose rope dangled from one of the piers.

“Oh no!” Lisa moaned.

“What was plan A?” Jamie asked.

“We were going to nick Jack’s dinghy,” Marina sighed. “I’ve sailed them before so I thought I could do that … but it looks like the Guard stole it first, or something.”

“They must have run out of boats …” Sarah muttered.

“So, what’s plan B?” Darius asked urgently, eyeing up the distant dots, which seemed to be almost atop Silver Rock Island now.

Lisa and Gavin exchanged wry smiles.

“We surf.”

*

The Cianwood Sea was frigid by night: Lisa wanted to scream as Gavin’s Seel surfed purposefully through the water, occasionally dipping an inch or two deeper and wetting a little more of her jeans with the ice water.

“Aaaaaargh!” she shrieked, as a small swell rose over them, drenching her right leg from the knee down. “This is insane!”

“I think my leg is falling off,” said Sarah, from the back of Darius’ Dragonair.

“Toughen up!” said Darius sharply, though even from her distance, Lisa could see his teeth chattering violently.

Looking around, she was glad they had managed to surf on relatively small pokémon: it would make them less visible by either the Guard or the Union as the silhouette of Silver Rock Island loomed ever closer. Gavin was seated on his half-submerged Staryu, his legs crossed to keep his feet dry, while Marina and Jamie each took one of Starmie’s horizontal arms, her grubby sneakers and his black-and-white Converse All-Stars trailing through the seaspray.

“Reckon the Union’s got someone on lookout duty?” Lisa called to Gavin.

Gavin shrugged, scratching his leg.

“I would, if I were them,” he called back.

He grabbed the pair of silver binoculars from around his neck and peered up ahead at the armada of Guard boats, all of which were now either in the shallows surrounding Silver Rock Island, or actually disembarking.

“Looks like they’re arriving undetected,” he remarked, impressed.

Lisa patted Seel gently on the head.

“G-good job, buddy,” she grinned falsely, trying to appear grateful for the ride instead of resentful that she had taken one of the pokémon lowest to the water level.

Silver Rock Island was now only a few hundred metres away. Although the island itself was largely no more than a gigantic, conical silhouette, the jagged silver rocks caught the moonlight in various places, giving the island a twinkling aura.

“The Guard members are taking too long to get out of the way,” Gavin observed through his binoculars. “Some of them have already gone into the island through a cave … I think it’s through a cave anyway … but there’s a bunch still hanging around on the shoreline. They’ll see us if we get much closer …”

“That’s D-Donovan’s team,” stuttered Sarah, her teeth clattering together. “They’re meant to act as a back-up for Azura’s team. They’ll only go in when they’re called.”

“So what, we’re gonna float around and wait for ‘em to go in?” Jamie demanded brashly.

“What are they gonna do, tell us to turn around and go back?” Lisa laughed. “Once we’re there, they’ll need us … OH!”

Her cry of shock was echoed by the others.

An enormous streak of flame had suddenly exploded from the core of the extinct volcano within the island, illuminating the island and the sea. Lisa and the others watched in awe as the tongue of flame rocketed into the air like a nuclear warhead, apparently bound for the stratosphere, before it reached its zenith, hung delicately in mid-air for a moment, and then arced back down toward the ground, gathering velocity.

“Are they battling inside the cone – OH MY GOD!” Marina screamed.

Lisa screamed with her: the gigantic ball of flame had not returned to the inside of the cone, but rather, had streaked down the outside of the island, illuminating the silver rocks around it before slamming with almighty force into the centre of Donovan’s team; silhouetted bodies went spinning backward into the beach sand; a second later, a barrage of anguished screams reached Lisa’s ears.

“Fuck!” Jamie yelled.

“Oh no,” Sarah whimpered.

Lisa and Gavin exchanged glances.

“The Union saw them coming …” Gavin muttered.

Lisa’s teeth were chattering and she felt a surge of self-hatred overcome her as she cried, “Seel, get deeper into the water and surf as fast as you can!”

Her mind churned; the voice she had successfully repressed for the last few minutes reared its head with a vengeance.

It’s on me … it’s my fault if they die …

Icy needles pierced Lisa’s arms and torso as Seel dove, almost submerging himself; around them, Starmie, Staryu and Dragonair followed suit, accompanied by curse words from the boys and a whimper from Sarah. Marina alone seemed immune to the water’s frigid wrath.

“Shit!” Gavin muttered, peering through the binoculars as Staryu pulled in closer to the other pokémon. “The Union’s got troops coming to finish the job.”

Lisa didn’t need binoculars: they were close enough now for her to see what was taking place on the beach, which was illuminated by the blaze that had sprung up in the wake of the massive fireball attack. Union agents in camouflage gear and bandanas were streaming from a hidden cavern near where Donovan’s team were writhing on the ground; all of the agents were equipped with either Stunners or AK-47s.

“No!” Lisa cried, as the agents levelled their weapons and began to fire.

The rat-tat-tat of rapid gunfire echoed across the water, followed by bloodcurdling screams; one of the Guard members on the beach, a male, judging from his bulky silhouette, bellowed, “NOOOOO!” and hurled something at the nearest group of Union agents.

BANG!

The grenade exploded; a wave of flame blossomed over the beach, enveloping the three Union agents, accompanied by a wave of airborne sand, which rained over the others.

They were just twenty metres from the shoreline now; Sarah was looking around wildly at the others, as if demanding to be taken back to safety, but nobody was even capable of returning her gaze – least of all Lisa. She firmly redirected her eyes at Gavin, her mouth hanging open as a vortex of horror and guilt swirled in her gut.

She knew Gavin understood what she was feeling, but he offered no word of comfort. Instead, he called out to the group at large.

“Let’s attack from here,” he said firmly. “At the ready, guys, with your quickest, strongest ranged attacks. Go!”

And at once, Lisa’s anxiety was supplanted by the call of duty; life and reality and the world ceased to exist, and the world became war.

“Staryu, Psybeam!” Gavin roared.

“Hydro Pump, Starmie!” Marina bellowed.

“Dragonair, Hyper Beam!” Darius cried.

Lisa hesitated just a moment.

“Seel – use an Ice Beam!”

The Union agents on the beach turned at the commotion, but they were too slow to react: an ice-white beam of energy flew from Seel’s mouth, grazing the top of the seafoam before smacking directly into a Union agent’s leg, sending him tripping over his own feet and into the fire; a ray of purple blasted through the night air, slamming directly into an Umbreon and its trainer; by the time Starmie’s cannon of water flooded the beach and sizzled half the inferno, there was an explosion of gunfire and bullets sizzled the surface of the water around them, pinging off with a distorted twang sound.

“There’s some more coming from the wat-aaaaargh!”

A Union agent decked out in leather copped a Hyper Beam to the head as he tried to call for back-up; he slammed into the ground as a deadweight.

Screams echoed from the beach as the battle continued to rage in the semi-dark, illuminated by the flames.

Abruptly, Lisa felt Seel slow down, and then her feet scraped against sand.

“Everyone stay back!” she commanded to the others, pelting onto the beach and hurling her rucksack to the sand.

She supposed it was abject fear, rather than genuine conviction, that caused her to say it; she knew at once that her desperate cry would have no pull over the others. Around her, Gavin and Marina were clambering to their feet and launching pokéballs into the air; Darius followed suit, wading toward dry land, edging past the Guard’s moored vessels.

Sarah, meanwhile, was floating half-submerged in the shallows, looking completely stunned; and Jamie stood beside Starmie, a pokéball in his hand and a vacant look on his face.

“Don’t just stand there, you’re an easy target!” Lisa roared. “Go, Kingler! Revelum, Altaria!”

Lisa had perhaps one full second in which to survey the battleground before her: she realised the beach was only a small alcove, home to about a dozen battling Guard members and about double the number of murderous-looking Union agents; motionless bodies littered the sand. Before Lisa could get her head around anything else, she saw a bolt of blue light streaking from nowhere toward her head, and threw herself to the ground; she rolled in terror, her ears caked in wet sand; her heart was pounding; she was sure that staying still would seal her doom in an instant …

“Nooooo!”

There was an explosion of green light just feet away from where Lisa lay; a second later, a sweaty hand gripped her arm and hauled her onto her feet.

“I got your back, Leese!” Gavin screamed. “Yeah, Natu, peck his fucken eyes out!”

“DIE!”

A Union agent seemed to materialise from the darkness, a machete in his hand and madness in his eyes; he lunged at Lisa, brandishing the blade …

“ELECTRIFY!”

The Buzzball crackled to life; a blue streamer sparked through the wet air and connected with the tip of the machete, only a foot from Lisa’s face; the agent screamed as he was blasted off his feet …

“NO, LISA!”

Donovan’s voice came from nowhere; Lisa spun around almost a full three hundred and sixty degrees before she realised that he was in front of her.

“Why’re yeh HERE?” he growled furiously. “LOOK OUT!”

He threw his entire weight on top of her; Lisa’s bones crunched audibly as they slammed into the dirt together; Lisa didn’t even have time to see what attack they had just escaped; she yelled an indiscriminate, “Electrify!” and clambered to her feet.

“Thanks, Donovan,” she called, hunting around the beach until her eyes caught something white and blue being pummelled by a red-eyed Raichu.

“Altaria, don’t take it lying down! Speed Star!” Lisa cried.

“Fucking hell, it’s the Walters bird!” roared Raichu’s owner, a bearded bikie. “Get ‘er!”

“Not likely!”

Stephen appeared from somewhere in the shadows, delivering a deft uppercut to the bikie before smacking him neatly in the nose; in the same instant, amid a renewed round of gunfire, Altaria squealed a series of high notes and released a volley of golden, resplendent stars, which slammed into the Raichu’s side, almost throwing it off its feet.

“Quick attack!” Lisa bellowed, exchanging an awkward wink with Stephen by way of thanks. “AARGH!”

She would never know where the attack had come from: blackness overcame her; her body was shaking, spasming; her bones were being loosened, screwed from their joints by a grinding screwdriver; her nerves were being cleaved by a blunt saw … her brain was screaming …

“GET OFF!”

The pain lifted; Lisa found herself lying face down on the beach, her mouth half-filled with mud. She spat it out and pushed herself back up, her arms shaking uncontrollably.

She wheeled around to see Darius standing over her, flanked by his Stantler and holding Lisa’s Buzzball out before him.

“Electrify!” he cried. “Stantler, Double Team!”

As a bolt of electricity crackled toward the nearest agent, Stantler multiplied itself; suddenly, the beach was filled with dozens of brown stags, each one as real-looking as the last; just as the nearest Union agents cried out in confusion, Darius spun round to face Lisa.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Before Lisa could answer, a Hispanic agent lunged out from the shadows, a pistol outstretched, and pulled the trigger twice.

Bang! Bang!

Darius hung for a moment, as though suspended in time, and then collapsed backwards into the soft sand.

A crystal of black ice blossomed in Lisa’s chest.

“NO!” she screamed, scrambling toward Darius’ body, thoughts of her own safety forgotten.

Don’t be dead … don’t be dead …

Darius’ face was frozen in a stunned expression, his eyes rolling around in his head. Her heart burning, Lisa scanned his clothes for a deep red stain and finally located one slowly flowering – on his right shoulder.

There was a metallic click nearby. She whirled around: Anthony, the Union agent, had levelled his pistol at her chest.

“We both know you won’t do it, Anthony!” Lisa screamed. Knowing his name – and using it – somehow made her feel powerful. “You know Sterling needs me too much …”

Anthony’s yellow-toothed grin broadened. He lowered his pistol toward her leg and pulled the trigger just as Lisa dived to the right; the slipstream of the bullet grazed past her thigh moments before she slammed roughly into the ground once more …

Sprawled on her back, Lisa saw Annette, the purple-haired Guard agent, run at full-pelt at Anthony, pulling the trigger of her Stunner at point-blank range. A jet of blue light burst from the tip of the Stunner; Anthony spasmed as though he had been kicked in the solar plexus; he crumpled to the sand.

“You okay, Lisa?!”

Annette hauled Lisa to her feet. Behind her, another grenade exploded, showering both of them in wet sand; somewhere in the mêlée around them, Marina cried, “COP THAT, BITCH!” and Donovan let off a tirade of curse words as he fired off a Stunner relentlessly into a Union agent’s gut.

“We rock!” Annette cried, appraising the beach around them.

The chaos had somehow petered out into a series of isolated fights, though Lisa spied at least four Union agents retreating back into the cave. Bodies covered the ground; only a few people were left fighting; the Guard’s sheer number of pokémon had tipped the scales in their favour. A gang comprised of an Ivysaur, a Wigglytuff, three Beedrill, Marina’s Bayleef and Golduck, Gavin’s Girafury, Lisa’s Altaria, a monstrous Golem and a Treecko was systematically taking down one Union agent after another, impervious to most attacks thanks to the constant Reflect and Light Screen provided by a Xatu in their midst.

Lisa scanned the scene – Marina had now apparently disappeared, but Gavin was still locked in a fierce pokémon battle with a female Union agent, and Jamie was engaged in fisticuffs with a Union agent who looked no older than he; as they watched, Stephen ran up and decked the Union agent definitively, before high-fiving Jamie in triumph.

“Where’s Sarah?” Lisa cried, looking back into the shallows, but there was nobody there.

“That’s her!” Annette said in astonishment, pointing behind Lisa.

Lisa whirled around in time to see Sarah perform a lightning-fast kick to a slender Union agent’s head; the female agent’s nose broke with a loud crack; she reeled backwards, stumbling, as Sarah ran forward and delivered a swift backhand to her bleeding nose. With an anguished roar, the woman collapsed to the dirt.

Sarah spun on her heel, her arms twirling around her in a distinctive martial arts formation.

“I learn karate,” she said, looking slightly shell-shocked at what she had done as Annette and Lisa stared on in disbelief. “For – for self-defence.”

Lisa barely had time to express her astonishment; a shout of victory from Gavin, Donovan and some other Union agents signified the battle’s end. A relative calm fell over the beach, broken only by the crackling of the fire and the groans of various agents sprawled across the sand.

“Lisaaaa!”

The hoarse cry came from just a few metres away. Lisa’s blood ran cold once more. She rushed back to Darius’ side.

He lay spread-eagled on the shimmering sand. Marina knelt at his side while Stantler presided over affairs, cooing miserably.

“I’m here,” Lisa muttered, as Darius’ pained eyes found hers.

“Am I okay? How bad is it?” he said in a panicked voice.

The wound, a few inches east of Darius’ collarbone, was trickling with hot blood. Marina held a scrap of black material to the spot, her eyes wide.

“It’s going to be alright,” Lisa said in the calmest tone she could muster, though tears had sprung to her eyes. “He only got you in the shoulder.”

Marina gaped at Lisa, her voice strangled, tears tumbling down her cheeks.

“Lisa – I don’t know what I’m doing –”

“I can help!”

Annette came rushing up to them, pulling two red-and-white pokéballs open; a plump, bright pink Blissey and a robust Wurmple emerged in a flash of radiance.

“All good battlers should always carry a Blissey and a Wurmple,” Annette said seriously to both Lisa and Marina. “Blissey, try a Softboiled and let’s see if we can’t do something about that wound with Wurmple!”

Not convinced that Annette was going to have much success, Lisa gripped Darius’ hand tightly before turning around to survey the rest of the beach. There were only a dozen figures on their feet, all of them Guard agents.

“Leese!”

Gavin came lumbering forward clumsily; as he got closer, the flames from the still-raging blaze illuminated his thin face; his nose was crooked, bent violently to the right, and blood flowed in a thick stream from his nostrils into his mouth.

“Gav – you okay?” Lisa cried, suddenly aware that her heart had slowed to a rapid pounding; she suspected it had been veritably vibrating before.

“I’m fucking wicked!” Gavin cried, spitting a mouthful of blood and saliva to the sand. He threw his arms around Lisa. “I’m alive, so I’m fucking wicked!”

Lisa managed a smile; though bruised, she had somehow escaped the scuffle unscathed.

Over her shoulder, she glimpsed Jamie rubbing his head gingerly; it looked like he had sustained several bruises during his fistfight, including a heavy hit to the face which seemed to be swelling into a black eye.

“Eddie is dead,” Donovan announced.

“No!”

There were screams and cries from the surrounding Guard agents, only a few of whom Lisa knew by name or face.

“Tamara too,” said Donovan. “And Jonas, Adam and Travis.”

Lisa barely heard the second chorus of grief. Her ears were ringing, her throat swollen as the truth hit her: five Guard agents were dead.

“It’s on me …”

She didn’t realise she had said it aloud until Gavin, his arms still embracing her tightly, pulled away slightly and locked eyes with her.

“Lisa – it isn’t on you. Stop punishing yourself,” he said sternly.

Lisa swallowed a dry sob and hummed to herself, visualising her five pokémon’s joyful faces when she rescued them.

It was just enough.

“Roxanne is unconscious and wounded, but not seriously; we will have to abandon her here,” Donovan continued. “Same as the others; we don’t have time for grief or diagnostics. Azura’s team will need their back-up now; we have to go into the caves, and now. Wartortle, Hydro Pump,” he added in the same breath; a Wartortle waddled up to the blaze and, with several bursts of cold, refreshing water, extinguished the fire in a matter of seconds, the hissing of steam echoing into the night.

Stephen, Owen and some other agents began picking up various weapons from the unconscious or paralysed Union agents at their feet.

Donovan regarded Lisa and Gavin with an expression of incredulity.

“You kids … nothing will stop you, will it?”

Feeling as though she were repeating a hypnotic recording, Lisa pulled away from Gavin and faced him.

“I need my pokémon back,” she said firmly. “And you need us.”

Donovan ground his teeth.

“I need you to stay here on the beach and take care of our wounded members,” he said gruffly, “but I have a feeling that’s not going to happen.”

He sighed heavily as he picked up a revolver from Anthony’s holster and took it for himself. He trudged through the beach sand toward Lisa and Gavin and placed a hand on Gavin’s shoulder.

“If you kids are going to fight no matter what, then at least do me this favour, and stay the hell away from the main cavern. Most of the fighting will take place there, if it isn’t already.”

“If you help us out with some info, we’ll be able to do that,” Lisa said quickly. “I need to know where the Union’s lab is – where they do tests on pokémon – I want to get my pokémon back …”

Donovan’s beady eyes flicked to the top of his head, as though he were racking his brains.

“Each team had a set objective,” he explained quickly. “Ryan and Maria’s team is freeing trapped Guard operatives, including Professor Westwood; Lance and a few other agents are basically kicking arse and takin’ out as much Union scum as they can; Azura’s team and mine are hunting for the Fourth Key.” He paused for breath. “Alison’s team went in to liberate the pokémon and destroy as much infrastructure as possible … it’s them you’ll need to rendezvous with. Oy, Venner!”

Sarah jogged over from Darius’ side.

“Yes?”

“You and Lance plotted this thing – you got any idea where the pokémon are being kept?”

“No – we didn’t have enough intel. We only know cavern codenames,” Sarah said anxiously. “But … if I knew what cavern the lab was in, I could probably find my way to it.”

Donovan grunted and reached down for the nearest Union agent he could find sprawled on the dirt; he hauled a red-haired teenager a foot off the ground by his hair and held Anthony’s pistol directly against the young agent’s face, the barrel resting on his forehead.

“Yeh’ve got two seconds to gimme the fucken codename of the cave where the pokémon lab is kept, Red, or I blow your fucken brains out all over this beach.”

The agent began to scream hysterically.

“It’s codename Cyprus! Cyprus cave! Please, don’t, don’t kill me – don’t! –”

“Fucken treacherous prick,” Donovan growled, releasing his hair and sending him face-first into the dirt; he aimed the revolver toward the sky and fired a single bullet off with a deafening bang!; the agent convulsed and shrieked in terror.

“Cyprus cave is your best lead, even if he’s lying,” Donovan said to Sarah. “And on that note, we’re off.” He sighed heavily, surveying them with bemusement. “Stay safe, kids.”

He jogged toward the rock wall that comprised the foundation of the volcanic cone, Stephen, Owen and the others following him eagerly.

“One more thing,” he called as he jogged, “Lance always tells us the main objective to keep in mind is to STAY ALIVE! Remember that!”

“We will!” Lisa and Gavin called in unison.

No sooner had the Guard agents disappeared into the crack in the rock wall than there was the renewed sound of gunfire and anguished screaming. Lisa jumped as she saw a blast of light high above them, from within the cone itself; clearly, another battle was taking place in there, too.

“I think we’re done!” Annette declared, stepping back from Darius.

Lisa, Gavin, Sarah and Marina looked on as Annette recalled her Blissey and Wurmple. The colour had returned to Darius’ face, and his shoulder was no longer bleeding, bandaged organically with Wurmple’s thick, sticky String Shot.

“Wurmple String Shot is the best for wounds,” Annette said confidently. “I bound it nice and tightly … so it shouldn’t come loose. You should be okay, Darius.”

“T-thanks,” he muttered, sitting up slowly.

Annette surveyed the sea of bodies before her, clutching her hands to her bushy purple hair. For a moment, the moonlight fell upon her face and Lisa realised that she was emotionally shellshocked; but before she could comfort her, Annette gave them all a distracted wave and, muttering, “Stay safe, kiddos!”, she bounded toward the tunnel entrance that Donovan and the others had taken.

A set of waves crashed over the shoreline, water rushing over Darius’ backside and the hiss of seafoam almost blocking out – for a second – the pandemonium of at least two separate battles on the island.

“What are we waiting for?” Jamie drawled, tapping his knee with Cubone’s bone.

Lisa looked around at the others: Gavin’s bloody nose, Jamie’s black eye, Marina’s grazed arm, Sarah’s bruised face and Darius’ wounded shoulder. The guilt finally overcame her.

“Look, I dragged you here to get my pokémon back, essentially … and I feel really bad that out of all of you, it’s me who comes out of the first battle, you know, without a scratch …”

“Lisa, what are you babbling about?” Marina asked, regrouping with her pokémon. “Have you even seen your arm?”

Lisa followed Marina’s finger to the underside of her right arm: it was grazed so badly it looked as though someone had grated it; flakes of skin dangled loosely while blood seeped from the holes.

“I can’t even feel anything …” Lisa muttered.

“It’s called adrenaline,” Darius said, miraculously sardonic as he allowed Sarah and Gavin to pull him to his feet. “I can barely feel anything in my shoulder, either. I mean, it’s killing … but I’m kind of numb …”

“Then let’s get going while we’re still pumped!” Jamie urged.

“Well, that’s what I was starting to say. The Union aren’t fighting fair; they’re using bullets and we’re not. We could be killed tonight. If you guys want to wait here and avoid any more fighting, then I’d –”

“Oh, fuck’s sake, don’t pull this shit, Lisa!” Jamie cried indignantly. “I was just starting to like you, jeez. Get your bloody hand off it and let’s go!”

Gavin’s face wrinkled into a grin.

“First time I’ve agreed with him,” he muttered. “For the last time, Leese, stop thinking you’re responsible for us, for God’s sake.”

Without another word, Gavin and Jamie leaned over the bodies of some of the Union agents, collecting weapons for them all. Marina gave Lisa a friendly elbow before following suit, along with Sarah.

Lisa felt the burden in her chest lift, if only slightly. She turned to Darius, who was gingerly brushing wet sand off himself.

“I was so scared for a minute there,” Lisa admitted.

“No kidding,” Darius breathed. And then, while the other four were busy scouring for weapons, he leaned toward her and pressed his lips against hers.

Lisa froze, taken completely off-guard. She had never been kissed before, had never experienced the sensation of a warm pair of lips against her own. Her heart seemed to lift in her chest, suspended by elation, her mind wiped completely blank by the new sensation; and then, quite as suddenly as it had happened, Darius pulled back and their lips broke apart.

Lisa locked eyes with Darius. She could see her own reflection, pale and battered, shining in his brown irises. She searched the depths of his eyes for meaning. For an infinitesimal moment, time seemed to wait for them. And then –

“Take a Stunner!” Marina called, her voice deliberately loud. She pushed in between them and thrust a stun gun into Darius’ hands before pressing a second one into Lisa’s and dragging Lisa along by the arm.

“Okay, let’s move!” she bellowed, trudging determinedly toward the cleft in the rock wall that led to the inside of the cave.

Lisa looked back at Darius, who held her gaze until Sarah came up by his side and spoke to him in a whisper; Lisa felt a surge of jealousy rise within her.

“Focus, Lisa,” Marina said knowingly in her ear, as they reached the tunnel entrance.

“Right. I know. I am,” Lisa said, tearing her eyes from Darius and facing front. She recalled Altaria into the poképort and jogged onward.

Gavin had somehow come into possession of the Buzzball: as they strode into the pitch-dark tunnel, he held it before him and said quietly, “Illuminate.”

A globule of light materialised from nowhere and began orbiting gently around the red Buzzball, sending sparks of golden light glimmering to the ground and illuminating the tunnel ahead.

“Okay, that’s fucking awesome,” said Jamie.

The tunnel stretched out a long way before them; echoes of shouts and bangs could be heard further ahead. Almost at the end of the illuminated section, there was a dark shape curled up on the ground.

“Let’s … uh … proceed with caution, ay?” Gavin suggested, slowly creeping forwards.

“Cyprus Cave is actually very close to here,” Sarah’s voice echoed from behind Lisa and Marina. “The first tunnel to our right should take us to an antechamber, and Cyprus Cave leads right off that, I’m almost positive.”

“Okay,” Gavin said, adopting a tone of faux-machismo. “Stunners at the ready? Let’s march, boys!”

Gripping the handle of the Stunner with her left hand and holding her right index finger on the trigger, Lisa shuffled forward. As Gavin walked, the tunnel lightened further and further. Before long, they had reached the dark shape that lay slumped in on the edge of the tunnel.

Lisa was only a few metres from it when she realised it was a body.

“Oh no …” Marina breathed.

It was the body of a man in his mid-thirties: his polo shirt had been torn to shreds by what looked like a vicious pokémon attack; his gut, still visibly hairy, was sliced in a thousand places, leaving red, bloodied slashes across his torso. His face was also shredded, the gashes even deeper here, with what was left of his nose dangling from his face on a precarious thread, leaving a bloody, gooey mass exposed beneath. One of his eyes, mercifully, was closed, but the other had been clawed out, leaving a mess of white and black jelly leaking over the side of his face.

The bile rose in Lisa’s stomach; she pushed Marina out of her way and vomited violently.

She wasn’t the only one affected so strongly, either; Gavin made a retching noise, and Sarah was quietly throwing up at the back of the group, while Marina clapped her hand to her mouth in terror, and Jamie covered his eyes and walked around in a small circle, muttering, “Christ, no, no, no …”

Darius had gone pale, biting his lip repeatedly, as if in a petrified trance.

“Please tell me it’s a Union agent,” Lisa managed eventually, wiping her mouth on her sleeve; all thoughts of decorum were antiquated, silly.

“It’s not,” Darius groaned. “His name was Jon, he worked with Donovan’s team.”

A collective cry – something between a groan and a scream – went up from the group.

“What d’you think did this to him?” Marina wondered in terrified awe. “It almost looks too vicious to be a pokémon, doesn’t it?”

“Who knows …” Darius muttered darkly. “Let’s just … keep an eye out …”

A shiver ran down the length of Lisa’s spine. Focusing her gaze anywhere but on Jon’s body, she glanced at the dimly illuminated cave ahead and felt slightly relieved: there was a wide opening to their right.

“Is that the tunnel?” she asked nobody in particular.

“If it’s the first one to the right, then, yeah,” came Sarah’s voice.

Eager to escape the corpse in the tunnel beside them – though Lisa did not think the image burned into her retinas would ever leave her – they turned down the auxiliary tunnel, jogging. The sound of fierce battle echoing through the glittering ceiling above them instilled a sense of urgency: Lisa’s knuckles grew white on the trigger of her Stunner.

“Slow down, Gavin, we’re nearly at the antechamber!” Sarah cried suddenly. “Cyprus Cave will be dead ahead – the pokémon lab is within – but the tunnel that intersects with this one leads from the Union’s barracks!”

“You’re telling me now!” Gavin bellowed, extinguishing the Buzzball at once; they were plunged into total blackness.

Lisa ground to a halt; Marina slammed into her heavily.

“Well this is helpful,” Jamie muttered snidely.

“Shut up,” Gavin snapped.

“Gav, I can’t even see my hand in front of my face,” Lisa muttered, feeling around for his shoulders.

“Well, according to Sarah the barracks are ahead – they’ll be friggin’ flooded with Union bastards …”

“THERE’S SOME MORE DOWN HERE! HEADED FOR THE LAB!” a hoarse male voice bellowed from behind them.

“SMOKE ‘EM OUT!” barked another man. “Charizard, Blaziken, use Fire Blast!”

“I’m thinking we don’t have a choice!” Lisa screamed, as the roars of the fire pokémon behind them were followed by torch-like sounds.

“RUN!” Marina screamed, pressing into Lisa.

It was chaos in the inky blackness. Lisa felt at least three bodies crushing against hers as she fought to run forward; her sneaker catching what she assumed was a stray rock, she lost her footing, slamming her cheekbone against the rock floor.

“Arrgh …”

Stars sprung into existence before her eyes. Though she could still see nothing, the darkness seemed to take on a vibrating, fluorescent glow.

“Stop moving, I think Sarah fell over –” Jamie cried.

“I didn’t,” Sarah said. “I think it was Lisa.”

“I’m okay!” Lisa tried to say, but she didn’t hear any noise come out.

At that moment, several things happened all at once. The tunnel was momentarily illuminated by a flash of translucent scarlet light; a Machoke emerged from a pokéball held in Darius’ outstretched hand; and at the same time, the tunnel in the direction they had come from was filled with a two jets of orange flame, rocketing toward them.

“Rock Slide!” Darius yelled.

The silhouetted Machoke leaned forward and wound up his fist before slamming it devastatingly into the wall; the entire tunnel shook before a cascade of silver rocks tumbled from the ceiling, slowly at first before an avalanche seemed to trigger itself; dust flooded the air around them and an almighty roar accompanied the ceiling’s collapse.

“GET BACK!” Darius roared.

Already sprawled on the ground, Lisa was forever struck by the colossal image of Darius hurling his body to the tunnel floor as a metre-long tongue of deadly vermilion fire exploded through the final gap in the blockage, missing his head by centimetres; the wave of intense heat hit them all a millisecond later; Lisa felt as though her face had been smacked with a hot iron.

“CLEAR IT!” roared the Union agents on the other side.

BANG! BANG!

They were firing at the blockage in their rage; feeling as though she were about to pass out from the combination of the heatwave and the blow to the head, Lisa clambered to her feet gingerly.

“Gav, we need the Buzzball. Let’s run for it!”

“Amen!” Marina cried.

The globule of light once again lighting their way, the teenagers took scarcely ten seconds to regroup – helping each other to their feet and thumping smoked-out Darius heartily on the back – before Gavin led the charge down the tunnel.

“I see it!” he cried at last.

A bright glow was visible ahead; Lisa could see a torch burning in a bracket against the rock wall; they had reached the antechamber. They tumbled out of the tunnel almost at once, temporarily blinded by the brightness of the enormous, well-lit antechamber. As her eyes adjusted, Lisa felt acid eating through her gut.

The entire antechamber was strewn with dead bodies, the floor grotesquely adorned with bleeding, bullet-riddled pulps, some dark-clothed, some denim-clad, all of them bloodstained.

The walls weren’t silver: they were crimson.

The smell was nauseating.

Her vision blurring, Lisa’s eyes fell on the only figure still standing in the antechamber. Directly opposite them, standing before a metal door marked ‘Cyprus’, was Veronica, her entire body sprayed with scarlet blood, her platinum-blonde hair matted and red, and an AK-47 in her arms. Wincing against the deep, oozing gash on her face, she stared down at the writhing, bleeding, purple-haired woman whose throat she currently rested her boot on and roared with triumphant laughter as she pulled the trigger a dozen times, the flashes of light illuminating her maniacal expression as she tore Annette’s body to shreds.

“NOOOO!”

Lisa wasn’t sure if the five others were screaming with her, or if her ears had just been so badly damaged that everything echoed. In any case, her shriek jolted Veronica; the blonde agent looked up and regarded them with an expression that bordered on savage delight.

“Lisa! My favourite guardian! You made it to the party!” she cried, her tone mockingly sweet.

She kicked Annette’s head out of her way and took a step closer to them, examining their faces with keen interest.

“Not that I don’t have a special place in my heart for you, Marina …” she grinned. “And this must be the famous Darius Hudson. You certainly inherited your father’s good looks, boy …”

“Don’t talk about my father!” Darius barked, glaring at Veronica with venom; behind her back, Lisa heard Sarah mumble something indecipherable.

Lisa regarded Veronica curiously. There was something inscrutable on her face – she looked almost intrigued by Darius, more than any of the others – but a second later, the look was gone; she returned to scanning the remaining faces in the group.

“Now let me see – which ones of you am I allowed to pick off without getting fired …” Her eyes fell on Sarah. “You’re cute,” she smiled, raising the black AK-47.

“NO!”

Lisa lunged to her right, straddling Sarah from Veronica’s range. Around her, she felt Darius and his Machoke shuffle in front of Gavin, while Marina threw her arms over Jamie.

“You wouldn’t shoot a guardian!” Lisa barked at her triumphantly, aiming the Stunner at Veronica’s head and pulling the trigger swiftly.

A jet of blue light issued from the tip of the Stunner; seconds before it connected with Veronica’s gored face, however, a bubble of ethereal brown light materialised around her head, shimmering as the blue bolt struck it and then sending it flying back at Lisa’s face.

“Aaaarrgh!”

Instinctively, Lisa ducked; she heard Sarah scream as she was thrown backwards, paralysed.

“What the hell?!” Marina cried.

“Oh, we can invest in Battlemagic too, Marina Frost,” Veronica snarled. “You’ll be pleased to learn that your Guardian Butterfree’s little stunt in Goldenrod City inspired me to invest in a hundred Guardian Eevee for the Union.”

She smirked.

“They specialise in Light Screens.”

Marina scowled darkly; Lisa felt her hackles raise: a tiny, caramel-brown Eevee was perched, infuriatingly insouciant, on Veronica’s shoulder.

Sarah groaned as she returned to her feet, idling cautiously behind Lisa.

“I suppose you’ve bested me, Lisa,” Veronica sighed heavily; her tone was laced with dangerous irony. “You’re right. I won’t dare shoot at a Guardian.”

Abruptly, Gavin screamed “Electrify!”; a spear of electricity arced through the air toward Veronica and the reflective bubble kicked in again, forcing both Gavin and Darius to duck in unison as the spark sizzled past them.

From the intersecting tunnel to the right of the antechamber, Lisa heard a dull, metallic grating; aggressive male voices were shouting epithets as the sharp, regimented sound of booted footsteps grew louder and louder.

“Unfortunately, I can’t guarantee that my grunts will have the intellectual capacity to distinguish between you,” Veronica laughed, backing toward the high, rectangular metal door behind her; she slammed her fist against a large white button and the door hissed open, revealing a sleek, metallic lab within.

“Good luck!” she grinned savagely. “I might just pop into the lab and see how your lovely pokémon are coming along, Lisa!”

“BITCH!” Lisa screamed, pulling the trigger on the Stunner once more, but she was too late; the barrel of the AK-47 disappeared through the silver door as it slid shut once more; the bolt of blue light bounded uselessly off the door.

There was no room for thought: rage propelled Lisa forward; she hurtled across the antechamber, leaping over dead bodies as she rushed for the door to the lab. She threw the useless Stunner to the ground as she climbed over the body of a Union agent, substituting it with a loaded Mini-Uzi …

“Lisa!” Marina cried from behind.

“What?”

Lisa spun round to face the others in the antechamber, her hand poised over the white button beside the door.

“Get in, get your pokémon, get out!” Marina cried frantically, hurling pokéballs to the ground as the roar of booted footsteps grew louder. Her eyes fell on the Uzi. “And be careful with that!”

“I will!” Lisa said brashly. She didn’t think she possessed the guts, even in hot blood, to fire a bullet, but perhaps the threat would be enough for Veronica.

“And take Jamie and Sarah with you!” Gavin cried, bodily pushing Sarah and Jamie toward the metal door; Jamie nearly fell face-first onto a mangled corpse before recovering and deftly grabbing the dead agent’s AK-47.

“You’re not a guardian either, Gav!” Darius cried, a full team of six pokémon surrounding him. “Machoke, try heading them off before they get here, cave the tunnel in on them with Rock Slide!”

“Yeah, but I got a plan, it’s cool!” Gavin winked, Natu clinging to his shoulder as he squeezed the Buzzball.

Holding hands, Jamie and Sarah ran the gauntlet of bodies and reached the metal door beside Lisa, their faces pale.

“Go, hurry, we’ll hold them off!” Marina cried, waving her hands frantically at Lisa. “Starmie, Hydro Pump them as they come through!”

“Whaddaya waitin’ for?” Jamie shouted in Lisa’s ear, punching the white button fixed to the wall.

The silver door hissed open instantly. Lunging forward as one entity, Lisa, Jamie and Sarah tumbled through into the lab; glancing back, Lisa caught a glimpse of several beams of blue, green and yellow light arcing through the air before the silver door slid to a close.

“Uh, Lisa … maybe stand in front of us …” Sarah breathed, gripping Lisa’s shoulders and about-facing her.

The lab was enormous, almost the same size as the antechamber, except that there was no sign of roughly-hewn archways or glinting silver rocks: every surface of the lab – floors, walls, ceilings, benches, sinks, shelves – was made of smooth stainless steel.

A couple of duelling agents had clearly made their way through the door during the earlier mêlée: two bloodied bodies were sprawled, motionless and facing each other, on the steel about three feet ahead of Lisa, each with a revolver in hand. They had shot each other in the forehead at the same time.

“Mutually assured destruction,” Jamie muttered darkly, regarding the AK-47 in his hands. “How the fuck do you use this …”

Lisa levelled the sleek, black Mini-Uzi at the blonde agent at the far end of the lab. Veronica was hunting through a steel cabinet near a second metal door, glancing surreptitiously at the teenagers like a child caught sneaking into a cookie jar.

“Get out of it!” Lisa snarled, fury blossoming in her chest. “Leave my pokémon alone!”

“Ha!”

Veronica burst into a fit of almost girlish giggles as she hauled a plastic sleeve from within the cabinet. Five red-and-white pokéballs were contained within it.

“They’re MINE!” Lisa screeched, hurtling past the dead bodies and approaching Veronica. “GIVE THEM BACK!”

As she reached the bench opposite Veronica, Lisa saw the blonde woman’s battle-scarred face curve into the cruellest smile she had ever seen.

“But sweetie, I was always going to,” she said innocently, opening the plastic sleeve and hurling the five pokéballs to the ground.

As five blasts of radiant crimson light flared in the fluorescently-lit laboratory, Veronica cried, “Goodbye!” and pressed the white button on the silver door nearest her, disappearing in a flash of silver metal before Lisa could process what she had meant.

But as she watched the five globules of red light form into pokémon, Lisa knew something was wrong.

“Oh God …” she breathed, stepping back in alarm.

“You have an Electivire?” Jamie asked, his voice less urgent now that Veronica was no longer with them; from the antechamber, though, Lisa could still hear the screams and explosions of battle; she hoped Gavin and the others were holding up … but for the moment, something else was deeply amiss.

“No, I don’t,” Lisa said, slowly, regarding the other creatures. “Nor do I have a Ninetales, or …”

Five pokémon – Electivire, Dragonite, Ninetales, Fiskmire and Aipom – rested on the steel floor before Lisa, all affixing her not with looks of joy or recognition, but rage.

Their pupils glowed red.

“Lisa, get back from them, now!” Sarah cried sharply.

Lisa couldn’t. She stared in disbelief at the creatures before her, sure that, yes, they belonged to her; and yet, she had never felt more detached from them; never had she been so abjectly frightened of beings that she knew and loved. A deafening buzz rose in her ears, drowning out Sarah’s words: her nightmare – the thing she had dreaded the most – had happened.

“They’re mutated, Lisa, get back!” Sarah cried warningly.

Lisa gaped as Electivire’s behemoth form began to lumber toward her, its black-fingered hands outstretched; Ninetales advanced with a smooth, deadly gait, pearly teeth bared.

“They’re my pokémon …” Lisa breathed, a lump forming in her throat.

Dragonite lumbered closer, behind Ninetales; Fiskmire’s canine teeth were bared as he waddled toward Lisa.

All of their movements were slow, deliberate, controlled.

“Lisa, get back!” Sarah called again. “Listen to me, I know about this. The Union have used this technique before. Your pokémon won’t respond to you as their trainer.”

Lisa’s eyes fell on Aipom. The purple monkey scampered toward her, white claws appearing from its erstwhile blunt hands, its tail erect.

“Aipom … it’s me …”

Lisa stared into Aipom’s eyes, her heart cleaving.

“Aipom … it’s me … Lisa …”

Tears tumbled from her eyes as nothing but red, deadened pupils met her gaze. Aipom growled menacingly.

“Aipom … it’s me … Leeeeeeeee –” She sobbed as she imitated the way Aipom had learned to say her name. “–eeesa …”

“Appealing to them is useless!” Sarah cried hoarsely. “You’re an enemy in their eyes, Lisa … GET BACK NOW!”

Her shriek broke Lisa’s attempt to connect with Aipom; Lisa glanced up again just in time to see Electivire’s furry, black-and-yellow form descend on her. She backed up a step or two in fright, but it was too late: a massive, furry arm swung through the air.

WHACK!

Lisa’s cheekbone cracked as Electivire’s black fist slammed into the side of her face; her skull burst in renewed agony as she fell against the stainless steel floor, the Mini-Uzi spinning away …

“Rrruuuuuuu!” roared Electivire monstrously, its red, beady eyes feasting on Lisa as though she were prey.

“No!” Lisa shrieked, blinking against her tears and the silver stars before her eyes. “Electivire – it’s me – back off – OOOOOOF!”

His leg swung at her from nowhere, the clawed foot driving hard into her solar plexus and jarring the base of her rib cage; Lisa moaned but no sound came out; Electivire had winded her.

A second kick slammed into the side of her head and the world went temporarily black. Her nerves were ablaze as clawed feet slashed down her arm, her left side suddenly damp and warm …

As her vision returned, Lisa saw the maniacal red glow in Electivire’s eyes intensify as he ploughed his fist once more into her solar plexus; she retched on reflex, vomit dribbling down her chin; and already, Electivire was robotically winding his arm up again …

“NO!”

The rapid-fire of the Mini-Uzi shattered what remained intact of Lisa’s eardrums. Mid-punch, Electivire recoiled, roaring in pain.

Lisa craned her neck backwards and gaped: Jamie stood behind her, his feet apart, the Mini-Uzi held out directly before him, exploding with flashes of light as bullets ripped through the air, rapid-fire, and pierced Electivire’s body.

The electric pokémon howled as the twentieth bullet tore through his torso: he stumbled backwards in blind terror, sending Ninetales and Dragonite reeling back in turn. Electivire teetered for a millisecond, his red eyes rolling back in his head, before he gave a bloodcurdling howl and toppled over, thick squirts of blood spraying the ceiling before his body fell to the stainless steel floor.

[Gavin Luper]

The silence will not deter me like it once did!

Here is the next - enormous, climactic and emotional - chapter. We are nearly at the end of book three.

Happy reading everyone!

Cheers!

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Chapter 81 – Lance Hudson versus Joseph Sterling.


Lisa’s silent scream haunted her forever: she mouthed Electivire’s name, roared it at the top of her lungs, screamed that she loved him as his furred body fitted violently on the laboratory floor before, abruptly, falling limp.

A sweaty hand grabbed at Lisa’s arm and a searing pain coursed through her skin: her arm had been slashed by Electivire’s claws.

“Lisa, come on, get up!” Jamie cried urgently. “No, back off!” he shouted, pointing the Uzi at Ninetales’ paws and letting off a loud round of bullets, which pinged deafeningly off the steel floor.

Ninetales recoiled instinctively, before slowly advancing again.

“Electi – elec –” Lisa spluttered, breathless and winded, as Jamie repositioned his grip on her arm and dragged her away from the pokémon; her body slid smoothly over the blood-splattered metal.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!” Jamie cried, firing off another round at Ninetales, Dragonite, Fiskmire and Aipom. “I had no choice … he was going to kill you …”

Sliding along the floor, Lisa looked up at his face: he was sprayed with deep crimson blood and his black eye was now so swollen it was almost shut, but through the battle scars, she saw devastation in his eyes for the first time, his lip spasming.

Lisa stared soullessly at Electivire’s body and felt a gaping nothingness within her. She knew, although her mind grappled desperately with the thudding reality before her, that she would not be able to feel it right then … or perhaps ever …

“Wait there!” Jamie ordered, releasing Lisa’s arm. He had dragged her behind a steel lab bench, protecting her from view of the pokémon. “Sarah, we need to get them back in their pokéballs …”

“Right …” Sarah’s voice was a panicky wisp of smoke.

“If I hold them back with the gun, reckon you can get their pokéballs and recall them?” Jamie cried.

“I – I’ll try –” Sarah spluttered anxiously, her face pallid.

The lab reverberated again with the jarring throb of gunfire. Still trying to catch her breath, Lisa stayed on her back, glazed eyes fixed on the ceiling as waves of pain rushed over her, her gut contracting with agony. When Jamie took a second to change from the Uzi to the AK-47 – he had run out of ammo – Lisa was able to hear, through the closed metal door, the chaos of battle still raging in the antechamber. Someone screamed, “TAKE HIM OUT!” and another voice bellowed, “FIGHT LIKE A MAN, COWARD!”

And then, her aching heart buoyed slightly, Lisa heard Gavin’s cocky yell:

“Better luck next time, fucktard!”

There was a tortured scream, followed by a new burst of gunfire – both within and without the lab.

Lisa tuned her throbbing ears back into the scuffle at the far end of the lab: after a final clatter of gunfire, Sarah’s voice emerged triumphantly, “RETURN!”

“YES!” Jamie cried; Lisa heard them high-five one another.

Their footsteps clattered on the metal before their pale faces swam into Lisa’s line of sight.

“Are you alright, Lisa?” Sarah asked breathlessly.

“I will be …” Lisa muttered.

Jamie’s eyes were wide, his expression sneer-free; he looked utterly devastated.

“Lisa … I don’t know how I can ever make up for what I did … I … I’m so sorry …”

Lisa couldn’t return his gaze, and yet she was not sure whether she hated him for killing Electivire or not.

“So much for pokémon rights, hey Jamie?” she said acidly, her emotions polarised. “You took one’s life.”

Jamie’s dark eyebrows bounced off his peroxide hairline; shame morphed into solemnity.

“It’s life wasn’t as important as yours,” he said simply.

“It was going to kill you, Lisa,” Sarah added fervently.

Lisa turned to her keenly.

“You said the Union had used the technique before,” she said slowly. “What have they done to my pokémon?”

Sarah retied her brown hair into a ponytail as she spoke.

“Lance and I have discovered that the Union are evoking three ancient techniques for using – or in this case, abusing – pokémon for means other than simply battling,” she said quickly, before abruptly muttering, “Oh!”

“What is it?” Jamie asked.

Sarah flicked her hand as though she had just burnt it on a hot plate.

“Stabbed myself with a bobby pin,” she muttered surreptitiously, removing her hands from her hair.

“So what are the techniques?” Lisa pressed, wincing as a residual wave of pain tumbled through her gut once more.

“One is Sentrying, where pokémon can be used as sleeper guards, their vision or knowledge tapped into by another force, usually without their knowledge. And what we just saw here is known as Puppeteering, where a pokémon’s entire conscience – its body, its mind – every function it has – is put into the enslaved service of the employer. The employer – in this case, the Union – has total mind and body control of the Puppet.

“The results I’ve read about in some of the Guard’s op debriefs have been … gruesome … to say the least,” Sarah shuddered. “Some of the Union’s enemies have been murdered in their sleep by their own pokémon. Torn limb from limb. Sometimes as their families watched.”

Lisa gaped; Jamie swore loudly.

Sarah fixed Lisa with a keen, level gaze.

“Electivire would have been programmed to kill you, Lisa,” she explained. “Jamie saved your life.”

Amid the pain in her stomach – which had now become a dull, nearly bearable ache – Lisa felt a spark of rage ignite.

“This was Veronica’s idea of a joke.”

“Seems like it,” Sarah sighed.

“What’s the third technique?” Lisa asked at length, when it became clear Sarah had finished.

“What?” Sarah asked, her brow wrinkling with mild bemusement.

“There’s Sentrying, Puppeteering, and … what’s the other technique? You said there were three.”

“Did I?” Sarah asked incredulously.

“You did,” said Jamie.

“Then this night has really mucked around with my head after all. There’s just the two,” she shrugged.

All three of them jumped suddenly: there was an ear-splitting explosion from beyond the silver door. Panicked shouts rang out. “THEY’VE CALLED FOR BACK UP!” Marina screeched.

Someone pounded on the silver door; Darius’ muffled voice came through.

“GUYS, HURRY UP, WE’RE ABOUT TO BE TOTALLY OUTNUMBERED!”

Jamie threw the empty AK-47 to the ground and stole the dead Union agent’s silver revolver.

“I’m thinking we get outta here the same way that blonde bitch did …”

Lisa let them haul her to her feet.

“Can you walk?” Sarah asked gingerly.

“More importantly, can you run?” Jamie asked, his hand raised to the white button beside the silver door that linked the lab to the antechamber.

“I’ll have to, let’s go,” Lisa said, taking a deep breath and wincing as her rib cage stuck her lungs like a needle.

“THERE’S AN EXIT THROUGH THE LAB!” Jamie roared through the silver door.

Darius’ hoarse voice rose over the chaos of gunfire and pokémon cries beyond.

“WE’RE GOING THROUGH THE LAB! GAV, GET BACK DOWN HERE; MARINA, C’MON; JIM, ROD, AMY … COME WITH US!”

“NO CHANCE!” roared a deep voice that Lisa thought sounded like Donovan’s. “YOU KIDS GO, WE’LL HOLD ‘EM OFF –”

The silver door hissed open: at once, the deafening noise of mixed close and ranged combat struck them; Lisa glimpsed a female Union agent clawing at a Guard member’s face; above them, Gavin rode atop his Skarmory, flitting rapidly above the agents below, avoiding gunfire with Agility as he rained electric fire down upon the Union agents with the Buzzball.

Darius rolled through the door, the Stunner in his hands accidentally discharging as he hit the ground; a yellow bolt of light smashed through a shelf of beakers, dusting the floor in shattered glass. Marina charged through next, a trickle of blood tainting her blue hair, a Stunner in her arms, followed by a string of pokémon belonging to her, Darius and Gavin. Just before the door slid shut, Skarmory gave an almighty battle cry and swooped down from the ceiling of the antechamber, sliding with needle-like precision through the door and landing on the steel with a spine-shredding metallic scrape.

“Woooooooo!” Gavin roared, guffawing, his face bright red as he pumped the air with his fist.

“Adrenaline junkie,” Marina shot at him pejoratively, recalling some of her more battle-scarred pokémon. She gasped. “Lisa – what happened?”

“I got my pokémon back … mostly …”

There was a hiss as the door slid open once more: everyone whirled around as a very tall, lean man entered. His bare arms were covered in tattoos; a black and white bandana held his short bleached hair back.

His jeans were draped with long metal chains; odd, rectangular plastic devices hung from them.

Lisa waited for one of them to shoot the Union agent down. She was completely thrown when Marina cried, “Rod, you’re meant to be holding the Union off!”

Rod seemed impervious to her contempt: he stroked his stubbled chin and reached for one of the plastic devices.

“Donovan and the others can take care of that,” he shrugged distractedly, eyeing up the complex-looking scientific equipment on the left wall of the lab; there was an almost hungry look in his eyes. “Mmm mmm … I’m gonna have a little party here …”

“Rod’s a demolitionist by trade,” Sarah said in response to Lisa and Jamie’s worried looks. “We brought him here to … wreak some havoc, basically.”

“And wreak I shall,” Rod muttered, chuckling as he gnawed on a toothpick he held in his mouth. “This place is gonna go sky high … I’ll be buggered if the whole fucking volcano doesn’t fall to bits.”

“He’s an optimist,” Sarah added.

“Okay, let’s move, guys, seriously!” Lisa urged; her heart was pounding. Several realities had returned to her as she recovered from Electivire’s attack: namely, the fact that her parents, and Tom and Miki, were also on the island somewhere, questing for the Fourth Key and battling the Union, too. Were they all still fighting, or …

“No,” Lisa said firmly to herself as she and the other five jogged to the far end of the lab, leaving Rod to his work; she refused to entertain the thought that anything should have happened to her family. “No, they’re still alive, they’re okay,” she muttered obsessively, ignoring Jamie’s obtuse glance.

Marina, Darius and Gavin cried out in shock at Electivire’s blood-drenched body still sprawled on the floor; Lisa did her best not to look at him. She closed her eyes and steeled herself, humming gently, and as she did so, she felt the terrible wound in her heart crust over.

“The pokéball – it wouldn’t take him back in,” Sarah whispered apologetically.

Lisa ground her teeth and said nothing.

Marina slammed the butt of the Stunner into the white button beside the silver door through which Veronica had disappeared. It hissed open. They filed through quickly and the door breathed to a close behind them.

The lab was another world away. They were once more in a poorly-hewn rock tunnel, lit only by flickering wooden torches, their iron sconces affixed to the shimmering wall.

“What?” Sarah said blankly, realising that every eye was on her.

“Well, where do we go?” Gavin demanded.

“That depends what the plan is!” Sarah cried defensively. “We’re getting out of here, right?”

Lisa and Gavin shook their heads in sync; there was no need to communicate.

“Mum and Dad and everyone else needs help …”

Sarah’s rust-coloured eyes seemed to bulge in disbelief.

“Lisa, come on … you got beaten up really bad in there … and most of your pokémon have fainted. Your arm’s still bleeding!”

“The Union have done worse to both of us before,” Gavin said resolutely, his chestnut-brown eyes ablaze. “You can all do what you want, but I’m not done giving ‘em what for yet.”

“Nor am I,” Lisa said firmly. “And the Guard needs us …” And my family needs me, too.

Sarah blinked.

“But we’ve all nearly been killed! So many times!” she cried.

“That’s why they call it a war,” Marina said sardonically.

“We’re not weak,” Darius said. “We’re not retreating now. We’re Guard members. We should stick with the rest of them.”

Sarah crossed her arms, her lip quivering apprehensively.

“You realise the odds of all six of us surviving this are astronomically bad, don’t you, Darius?”

“Not really,” Darius said seriously. “The Union still thinks Lisa, Marina and I are Guardians … and they probably know that Gavin’s somehow involved, too.”

“If you or Jamie want to leave now,” Marina said, abandoning her sarcastic nature, “and get back to the beach, and wait for us in one of the boats, then you can. None of us would think less of you for it.”

Sarah looked desperately for Jamie.

He tilted his head, wincing apologetically, and spun the barrel on the silver revolver.

“I’m in.”

“Then I’ve got no choice. We go left,” Sarah said flatly, marching past them all and stalking further up the tunnel, apparently in high dudgeon.

Marina frowned in dismay.

“Sarah, nobody’s forcing you –”

She wheeled around to face them, her hair slipping from its ponytail. Her pretty face was set in a mask of suppressed fear.

“I’m choosing to come with you,” she said through clenched teeth. “Trying to get back to the beach completely alone? Suicide mission. Let’s get this over with.”

She trudged onward, the torches silhouetting her slender form.

“I’ll lead the way,” she said. “The teams were due to rendezvous about now if possible in the cone at the centre of the volcano. I know a shortcut through the Union’s rec centre … come on!”

*

Sarah led them through a complex labyrinth of tunnels and chambers, each one deserted and silent. It was an oddly eerie feeling to be jogging along in silence when mere metres away, vicious battles were raging … people and pokémon were being murdered in hot blood …

“This is the mess hall,” Sarah cried, leading them through a drab green-and-grey hall crammed with graffitied pine tables. “We’re getting close now!”

Flanked by Darius, Stunner at the ready, she bounded through a set of double doors at the far end of the mess hall.

Lisa heard the commotion before she saw it: Sarah’s shriek prompted her to run, pushing past Jamie and throwing the double doors open, Buzzball in hand.

She ground to a halt: they had entered what looked like a high school gymnasium, except the walls were draped not with medals, honour boards or photographs, but with broad strips of black material emblazoned with a silver, runic symbol.

There was another set of double doors at the opposite side of the gym. Above the doors was another strip of black material: enormous silver letters proclaimed, “ONCE UNITED, NEVER BROKEN”. At the base of the doors, the gored body of Larry O’Brien was strewn, clearly dead.

Sarah was screaming hysterically, standing by the body and pulling at her hair in absolute terror. Darius cried out to her, tried to scream reason and calm in her ears, but to no avail.

“It’s too much!” she wailed, hyperventilating. “Too much! I used to talk to him on the phone! I pretended to be his daughter … we talked about casual stuff, stupid stuff …” She clutched at her chocolate-brown hair, tugging at her ponytail. “WE WERE SO CAREFUL!” she screamed. “HOW – HOW DID THEY KNOW IT WAS HIM?”

Darius pulled her into a forceful embrace, stroking the back of her head gently as she sobbed hysterically into his shoulder; over his back, he made an alarmed face at the others.

“He was a double agent for us,” Lisa elucidated dully. “He’s the reason I escaped the Union a week ago … It’s thanks to him that any of this happened tonight.”

“Guess someone was onto him,” Gavin observed blankly.

“Guys – what’s that?” Marina asked, pointing at a dark shape beside the body.

Lisa glanced to where she was pointing, taking in the grotesque sight of Larry’s corpse along the way, and finally she knew that she had reached saturation point: no sight could shock her anymore, not after tonight. Not even the deep red ‘X’ gashed across Larry’s chest, or the blind look of horror in his white, open eyes, or the slimy clear substance that mingled with the pool of blood nearest his gut.

Lisa surveyed the object Marina had pointed out: it was a long, rectangular box made of ebony, sitting about a metre from Larry’s left hand.

Its black velvet-lined lid hung open: the box was empty.

“That’s where the Union kept their keys,” Lisa said, her memory catching up with her optic nerve. She recalled Joseph Sterling brandishing the box – complete with the first two keys – in the caves of Mt Fairfax. She felt a sudden surge of pride in Larry. “He stole the Union’s only two keys.”

“And he was murdered for it,” Darius said, still patting Sarah, who had stopped making noise but was still shaking uncontrollably.

“And whoever killed him took the keys,” Gavin sighed, tracing his finger over the velvet lining.

“It must have been Sterling,” Lisa scowled, wincing as her solar plexus gave its regular two-second convulsion.

“I can’t take this anymore,” Marina said flatly. “Guys – we have to keep moving. I’m gonna be sick if we don’t …”

“Yeah, let’s go,” Jamie chipped in quickly.

Lisa nodded, all too keen to sterilize her brain. What better way to remove the stain left by Larry’s corpse than with a shot of adrenaline to the head?

After Darius had calmed Sarah down, she resumed her role as navigator, albeit with a significant deficiency of gusto. Indeed, the group’s morale was shot: the energy that had propelled them from the lab – the Union in hot pursuit – was now almost nothing more than a memory.

“We haven’t seen anyone for ages,” Gavin remarked, vocalising Lisa’s thoughts a second before she did. “Where the hell’s the war?”

“Sarah said this was a shortcut,” Jamie said, his tone only just falling short of accusatory.

“It is a shortcut,” Sarah sniffed, as she led them from the gymnasium to another antechamber, a second barracks, a string of offices and several adjoined supply caves, most of which were crammed with wooden crates marked either ‘AMMO’ or ‘FOOD’.

She halted in her tracks suddenly, leaning against an anomalous crate marked ‘DEFENCE’, wiping her tearstained eyes with the back of her left hand.

“I’m taking you guys through the quickest and safest route,” she said stiffly. “The Union’s barracks and offices are totally abandoned at the moment – the battles are all taking place in the entrance tunnels and in the cone of the volcano, which is where we’re heading.”

“I wasn’t having a go at you, dude,” Jamie said hastily.

“Then don’t say things with that tone!” Sarah cried hoarsely.

“Guys, let’s not fight,” Lisa said tiredly; it suddenly hit her that it must have been well into the wee hours of the morning and yet they were still preparing to charge into an armed mêlée.

“I’m not fighting with anyone. I’m not in the mood,” Sarah sighed.

She pointed at a low, wooden door at the end of the supply room, about five metres ahead.

“That door leads to a kind of baggage dock for the Union; right off that is the cone itself. Unless something huge has happened, we’ll be running into the middle of another battle.”

She swallowed with clear difficulty.

“Be ready.”

Her words – spoken in her soft, wounded voice – rang out as a battle cry. Everyone responded like clockwork, like trained soldiers: Gavin readied Skarmory’s pokéball and the Buzzball; Darius and Marina checked their Stunners; Jamie flicked the safety off his gun; and Sarah stretched her arms in an ethereal, Oriental style. Amid the scuffle, Lisa listened for the sound of battle, and heard it. There were dull thumps, the frequent rattle of gunfire … it sounded close.

A cartridge clicked in her brain: a vial of adrenaline was crushed into her bloodstream, a drug she loved and loathed. Her heart began to hammer anew, her face hot with raging blood. She was going into the fire, again, like a braindead bull charging at an electric fence time and time again. But this time, she was going into the fire for what would, hopefully, be the last time …

Setting her Stunner to immobilise, she faced the others.

“Let’s do this,” she said.

Her frightened face remarkably resolute, Sarah wrenched the door open; and at once, the sound of screams and explosions intensified. Lisa exchanged a determined look with Gavin before charging through the door after Jamie.

The metallic baggage dock was little more than a glorified vestibule: they jostled for space, Lisa jumping with fright as she felt someone’s Stunner poking into her ribs.

“Go, go, go!” Gavin roared, slamming his fist into a white button beside the silver roller door on the far side of the dock that divided them from the cone. It gave an almighty mechanical whirr and rose slowly into the ceiling, revealing, piece by piece, the chaos that raged within the cone.

No words were spoken – none coherently, at least – as Lisa and the others ducked under the ascending door and into the madness beyond.

For a second, there was utter blackness, and the melange of inky blindness and frightened screams sent a shiver through Lisa’s spine; and then, someone very close by screamed, “MAGMORTAR, USE FIRESTORM!” and in the radiance of the ensuing explosion of flame, Lisa garnered a true impression of the battlefield.

The silver-encrusted inner cone of the extinct volcano was infested with duelling agents. There was scarcely an inch of terrain that wasn’t occupied with Union and Guard agents firing off shots from Stunners, or launching their pokémon at each other in what looked like highly unethical battles: two metres before her, Lisa glimpsed a hulkish, leather-clad Union agent taking potshots with a black pistol at Azura Frost, while she used her Vaporeon to defend her and commanded her Feraligatr to battle the agent’s Machamp.

As the swirl of fire formed a tornado in the centre of the cone, Lisa saw her own parents, back-to-back, fighting off three Union agents each, their full pokémon teams spread out before them; one of the agents was Den, one of Sterling’s right-hand men.

Across the other side of the cone, Owen and Stephen were fistfighting a couple of skinheads, ducking knuckledusters before delivering swift uppercuts. Lisa chanced a quick glance upward and saw that the silver catwalks built into the walls of the cone also housed several intense battles: Veronica was locked in a fierce match with Lauren, while Anthony, the Union agent, held an AK-47 from one of the uppermost metal catwalks, picking off Guard agents at will.

Lisa’s blood boiled. She lunged into the fray, and at the same moment, something wet slammed into the side of her face. She reeled back, barely regaining her feet as she tasted something putrid and bitter in her mouth …

“Sludge that bitch again, Muk!” roared a Union agent with a throaty voice.

As Lisa wheeled around, Stunner levelled, to face him, the column of fire in the centre of the cone exploded outwards; a wave of furnace-like heat threw her off her feet and into the rocky ground, grazing her nose.

“Leese – you okay – AAAARRRRGGH!”

“MARINA?!”

Lisa struggled to her feet, hunting for Marina, but without Magmortar’s attack, there was nothing but the faint twinkle of the stars above to illuminate them. She scanned the mob of dark shadows running around her frantically.

“MARINA! MARINA, IS THAT –”

She shook the shoulders of a figure on the ground, hoping it was Marina; to her horror, a male voice screamed and grabbed hold of Lisa’s arm with a vice-like grip.

“YOU FUCKIN’ BITCH!”

“No you don’t!”

Darius emerged from nowhere; Lisa only knew it was him from his voice. A jet of blue light exploded from the tip of his stunner, striking the man squarely in the face; he cried out in shock before falling back, his grip on Lisa’s arm relinquished …

“Thanks!” Lisa cried.

“Got your back!” Darius called, disappearing instantly.

Lisa returned to scanning the ground.

“MARINA?”

At once, something slammed into the same side of her head with the force of a large rock; she reeled, again tasting bitter muck …

“HA!”

“WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU COMING FROM?” Lisa screamed, spitting a globule of mud from her mouth. Panicked and incensed, she spun in a rapid circle, firing off shots from her Stunner completely at random; jets of ultramarine light issued into the air, whizzing and hissing, before at least two male voices cried out in shock; she heard bodies crumple to the ground with loud thuds.

“Cop that!” Lisa cried, a rush of vengeance rising within her.

She scanned the ground and knew that finding Marina in the darkness – or, indeed, finding any of the others – would be an exercise in futility; she spun on her heel and bounded toward the centre of the cone, searching for some kind of clarity, some kind of information. Had the Fourth Key been located? Were the Guard ready to retreat, victorious, or had the mission failed?

“NO!”

Lisa whirled around in time to see Owen take a roundhouse kick to the face; he collapsed to the ground in a spray of blood. Without thinking, she pulled the trigger of the Stunner, firing a bolt of cobalt-blue at the silhouette who had delivered the kick; the man crumpled instantly.

“Thanks, Lisa!” Owen mumbled, staggering to his feet. He did a double-take. “Wait – LISA?!”

“We thought you might need help!” Lisa cried, ducking a stray Psybeam and leaping over a still-living Union agent who was writhing on the ground, his intestines leaking from his torn gut as he tried, feebly, to grab the heels of every passing Guard operative.

“No shit!” Owen muttered. “Heads up!”

He hurled something cricket ball-sized at her. She caught it as she jogged toward him, barely dodging a Union agent’s ill-timed kick (he received the full force of the Stunner’s business end directly to his groin) and avoiding a volley of bullets fired from above by pure luck.

“What is this?” Lisa quizzed Owen, reaching his side. The ball he had thrown her appeared to be made of black rubber and was about the same size as the Buzzball.

“Darkball!” he said, eyes illuminated by a nearby Jeep exploding into flames. “The Union use them – they’re Battlemagic items imbued with the essence of Dark energy! Bloody useful, you’ll need it!”

“Thanks, but how do I –”

“It projects Dark Screens, really good for protection and stealth, and also Dark Waves!” Owen roared distractedly, rushing to Stephen’s aid; the black boxer was fighting off a vicious attack from Mick, an agent whose kneecap Lisa had shot once before.

“What the hell is a –”

Lisa’s breath was stolen from her as something sharp struck her in the side; she fell to the ground for what felt like the millionth time that night. Her head struck something hard and her vision, already limited, blurred again, pain piercing her consciousness and dulling the cacophony so it was barely audible: it was as though she had fallen underwater, the membrane protecting her from the war. She lay on the rock floor, dazed, unable to even see who or what had struck her – they had already disappeared into the fray …

Lisa fixed her cloudy irises on the patchwork of stars above and realised with abject horror that she had nothing left in her. She had fought and fought and been knocked to the ground like a rag doll … her body had taken all it could …

If it had not happened at that moment, Lisa was not sure she could ever have gotten up from the dirt: the leather-clad Union agent appeared before her, his ugly face and thick neck illuminated by the hot flicker of the burning Jeep.

“Lisa Walters,” he said in a thick, Eastern European accent, holding a Stunner toward her. His beady eyes gleamed with reflected fire. “You have no idea what kind of commission I’ll get for being the one who took you down.”

“You won’t take me down!” Lisa spluttered, trying to stand, but he had landed a gargantuan foot on her solar plexus; she writhed in renewed agony. “I’M – TOO – IMPORTANT … YOU – NEED – ME – TO – GET – THE –” She coughed, gasping for air. “SIXTH KEY!”

The agent glowered.

“Fucking smart bitch,” he snarled. “You always got off way too easy with that one, didn’t ya?” She pressed his black boot a little harder into her gut; she screamed in agony: it was too much … she was going to retch … she was going to pass out from the pain …

“Not anymore,” the leather-clad agent continued. “The secret’s out, you lying little slut. We know you already got the key fragment – Suicune is dead …”

A tsunami of gaping terror crashed over Lisa, extinguishing the only flame of hope in her chest. There was no oxygen left in the world. The Union knew … and she had nothing more to protect her … no bargaining chip, no inherent value … she was naked, exposed …

“Why don’t you –” began the agent.

“DARK SCREEN!” Lisa screeched.

She had no idea what the attack would do – she didn’t even know if she had uttered the right words to activate it. In an instant of final, desperate defiance, she held the Darkball out between her and the agent, face clenched …

… and then he fired his Stunner at her, victorious. A bolt of toxic green light exploded in a shower of sparks from the tip of the Stunner; Lisa closed her eyes, anticipating the final delivery of utmost pain … a blow she did not think she could handle … but it did not come …

Lisa opened her eyes in astonishment to see the leather-clad Union agent reeling back in pain, his hulking form thrashing about as green sparks crackled across his arms and chest, piercing his skin; his boot lifted from her stomach as he roared, bear-like, at Lisa, his eyes wild as though he could not see her and his canines bared, before thudding to the ground and twitching erratically …

Lisa clambered to her feet, not quite sure how the Dark Screen had worked – she couldn’t even see it – but feeling a rush of gratitude toward Owen.

She whirled around: both Owen and Stephen had evaporated; Gavin and the others were nowhere to be seen. Pocketing the Darkball, Lisa took up the Stunner once more, firing it indiscriminately before her as a type of ferocious defence mechanism: she saw silhouettes collapse as she jogged painfully toward the burning Jeep, hoping that, perhaps, the light of the blaze would help her find an ally …

Just as she reached the wreckage, there was an almighty explosion from above. The eyes of every dueller seemed to arc skyward as a high-up section of the glittering volcanic cone was blasted to pieces in a burst of flame and white light, raining sparkling dust down on the battlers below …

Lisa closed her mouth instinctively, keen not to inhale the dust, but she could not tear her eyes from the sight before her.

Lance Hudson sat astride his rose-gold Dragonite, Draco, suspended in mid-air, his face lined, the aura of fury around him palpable as he glared into the sallow face of Joseph Sterling, who flew on his Murkron, a black welt spewing blood from the side of his face.

At once, everything on the volcano floor ground to a halt: there arose an almighty cheer and storm of applause from every agent, Union or Guard, each screaming his support for his leader. Lisa found herself screaming and clapping her hands in excitement; when she looked around, she saw a young Union agent in Army fatigues standing beside her, doing the exact same thing.

“FOR THE LAST TIME,” Lance bellowed, so loud that Lisa could hear him as clearly as if he were right beside her, and not suspended fifty feet in the air, “FIGHT. LIKE. A. MAN.”

Sterling’s face darkened.

“You are the coward, Lance Hudson,” he sneered. “Launching a sneak attack – trying to deceive me.” A malicious smile curled his thin lips. “You failed, of course. I caught your double agent trying to escape with my two keys. Larry died telling me how loyal he was to me. Hardly a courageous, straightbacked thing to do, is it?”

“LARRY WAS A GOOD MAN!” Lance yelled, red-faced; his clothes were torn badly and looked stained with crimson.

“Like you, he was a snake!” Sterling roared.

A jet of inky energy issued from Murkron’s mouth, forming an arrow-head in mid-air, aimed at Lance’s head; Draco cooed defiantly and breathed out a stream of sparkling, effervescent cerulean mist, neutralising the black beam of energy, which fizzled out with a hiss of smoke …

“FOR ONCE,” Lance cried, “LET’S FIGHT FAIR, JOE!” He lowered his tone to a deathly serious hush. “One-on-one. No weapons. No armies.”

Sterling’s lip curled further.

“Deal.”

Another ear-splitting roar came up from the ranks below; Lisa included; she was screaming Lance’s name as if he were a football player she particularly needed to score a goal.

One massive goal.

Murkron and Draco circled around each other threateningly, each growling as they descended slowly toward the floor of the cone. An excited grin stealing over his handsome features, Lance pulled at the golden collar of his black cape, unfurling it with a flourish and flinging it toward the ground; as it billowed down through the air, a hundred violet-and-indigo Master Balls tumbled from within the cloak, as though they had been magically suspended within it all along.

The crowd gasped and cried out in surprise; the Union agents jeered and hurled insults at Lance, some of them trying to aim their weapons at him; the Guard agents, Lisa included, cheered excitedly; it was like they were suddenly spectators at a high-stakes battle at Mt Silver – only this time Lance seemed to be holding nothing back.

As Lisa watched, transfixed, mirrored by the young Union agent beside her, the Master Balls began to pop open in luminous bursts of white energy. Suddenly, a hundred pokémon were cascading from the sky above, some of them flying types – Pidgeots, Charizards, a Gyarados, three Scizors and two other Dragonites – and some of them enormous, flightless creatures – Nidokings, Tyranitars, and two mammoth, crystalline Steelixes – who were no more than deadweights plummeting toward them all, threatening to crush whoever stood below them.

Screams erupted all around Lisa; she found herself wordlessly transfixed on the feet of the impending Nidoqueen above her … there was nowhere to move … anywhere she ran, she would be crushed …

“Ooooof!”

A flutter of caramel-coloured feathers obscured Lisa’s vision seconds before the Nidoqueen landed; two sharp talons dug into her bloody shoulders; she screamed in agony as her body was carried swiftly backwards through the air, the Nidoqueen thudding down to earth mere feet from her face.

The Pidgeot relinquished its razor grip on Lisa’s shoulders; as she crumpled to the ground, right beside a cluster of Union agents and a trio of Blastoise, Charizard and Venusaur, she realised that the flying pokémon all around the cone were picking people up one by one – human or pokémon, Guard or Union – and flinging them to the very edge of the rock ring that bordered the cone, clearing the centre circle as Lance and Sterling hovered ever-nearer to ground level.

Joseph Sterling’s face contorted into a mask of utter confusion and fury and, for the first time that Lisa had ever seen, utter fear. Lisa gazed around at the sight before her – an army of humans being forcibly relocated by an army of what were probably Level 100 pokémon – and, as the final pieces of the puzzle fell into place, she finally understood the depth of Lance’s genius; the reason why he, above all the green and weedy contestants he allowed to defeat him each season at the League Tournaments, had remained Champion of the Elite Four for so long: he was a Pokémon Master.

The final collection of flying pokémon removed the last of the agents from the centre of the cone’s glittering rock floor before fluttering above the motley group of mixed agents as if supervising them sternly. Lisa heard the Union agents nearest to her cry out her name and attempt to fire a shot from a Stunner at her; before she could even duck, a shimmering, gold-coloured Xatu flew down from above them, a bubble of glimmering yellow light encircling it and Lisa; the bolt of electric green light from the Union agent’s Stunner bounded back at the agent who had fired it, but even as he yelped out in shock, Lance’s Gardevoir flew down and shielded him, too, with a Light Screen: the jet of green light sizzled off harmlessly into the rock wall.

Lisa gaped: the pokémon had been assigned to protect them all … regardless of affiliation … Her brain knotted. How on earth had Lance managed to train his pokémon to such an advanced level? And what was he playing at, immobilising and disarming them all?

Pulling her middle finger defiantly at the Union agent who had attacked her, Lisa wheeled back to face the showdown. The two crystalline Steelix finally touched down, as though they had been enchanted to merely drift, defying the true nature of gravity. Their silver, glistening forms coiled around the edges of the cone, pressing everyone against the walls of the cone: Lisa was coerced backwards, squeezed between a stray Charmeleon and Lauren, the Guard agent, who looked rather the worse for wear: she sported a massive, bloody gash on her forehead, but still managed to nod stiffly to Lisa by way of salutation as their eyes met. Lisa could tell from the blank expression on her face that she, too, was completely blown away by what Lance was doing.

Lisa’s heart rose in her chest as she glimpsed Gavin and Sarah across the other side of the ring, their faced battered and bloody, but they were clearly in good shape; both of them waved frantically at Lisa, mirroring her.

At last, Lance’s rose-gold Dragonite and Sterling’s pitch-black Murkron landed firmly on the ground, well illuminated by the light of the still-burning Jeep. Cheers and shouts rang out from all sides of the cone; Lisa and Lauren screamed Lance’s name in a kind of melodic tune, while the Union agents seemed to be reciting some kind of gothic chant in latin. Lisa rested her aching arms against the Steelix’s body – she was just able to see over it and into the centre of the cone – and watched the scene unfold with bated breath.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Sterling snarled, his hand flinching toward the holstered revolver on his belt before he seemed to regain control over his limbs; he instead shoved the hand into his pocket and produced a Master Ball.

“I never could trust you, Joe,” Lance said coolly, disembarking from Draco and patting his resplendent back reassuringly. He took two neat steps toward Sterling, not in a threatening manner, but rather as though they were about to shake hands in the street, or engage in a friendly game of bocci.

His demeanour was inconceivably casual.

“You fight like a coward,” Sterling snarled, enlarging the Master Ball in his hand.

“Au contraire,” Lance said, rummaging in the folds of his cape, which had swirled onto the ground when he dropped it, and producing yet another blue-and-purple Master Ball. “I seem to remember being simultaneously attacked by three of your other agents the last time we battled, Joe. I should remind you that not a single Guard agent stepped in to defend me, nor should they.

“We are going to do something we should have done that day – what was it, more than a decade ago, now? We’re going to battle the old-school way. Six pokémon on six. May the best man win.”

And looking Sterling directly in the eye, he screamed, “GO, PYTHIR!”

Sterling grinned venomously and hurled the Master Ball toward Lance, “RHYDON, TAKE HIM DOWN!”

An enormous black-and-purple python coiled out from Lance’s Master Ball, its patterned head rearing back and rising into the air as a grey, rock-solid Rhydon emerged for Sterling’s team.

No commands were issued: Rhydon roared, “RHUUUUUUU!” and at once began charging at Pythir, whose tail suddenly leaped up into the air of its own accord … The purple snake was suspended in mid-air for a second, a perfect parabolic shape, before it hissed viciously and launched itself head-first toward the confused Rhydon, a hundred dripping fangs bared …

Lisa screamed: Pythir detached its jaw as it was just metres away from Rhydon; she watched in wonderful horror as Pythir swallowed Rhydon’s entire head before sinking its fangs deep into its neck; Rhydon roared with agony, its bulky grey body twitching as the poison seeped in. Still without any verbal instruction from Lance – and without ceasing its devastating bite – Pythir wound its long body around Rhydon’s gut three times before constricting tightly; it took scarcely ten seconds before the rock-type stopped moving and fell to the ground, defeated.

“GOOOOOOO LANCE!” Lisa and Lauren screamed in unison, hugging each other tightly.

A gunshot sounded from beside them; Lisa jumped, facing the commotion … the antagonising Union agent had been joined by the leather-clad agent who had attacked her before. Lisa glanced around for the Xatu that had no doubt stood in to protect her and saw a bundle of green feathers sprawled on the ground, bleeding. Nevertheless, a second, shiny Xatu had seemingly materialised from nowhere, hovering at her side with a collection of semi-automatic weapons telekinetically suspended in a green plasma above its head; it had disarmed the Union agents, who were now swearing more profusely than ever.

Lisa’s mind grappled with what was happening. She had thought, fleetingly, that Lance had somehow managed to link psychically with all his pokémon, commanding them to protect every agent … Perhaps while his attention was on the battle, the psychic link had become weaker, allowing Xatu to be killed? Then again, powerful though his pokémon might be, they were still mortal …

She turned to Lauren.

“I thought they were protecting us …”

Lauren shrugged her enormous shoulders.

“I have no idea what the fuck’s happening, Lisa …”

In addition to the second Xatu, a Nidoqueen stepped in protectively between Lisa and the agents; feeling a little more secure, Lisa turned back to the fight.

Sterling let off a string of expletives – “FUCKING COWARDLY COCKSUCKER!” – and recalled Rhydon’s motionless form before throwing out an Ultra Ball.

Lisa barely saw the cream-furred Persian; it streaked out from the Ultra Ball, still half-illuminated by white light, and raced at Pythir in a zig-zag pattern, using agility; it was almost invisible …

Pythir ducked several Slash attacks deftly, its snakish form bounding from one part of the field to another, before, in the blink of an eye, Persian pounced on its prey, grabbing the python by the throat and slitting it cleanly; a gruesome, bone-chilling sucking sound came from Pythir’s throat as it clutched helplessly for air, luminous green blood gushing from its neck as its golden eyes reeled back in its head, replaced by blank white eyeballs.

“No!” Lance screamed, his composure gone in a flash. His face was instantly pallid; he reached for the Master Ball and returned his bleeding Pythir, adjusting something on the side of the Master Ball as he thrust it back into the pocket of his black pants.

“TOO FAR, JOE!” he raged, face scarlet. “I DIDN’T MORTALLY WOUND YOUR RHYDON, I ONLY PARALYZED IT – YOU BLOODY –”

“LANCE HUDSON IS ON HIS KNEES!” Joseph Sterling roared, his oiled black eyebrow raised and his lips curved into a savage grin as he called out to his faithful. “SOON, VICTORY WILL BE OURS!”

The Union’s ranks rang out with deep, guttural cheers; the Union agents on the other side of Nidoqueen heckled Lance and shot a round of bullets into the air. A second later, Xatu’s telekinetic plasma enveloped their last gun; Lisa grinned with vicarious victory.

“You are vile,” Lance spat to Sterling; Lisa had never seen him look so murderous.

“Go ahead, get mad. For once in your life, say what’s on your mind, Hudson,” Sterling mocked, buoyed by the catcalls and jeers of his army.

Lance plunged his hand back into his pocket and held a Master Ball out before him.

“DRACO, HYPER BALL!”

Lisa did a double-take; her eyes – like Sterling’s and Persian’s – were still trained on the Master Ball in Lance’s hand when the rose-gold Dragonite beside Lance squealed, “Waaaaoooooh!” and opened its mouth, jettisoning a boulder-sized orb of crackling golden-white energy at Persian’s head.

The cat screeched “Rrrrreeeowww!” as the ball slammed into its head, hurling it into the air as sparks of Dragon energy pierced its skin and fur. When Persian’s body landed on the ground a second later, there was no sign of cognition or recovery: it was limp.

“CHEAT!” Sterling roared, recalling Persian in a blast of crimson light and lobbing another Master Ball into the arena.

“I’d never cheat, Joe,” Lance said, voice dripping with glorious sarcasm as he pocketed the Master Ball smoothly. “You shouldn’t have assumed I wouldn’t use Draco next.”

Sterling’s face purpled as a Houndoom materialised before him.

Lance’s eyes sought Draco’s and found them; without a word, Draco took flight, swiftly dodging the Fire Blasts that Houndoom sent at him from its mouth before suddenly, having risen almost twenty metres into the air, diving rapidly, his rose-gold head barrelling down and crashing with incalculable force into Houndoom’s side …

Before the dog could get back to its paws, Draco had delivered a Thunderpunch to its head before grabbing hold of its canine jaws and, wrenching its mouth wide open, opened its own mouth and delivered a Hydro Pump directly into Houndoom’s fire sac.

The drenched dog collapsed to the ground, motionless.

The crowd roared.

“NO!” Sterling cried, hurling another Ultra Ball out as he recalled Houndoom.

“ICE BLADE!” the dictator roared.

A Sneasel appeared, bounding onto the field with a blade of ice in its clawed hand; Draco shot a well-aimed Ember at Sneasel, who deftly evaporated into thin air, reappearing on Draco’s shoulder, wielding its ice blade and preparing to plunge it into Draco’s neck.

Undeterred, Draco cooed gently and opened his mouth wide, a veritable column of pure flame erupting from his mouth and enveloping both pokémon. Both Sterling and Lance leapt back from the heat; the column of flame towered into the starry sky, as high as the very top of the cone. Even Lisa, Lauren and the others were forced to crouch behind the Steelix’s protective body, shielding themselves from the wave of extreme heat.

When Lisa dared to peer back over Steelix’s crystalline vertebrae, her mouth fell open in amazement. The column of fire was gone in a wisp of smoke: in its place was Draco, still standing resolutely, his face alight and hard.

Sneasel’s shrivelled form was curled up on the ground, unconscious.

“NO!” Sterling roared; another volley of gunfire echoed around the cone from the agitated Union agents; people everywhere were swearing and screaming.

“Keep going, Lance!”

“You can finish him!”

“FLOG HIS FUCKEN ARSE!”

Lisa would have recognised Donovan’s voice anywhere; she guffawed with Lauren, her aching gut and bones all but swept away by the rush of adrenaline; she almost felt as though she, too, were fighting Sterling – and winning.

Sterling turned and regarded the dark form of his taloned Murkron, standing by in the wings. His sallow face wrinkled; he looked as though he were considering something very carefully; then, quite abruptly, he reached his hairy hand into his half-unbuttoned shirt and grabbed something on his chest, screaming, “DO YOUR WORST! REVELUM!”

A blast of gold light exploded from a charm around his neck. The radiance arced through the air, ringed by globules of vermilion light, forming a gigantic, canine creature.

The blood drained from Lisa’s face; her long-suffering stomach churned.

Two hundred people gasped in shock.

It was Entei.

“No …” Lisa heard herself mutter.

Entei stood ten feet tall, his legs as thick and rigid as tree trunks, his furry, red-and-yellow face fixed in a mask of utmost rage.

Draco cooed with apparent surprise, tensing himself; Lance, on the other hand, looked impossibly calm.

“Don’t pretend you knew, Hudson!” Sterling skited gleefully, his dark eyes flashing as the Union cheered once more. “You had no idea …”

“You’re right,” Lance said; he was almost smiling. “Certainly, I had deduced that Entei had betrayed the brotherhood … there was enough evidence to prove that. I even suspected he was loyal, in part, at least, to you. But I never imagined he would have lost so much of his dignity as to submit to you this fully.”

Lance looked Entei in the eyes; Lisa felt her own limbs lock in instinctive apprehension.

“Hello, old Guardian,” Lance said, quite casually. “You really have fallen from grace, haven’t you? Estranged from your brothers … killing innocent humans … and now you let this cad keep you in a poképort? A disgrace indeed – and a dangerous mistake, I might add.”

Entei barked sharply and spat a tongue of flame at Lance; Draco conjured up a glittering, rainbow-coloured Light Screen that not only held the fire back, but wrapped it up in a shimmering rainbow cocoon and crushed it; a fine mist drizzled to the ground where the flame had been.

To Lisa’s complete surprise, Entei turned his head sharply toward Sterling, his face hard.

//Fool// he snarled at Sterling, perplexing Lisa; she neither knew why Sterling was being called a fool, nor why she was able to hear Entei’s telepathic messages; but judging from Lauren’s face, everyone else could, too.

“Yes, Sterling is an idiot, to put it mildly,” Lance drawled laconically. “But Entei, mate – yes, look at me – believe it or not, Sterling’s been a bigger idiot than you’d think! Remember how you wanted to keep the Sepulchres sealed, at any cost? Sterling went and did it behind your back. He tried to send Lisa into the Sepulchre of Suicune a few days ago!”

Entei growled.

//Sterling obeys the Legend, unlike some// Entei spat, leering at Lance. //You have no proof for your treacherous claim//

“Suicune is dead, and his fragment of the Sixth Key is now in my possession,” Lance said smoothly. “I’ll be happy to show you the material proof, if you will consider abandoning the Union and returning to the true purpose of your guardianship.”

//YOU LIE!//

“I’m telling the truth,” Lance said, reaching into his black-and-orange vest and into a barely visible pouch.

Lisa gasped, comprehension breaking over her, as he withdrew the bloodied Sceptre of Suicune, its tip glowing with an icy azure hue.

Entei’s canine mask froze.

//No …//

“Yes!” Lance cried, brandishing the sceptre in front of him. “Lisa Walters killed Suicune! Your old defence is outmoded, Entei!”

//NO …//

“The Guardianship is broken forever!” Lance cried, now beginning to laugh. “And Raikou will see sense, too … Come back to the Legend, Entei … end this now …”

Entei spun around to face Joseph Sterling’s rigid form.

“He lies!” Sterling roared, beckoning reason from Entei with his black eyes. “Great beast, he is trying to divide us …”

//That is the Sceptre of Suicune// Entei said blackly. //It is illuminated … My brother is dead//

“It is deception, no more!” Sterling bellowed hoarsely. “Hudson seeks to lie to you again … he arranged Walters’ entrance to the Sepulchre himself …”

//Then when and how did he discover the location?// Entei demanded. //I thought only we knew of it …//

Sterling spluttered, unable to find the answer Entei sought; the fire dog was now advancing steadily on him, his back turned to Lance. But in the exact moment that Lance cried, “DRACO, DISABLE HIM!”, Sterling’s hand leapt back to his chest and he shrieked, “RETRAHERE, ENTEI!”

//NOOOOOOOOOOOO…//

Entei roared with rage as he was recalled back to the poképort against his will; Lance laughed heartily and placed the sceptre back in the compartment in his vest.

“If it helps, Joe,” he said, as Sterling buttoned his black silk shirt up and attempted to regain some composure by regarding his supporters, who rallied and cheered, “Entei would have been pretty useless against me. Guardians aren’t meant to do battle with each other. It would be like forcing two negative poles of a magnet together, you know?”

“You will not defeat me, maggot,” Sterling growled; the poképort was still shaking violently.

“We’ll see,” Lance said simply. “I have five pokémon left. You have one. Use it wisely.”

“ENTEI DOESN’T COUNT!”

“HE DOES TOO, YA DIRTY FUCK!” Donovan yelled from somewhere behind one of the Steelixes; at once, a renewed volley of insults came from the nearest Union agents.

“Yes, he does count!” Lance countered Sterling smoothly. “He launched an attack, and Draco countered it. That round ended with you recalling your fifth pokémon. You can either send Entei back out – for your own good health, I wouldn’t advise it; I doubt Entei will show as much restraint with you as I may – or you can choose your final battler.”

Sterling’s face blackened.

“It matters not what happens,” he smirked. “The other half of my force will return here, soon. I alerted them the moment I spotted your boats. You will be outnumbered – you will all perish!”

He cackled mirthlessly; his agents guffawed in turn.

“For about the millionth time tonight, you’re wrong,” Lance said brashly, his voice deep and resonant. “Having orchestrated every one of tonight’s events, I can say pretty securely that half your army is in either Guard or Police custody right now. You see, I had one of my covert teams stake out the decoy key location in that cave west of Azalea Town. You remember Clair, right?” He smirked, clearly savouring a moment that only he and Sterling seemed to fully comprehend. “She and a few other old friends of mine trapped your army in the cave – it’s a dangerous place, you know, only one way in or out – and they called the cops.”

Lance’s grin broadened.

“I think you’ll find you’re screwed.”

“LIAR!” Sterling screamed, his eyes bloodshot and his sallow face now a deep shade of pink. He whipped a Master Ball from his pocket and, at the same moment, Murkron’s mouth opened and released a ray of pure darkness: Lance’s eyes were trained on the Master Ball, as were Draco’s; the jet of black formed a spearhead and plunged with lightning speed directly through Draco’s chest.

“NO!” Lance shouted.

Draco’s eyes bulged in surprise; the jet of black energy seemed to have a consciousness of its own; the spearhead evolved into the shape of a human hand, which plunged once more, unstoppably, into Draco’s chest, pounding and piercing his lungs, grasping with murderous fingers for the beating heart …

At last, Draco seemed to regain his bearings, opening his mouth and firing a thin ice-white beam of light; the beam speared the air, slicing toward Murkron, who was forced to use Agility to avoid the ranged attack; and the moment Murkron shifted its winged form, its concentration broke, and the dark hand in Draco’s chest lost its power, sliding down to the ground before disappearing into thin air …

Draco stumbled, its chest open … rose-gold blood was leaking down his front …

“No – Draco –” Lance gasped, staggering. He seemed almost unable to control the urge to run at the Dragonite and hug him. “Draco – come on – stay with me …”

A shiver slid down Lisa’s spine: Lance was frightened.

“Murkron, Shadow Ball!” Sterling ordered, unfazed.

If Lisa had never seen it with her own eyes, she never would have believed it. As Murkron took to the air, a globe of dark violet energy forming in his beak, Draco – barely breathing – leapt into the air too, tunnelling at Murkron in what looked like a super-fast Headbutt attack, except Draco was oscillating, spinning on his vertical axis; and as he spun, beads of aquamarine light slid over his rose-gold skin, sliding into one another, coating his entire, scaly form in a liquid layer of aquamarine energy; Murkron’s Shadow Ball launched at point-blank range, as Draco was scarcely two metres away from the bird pokémon’s beak …

… the crackling violet orb struck Draco’s coated head … and then, as if it were made of water, it splashed over Draco’s body harmlessly … coating his aquamarine skin with another layer … a layer of black …

… and then Draco crashed fearlessly, headfirst, into Murkron’s underbelly, imbued with the power of the Shadow Ball; Murkron squawked in agony as sparks of violet tore through his soft underbelly; and at the same time, Draco’s retractable claws burst from his hands and he reached up a thick, muscular, scaly, black-coated arm, and slashed Murkron’s eyes to bleeding shreds …

“Krooooo!”

“Ryyuuuuu!”

Draco landed, feet-first, on the ground, its skin still glowing with a mixture of aquamarine and black coating; Murkron gave an earsplitting screech and crumpled to the ground in a feathery, bleeding mass.

Unconscious.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” Sterling shrieked madly.

The roar from the crowd of Guard members almost drowned him out: Lisa and Lauren screamed and embraced each other; across the other side of the cone, Gavin and Sarah high-fived with a look of sheer astonishment; curse words flooded from Donovan’s mouth like blood from an open wound; Lisa even thought she heard her father call out, amid the chaos, “Good one, Lance!”

“Enough!” Lance called to the armies trapped behind the two Steelixes.

He turned to recall Draco back into the poképort, muttering something in a gentle voice, but Draco waved a hand before him as if to say, “I’m fine.”

Apparently satisfied in his pokémon’s ability to self-diagnose, Lance faced Sterling obliquely and produced four more Master Balls from his pocket.

“I win, Joe,” he said definitively, his fingers playing casually with the Master Balls. “Fair and square. Hand me the three keys and I’ll ask the Supreme Court for leniency when they prosecute you, I promise.”

Lisa’s heart thudded. The three keys? That could only mean one thing: Sterling had got to the Fourth Key before the Guard had … or he had stolen it from them … In any case, he held the majority of the power: the first two keys, and now the fourth …

“You lose again, Hudson!” Sterling sneered, reaching for his pocket once more.

“NO!”

Lance launched a single Master Ball from his hand; the orb opened on its hinge in mid-air, a slender, glowing form emerging from the brilliance: an indigo-and-white Dragonair appeared, instantly wrapping itself around Sterling’s body and constricting him; his arms, both plunged into his pockets, were immobilised.

“COWARD!” Sterling screamed, amid shouts and screams of dismay from the Union agents trapped on the sidelines.

Lisa flinched as more bullets pinged off the walls of the cone: apparently the Union had kept at least one weapon concealed. She saw Draco suddenly lunge forward, staggering as if drunk …

“I offered you a chance, Joe,” Lance said irascibly, unaware of Draco; his eyes were rock hard, focused on Sterling. “You missed it.” He nodded his head to Dragonair. “Find the keys.”

Still constricting Sterling’s arms – though Sterling appeared to be desperately fighting to reach something on his belt – Dragonair began to wriggle over his body, using its tail to turn out the contents of Sterling’s pockets: a sheathed dagger, a few Ultra Balls, a folded square of parchment … no keys …

Its watery eyes showing nothing but determination, Dragonair flicked its beady tail over the front of Sterling’s black silk shirt, tearing the top three buttons away in one sleek movement.

“Bingo!” Lance hollered.

Lisa peered over the reflective form of the Steelix and gasped: strung along a thin band of brown leather that was tangled in the forest of thick black hair on Sterling’s broad chest, barely obscured by Entei’s poképort, were three small, shiny, glassy keys.

In a deft movement, Dragonair yanked the leather band upwards and over Sterling’s head – the dictator tried desperately to bite at the dragon’s tail with his yellowed teeth – and then, moving as swiftly as it had before, Dragonair relinquished its Constrict and lunged for the ground, slithering toward Lance; and in the same moment, Draco, still staggering, finally lost his strength, tumbling toward the ground, blood streaming from his open chest …

Freed for a split second, Sterling’s eyes flashed; his hands grabbed for the revolver in the holster on his belt.

“Nice try!” Lance grinned, grabbing the leather band from Dragonair and throwing it around his neck, still unaware of his pokémon collapsing to the ground. “Draco, block it!”

Lisa’s scream caught in her throat.

Sterling roared with triumph as he aimed the revolver and fired three times.

His body half-silhouetted against the light of the blazing Jeep, Lance Hudson staggered backwards, his strong legs crumbling as two white-hot bullets tore through his gut and one tore through his chest, blood exploding from his back in warm, beautiful geysers.

Sterling roared with maniacal laughter and fired a fourth shot at the distressed Dragonair; the bullet went straight through its petite head and indigo blood sprayed over Lance’s crumpled chest; the dragon flailed; its head slammed into the earth … dead.

“No!” Lisa screamed. Her heart had turned to black ice. Everyone was screaming. Lisa tried to scramble over the Steelix’s back – she had to help Lance … she had to save him – but the Steelix roared and shook her back, pressing them all even more firmly against the walls of the cone.

Sterling advanced on Lance’s spluttering, gasping form, the revolver held out before him – and then, gloriously, two figures burst through the gap between the two Steelixes, apparently allowed: Lisa’s father, Ryan Walters, his ruddy face alive with rage; and Marco Trippolo, Lance’s oldest friend …

“You’re fucking dead, Joe!” Lisa’s father roared. He levelled a Stunner at Sterling and pulled the trigger; Sterling dived to his left, avoiding the bolt of green light by inches. Lisa’s father shouted in blind rage and charged at Sterling, pulling the trigger again.

Marco, meanwhile, had rushed to Lance’s side.

“Ma-a-rr-!” Lance spluttered, his chest rattling. Lisa felt sick.

“I’m here, mate …” Marco cried.

“Sorry – tell – Su – Dar …” Lance gasped, unable to form full words. Shaking almost uncontrollably, he removed the leather necklace from his neck and held it out for Marco, who snatched it up swiftly and held it tightly in his left hand.

And then, Marco plunged his right hand into his pocket, whipping out a flick knife, and drew the silver blade swiftly across Lance’s throat.

The Champion’s eyes bulged wide for just a second; his mouth opened, as if in surprise, as if he were about to exclaim something; and then, without ceremony, scarlet blood gushed from his throat, flooding his lungs and mouth, drowning him before his pale, blood-splattered body arced gently backwards and fell, motionless, to the earth.

“What?!” Lisa screamed.

“What’s Marco DOING?!” Lauren shrieked, tugging at her blonde hair madly. “WHAT THE HELL IS HE DOING?!”

Marco regarded Lance’s body for just a moment before he glanced up at Joseph, who was still ducking the bolts of light from Ryan’s Stunner, while Ryan dodged the poorly-fired bullets.

“Master! I have the keys!” Marco called, running within five metres of Sterling – barely three metres before Ryan – and lobbing the jangling leather necklace across to Sterling, who, having run out of bullets, threw the revolver aside and caught the three keys with his right hand.

The Union roared with delight; Lisa couldn’t hear anything amid the cacophony and the gunfire; her eyes alone documented what happened next.

Sterling looped the keys around his neck and then, weaponless and still in the line of Ryan’s Stunner fire, he reached to his belt, producing a small, circular, metallic object, a red, digital light blinking on its surface, and hurled it in Ryan’s direction.

Lisa screamed; her father leapt back instinctively as the electronic grenade rolled toward him; Marco, however, looked temporarily confused; he glanced at the blinking bomb in apparent disbelief for just a second too long:

BOOM!

A giant flower of flame blossomed from the mine, and the man that was Marco Trippolo was silhouetted against the light for a fraction of a second before his body disintegrated, ripped into a million pieces by the blast.

Consumed by the inferno.

Sterling looked over his shoulder with mild surprise at the thick, putrid black smoke billowing from Marco’s burning corpse. He shrugged indifferently and turned away.

Bile rose in Lisa’s stomach: this was a nightmare – it couldn’t be happening …

Sterling hurled a Master Ball to the ground, revealing a jet-black Scizor. He bounded onto its back swiftly.

“It’s been fun!” he grinned through savage yellow teeth, before the Scizor flew in an agile, evasive zig-zag pattern, up toward the top of the cone and toward the star-encrusted sky.

“NO!”

Lisa’s father hurled an Ultra Ball into the air, leaping onto the regal Charizard that emerged from it and yelling, “Charizard, chase him!”

In a matter of seconds, the Scizor and Charizard were soaring into the moonlight, leaving two stunned, seething armies in the cone below.

A potent cocktail of emotions bubbled in Lisa’s chest, the strongest of which were rage, grief and terror. Without even thinking about what she was doing, she launched herself at the Steelix’s side, however her hands slid off the steel pokémon’s chunky segments as though they were slick with oil; she lost her balance and slid unceremoniously to the rocky ground, grazing her face.

“Ooof!”

“Lisa …” came Lauren’s voice.

Adrenaline still buoying her, Lisa pressed herself up and clawed at Steelix’s side once more, but it was impossible to grasp the metallic segments.

“What the HELL is wrong with these Steelixes?!” someone screamed nearby; clearly Lisa wasn’t the only one struggling to circumvent the odd, inflexible barrier the steel pokémon had created; indeed, incensed and frustrated cries were going up all across the chamber.

Lisa looked at Lauren desperately; the thought of her father battling alone against Sterling gnawed at her as the seconds pressed on. The older woman’s eyes glinted and she grabbed a Great Ball from her belt, hurling it to the ground with gusto. A Pidgeotto emerged from the ensuing radiance.

Lauren leapt aboard the Pidgeotto’s back and immediately rose into the air, making a break for it by flying over Steelix’s body; however, a hovering Magneton appeared seemingly out of nowhere and delivered a sharp thunderbolt to Pidgeotto; both the bird and it’s rider were thrown back to the ground roughly.

“What the …” Lisa muttered angrily; why were Lance’s pokémon preventing them from doing anything? “COME ON!”

Just as she thought she might explode from the force of her restrained anger, a soft, bell-like sound rang out in the hollow cone, and in an instant, the chamber was awash with the vibrant glow of a hundred-odd pokémon being mystically recalled to their erstwhile homes; the Steelixes evaporated into enormous globules of cinnabar light.

Lisa didn’t care how it had happened; she roared with detached triumph and, without wondering if Lauren’s Pidgeotto would obey her, she pounced upon its back, clung to the caramel feathers and cried, “FLY UP HIGH, PIDGEOTTO!”

Lauren, still recovering from the fall, shouted something warningly to Lisa, but Lisa’s ears were suddenly filled with the rush of wind as Pidgeotto took flight, rising high into the centre of the cone and zooming skyward.

I have to help Dad … I have to …

Lisa took a fleeting glance at the arena below, only to realise with a sinking feeling that she hadn’t been the only one to take to the skies: below her, Union and Guard agents alike were throwing pokéballs to the ground and releasing their winged companions; battle cries were reverberating across the volcanic cone.

Biting her lip against the tide of terror in her gut, Lisa delivered a hearty slap to Lauren’s Pidgeotto’s back and set her sights on the star-studded sky above – and the two airborne shapes locked in battle directly above her.

“Okay, Pidgeotto – LET’S DO THIS!”

[Chris 2.1]

Gripping chapter; when I saw Lance and Joseph would battle, with Pokemon no less, I didn't think it would feel right given that the fic has grown away from Pokemon, but the 6-6 battle was brutal, and so quick. It felt like what wild animals fighting should feel like: blood thirsty, vicious, and with each party trying to kill.

I also kind of hoped Entei would turn on Joseph and destroy him, but I loved seeing Joseph turn the tables - and in such a villainous way.

Excited for the next chapter. Excellent work as ever, some beautiful descriptions and Lisa's reaction to Electrivire was brilliant.