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

[Gavin Luper]

Hey LTL readers!

As part of the weekly prompts being held in the sticky thread in this forum, I've devised Lisa's "bucket list" and thought I would post it here for a wee insight into her character - and one of the rare occasions I've delved (very slightly) into her first-person narrative. Kind of makes me want to rewrite all of LTL in the first person, but the very thought of such an onerous task has me hating the idea as well.

Anyhow, here's the list:

Lisa Walters' (from LTL) Bucket List:

1. Learn bass guitar (or keyboards).
2. Do the hiking and kayaking trip in Tokor's jungle that Marina always talks about.
3. Sleep with Darius.
4. See pop music LEGEND Julienne Brextar live - and meet her backstage!
5. Visit Emma's grave and apologise to her.
6. Have a career that puts Alena White's to shame.
7. Learn a foreign language (French or Italian probably).
8. Travel though Johto with Gavin again (how many awesome sights have we had to overlook while running away from the Union?) - once the world is at peace.
9. Re-do Paddy's contest on Mt Fairfax for real - and win it. (I want the buggy!)
10. Do the whole love/marriage/family thing when I'm old, like 28 or 29ish.

If you haven't already done the writer's prompt this week, I would recommend it! You just basically write a list of 10 things for one of your character's bucket lists (ie. things to do before they die). It was really fun and gets you looking at your character in a new way.

(Incidentally, number 6 is maybe a bit cryptic, but I don't want to spoil any of the unposted chapters by revealing anything about Lisa's potential career directions in the future. Also, the list is more of a fun/personal one, instead of focusing on Lisa's mission with the Legend/Union/Guard.)

Hopefully more updates to follow soon. I still have many chapters sitting in a massive word document, ready to be posted, and I can now count on two hands the number of chapters remaining to be written, which totally freaks me out. And that's still the reason I've not posted anything up yet. My perfectionism doesn't want me to post all these chapters only to realise there was a big plot hole in one of them or something. So I want to hold off as long as I can. Possibly will post chapter 70 very soon, though, as I don't think there's too much potential for plot holes in it.

Anyhow, thanks for all the patience guys.

Cheers,

Gavin.

[Dryk]

3. Sleep with Darius.

Uh-oh... Don't get into trouble Lisa!

Really good list, and I see what you mean about insights into her character. You have successfully piqued my interest in Alena White. As always, looking forward to new chapters, but only when you think they're ready.

Good Luck.

[Gavin Luper]

Uh-oh... Don't get into trouble Lisa!

Really good list, and I see what you mean about insights into her character. You have successfully piqued my interest in Alena White. As always, looking forward to new chapters, but only when you think they're ready.

Good Luck.

Dryk: Haha don't worry, Lisa is a relatively sensible girl. Although at the end of the day, she is a teenage girl after all, so we'll see what happens. I almost wanted to write 'make love to Darius' but that just sounds a bit too girly or something, I reckon Lisa would write 'sleep with' if she were writing a list.

Glad you are piqued by the Alena White reference ... although it will be a while before she pops up in the story!

I did a frenzy of planning last night and I think I have overcome a massive obstacle that was holding me back - so things might come quickly now. In any case, if I haven't already finished LTL by November this year, I'll use NaNoWriMo to finish it off ... so worst case scenario, I think everything will be written and done by the end of this year, and then posted this year/2012. It's scary to think of letting go of Lisa and co, but I think I've held onto them for long enough.

Cheers!

[Gavin Luper]

Hullo readers!

I have a Chapter 70 for you. I was actually spurred onto posting this because I wrote a piece for this week's writer's prompt, but it would be a spoiler unless I posted this chapter first. Hence posting this up before I post my 'nightmare' piece.

Also trying a new 'previously on LTL' kinda thing - let me know what you think!

Please enjoy - this chapter is a nice prelude to the awesomeness of the next few chapters!

Cheers!

- Gavin.

PS: Brownie points to whoever can guess where the chapter title came from.

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Previously on Lisa the Legend:


Gavin left on a mission ...


“Once they discharge me, when I’m healthier and stronger, I’m going to make my way to Olivine City. I’ll take a boat across to Cianwood Island. There’s an old seer there who lives up in the Island’s wildlands. Apparently he might know something about how to harness my psychic powers.”


Lisa escaped the Union, but freedom was not as safe as it appeared:


“The helicopter – um –” Lisa wiped her eyes and tried to clear her thoughts. “Sterling was taking me to the Sepulchre … I had to jump from a helicopter. He chased me and got shot by the coastguard and he backed off, I don’t know if he’s on the island looking for me or not … but the coastguard called the police, and I don’t trust them, so I ran …”

“Good move,” said Lance sharply. “My sources tell me the police on Red Rock Island are definitely corrupt and under Union influence, which means they will be tracking you down as we speak –”


And after being attacked by the Union once again, Lisa fled to safety with a dubious ally, Jamie, who led her to a life-changing decision:


For some time, Lisa Walters sat on the bed of the stranger whose name she still hadn’t asked for. The grubby white phone was warm in her hand, but she was rapidly losing the desire to use it. Her mind was bubbling with new possibilities, new choices – choices she had never even realised she had …

If I entered the Sepulchre of Suicune without anyone knowing … If I could get the fragment of the key on my own terms …

She recalled her father’s words in the makeshift hospital ward at the Fairfax Inn:

“ The Union wants to break into the shrine. To succeed they’re going to need all seven keys. But what we want to do is protect the shrine, prevent the Union getting in. And to do that we need only to deprive the Union of one single key, one single fragment, even, to succeed.”

Lisa’s heart seemed to be climbing into her throat.

MY fragment.


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Chapter 70 – Island of Lost Souls.


They could have been an awkward teenage couple striding down the palm-lined boulevard. He was a boy with platinum-blond hair, decked out in a threadbare punk band T-shirt and grafittied jeans, a cigarette hanging from his mouth. She was his female equivalent, her jagged, bleached hair not even reaching the collar of her black tee. Though a pair of beaten aviator sunglasses obscured her eyes from the view of the villagers and merchants heading into town, she wore the same disenchanted scowl as her apparent boyfriend.

The boulevard they followed was one that circled the isle. To their left were rows of red-brick cafés and artisan stalls, already brimming with tourists and locals, set among parks, a red-dirt battlefield and various cottages. To their right was the crisp coastline, with its almost resplendent cinnabar sand and eager surfers already hitting the swell. The entire place had the air of a luxurious, crowded tropical resort: a casual onlooker would have no idea that the place was now heavily infiltrated by the Union. Lisa glanced at the rows of tanned faces in the crowded street, repeatedly quelling her fears with the knowledge that if anyone was looking for Lisa Walters, they would not even look twice at the ragged figure she had now become.

“You sure the place is this way, dude?” Jamie muttered, exhaling a pungent jet of smoke in her direction.

Lisa coughed. “Can you not smoke near me? It’s disgusting,” she snapped, waving the stench away with her hands. A swarthy deckhand who was passing by in the opposite direction shot her an obtuse look.

Jamie sniggered derisively as they quickly passed the marine stench wafting from the open doors of a seafood restaurant.

“Ya know, this disguise is only gonna work from a distance,” he said acerbically. “If anyone actually talks to ya, they’re gonna realise what a total prude you are.” He laughed. “You’ll blow yer own cover.”

“It doesn’t make me a prude to not want my lungs to rot and die,” Lisa shot back sardonically. “I don’t know why you think it makes you so awesome to smoke,” she added, screwing up her nose at Jamie.

He responded by cheerfully blowing several smoke rings into the air.

“It’s called punk rock …” he muttered obnoxiously. “Anyway, I was serious, do ya know where yer going? ’Cause there’s not many houses out this way …”

He gestured to the streetscape ahead. The boulevard rose up to a small grassy crest a few hundred metres ahead, at which point the café strip seemed to peter out into a cluster of coastal cottages, and then, further on, nothing more than luxuriant viridian foliage.

Lisa scanned the way ahead through her tinted aviators. Granted, it had been six months or so since she had set foot on the island, but she recalled this café strip quite well – and the seaside hut was just over the crest, she was sure.

“Yeah, we’re on the right track,” she said irritably. “Look, I know what I’m doing, so just stay close and act like we’re together, like I told you. Once we get there undetected, you can go back to your mum’s place and light up again, alright?”

Jamie shrugged. “No complaints there, dude. Gotta stop by the pokémon centre though, see if Trent’s there. Bastard still owes me fifty bucks for last week …”

Lisa clenched her teeth as the boy rambled on about one of his fellow drug-addicted mates. She hadn’t meant to come across as agitated, but for most of the walk from the boy’s mother’s house to the boulevard, he had rabbited on – with apparently no regard for Lisa’s rolled eyes or short answers – about his favourite hardcore punk band, The Decay, and about the drunken antics he and his mates got up to in the newly Caribbean-esque Pokémon centre.

“… up his arse!” Jamie half-laughed, half-coughed as he reached the punchline in what was likely an unabashedly low-brow tale. Lisa managed a mild chuckle and pursed her lips.

“So are you going to tell me your plan then?” Jamie prodded unabashedly, sidestepping an eager newsagent who had left the confines of his store and was bustling about on the footpath among them, thrusting copies of the Red Rock Recorder under the noses of the passers-by.

“I already told you, I’m going to try to find an old friend,” Lisa said shortly, lowering her head against the sun beating down from overhead; it was rapidly becoming a very warm day. “Well, more of an acquaintance than a friend, I guess, but I think we were close enough that he’ll help me.”

“Help you get into the Chamber of Secrets?”

“You know that’s not what it’s called,” Lisa sighed. “He’s a sailor. I’m hoping he’ll be able to take me to the mainland without having to go through checkpoints or anything.”

Jamie nodded, apparently impressed.

They walked past the final café in the strip, right near the grassy crest. As Lisa squeezed her way through the cluster of outdoor tables with their bright yellow umbrellas, she bumped unceremoniously into a young, tanned girl around her own age, knocking the girl slightly off balance.

“Watch it!” cried the other girl indignantly, screwing up her nose slightly at Lisa.

Lisa opened her mouth to say sorry, but the apology died on her lips. She stood stock-still amid the café tables, watching Jamie stride several paces ahead before realising that she was no longer with him, turning around and approaching her with a look of mild bemusement.

“What’s up?”

Lisa’s mouth was still hanging open in shock. She forced her tongue into action.

“That girl I just ran into –” she spluttered. “It was Marina.”

Jamie’s eyes widened, his forehead crinkling.

“Duuuuude …”

Lisa hesitated, holding his surprised gaze for a moment, before she about-faced.

“Wait here for me!” she cried over her shoulder, running after the blue-haired girl ahead in the crowd. “I’ll be right back!”

*

Shane’s Shark Shack wasn’t the most attractive establishment on the boulevard: a tiny take-away shop wedged between two much larger and ritzier restaurants. Despite this, Shane, the stubbled owner in his early thirties, did a roaring breakfast trade: locals and tourists alike crammed into his store for his famous surf ‘n’ turf breakfast.

Lisa followed Marina into the Shack, her heart thumping with excitement at seeing her friend again. The ultramarine-haired girl stood beside a short man in a white polo shirt and blue jeans, apparently conversing with him in hushed undertones. Lisa stood by the drinks fridge, feigning an interest in a new energy drink whilst examining Marina and the man’s reflections in the glass door of the fridge. Was he an escort from the Guard? There was no other explanation: Marina showed no sign of being held against her will. Lisa furrowed her brow. Was this the rescue party Lance had sent for her? He had promised to send someone she would recognise, true – but Marina, of all people? The Guardian of Raikou? It seemed like an impossibly reckless move for Lance – and indeed, Marina – to make.

Then again, Lisa remembered, the Union had already used Marina to access the Sepulchre of Raikou, back on Emerald Plains. Had the Guard deemed her less valuable now? Her frown deepened.

As the man in the white polo moved to the counter to place his order, Marina moved absent-mindedly toward the aquarium display nearer the door. Lisa stole her chance. Pushing through a bunch of dreadlocked trainers and their Mankeys and Ivysaurs, she moved up alongside Marina by the aquarium. Now that she was closer, Lisa could see Marina’s new turquoise-tinged Guardian Butterfree perched on the strap of her white halterneck, apparently at the ready.

Speaking in the lowest voice she could manage, Lisa said, from the corner of her mouth, “Don’t react. It’s Lisa. Meet me in the toilets. Don’t mention me to your guard.”

Then, only barely aware that Marina had stiffened beside her and the Guardian Butterfree had risen, wings abuzz, Lisa strode calmly away from the aquarium and headed in the direction indicated by the sign over the counter that proclaimed “Toilets at rear”.

*

The unisex bathroom was in a state of near-disrepair: Lisa could barely make out her own reflection in the grubby mirror that hung above the cracked basin. The floor was soaking wet and covered at odd intervals with toilet paper and dog-eared copies of the Red Rock Recorder. Just as a dubious headline from the most recent issue – “Joseph Sterling: Foe or Friend?” – caught her eye, the peeling white door creaked open and Marina Frost entered.

“LISA!”

“MARINA!”

The two girls embraced, Lisa taking care not to crush Marina’s Guardian Butterfree with her chin.

“Oh my God!” Marina cried. “What did you do to your hair?”

They pulled apart.

“I needed a change,” Lisa grinned.

Marina crinkled her nose. “Oh Lisa … you looked fine as a brunette,” she said crisply, casting an eye over Lisa’s hair before moving on to her clothes. “Now you’re some kind of female bogan …” She trailed off. “Anyway – I’ll give you hell for that later …” Her eyes suddenly became fierce. “More importantly … What the hell happened to you last night?”

Her voice, far from being aggressive, cracked slightly. She sounded upset.

“The Union got to me, I can explain everything,” Lisa rushed, Marina’s emotion reminding her of her mission. “Listen –”

“We thought you’d been captured again,” Marina interrupted anxiously. “Giles and I got to the Colosseum at midnight and the trainer’s entrance was practically in ruins …”

“They ambushed me,” Lisa said shortly. “I was lucky to get away –”

“But why didn’t you try to find –”

“Marina, please – LISTEN!” Lisa spoke over the top of her. At once, the miniscule Guardian Butterfree on Marina’s shoulder pricked up its wings and hovered two inches into the air, apparently unnerved by Lisa’s volume; a small violet glow appeared around its antennae.

“Easy,” Marina said swiftly to the Butterfree, and it fluttered back to her shoulder, the purple glow disappearing. Marina turned to Lisa, clearly peeved at being interrupted. “What?”

Lisa verged on apologising before deciding there wasn’t time for it.

“I didn’t call you today ’cause I decided not to,” she said quickly. “I’m not going to go to the safe house.”

Marina looked baffled.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve decided to – well – look, do you promise not to say anything about this to your guard, or anyone from the Guard?”

Marina regarded her, nonplussed. “Lisa, of course not. Whatever you say stays with me.”

Lisa felt a warmth spread in her chest. She should have known that she could count on Marina.

Without idling, Lisa leaned over and whispered her plan into Marina’s ear.

When Lisa had finished, Marina gaped at her with shining eyes and a devious expression on her face.

“I am so coming with you.”

*

The sun was high in the sky and the dubious breakfast menu had changed to the even greasier-looking lunch menu by the time Marina Frost returned to find Lisa and Jamie sitting at the outside tables at Shane’s Shark Shack.

“Well, I feel like the worst person in the history of the world,” she announced cheerfully, sinking into a grafittied plastic chair between them.

Lisa sipped at her lemonade. “Guilt setting in?”

Marina sighed. “Mm hmm.” She folded her arms on the table and rested her head on them wearily. “Mum’s going to have an absolute heart attack when I don’t show up at the airport.”

“I told you you didn’t have to come,” Lisa said hastily. “I mean, I was really planning to do this alone –”

“Don’t get all noble, I’m the one who put my hand up for it,” Marina snapped, waving Jamie’s smoke away from her face aggressively. “I’m just feeling bad about it … It’ll pass …”

“You can still change your mind –”

“Forget it, Lisa. I’m coming with,” Marina said firmly, pressing her cerise lips together. “Plus, the more I thought about it, the more I realised you’d need somebody with you in the Sepulchre anyway.”

“I will?”

“You’ll see,” said Marina enigmatically. “Anyway, look, I figure Mum and everyone will be happy, ultimately, once they find out what we’ve done. They’ll probably revoke my membership to the Guard once I get back, though.”

Lisa coughed. “So you’re actually like … a proper Guard member now?!”

“Well, it’s not like we get badges and a membership number or anything,” Marina said, almost defensively. “But yeah, after your phone call yesterday, I argued – and Mum argued – for me to be able to come to get you. I’m no use to the Union anymore, and plus, I was going insane at the safe house. It’s all jam-making and cleaning. Honestly …” She trailed off in exasperation. “Anyway … point is, I’m in.”

Lisa nodded and drained the last of her lemonade, crushing some of the ice between her teeth.

“And you slipped away from Giles without him knowing?”

Marina nodded. “Yeah, it was easy. He saw me board my flight but I know he had to rush away to catch his own. So I waited five minutes, staged a medical emergency with Mudkip and then got the hell out of there.” She sighed heavily. “Should I be worried how easily it’s becoming to flat-out lie to people?” she added, a sardonic lilt to her voice, but her frown looked quite genuine.

“Nope,” Jamie chimed in, ashing his cigarette, which Lisa direly hoped contained only tobacco. “It means you can think for yourself, dude.” Without even trying to hide it, he gazed over Marina’s lean, tanned arms and the part of her chest exposed by her halterneck. “I’m Jamie, by the way.”

Marina exchanged a disgusted look with Lisa and muttered back, “I’m Marina, nice to meet you” in the most unconvincing tone Lisa had ever heard.

*

“Bubblebeam, Altaria!”

“Awooo!”

The cobalt-skinned dragon pokémon let off a gleeful coloratura before opening its mouth and releasing a volley of gleaming bubbles at the wild Cubone. The ground-type pokémon spun the bone in its hand, using it as a high-powered fan to blow the rush of oncoming bubbles into a nearby cluster of saltbushes and reeds, where they promptly burst harmlessly.

“You can get him, Leese!” came Marina’s distant voice.

Lisa narrowed her eyes at the resilient Cubone.

“Altaria, Aurora Beam!”

“Riiiiii!”

Cubone raised its bone club defensively, but it was no match for the explosion of rainbow-coloured light that emanated from Altaria’s mouth. The Aurora Beam struck the lonely pokémon’s unprotected stomach, blasting it off its back and sending it spiralling through the air into another saltbush, where it lay motionless.

“Good one!” Marina called.

Lisa grinned and pulled out the red-and-white pokéball Marina had given her.

“Go!” she cried, hurling it at Cubone’s stirring form.

The orb bounced off Cubone’s macabre grey skull helmet and opened: with a flash of radiant light, the brown pokémon became a translucent scarlet colour before disappearing into the ball. The pokéball landed on the ground, shaking a couple of times, before it stilled.

“Yesssssss!” Lisa cried, high-fiving Altaria, who looked composedly exultant. “Finally!”

“Go Lisa!” Marina called.

“So now the once innocent pokémon becomes a mindless slave to the human poacher who decided to collect it,” came Jamie’s laconic drawl. “Tell me honestly – how is catching pokémon not illegal yet?”

Lisa rolled her eyes at him and walked over to the bushes to claim her prize. After leaving Shane’s Shark Shack an hour ago, Lisa had led Marina and Jamie to her destination – the seaside residence of Jack Criddle, the sailor who had given her Elekid in November – only to discover that there was nobody home. Resigned to the fact that they would have to try again later, Lisa and Marina had decided to fill in some time by going to a deserted beachside thicket nearby to catch a temporary pokémon team for Lisa to replace Aipom, Fiskmire, Dratini, Electabuzz and Vulpix, who were still, as far as Lisa knew, being held in a Union lab somewhere.

So far, Lisa had not had a great deal of luck: she had attempted to catch a Cloyster and a particularly resplendent Beedrill, but had failed on both counts: Cloyster had been too strong to stay in the pokéball, and the agile Beedrill had fled before Lisa could order a second attack from Altaria.

“There’s nothing wrong with pokémon training,” she said, pocketing Cubone’s pokéball and scanning the seaside thicket for Marina. The blue-haired girl was several metres away, ordering Herby, her Bayleef, to launch a Razor Leaf attack at a vermilion Kingler. “Hey Marina, let’s try Jack’s house again after you finish that battle!”

“Okay!” Marina cried.

“There are about a hundred things wrong with it, dude,” said Jamie, who was standing back a bit from the long grass, hands stuffed in the pockets of his paint-splattered jeans. “It’s the most aggressively capitalist bullshit I’ve ever seen, and people sugar-coat it as a kid’s hobby. I mean, seriously, it should qualify as animal cruelty at least –”

“Pokémon aren’t animals,” interjected Lisa, recalling Altaria to its poképort.

“No, exactly! Animals at least have some rights. Pokémon don’t. People just treat ‘em like tools, work ‘em and abuse ‘em until they pass out, then run them through a machine that heals them and start the process all over again. And what for? Personal gain. Glory. Sometimes money. It’s fucking sick.”

Lisa ground her teeth. “It’s not sick, it’s a fact of life,” she argued. “Pokémon and humans have coexisted for centuries. As friends. Humans train pokémon and pokémon are willingly trained … You make it sound like there’s some kind of mind-control or something horrible happening. It’s just the way it is. Pokémon trainers have been around since forever … and I’m proud to call myself one.”

Jamie pulled a cigarette packet from his jeans and fumbled for his lighter.

“Slavery existed for centuries too,” he sneered coolly. “Just because something is, doesn’t mean it should be.”

Lisa riled. “That’s a stupid example! It’s not the same thing,” she shot back hotly. “I treat my pokémon like I would any human friend.”

“So you call your human friends ‘boy’ and ‘girl’, then?” he said baitingly. “Or even just ‘human’, for that matter?” He scowled. “You don’t even give your pokémon names.”

Marina gave a whoop of excitement; both Lisa and Jamie glanced across the verdant thicket to see the Kingler disappear into a pokéball.

“I got another one for ya, Leese!” she called excitedly.

“And another one bites the dust,” Jamie sighed under his breath, nose upturned slightly as he lit his cigarette and began walking back up the path that let to Jack Criddle’s hut.

“I think I like you better when you’re stoned,” Lisa snapped, deliberately loudly enough for him to hear.

*

The front door of Jack Criddle’s beachside hut was little more than a roughly-hewn plank of rotten-looking wood. Lisa searched for a section that looked relatively splinter-free before knocking three times.

After a moment, the door creaked open. A grey-haired man with rough, leathery skin stood before them, a pipe hanging from his sun-damaged lips and an unfathomable grimace on his face as he held his hand up above his face against the bright afternoon sun.

“’Lo?” he grunted in an almost impossibly guttural voice.

Lisa recognized the man at once, but it was abundantly clear from his expression that he could not place her.

“Hello, Frank?”

“’S me. Oo’re you lot?”

“My name’s Lisa Walters, if you remember me? I travelled on your boat last November? From Cianwood Island … ?”

Lisa tapered off. Frank had simply stared at her blankly in response to each of her questions.

Jamie guffawed. Marina nudged Lisa in the back encouragingly.

“I was with a sailor called Jack Criddle?”

Some flicker of recognition flared in the old captain’s eyes.

“You mates o’ Jack’s?”

“Yes, I’m a friend of his,” Lisa pressed vehemently. “Um … do you know if he still lives here? I’m looking for him.”

“’Ee’s gon’ out to Cianwood,” Frank grunted. “’Eel be back in a bit. Make yerselfs at ‘ome.”

Without a second look at the three of them, the old man shuffled back into the cool shade of the hut, leaving the door open behind him.

Lisa led Marina and Jamie into the hut. It was much as she remembered it from her brief stay in November: creaking wooden floorboards, faded green wallpaper and mostly-bare rooms. Frank sat at the flimsy-looking dining room table, arms folded as he watched the small wall-mounted TV set, chuckling every now and then.

Lisa, Marina and Jamie loitered at the end of the dining table.

“So now, what, we just wait for Jack to get back from his trip?” asked Marina. “Even if he takes hours?”

“And just hope he’ll agree to take us to the mainland,” Lisa nodded. “I’ve got no other plan, and there’s nothing else for it.”

Jamie took out a small pouch and some cigarette papers from his pocket and moved over to the open window, which overlooked the scarlet-tinged sand of the beach and the crystalline waters of the Cianwood Sea beyond them. Marina rolled her eyes at Lisa, who returned the sentiment. Turning their backs on Jamie, they sat down at the end of the dining table and stared up at the black-and-white TV set, trying to absorb themselves in a very dated episode of The Goldeen Girls.

She must have fallen asleep at the table, for the next thing Lisa knew, there was a loud slam of the front door. She jolted and stared around in disbelief: night had fallen! Only blackness and a few distant beacons in the ocean could be seen outside the windows; the only light in the hut came from the old TV set, which cast a spooky blue glow over the room.

“Morning,” Marina joked from beside Lisa. It looked like she had fallen asleep, too, for tendrils of blue hair were still strewn across her face.

Beneath the window, Jamie had his head slumped against the wall at a painful-looking angle; he was otherwise almost laying horizontally on the floor. His eyes were open but they were very bloodshot: he barely looked awake.

“’Zat you, Jackie?”

Still seated at the end of the dining table, though now with a plate of baked beans on his lap, Frank peered down the passageway to the front door.

“Just me and the boy, Snowy,” came the gruff reply, accompanied by not one but two sets of footsteps. “Just throw your things in there,” came Jack’s voice to his companion. A moment later, Jack Criddle walked into the dining room.

He looked much as Lisa remembered him: young, tanned face, short, dusty golden hair, a blue wife-beater and tanned, muscular arms; however, he had since marked his right bicep with an enormous tattoo of what looked like either a dragon or an eagle, or perhaps both mixed together. Lisa thought she had never seen anything quite so ugly on a person before.

“Havin’ a party, Snowy?” he boomed, glancing at the dark shapes of Lisa and Marina, and Jamie mumbling to himself in the corner. He extended his hand to Lisa enthusiastically. “G’day, I’m Jack, nice t’ meet – oh!” Recognition flooded his oddly-lit face. “It’s … Lisa, isn’t it?”

Lisa shook his hand back firmly. “Hi again, Jack.”

A look of mild confusion crossed Jack’s face.

“’S’bin a while, ay? What y’ done t’ y’ hair? What brings y’ back ’ere?” he asked, apparently disconcerted by her reappearance on Red Rock Island.

Slightly apprehensive now that the moment had arrived, Lisa tried to keep in mind the poster on the wall in Jamie’s bedroom.

“Well, I’ll be straight with you,” she began. “I came here for a favour. I need to get back to the mainland, and I was wondering if you would be able to take me on your boat. If that’s possible …”

She expected for her proposal to linger in the air; perhaps a pregnant pause, or an awkward look on Jack’s face. But, to her complete surprise, he grinned and said, “No worries.”

From the corner, Jamie contributed a vague giggle for no apparent reason.

“So – that would be okay, then?” Lisa clarified, as the second pair of footsteps approached the dining room.

“’Course,” Jack boomed, moving over to the wall and flicking a light switch. A grubby fluorescent tube above the dining table flickered four or five times before casting a depressing glow over the dining table. “I’m headin’ there in two days, anyway, to drop your mate back home.”

He said this as if Lisa would understand what he meant: however, she found herself exchanging a bemused glance with Marina.

Just as she opened her lips and said, “Which mate?”, a teenage boy wearing a navy blue fisherman’s beanie and a heavy grey jumper entered the dining room.

Marina gasped audibly; Lisa’s jaw dropped.

“Hey guys,” said Gavin Luper.