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

[Gavin Luper]

Sup homies,

Here is Chapter 71 at last. A short, not-so-sweet one before I unleash the next succession of rather explosive chapters. Argh. Letting go of long-planned secrets is going to hurt and be exciting all at the same time. So, let it begin!

Hope you enjoy!

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Previously on Lisa the Legend:


Having escaped Joseph Sterling's clutches and finding herself alone on Red Rock Island, Lisa met Jamie, an apathetic punk whose attitude led her to a startling revelation:



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.



And after Marina abandoned her Guard escort to join Lisa in her new mission, Lisa enlisted the help of another old friend - Jack Criddle, the sailor who housed her during the Whirlpool Cup and who gave her her Elekid.



“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.”

“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.



And, to her complete surprise, Lisa found that her oldest and most dear friend of all had also just walked back into her life.



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.


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Chapter 71 – Scars.


The shock of seeing Gavin alive and well again bound Lisa firmly to her chair. While Marina leapt up from the wooden table to greet Gavin with a warm hug and a jocular high-five, Lisa goggled at him, eyes vacant.

“Nice to see you again, Debbie Harry,” Gavin said in a mock-professional voice, extending a cordial hand to Lisa after extricating himself from Marina.

Lisa felt a rush of emotions flood her arteries; despite herself, the prevailing one was joy. She laughed at Gavin’s sarcastic quip and stood up at once, limbs revitalised by his familiar tone. She threw her arms around him, hooking her hands quite tightly around his back and kissing him gently on his unscarred cheek. To her mild surprise, he hugged her back quite as firmly, and she was almost certain she felt his lip against her earlobe, but, quite suddenly, he pulled away; Jack was speaking.

“S’like a reunion, innit?” he boomed, opening the small bar fridge in the hut’s depressingly-lit kitchen. “Who’s up for a beer?”

“I’ll go one,” said Gavin promptly, sinking into the chair opposite Lisa and beside Marina.

Jamie muttered something incoherent across the room; it seemed that even in his drugged-out state the prospect of alcohol was still attractive.

Gavin regarded Jamie’s slumped form with something like disgust before casting an obtuse look at Marina and Lisa.

“Who’s he?” he hissed.

“A – friend,” said Lisa at length, trying not to respond to the feeling that Gavin was quietly assessing how good a judge of character she was. “He helped me out a lot …”

Jack shuffled up to the table, setting down six blue-and-gold cans of beer. “There youse all go!”

“Cheers, Jack,” Gavin said, eagerly taking one of the cans and cracking it open with a faint hiss.

“Lisa?” Jack pressed.

“Oh … no thanks Jack … I really don’t drink beer or anything …”

His handsome face looked crestfallen. “But we’re all back together again – s’like a reunion! Nothing like a bit o’ grog to celebrate! Come oooooon …”

“Erm …” Lisa hesitated, glancing at Gavin’s can without affection; she could already smell the bitter liquid inside; it reminded her strongly of the smell of vomit. “Well – do you have any wine?”

As one, Jack and Frank stared at Lisa in apparent disbelief that she could have mentioned any alcoholic beverage other than beer.

“Me and Lisa will both have a shandy, Jack, if that’s okay?” Marina chimed in quickly.

He nodded heavily and trudged back to the kitchen; Frank tore his eyes from Lisa and returned to his reruns.

Marina giggled.

“What’s a shandy?” Lisa asked quickly, simultaneously judging Marina for her knowledge of alcoholic beverages and wondering what she was now obliged to drink.

“Beer and lemonade, it’s not bad.”

“Beer on its own is better,” interjected Gavin, burping unabashedly.

Lisa rolled her eyes at him, but could not remain annoyed at him for long. She had a million questions bubbling in her mind for Gavin, but she was not sure she could freely discuss anything with him in front of Jack and Frank.

Gavin seemed to read her mind.

“Not now, Leese,” he said stiffly. Then, apparently realising how coldly he had come across, he offered, more kindly, “Talk later?”

Lisa nodded.

They spent the next hour playing along with Jack’s illusions of a party: the young sailor seemed oblivious to the fact that his guests were only consuming one drink to his four. Slowly sipping her shandy (which she scarcely found an improvement over the bitterness of beer, though it was mildly sweeter), Lisa jovially revisited the times she, Gavin and Jack had had while they had competed in the Whirlpool Cup last November. Surrounded by old friends again, Lisa found it easy to push the Union out of her mind, and laughed heartily with Jack and the others.

Eventually, as Jack chugged down the final, foamy swirl of amber liquid, he declared himself to the room as “fucken buggered”, and, after sweeping each of them into affectionate bear hugs, stumbled back toward his bedroom, slamming his considerable mass into several door frames along the way before a loud click suggested that he had located his quarters at last. Apparently taking this as a sign that the evening was at an end, Frank muttered a vague “goodnight,” to the table at large and followed suit, leaving Gavin, Marina and Lisa alone at the table; Jamie was definitively sprawled on the wooden floor, snoring loudly.

“Alright, now we can talk,” Gavin said, after listening for the click of Frank’s bedroom door.

“Where have you been?!” Lisa exploded.

“Well, I kind of wanted to ask you that …” Gavin muttered.

“She asked you first,” said Marina sleekly.

Lisa grinned appreciatively in Marina’s direction.

“Well, it’s no big mystery, Leese. You already know where I’ve been,” said Gavin slowly, taking a hearty swig from his beer can. “I told you in the hospital – I went to Cianwood Island to see that Seer.”

“Well, this sounds interesting,” noted Marina, interlocking her fingers and resting her chin on them, an intrigued expression on her face.

Lisa tried to articulate herself without revealing too much emotion.

“I know that but –” she faltered; quite against her will, her voice began to quiver. “I never knew for sure if you made it out of the hospital okay or not.”

She bit her lip. The terror of the hospital siege was rushing back to her: the horror of Emma’s dead, open eyes in the elevator; the door of Gavin’s room being shattered by the Union agents; her shock at not being taken with Gavin when he teleported away; the pressing realisation that she had been captured … Hot, salty tears began to splash down her face.

She felt Marina’s hand rubbing her left arm soothingly, but rather than feeling comforted, Lisa simply felt embarrassed.

“Sorry guys – I’m fine – it’s just hard to think about –” she spluttered, shrugging Marina’s hand away. Then, unable to compose herself, she looked Gavin directly in the eye and shot him a question that she had tortured herself with for days. “Did you ever come back to try to find me?”

Gavin squirmed uncomfortably in his seat, his hands occupied with attempting to bend a small pull-ring out of shape.

“I tried, Lisa,” he said in a leaden tone. “I – I freaked out a bit when I got to the river bank and you weren’t with me.” His voice, too, was hoarse and broken, though he was far too self-conscious to shed a tear. “I tried to teleport back, but it was useless, my energy was so drained. I kept trying but nothing happened. I eventually flew back on Skarmory, but the room was empty – you and the Union were long gone … and I had no idea where.”

“So you just – left?”

“Skar and I flew to a Pokémon centre, where I contacted Lance. He told me what happened to you – that you’d been captured. I –” he hovered over his next words uncertainly, “I took out a lot of my anger on him …” he said abashedly. “Anyway, he said I should keep following the plan we’d established before – and do it as secretly as possible. With Skar, I made my way to Olivine and then surfed here on Staryu. I tracked Jack down and asked him to take me to Cianwood – and he’s a good guy, he was totally happy to do it. So, that’s that,” he said, matter-of-factly.

“Well, you could’ve told me Gavin was okay, at least!” Lisa rounded on Marina in her frustration.

Marina raised a dark eyebrow – mercifully, without firing up.

“Lisa, I told you before I didn’t know anything about Gavin, and that’s true, Lance didn’t tell me a thing, nor did Mum. I didn’t know the Guard knew he was safe.” She paused. “Don’t take your frustration at Gavin out on me.”

Lisa’s face flushed slightly; Marina had taken the high road, and worst of all, Gavin was now regarding Lisa with a look of bemusement, as though he couldn’t quite believe that she was frustrated with him.

“What about the Seer?” Marina quizzed Gavin swiftly. “What was all that about?”

“Lance had located a Seer on Cianwood Island who was apparently a full bottle on everything to do with psychic powers. He thought the Seer might have some information about – you know – my family’s curse and stuff.”

“Sounds like there’s a ‘but’ coming,” Marina said.

“Exactly,” Gavin said, nodding at her. “I found the Seer last night, and he was a really creepy guy, too. Lives in a beach hut that’s even shittier than this, and it’s overrun with Wurmple and Rattata, it’s disgusting.”

Marina grimaced.

“He told me a lot of things about psychic powers,” Gavin continued. “And he gave me some really good tips on how to train myself and take control of my abilities. And he did know a freakish amount about me, if you know what I mean.” Even now, Gavin’s face looked slightly unnerved. “Like, he knew about everything I do, little OCD habits and what pokémon I have on my team and how I used to work at the Radio Tower. And he knew about my family curse, but when I asked how to solve it, how to end it, he just said I should keep training myself, practise my psychic powers …” There was a note of disappointment in his voice that was rather a great deal more bitter than Lisa’s shandy. “It was … kind of anticlimactic, to be honest.”

“Did he mention anything about the psychic creature that you have to fight?” Lisa asked, too curious to remain sullen and silent any longer.

“Oh – yeah,” said Gavin. “He confirmed what we thought – it’s Lunanine. I have to fight a ten-foot-tall rabid black dog that can fire Hyper Beams from its mouth. As you can imagine, I’m pretty much doing backflips about it.”

His sardonic tone sliced through the rather gloomy atmosphere of the dining room; all three of them laughed, mostly because there was nothing else for it; by the bay window, Jamie was still snoring violently.

“So that’s me,” said Gavin, scratching his scar absent-mindedly. He looked at Lisa with a melange of disbelief and admiration. “Lisa, seriously, how the hell did you manage to get away from the Union?”

Lisa filled him in on what had happened to her in the past few days, though, as she had done while recalling the events to both Jamie and Marina, she glazed over the existence of Larry; she was still clinging to the hope that Joseph Sterling hadn’t discovered the double agent in his ranks; that her actions hadn’t directly resulted in the death of an extremely brave man. She fudged a tale of how she had hidden the Buzzball in her bra, and that, when the Union had left her in a small office with only one guard, she had taken the chance to electrocute him, overpower him, steal his Stunner and escape from the Union’s headquarters.

As she trudged through the motions of her lie, Lisa felt a familiar pang of guilt in her stomach at being dishonest with her closest friends – she wondered if she sounded authentic or not – but Gavin did not question her tale. He gasped in all the right places, assuming, like any friend would, that he was being told the truth. She knew, too, that she was only telling a white lie, but it felt foreign and unsettling to not be upfront with her two closest friends. Perhaps the worst thing was, as Marina had remarked earlier that day, how easily the lies now came. But what other choice did she have?

“So I got to the trainer’s entrance to wait for the Guard, and that’s where I met Jamie,” Lisa recounted.

An apprehensive look stole over Gavin’s pale face.

“What’s the go with him?” he asked Lisa directly.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, why is he here?”

Lisa suddenly understood: Gavin’s chestnut-brown eyes were alert with mistrust.

“He’s not a Union agent, Gavin.”

“You don’t know that,” Gavin bulleted back.

Lisa searched for Marina’s face – however, to her surprise, she found that Marina, too, had an apologetic expression.

“Et tu, Marina?”

“I don’t mean to be horrible, Lisa,” Marina said earnestly, her cerise lips downturned slightly. “But – I dunno – I just can’t trust him.”

Lisa felt as though she was backing slowly into a corner.

“Well, I do trust him,” she said defensively. “I know he’s – well – a bit rough around the edges – but he saved me from the Union when they attacked us at the Colosseum. If he were a Union agent, he never would have bothered trying to help me. And besides, the Union attacked him …” She tapered off, rapidly losing confidence in herself, as Gavin regarded her sternly.

“Lisa,” said Gavin. “The Union took the time to infiltrate the Army Reserve so they could take you from the hospital. They tricked you into thinking Morty – a friggin’ Gym Leader – was a good guy, then he stabbed you in the back. They put time and effort into capturing you. Don’t you think that they would do anything – even pretend to attack one of their own – if it meant they would capture you?”

Lisa clenched her teeth as he spoke; she found his voice exceedingly condescending.

“But it makes no sense for him to have done that!” she protested hotly; Gavin raised a finger to his lips, which Lisa found utterly obnoxious in her aggravated state. “They would have had me at the Colosseum anyway – but Jamie helped me get away. He even let me stay at his mother’s house all night, and he never alerted the Union. He even gave me the phone so I could call the Guard.”

Gavin seemed politely indifferent to Lisa’s argument, which only infuriated her further.

“Yeah, Leese, but that doesn’t mean –”

“Oh, for God’s sakes, you two!” Marina cried loudly, making them both jump. “You’ve been back together five seconds and you’re already bickering! Can we just keep it casual, PLEASE? You’re meant to be friends, dammit!”

There was a prolonged silence, broken by Jamie’s rattling breaths. Lisa promptly mumbled her assent, feeling slightly flushed; Gavin cast a surly glance at Marina before following suit.

“Look, I don’t like him much either, Gav,” Marina began, “but it doesn’t make any sense for him to be a Union agent. I think Lisa’s right. And besides, if it weren’t for Jamie, Lisa would never have got the idea for this new plan.”

Gavin blinked. “What new plan?”

Apparently relieved that the tension had broken between Gavin and Lisa, Marina took it upon herself to lighten the mood.

“Lisa’s bleached her hair and gone into renegade action-fighter mode,” she said dryly. “We’re gonna break into the Sepulchre of Suicune and get the key fragment ourselves! Come along for the ride, it’ll be heaps fun!”

Gavin’s face had gone slack. “Wait – what?”

“I’m not going back to the safe house,” Lisa said.

“Why the hell not?”

Lisa fought the urge to snap at him.

“Because I’m so sick of this constant running, the constant hiding from the Union, hoping they don’t find me,” she said tersely. “And I’ve realised the sooner I get the fragment of the key that’s in the Sepulchre, the sooner the Union will have no use for me anymore.”

“But that’s what the Guard is for,” Gavin argued. “Your parents – what did they say about this?”

“We’re not telling anyone,” said Marina smoothly, and not a moment too soon; Lisa had already begun to get defensive. “We’re doing this alone.”

“So you’re doing it too?” Gavin said, sounding more concerned by the minute.

“Yep,” Marina replied simply. “The Union already used me to get into Raikou’s Sepulchre, I’m no more special to them than any other random off the street now.”

“But –” Gavin seemed to be struggling with the concept. “Surely the safest thing of all would be to just go to the Safe House. All three of us could go, we’d be protected, the Union wouldn’t even have a chance to get at you …”

“But for how long, Gav?” Lisa cried. “All we’ve been doing is running and hiding. The Safe House is just a stall tactic. And even you just mentioned the fact that the Union’s infiltrated the Guard in the past. How do we know that the owners of the Safe House aren’t Union spies themselves, waiting for me to get there so they can turn me in?”

“I wouldn’t put it past them,” Marina chimed in uselessly. “That Mrs Stone is a real bitch. She heard me say the word ‘crap’ to Darius and she made me wash out twenty empty jam jars. TWENTY! Crap’s not even a real swear word!”

“The best step we can take is to take matters into our own hands,” Lisa forged onwards, trying to visualise the poster in Jamie’s bedroom that had given her so much of her newfound confidence. “We can either sit around or we can try to actually do something about it. This is something we could actually do that could make a difference – we could do something without either the Union or the Guard knowing about it – we’d have one-up on both of them …”

But it was clear from Gavin’s grimace that he wasn’t sold on the idea.

“So your plan is to risk your life trying to do, essentially, exactly what the Union wants you to do?”

“They won’t expect me to go willingly to the Sepulchre, Gavin. Actually, it’s probably the last place they’d ever expect me to be. I’d be safer there than at the Safe House.”

Gavin opened his mouth, probably to argue with her, but Marina got in first.

“It does make sense, Gavin,” she said. “Think about it: If we can somehow get Lisa’s fragment without anyone knowing, then we can destroy it ourselves, or if that doesn’t work, we could give it to the Guard directly. It would stop the Union in their tracks.”

Gavin shrugged indifferently and Lisa scowled; it annoyed her that he freely argued with every point she made, but quietly accepted everything when Marina presented it in a slightly different light.

“How is this even going to work, though?” Gavin asked dully. “How are you going to find the Sepulchre?”

“Lisa’s already found it,” Marina said.

“Well, I think I have,” Lisa corrected her. “When I was locked in that office in the Union’s headquarters on Silver Rock Island, I saw a map on the table with a pin stuck in it. The pin was stuck in a place called Lotus Lake. Since they were planning on taking me to the Sepulchre that day … it kind of seems like the Sepulchre must be at Lotus Lake, wherever that is.”

“Mm,” mumbled Gavin.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Lotus Lake,” Marina put in. “And I’ve kayaked through most of the water systems in Johto …”

“I’m pretty sure the map was of Johto,” said Lisa. “We can try to find a map anyway and work it out in the morning.”

“And then traipse through the Union-infested fields of Johto, totally exposed, sounds fun,” said Gavin acidly.

It was the straw that broke the camel’s back: Lisa’s chair slid back as she rose to her feet, jabbing a finger in Gavin’s direction.

“What the hell is your problem, Gavin?!” she cried, tears springing to her eyes for the second time that evening.

“Lisa – easy …” came Marina’s voice.

Gavin was on his feet, too.

“My problem is that after everything that’s happened to you, you still haven’t learnt shit!”

“Gavin, that’s enough,” Marina said sternly.

“No, seriously!” Gavin cried, now facing Marina; his pale face was alive with indignation. “This is so typically Lisa! She gets herself out of one predicament and, instead of taking the safe, sensible option, she goes and throws herself into the dumbest possible scenario again!”

“Dumbest?” Lisa spluttered, lost for words. “Gavin, I –”

“I mean, first she decides to go out on this stupid mission, then she decides to invite some random pothead along for the ride …”

Marina placed her head in her hands as if trying to block out the argument; Lisa prickled at Gavin’s words.

“Gavin, you’re not even making any sense! I didn’t invite Jamie along, he’s not coming with us –”

“– and that’s the first sensible thing you’ve said all night –”

“WHY ARE YOU SO ANGRY WITH ME?”

Lisa nearly shrieked it; she wouldn’t have been surprised if everyone in the household had woken up at once, but she was beyond caring: she couldn’t fathom why on earth Gavin was so incensed with her, nor why she was so incensed with him.

“Because,” Gavin said bitterly, locking eyes with her; his chestnut-brown irises were steely, “you’ve had so many chances, so many lucky escapes, so many people who’ve stuck their necks out for you, and apparently it means absolutely nothing to you!”

Without another look at her, he stormed off down the hall, his door slamming so loudly that Jamie, oblivious to the entire argument thus far, suddenly started and murmured, “Wassat?” before falling back to sleep.

There was a long beat.

After a few seconds, Marina removed her head from her hands, her face miserable. She stood up awkwardly and began tidying up the dining table, crumpling beer cans and throwing them into the kitchen bin.

After standing perfectly still for some time, Lisa joined her, eager for any activity that would take her mind off the argument.

“He’ll come around,” said Marina eventually, offering Lisa a friendly smile as they scraped the remains of their baked beans into the rubbish bin.

“The weirdest thing is that … I don’t even know what we were arguing about, really,” Lisa admitted, flicking a stubborn baked bean into its plastic grave.

The two girls finished clearing the kitchen and then, aware that midnight was approaching, decided to sleep. Unwilling to approach Gavin’s room – where she and Marina were also supposed to sleep – Lisa decided to curl up near Jamie on the wooden floor.

Marina sighed heavily before sinking to the hard floor beside her and sprawling out, clearly uncomfortable.

“The things I do for you, girl,” she grinned jokingly, before rolling over.

Though comforted by Marina’s presence, Lisa lay awake for some time, staring through the bay window at the patchwork of twinkling stars in the warm night sky. Gavin’s final words to her played on loop in her brain:

“Because you’ve had so many chances, so many lucky escapes, so many people who’ve stuck their necks out for you, and apparently it means absolutely nothing to you!”

With a sickening ache in her stomach, she finally understood what he had meant. The horrible dream she had had on Mt Fairfax flashed back to her; the dream where, somehow, she had glimpsed a morsel of Gavin’s entrapment with the Union.

Even when he was tortured for information on her whereabouts, he had never given her up.

The needling pangs of guilt in her stomach kept Lisa awake long after Marina’s snores mingled with Jamie’s. When finally she fell into sleep, she dreamt of how pure Gavin’s face had been before he received that scar.