Re: Lisa the Legend - Chapter 52 up!!
I've decided to edit Chapter 18 today and post it a little earlier than planned. Since I'm on holidays now, I'll be online a lot more, and by the end of this holidays ... *dum dum dum* I should be able to finish posting the book!!
HOORAY!
And then, the real stuff begins ...
Just gotta edit some stuff. Expect the chapter up in a minute!
Here it is ... this chapter had to be broken into two parts because it was too long, sorry for the inconvenience!
Cheers!
-------------------------------------
Chapter 18 - Legendaries.
“Leeeeesa!” squealed Aipom, swinging from the jarrah rafters in the high ceiling. “ Leeesa!”
“Ssh!” Gavin muttered, emerging from his couch, with a backpack on his back and all four full pokeballs on his belt. He held in his hand a tiny silver medal and a fast ball – runner up prizes from the Whirlpool Cup the previous day. He still felt sore from losing when the cup was within his grasp: he felt like just being alone for now. He was going to go to the mysterious caves in the island nearby for the day – maybe try to catch a new pokemon. That would give him something to be happy about.
Gavin sat at the murky-mustard bench, and pulled out a notebook from his pocket, only slightly crumpled. He quickly wrote a note to Lisa in his untidy scrawl, and folded it, placing it on the fridge-top, where Lisa was sure to go first. Whispering to Aipom to be quiet, he opened the door, which creaked very slightly, and shut it, with a much louder squeak.
Gavin plunged his notebook into his backpack, and slipped it onto his back, turning to face the beach before him. Stumbling in the beach sand and making slow progress, he approached the wet sand, on which waves were calmly lapping up against the shell which littered the otherwise plain beach. Gavin felt his sneakers sink in the muddy earth, and so decided to idle no more. “Staryu, c’mon!”
Staryu popped quietly out of it’s captivating home, the pokeball. It’s protrusive limbs stuck firmly in the sand at the floor of the shallow water where it had landed. Gavin admired the entire day – a typical summer’s day, and a perfect Friday. The steady breeze carried a hint of adventure for Gavin, he sniffed it eagerly, and grinned, hopping aboard Staryu’s right arm and pointing out directly east.
“Head that way.” He told his pokemon. “It’s not gonna be very far.”
*
“Quag!” Quagsire cried, firing a hyper-triple-mega-ice beam at Marina’s golduck. It was shot down in one go, and fainted. Marina fell down and began to cry, and Lisa joyfully recalled Quagsire after a high five. A Golden Trophy and Staff appeared in her arms. Then Aipom came up, and did a little dance on her shoulder, which made Marina bawl even more. But then Aipom began gnawing…
Lisa’s eyes fluttered open, and realised it had just been a dream. She grinned to herself – a good one, too, except for the end part, when Aipom bit her ear. Still, it was said that dreams were a distorted reflection of emotions, views and real life …
The girl felt a flash of pain in her ear.
“Aipom!” she squealed, pulling the cheeky monkey off her ear and sitting bolt upright. She rubbed her eyes and yawned uncontrollably for a few seconds. Friday the 15th … about a month until she returned home. Lisa rolled over, wondering why her lower back pained her so much until she actually pulled the bedsheets off to reveal a belt of six pokeballs, one empty, five filled, still on. She forgot to take them off, even after that party last night at the Entertainment centre, where she had been given a Friend Ball, and a tiny copper medallion, which hung now from her neck, along with her pokegear.
She opened the door, and saw an empty hut. Aipom leapt onto the TV, and then jumped up to the rafters in the roof. Lisa glanced around - there was no Gavin, lying like a deadweight on the sofa as usual. Lisa groaned, wondering only slightly where he had gone, and entered the cramped kitchen, the splinters collecting on her thick socks. She opened the fridge while Aipom carelessly destroyed the table next to the sofa as he dropped down – and Lisa couldn’t have cared less – it was their final day in the shack, and frankly, she had had enough anyway.
Pouring milk into a china bowl of Coco’s Crunch, she screwed the cap back on, sighing to herself as she gradually awoke, and returned to the fridge. This time, however, she noticed a tiny sheet of paper folded carefully atop the fridge. Replacing the milk, she picked up the note, sat down at the barstool at the bench and read. It was unmistakeably a note from Gavin.
[I]Dear Lisa,
Hopefully you find this straight away before you get worried or anything. I’m going to do some training on a nearby island – Silver-Rock – all day probably, so don’t worry. I’ll be back at about 4, so just wait for me, OK? Thanks, I’ll seeya later, hopefully with a new Pokemon. – Gavin.[I]
Short and sweet, Lisa noted, taking a few spoonfuls of Coco’s crunch at once and cramming them into her mouth. She felt really relaxed after last night, as though all the tension between her and Gavin had been dissolved by the battle. In a way, she felt relieved that Gavin finished her off first, so they didn’t have to fight each other, one-on-one, which might have been dangerous. However, she was a little peeved at him for the sneak attack in the fight – she had felt really angry about that, although tried to hide it. She sighed … “Just as I was getting to li…”
She broke off from talking to herself, as Aipom crashed a lamp beside the TV, and she sternly warned him. “ Aipom, that’s enough. We have to leave this place intact!”
After Aipom had solemnly promised to behave, Lisa turned back to her cereal while the purple monkey began gnawing on the sofa edge. Lisa felt slightly empty after the match – it felt like her whole life had been building up to the Whirlpool Cup Final Battle, and now that it was all over, she felt undirected in her pokemon quest. Sure, she had been going to find out about Suicune and the other legendaries, but now the task seemed tougher than ever. Where was she meant to start? Back in October she had been to the Radio Tower’s library – there was no hope of returning, in light of the destruction.
She sighed. Legendary pokemon hunting WAS hard work, after all. It wasn’t as if opportunities came knocking on the door, or appearing on the road to various places, or ringing on the phone …
On cue, Lisa’s pokegear phone purred loudly, and she jolted around, shocked at how coincidental it was. As she washed the now empty bowl of Coco’s crunch, she pressed the side button and said “ Hello?”
“Good Morning … am I speaking to Lisa Walters, of Ecruteak City?” a man’s voice said.
Lisa was startled. “Yes … you are … do I know you?”
“Most likely, no.” the man replied.
Lisa’s jaw dropped. “OH MY GOD, you’re a STALKER!”
“No no!” insisted the voice on the other end. “ I am most certainly not. I am Professor Westwood the fifth, and I am seeking your help. I was attending to my Pokedex files a day or two ago and realised some files are incomplete – files you may know of.”
The girl felt still suspicious, but was positive she had heard the name of the professor before, so continued. “What kind of help?”
“ Information on the legendary Black Beast - please can you help me?”
“ I don’t know…” stuttered Lisa, recalling the Black Beast suddenly. “ I can’t really remember much…”
“ Of course you can.” Westwood cried. “ Please, come to visit me at my holiday lab.”
Lisa stayed silent for a moment, and the Professor interpreted this correctly. “ I assure you, I am no stalker. Bring a team of Officer Jennies with you if you like …”
Lisa thought for a moment, and then nodded. She suddenly realised he couldn’t see her, and so she agreed. “ OK, tell me the address.”
After a few more minutes of conversation, Lisa hung up, and quickly wrote a note to Gavin in her neat printing, in case he returned before she. The note basically said that if he came home first, to quickly tidy up, and meet Lisa at Westwood’s mansion. Lisa quickly placed it on the TV top, where Gavin was sure to see it first, as there was no remote. Then she called Aipom, hoisted her backpack on, and left.
*
Mud stuck to Gavin’s shoes as he trudged up the short beach to the caves which covered almost the entire landscape of silver rock island. Gavin thought it was spectacular – an uninhabited Island which was littered with caves and crumbly brown rocks. However, all the caves were made from a much more solid looking, silvery rock, which looked fake at first, but was actually very real.
Gavin recalled Staryu, and set out, Fast Ball in hand, ready to be used at a moment’s notice. He had actually landed a little off course – possibly 200 metres, actually. This side of the island was obscured from view from the direction in which he had approached, but a quick gust of wind had driven him away, and off course.
Gavin shrugged – he was here now anyway, so he would make the most of his visit. It was already 10am, and the sun was becoming progressively stronger, or so it seemed, heating the island. Gavin began walking to a cave to his left, but found that this trail was too rocky, so he about faced and travelled for about five minutes before he came to a glittery silver cave, which didn’t face directly onto the beach, and it’s entrance was very narrow – unlikely to fit anybody much larger than Gavin himself. He gave a furtive glance around, before pushing himself through the cleft.
Inside, the cave was almost pitch black; light from outside barely penetrated the darkness. Distantly, what sounded like a voice was echoing in short bursts. Gavin pulled his backpack off, and dumped it on the ground. After a moment’s fishing around, he produced his torch, and flicked it on (just in case Lanturn had turned back to disobedience after it’s defeat the previous day, and in case it refused to use Flash technique). The beam pierced the blackness better than the sliver of light coming from outside, and, scanning the walls, Gavin soon found an opening to an adjacent chamber – very low, but quite wide. He slipped his pack back on and continued on into the chamber.
*
The mansion sat atop the cliff on the northernmost point of Red Rock Island. Marble pillars outlined the surroundings of the wide, glass-made structure, hoisting up long, shaded terraces bordered with new palms and lush green lawns.
Lisa rapped loudly on the door, and heard a scuttling sound inside. Aipom began to get excited, and started swinging off the door handle. Lisa yanked him off immediately, just as the door swung open.
“ Lisa Walters? Please come in!”
In was definitely the same man from the phone – Lisa recognised the voice – but he looked so … odd! Professor Westwood was a squat, balding man in a white lab coat. His buttons, Lisa noticed at first glance, looked ready to explode any second. The man had large, pale-blue, watery eyes and walked so strangely Lisa really considered it waddling.
“ I heard about you on the news a long time ago. I met your brother Thomas by chance last week, and he explained you were on the island.” He paused, and Lisa looked up – things were being explained. Although Gavin had told her Tom was on the island, he had been urgently called back to Ecruteak, and Lisa had failed to meet him.
“ In case you didn’t know, my lifelong study is the Pokedex.” Westwood continued. “ I study every pokemon there is known to exist, and my workers and I create names, and study them to discover what moves they use, how skilled they are, and what they evolve into. One pokemon I know almost nothing about is the black Beast. I believe you can help me.”
“ O – Ok.” Lisa breathed.
“ Follow me.”
The inside of his hybrid mansion/lab was very tempting for Aipom. Through the entrance hall, protrusive, ugly ornaments or various materials were placed neatly on short columns of marble, mostly pewter statues of heads of very noble-looking men, or colourful, fragile-looking vases. Lisa held Aipom’s tail close to her chest, incase he got any ideas. Westwood led Lisa and Aipom through the mansion until they came to a spacious, airy conservatory. The sunroom was filled with exotic-looking plants and palms, which sat in heavy terracotta pots on the green tiles.
“ Sit.” Westwood ordered, as he placed himself in a deckchair under a palm. Lisa pulled one up, and sat next to him, although she was cautious to keep the chair a good foot or two away from the flustered man.
“ Oh, don’t worry about that.” Westwood muttered, gesturing at Aipom, struggling to wriggle free of Lisa’s grasp. “ Let him go – he can make friends with Slowbro is he wants.” Westwood gestured to a bright pink creature over in the corner of the sunroom, and Lisa reluctantly released Aipom’s tail.
“ So – you called me here about the black –”
“ Yes, about that…” Westwood began, taking a sip from a lemonade can which Lisa hadn’t seen sitting next to the deckchair. “ I need your help.”
Lisa almost laughed aloud. Help from her? She looked the man up and down … he was the creator of an entire documentation of every known pokemon … and he needed her help?
“ Well, I don’t know…” Lisa said carefully. “ I don’t really think I can help you.”
“ I assure you it’s not difficult at all.” Westwood said hastily.
“ What would I have to do if I accepted your request?” Lisa enquired, choosing her words carefully.
“ Fill in a pokedex entry on the Black Beast.”
“ An entire thing?!”
“ Only a description, picture and name –”
“ Stats, right? I suppose I make them up?”
Westwood stopped abruptly. “ Is there a problem with that?” he said harshly, in a voice not unlike a cruel teacher at school.
Lisa shook, and timidly answered. “ No … but …”
“ I’m kidding!” Westwood boomed, and Lisa quickly decided he had a problem after all – a mental one. But she smiled politely, and then went on to say: “ No, I don’t think I can make up the stats – speed and all that –”
“ We’ll take care of that.” Westwood interrupted. “ Hardly anybody has ever seen the Black Beast – it’s still yet to be identified with a real name – I’d like to give that honour to you, Lisa. Stats will be discarded for now.”
Lisa thought for a moment, before blurting out. “ Sure.”
*
Gavin ducked as he walked past a cavern wall with horizontal stalactites sticking out from the wall – a very odd sight to see, made from when movements in the earth’s crust and changing of the rocks over millions of years caused the stalactites to grow on an angle. He walked past and continued through the chamber, the fourth one now since leaving the light of the outside world. Gavin was on the brink of simply giving up – his only finds so far had been a Magikarp out of water.
Just as Gavin turned the corner, Natu fluttering ahead, there was a squeaking cry, and a Psyduck came waddling out from nowhere, approaching Gavin. He would have let it run on by, but it glared at him oddly, and with barely a second of consideration, water gunned the boy. Within moments it had stopped, but Gavin was soaking, caked in mud and lying on the ground.
“ What was THAT?!” he muttered. Natu, still drifting along the tunnel, turned back to see the Psyduck preparing another watergun, and it shot out a thin beam of lavender light in retaliation. The beam slammed into Psyduck’s head, and it suddenly raced down the tunnel, towards the direction of the entrance.
Gavin shrugged the odd experience off, but thanked Natu first. Then followed a very long period of dark nothingness.
“ That’s it.” Gavin told himself, as Natu fluttered along behind his left shoulder, and the torchbeam ahead barely showed any light. “ If there’s nothing in the next cavern, I’m turning back!”
Natu hooted in agreement, as it and Gavin reached the end of the chamber, and found the only thing that could annoy Gavin more – a fork in the tunnels.
Instinct and common sense told Gavin to turn back immediately, but a raspy, heaving breath from beyond the left tunnel entrance told him a creature – a big one at that – was somewhere through that tunnel. Gavin, torn between the possibility of a pokemon and his own safety, was about to turn back when Natu squealed and fluttered into the inky blackness of the tunnel. Gavin gave one deep sigh, and stepped into the tunnel, ducking his head along the way.
His torch was almost no use. It the chambers, it had glittered on the silvery rocks and reflected, making the entire chamber that little bit lighter, though still dull. But this tunnel was composed of ordinary rocks, not gleaming silver ones. Gavin sprinted down, his torch locating a rock wall at the end of the tunnel – a dead end, he would generally presume, but Natu had disappeared. Gavin trudged to the end, and felt the wall – solid, a complete barrier. However, as he turned back in confusion, he noticed there was a wide cleft to his left through which a little light shone out of. Curiously, he stepped through, ducking so low his back was hunched well over.
This cave was actually quite bright compared to the last, so Gavin promptly turned off his torch and squinted his eyes so he could see without being dazzled by the apparent resplendent beauty of the cave. Inside, the breathing sound was even heavier, and this cave was composed primarily of silver boulders – and the light came both from them and from a huge opening above. Gavin opened his eyes fully now, and saw Natu, squawking loudly on a row of well-placed boulders. Gavin shushed him, but Natu insisted, so he walked over to investigate, and was very glad he did.
Behind the row of boulders, an enormous white creature lay, breathing heavily with its indigo eyelids closed – undoubtedly asleep. Gavin rubbed his eyes as he took it the huge bulk, the white wings and body, and the indigo strips on it’s back – definitely a mythical Lugia.
*
Westwood and Lisa walked down an aisle of shelves piled high towards the roof – Westwood was searching for a fact file on the Black Beast – all the information that had been collected from the few times it had been seen. Lisa was having her doubts now, as Westwood handed her a thin file from a collection of much, much fatter ones.
“ This is it?” she groaned, taking out a couple of sheets of paper, and one or two photographs, which she noted were black-and-white.
“ Very good, considering the Black Beast has been only seen a few times,” Westwood said, his chest swelling proudly. Lisa nodded, but then a new worry came into her mind.
“ Excuse me, Professor, my friend and I were meant to leave our accommodation tonight, there’s some new occupants staying for a while …”
Westwood answered almost automatically. “ I have a guest room at the back. You’re welcome to stay here – your friend too.”
“ Why, thank you,” Lisa said, thinking that people were very hospitable, and wondering whether she should first consult Gavin or not. She nodded, taking the file, and said. “ OK, show me the guest room.”
Originally Posted by mr_pikachu
Reply With Quote