Lisa the Legend - Chapter 52 up!!
New chapter! Surprise!
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Chapter 46 - Intuition.
“ Now this is the life.”
Lisa smiled lazily to herself. She, Aipom and Gavin were sprawled out beside each other on a remote stretch of beach, soaking up the warm, lazy sunlight that was beating down upon them. She felt her eyes closing very slowly as she relaxed; it was not hot enough for her to feel uncomfortable, but rather just the right temperature to have a midday nap. She suspected Gavin was already asleep, as he would probably be even more exhausted than she after their past few days.
Three days had passed since Lisa, Gavin and Aipom had set sail from the beach at Port Valeo on the backs of Fiskmire and Seel, leaving their friends Andrew, Jessica and Olivia on a journey for Dervine in the country’s southwest. Lisa had expected the seabound journey to be easier than her earlier jaunt in the Whirl Islands, but she had been proved wrong. While there had been no whirlpools at all on the surfing journey, something equally bad had occurred. On their second day after leaving Port Valeo, a storm struck them: Seel had nearly drowned in the dumping waves and Gavin had risked his life to save it. Lisa could remember the entire incident clearly, as she had watched, helplessly, as Gavin tried to regain his position aboard Seel. It had ended well enough, though. A massive wave swept down upon them all and threw them roughly aground on the mainland. Since arriving on the mainland they had been walking south on the continued trip to Dervine.
Their mission was a voluntary one. When in Port Valeo, Lisa had learned that a renowned researcher and scientist, Professor Oak, had disappeared without a trace down in the southern village of Dervine. Whilst the police did not appear concerned, Lisa and Gavin were; the last time Oak had disappeared, he had been unexplainably mixed up with a major argument between three legendary dogs - Suicune, Entei and Raikou. Nobody knew what exactly happened between the legendaries, as Oak had no recollection of the incident, but from what Lisa could gather, the legendaries had referred to her, and Gavin, and something else ...
A wave crept up the beach and reached Lisa’s feet, immersing them in cool water. She felt a tiny twinge of guilt but pushed it away; sure, they were in a rush to get to Dervine, but even they neede a break sometime. She closed her eyes fully. Warmth pulsated onto her face from the sun. In the distance she could hear the cheep-cheep sounds of Pidgeys in the trees, the whistle of the wind, the rushing of the waves as they broke … peaceful, serene nature …
BOOM!
The explosion came out of nowhere. Lisa’s eyes flew open; she cried out in alarm, but it was drowned by the deafening blast that was sounding from somewhere behind her.
“ What the hell!” Gavin yelled abruptly, flailing his arms around as he awoke. Aipom, too, had sat up in alarm.
There was a second explosion, smaller than the first but still loud enough to make Lisa’s eardrums ache. She, Gavin and Aipom had all turned to look behind them and into the thick forest that began at the end of the beach sand. Above the canopy of trees, a column of grey smoke was blossoming into the formerly clear sky.
“ What’s going on?” Lisa screamed, unable to tell if she was speaking loud or soft.
“ I don’t know, I just –”
Gavin was cut off as a third explosion rent the air and another cloud of smoke burst into the sky. Like a shot, Aipom had sprinted for Lisa’s backpack that lay on the sand, and had delved into the safety within it, his purple ears poking out through the zipper.
“ Shouldn’t we go see what that was?” Lisa demanded, standing up. Her cheeks were flushed with shock.
Gavin gave her a confused, sarcastic look. “ Are you insane? You get out of one lot of trouble and you go straight into another one! Explosions don’t just happen, people MAKE them. And not good people either.”
“ But there could be people there, they might have been hurt!” Lisa protested loudly, as the smoke continued to spiral into the sky. “ I don’t care what you say, I’m going to see what happened!” She finished her sentence feeling uneasy. It was true, there might be people hurt somewhere, but it wasn't that that caused her to want to investigate; it was a gnawing feeling she had, something that was telling her she should go towards the noise, that she was needed there ... or something. Lisa shook her head, but the odd feeling remained.
“ It’s asking for trouble, Lisa,” Gavin said.
“ I’ll go by myself then,” she declared defiantly, frustrated with Gavin’s delays. Lisa jogged to her backpack and swung it over her shoulder; the purple ears poking out from the bag twitched nervously.
“ Bye Gavin. I hope you’re happy to be a sook and wait back here while I go investigate. Ciao!”
A huge smirk on her face, Lisa ran towards the thick, green forest and reached it in no time. As soon as she entered the trees she found her path obstructed by a wall of trees and ferns so thickly set that it was impossible to pass through them. Anxious to get to the scene of the explosions fast, Lisa began tugging at the ferns, but they were too tall and too close together.
“ I’ll help.” Gavin appeared at her side, a pokeball in his hand. He didn’t throw it, though, just said, “ Go!” and pulled the ball open manually.
The ball exploded with light and a pokemon emerged instantly. Lisa gaped. It was quite large, about human height. Two shiny, metallic wings were folded across its back; it’s sleek, silver, scythe-like hands were glinting.
“ A Skarmory!” Lisa cried. “ Since when did you – how did you – what did you – you got any other pokemon you haven’t told me about?”
“ Um, no, that’s the last one I think,” Gavin replied, putting on a mock-thoughtful look. “ Skarmory, Slash through the forest and cut us a path. Quickly.”
The next thing Lisa saw was a huge clump of forest fall to the ground. “ Really fast,” she remarked, amazed at how quickly Skarmory’s slash had been; she hadn’t even seen it move. She watched as Skarmory continued slashing through the foliage, hovering with its wings and cutting down small trees at quite a considerable pace; Lisa and Gavin actually had to jog after it to keep up. But even though Skarmory was working fast, it felt to Lisa as though time was dragging by. It had been minutes since the third explosion, and no more had come since then. The absence of any action was unnerving Lisa. And although there was silence as far as any explosions went, the strange feeling Lisa had was still present, and growing stronger. Something within her kept urging her onwards ... as if she was required for something, or had to do something, somewhere. It was some kind of intuition.
“ Skar!”
Lisa emerged from her thoughts and looked ahead; the metal pokemon had come to a standstill, and was pointing with one of its claws at something it had found on the ground. She jogged and caught up with Skarmory and Gavin, who were further ahead.
“ What is it?” she asked.
“ Skarmory found this under a tree just then …” Gavin replied, pointing to a battered brown case that lay on the ground, partially covered in sticks and leaves.
She felt a wave of frustration leap up on her. “ Who cares about that, someone lost it obviously, we have to keep going!”
“ Right … keep going Skar.”
The Skarmory resumed it’s rapid slashing. Lisa jumped over a few large bits of tree, checking her watch nervously while Gavin dawdled behind her, his thoughts probably still on the briefcase. It had been over five minutes since they had entered the forest, and it was just as thick and untrafficable as before.
“ What do you think we’ll find?” Gavin asked presently, catching up to her.
“ I dunno,” she muttered honestly, adjusting her watchband in nervousness as they jogged after Skarmory. The forest was almost spooking her; they were surrounded on all sides by emerald green ferns and trees and yet there were no signs of animal life. And her feeling of intuition was still growing: she kept saying to herself, you're needed somewhere ... you have to be there; the feeling was intensifying, and she could not explain it at all. Lisa sighed in her own confusion and answered Gavin. “We can’t really just sit back and ignore an explosion, can we?”
Gavin didn’t answer, but it was clear that he thought they could.
Seven minutes … eight minutes … this is ridiculous, thought Lisa. Whatever's happening, there should be some more action by now ... some more signs, surely?
Just as her watch read that it had been nine minutes since entering the forests, Skarmory began flapping it’s wings excitedly. Lisa squinted to see what had excited it: up ahead, on their makeshift path, a thick, silvery-grey Spinarak web was spun between two trees. The web was about two metres high, five metres wide and – from the looks of it – about half an inch thick. Skarmory was standing back from it nervously.
“ It’s just a Spinarak web,” Gavin muttered as he and Lisa reached Skarmory’s side and stood beside the massive web. It was amazing to look at; though it was thick with dozens and dozens of layers, each thread was visible and so intricately woven that the web – although it obstructed their path – looked almost beautiful. Lisa reached her hand out to touch it, but then automatically drew it back, just in case.
“ Go on, cut through it,” Gavin urged Skarmory, but it would not move. There was a strange look in its grey eyes; it reminded Lisa of the look she had seen once in Marina’s eyes, on the night Lisa’s house was invaded.
And then she understood.
“ It’s scared,” she said. “ Your Skarmory is scared of spiders.”
“ What? Yeah right,” said Gavin roughly, while his steel-winged pokemon nodded fervently in agreeance with Lisa. “ He’s made of steel, he’s tough …”
But Skarmory was backing away from the huge web now. Lisa looked more closely at the edges of the web – shadowy Spinaraks were clustering at the edges of the web, waiting to attack anything that would break down their web.
“ Come on, Skar,” Gavin cried impatiently; he had not yet seen the spiders. “ Just go, cut the web! Like this!”
“ Gavin, no!”
Lisa’s warning came just in time. Gavin had actually raised his hand to mimic slashing the web down, but at her call he had stopped.
“ What?”
“ Put your hand down and step back from the web, Gavin.” Her voice was shaking with fear of what might have happened if she hadn’t stopped him. A Spinarak sting wasn’t very poisonous; a hundred stings would be. “ There’s spiders all around the edge of the web. If you try to cut it down, they’ll attack.” A better idea had occurred to Lisa suddenly. She pulled a pokeball off her belt and opened it manually, as Gavin had done. The flash of light that illuminated the area silhouetted the spiders; there were dozens of them in the web.
Vulpix appeared from the ball, ready for a battle, it’s crimson tail standing almost on end.
“ Ember, full throttle, Vulpix,” Lisa commanded. “ Just be careful not to get stung.”
“ Good idea,” Gavin said ruefully.
“ Vul,” agreed Vulpix.
Lisa, Gavin and Skarmory each took a few paces back as Vulpix cried out its name and used the attack. A stream of scarlet flames illuminated the area as they engulfed the massive web and scorched a hole straight through it. Lisa shielded her eyes as – unexpectedly – sunlight began pouring through the gap where the web had been; they had found a way out of the dingy forest.
“ Stop!” Lisa called, and Vulpix ended the attack. The web had torn in two, and was now reduced to a cluster of burning threads at each tree that it had been suspended from. Spinaraks were trying to escape but were failing – instead, they fell from the web onto the ground in the dozens.
“ Let’s get out of here!” cried Gavin, staring at the dozens of spiders on the ground only two metres from him. Without waiting for Lisa’s reaction, he sprinted ahead through the gap in the web, his hands clasped over his head, into the sunlight, where he stood for a moment before simply disappearing from view.
“ Vulpix, return! Skarmory … run!” The moment Vulpix dematerialised Lisa lurched forwards, but before she could run through the web, a group of spiders began to approach her, their pincers clicking ominously. She didn’t think twice: she sprinted forward and, just before her feet came in contact with the spiders, launched herself into a jump. She flew into the air and passed over several clicking spiders … but no … she had miscalculated – there were more … she was about to plunge herself right into their midst … Lisa shrieked and closed her eyes tight, waiting for her legs to return to ground, and the Spinaraks to attack …
But they never got the chance to attack. Lisa felt something pick her up by the underarms, and found that she was still airborne. She opened her eyes. Sure enough, she was held about two feet from the ground by Skarmory, who was flying through the gap in the web into the outside.
The steel-winged creature dropped Lisa about three metres on the other side of the ruined web. Once her feet were firmly back on the ground, and she had thanked Skarmory several times over, she looked around at her brightly-lit surroundings.
She was standing on a rocky ledge on the edge of a shallow canyon, facing out onto what seemed to be a dried-up river’s path. Lisa looked to her left; there was bare, rocky cliff-face, stretching out about three metres down. To her right was much of the same; the forest ended very abruptly, as it had reached a cliff-face that led on to form the sides of the gorge. But spread out directly before her was a grand view: across the wide gorge, about twenty metres from where she stood, was more lush, green forest. The air was slightly smoky here, so Lisa decided that they must be close to the source of the explosions, but there was no visual confirmation yet. Lisa began to think that Gavin had been right in suggesting they ignore the explosions – it was much more trouble than it was worth, and they had already taken eighteen minutes, according to her watch. But, out here on the ledge, her feeling of requirement for something was stronger than ever ... she was close now to whatever goal it was, she could feel it somehow.
“ Um … Gavin?” she said at last, looking all around. There was no sign of him, and the rock ledge that she stood on had nowhere to go from.
“ DOWN HERE!”
Tentatively, Lisa looked over the edge of the rock platform. Sure enough, about three metres below was Gavin, surrounded by a pile of rubble and pebbles. “ The ledge collapsed,” he called up to her. “ I fell … come down here. Is Skarmory with you?”
“ Yep!” Lisa called, relieved to find Gavin alive and presumably well. “ I’ll be there in a sec.”
She jumped onto Skarmory’s back, who was more than happy to oblige. Skarmory hovered over the platform edge and slowly lowered himself down until Lisa found herself beside Gavin. They were standing on a gradual decline that sloped all the way to the bottom of the gorge.
“ Return,” Gavin said, holding out Skarmory’s pokeball, and the worn-out pokemon dissolved in a burst of scarlet light.
“ You all right?” Gavin asked.
“ Yeah, thanks for letting me escape first,” Lisa said reproachfully. “ So much for chivalry.”
Gavin’s face was bright red and Lisa realised that she had succeeded in making him uncomfortable. He cleared his throat and bravely spoke onwards.
“ Well, thanks to your brilliant idea of following those explosions – which, by the way, have stopped – we’re now stuck half-way down a gorge and have no idea how to get back to where we were, or where to go from here. Good choice, Li-”
Gavin never quite finished his sentence, because an almighty explosion burst from somewhere else in the gorge. Lisa clasped her hands to her ears and felt Aipom squirming in her backpack, but nothing could block out the explosive sound that roared through the air. A blast of light had also accompanied the explosion; it was to their left, past a bend in the gorge. Already, Lisa could see grey smoke weaving through the gorge and making its way for them.
“ Let’s go. Be on your guard,” Lisa said, and she began jogging down the decline until she reached the lowest point in the shallow gorge. She was very close to the unexplainable thing she had been called to, she was sure of it. Once she was sure she was as low as possible, Lisa began running for the bend, aware of Gavin panting along behind her. Smoke engulfed her near the bend; Lisa began coughing and her eyes prickled with tears, but she kept running. She could still see the curve in the gorge – it was only thirty metres away … twenty metres … ten … five … she was running by choice, and yet she felt that she was being pulled towards some kind of goal, some necessity, by an invisible magnet.
With a lungful of smoke, Lisa reached the bend and ran full-pelt through the hot, thick smoke that now surrounded her. Her vision was completely obscured; she kept running, almost tripping on something but correcting her balance.
All of a sudden, the smoke disappeared and the air was clear again. Coughing once more, Lisa opened her eyes to see what was ahead of her, and gaped at the sight that met her eyes.
“ No way,” said Lisa in utter disbelief.
Her intuition had been right all along.
Originally Posted by mr_pikachu
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