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

[Gavin Luper]

Who says you can't do something useful with half a day?

Ta-da! Chapter's finished! Dramatic, action-packed, thrilling, and chunkier than I expected, but hey, length is never a bad thing! I hope everyone enjoys this one - it's kind of part of the finale sequence of Book Two, which is really exciting for me to do, because Book One didn't have a proper finale, just a sudden conclusion that was neither climactic nor conclusive in any way, nor did it have much of an indication of what was going on. Well, this one does/will. The book's not over yet, but the end is in sight - it's very close now.

This chapter was enthralling for me to read and very, very enjoyable to write.

So, here it is! Cheers!

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Chapter 56 – The First Battle.


‘ Fourteen-year-old renegade fights off criminal siege.’

Lisa chuckled mildly to herself as she walked down Mount Fairfax. There was nothing to laugh at but the absurdity of the situation. Here she was: A pokémon trainer, a daughter, a member of the under-15’s Emeralds Basketball Team – charging down a mountain en route to neutralise an evil organisation’s attack on a mountain.

Her smile faded as she brought herself back to the present. There was no time for reflection – that, assuming they all survived the siege, would come later.

Two hours had passed now; two silent, resolved, steeled hours. Lisa had not spoken to Gavin or Professor Oak since they left Morty behind. All three of them, even the old Professor, seemed to have accepted their lot; at least, Lisa knew she had; the Union’s impact on her life was not going to cease if she ran away or hid – it was time to begin fighting.

Behind her, Professor Oak suddenly began to hum – at least, it seemed sudden; the noise seemed to creep up on Lisa, so that she hadn’t even noticed it begin. Before long it was all that she could hear, and Lisa didn’t want their movements on the mountain to be too obvious.

Finally, she said, “ Professor, what are you doing?”

He stopped abruptly and glanced at her with wide eyes. “ I’m humming,” he said, as though it was perfectly normal. Lisa’s raised eyebrow apparently suggested otherwise to him. He coughed. “ I find it soothing. It relaxes me. Helps me think more clearly in difficult situations.”

Lisa recalled how he had been humming when he was dragged into the cave a few hours ago. The concept sounded ridiculous, however, trying to be diplomatic, she said, “ I see … but we need to be discreet from now on.”

Gavin nodded nearby. Professor Oak conceded. “ Very well, I will stop,” he said, quite cheerfully, “ I understand it is not the time now.”

He placed a hand on the Stunner slung over his shoulder, just as Lisa and Gavin had, on guard, ready to fight.

And the time to do that came sooner than expected.

It was ten minutes past three a.m., when they were only a little over half way down the mountain, that Lisa heard the sudden sounds of battle. The foliage on the side of the descending track was thick, but Lisa knew that the sounds were coming from somewhere to their immediate left. She spun on her heel; Gavin and Professor Oak both cocked their heads intently, listening for another indication of battle – and it came; a massive, ear-splitting crack rent the air.

A woman shrieked as another gunshot was fired nearby.

Lisa caught Gavin’s eyes and knew that he was as petrified as she was; nonetheless, they simultaneously took hold of the Stunners in their arms and pushed roughly into the thick underbrush.

Lisa’s skin was covered in goosebumps as she ploughed through the scrub, the others following her; apparently she was now leading the charge. She gulped and pushed on. Sticks cracked under her shoes and leaves scraped at her arms and face, but she ignored the mild pain. The darkness of the night prevented her from seeing anything very far ahead, but she knew they were getting closer.

People were screaming now and the sounds of fights – pokémon and human – were quite close by. Lisa swept aside the branches of a Screen Tree and stopped short in sudden shock. She had expected to see more bush, but there was nothing: she had stepped blindly into a vast rocky clearing, upon which a chaotic battle was raging. A hundred shadowy figures were duelling fiercely; bodies were strewn across the ground. A fire raged on the far side of the clearing. A metre in front of Lisa, a tall man wearing black had a screaming woman pinned to the ground, apparently unaware that three people had just burst into the clearing.

Lisa heard Oak sigh softly as she opened fire, pulling the trigger of the Stun Gun; a bolt of green light issued from it, striking the back of the man. He crumpled at once. Lisa lunged to help the woman, but she was on her feet already, looking somewhat bewildered as she whipped out a pistol and charged further into the melée that filled the huge plateau.

Quite forgetting to pray or hope for luck, Lisa followed the woman’s lead, levelling the Stunner and charging blindly into the crowd of duellers. She immediately lost track of Gavin and Professor Oak – in the dark, it was only possible to see shadows, silhouettes of people.

“ Help me! Help! Somebody help!”

A man was begging for mercy nearby; Lisa barely heard his pleading voice over the mayhem around her. Ducking around a man wearing a Police Badge, and dodging a stray Vine Whip purely by luck, Lisa weaved through the throng.

“ Please! Someone help me!”

“ I’m coming!” Lisa bellowed. “ Where are you?”

There was no response. Lisa took a tentative step forward before something heavy struck her head. Splitting pain blinded her vision; she spun on the spot and fell to the ground, losing her balance. Dirt went up her nose, and once again it began to bleed. She crawled senselessly, grabbing the ground for some kind of direction. Someone kicked her in the side, winding her; she collapsed to the ground again, her lungs clutching for air.

“ GET – OUT – OF – MY – WAY!” A completely unfamiliar voice shouted; Lisa dimly registered it. There was a muffled cry and a thump. A moment later, someone grabbed Lisa’s hands and hauled her roughly to her feet. Blood dripped into Lisa’s mouth as she opened her eyes; through the silver stars that clouded her vision, she managed to identify a rugged male face.

“ Where the hell did you come from?” He asked gruffly. A beam of black light whizzed past his head; he noticed it but didn’t even flinch. “ Listen, girl, get out of here – this isn’t safe!” And without another word, he let go of her arms and plunged back into the darkness.

Lisa wiped her nose on her sleeve and tried to regain her bearings. Looking up, she could see a high rock wall that framed the plateau, but otherwise, there nothing to indicate her position.

“ HELP ME – PLEASE – ANYBODY – ”

The panicked voice was painfully close now; it was coming from directly in front of Lisa. This time, however, Lisa heard another man’s voice, deeper and almost inaudible; it was demanding something. Tensing herself, Lisa pushed past a Police Officer locked in a struggle with a Union Agent dressed in the old Team Rocket Uniform. Her veins pulsed. Any second now and she would find the person pleading for help –

“ ANYBODY – HELP – AAAAAGH!”

The man let out a bloodcurdling scream, right beside Lisa. She turned her head a fraction too late; a solid, shadowy figure was bending over a writhing body. As Lisa levelled the Stunner her eyes fell on a small creature perched behind the large figure: a Murkrow was on guard. It had fired a jet of black energy before Lisa had even pulled the trigger. The Stunner recoiled and Lisa lost her grip on it; it went spinning away into the darkness.

Lisa whipped the Buzzball out of her pocket. “ ELECTRI –” she began, but the command caught in her throat; the dark figure had moved on from the man who had been crying for help, and with him, the Murkrow had used a Faint Attack and disappeared from sight.

Nervous about what she was about to see, Lisa stepped forward and bent over the now still body of the man. She recoiled in horror. He had two deep gashes down either cheek; dark blood covered his face. His pupils were not visible: his eyes had rolled back in terror, leaving the whites gruesomely exposed. Lisa clutched the man’s flannelette shirt in frustration. ‘If only I could have got here sooner,’ she thought weakly. But even so, she realised it would have been of little use – the Murkrow would still have staved her off, whether she had reached the man earlier or not.

“ LOOK OUT!” someone screamed.

Lisa whirled around, only to be blown to the ground by a blast of hot air; a hundred metres away, something had just exploded in a massive fireball, illuminating the entire plateau for a few seconds; dozens of people were sent flying into the air. Lisa felt her head slam into the ground for what felt like the umpteenth time that night. The pain this time was sharp, but fleeting; it felt like her skull had already taken all the punishment it could. As the fireball disappeared, Lisa noticed a deep laceration across the chest of the man she lay beside. A silver necklace was strewn over the bloody fissure. It looked like someone had ripped something from the end of the chain, leaving it broken. Lisa touched the man’s forehead and ran a hand over his eyelids, closing them as gently as she could. She felt it was the least she could do.

She stood up, now grasping Vulpix’s pokéball in the absence of her Stunner. The chaos around her was still raging; if anything, it had intensified since the explosion. Lisa had never known or imagined mayhem like this: even with the light from the fire, it was too dark to see who was fighting whom. There were at least a hundred people on the plateau, fighting a wild, unruly battle. People were swiping wildly at anyone around them. Pokémon stumbled in the blackness, many of them bleeding. Lisa caught sight of a Charmander crawling along the ground weakly, its eyes streaming with tears of terror.

She reached out a hand to help the tiny creature, but there was a loud war cry beside her. A woman with platinum-blonde hair leapt out before Lisa, eyes ablaze.

“ I knew you’d escape,” she spat venomously; Lisa recognised her as Veronica, the woman they had encountered the night they freed Marina. “ I told them you were too resourceful, but they didn’t believe me –” Without warning, she lunged at Lisa in fury. Lisa tried to throw the pokéball in her hand, but Veronica had a hold of her arm; she dropped the ball.

There was a flash of light as Veronica’s nails dug into Lisa’s arm. Lisa screamed involuntarily; her arm burned with pain. With a shriek she raised her free hand and managed to hit Veronica between the eyes; at the same moment, Veronica jerked suddenly, her body rigid. She released Lisa’s arm, and Lisa took the opportunity to wind up her good arm and deliver a punch to Veronica’s nose. With a loud cry of pain, the blonde woman keeled over, her eyes streaming.

Lisa glanced down at the ground to see Vulpix grinning and baring his teeth: he had clamped sharply onto Veronica’s leg, which was what had caused her to collapse.

“ Thanks, Vulpix,” Lisa said quickly. “ Come with me. And stay close,” she added sharply, remembering the lost Charmander she had just seen, which had now disappeared from view.

Vulpix on her tail, Lisa weaved through the duellers. The image of the dead man was still clouding her mind; it was as though it had been permanently imprinted on her memory.

In the shadows to Lisa’s right, somebody was bellowing loudly at their foe: “ Take – that – you – bloody – Mexican!”

Lisa caught the man’s face in the faint glow of the firelight – it was the man who had helped her up earlier. To Lisa’s amazement, he held what must have been some kind of Buzzball in his hand, though it was black; at each word, a burst of purple light speared the air, aimed at the man’s opponent. Lisa squinted her eyes and realised, with an unwelcome jolt, that the opponent was none other than Anthony, the Hispanic-looking man she had Stunned more than two hours ago. He had an Eevee at his feet, which was maintaining a translucent brown shield around its trainer – a strong Reflect; the jets of purple light were not penetrating it.

“ Vulpix, Flamethrower!” Lisa yelled.

Apparently neither Anthony nor the other man heard her in the ruckus – at least, Lisa assumed as much based on the total shock on their faces as a stream of vermilion flames burst forth into the battlefield, consuming Eevee at once. A tinkling sound indicated that the Reflect had finally shattered.

To Lisa’s surprise, the man she had helped didn’t even turn around to see where the flamethrower had come from, nor did he break for a moment in his attack on Anthony. He held the black orb before him and fired off three purple jets of light. Unprotected, Anthony was exposed, taking all three blasts of energy to the chest. He crumpled as though he was made of paper.

The man holding the black orb snorted. “ Well … who knew?” Now assured that the battle was over, he turned around to see Lisa standing beside Vulpix. “ Thanks, chick,” he said gruffly. Then he raised an eyebrow. “ Aren’t you the girl I helped before?”

Lisa nodded.

He deigned a kind of half-smile, as though he was suitably impressed with her. “ Good job,” he said. “ Now seriously, get going, you can’t keep hanging around here – ”

“ I’m not going anywhere,” Lisa said defiantly, looking the man straight in the eye. “ I’m fighting the Union.”

He held her gaze for ten seconds, then, still not looking away, said, “ You’ve got character.” A genuine smile crossed his rugged face. “ That’s rare these days.”

Lisa smiled uncomfortably. “ I just want to know – what’s going on here?”

He shrugged. “ Bad guys are trying to siege the mountain for some reason. So we’re stopping them. That’s about it.”

“ Are you with the police?” Lisa asked him, as there were loud gunshots amongst the roar of the nearby inferno and the ongoing battle.

“ Are you kidding? The bloody cops are useless.” A few metres away, a Growlithe went soaring through the air, barking wildly and angrily as it did so. The man stopped short. “ Oh **** – I think that’s mine –” He made to leave.

“ Wait,” Lisa said, “ What’s that thing in your hand?” She gestured to the black orb that she assumed was some kind of modified Buzzball.

He shrugged again. “ Haven’t the foggiest. Just picked it up off the ground a minute ago – ” The Growlithe barked in pain somewhere in the distance. “ Better go –” And with that, he ran off.

Lisa stood there alone for a second. The battle was still raging around her, and although there didn’t seem to be quite as many battlers as there were when they first entered the clearing, chaos still reigned. People were still fighting and screaming. Checking that Vulpix was still at her feet, Lisa began to search for another Union agent to take down.

She had taken maybe three steps when there was a loud yell from across the plateau: “ CHARGE!” At once, the cry was taken up by dozens of others, and suddenly the crowd of people and pokémon in the clearing were rushing towards the far side of the area like water being sucked down a drain. Lisa followed with the crowd, vaguely aware that right beside her was a Union agent, running alongside her as if an ally. She resisted the urge to hit him and let herself be carried by the flow of people –

“ Ouch!”

Her foot caught something and she tripped; accustomed to falling over by now, she put her other foot out deftly, breaking her fall, but it jarred painfully on the dirt. She winced but hobbled onwards, attaining incidental blows to the head from other people as they passed in a rush.

Lisa went on following them. They were leaving the plateau in droves, eagerly descending into a patch of thick foliage, Lisa didn’t know why. She jogged along, panting heavily, wedged between a Union agent and a galloping Ponyta.

A branch scratched her face as she plunged downwards, but it was the least of Lisa’s injuries. Up ahead, the sounds of battle had suddenly recommenced. Sure enough, a second later, the foliage yielded to another rocky plateau, this one quite a lot bigger than the last. Lisa spilled out into the clearing, only to discover that Vulpix had disappeared.

“ VULPIX!” Lisa bellowed in panic; she had seen what the Union did to stray pokémon – the image of the flying Growlithe was still in her mind.

As if in response to her yell, the Union agent beside her, a man, swung his fist at her. Surprising herself, Lisa threw up her arm and deftly blocked the punch, but she was too weak to hold the man off. He pushed her aside and ran off to join the melée further down.

Now that they had all made the descent down the mountain slightly (Lisa still didn’t know why), there was no fire raging to shed light on the area, other than the blasts of light from Stun Guns and pistols and pokémon attacks. Lisa suddenly noticed a faint glow coming from her left and spun to see the Ponyta pawing the ground anxiously. She sighed. It seemed that almost every pokémon had been abandoned or lost in the battle.

An idea suddenly struck her. She approached the Ponyta gently, patting its beautiful off-white coat. If she could just get it on side, perhaps it could help her.

Lisa was about to put a leg over the flame-horse, but she never made it. A voice rent the air behind her, overpowering the noise of the battle:

“ FREEZE!” The person screamed, then, before Lisa had time to register or to even turn around, there was a loud gunshot – and a bullet drove its way into her back.

Unlike the stories Lisa had heard in her life of people who claimed not to notice they had been shot, she felt the pain at once. It was like a hot poker piercing her skin, burning her flesh. The pain came in an almighty tidal wave, flooding Lisa’s senses. The realisation of what had happened was just as terrifying. Lisa’s head swam. She fell to the ground, her breath shallow, the knowledge worse than the pain: I’m going to die.

Her vision was fading. All she could hear was a pounding in her ears. A massive, heavily-built man suddenly appeared above her, glaring at her, watching her writhe in pain with some kind of sick hunger in his eyes. He raised a boot-clad foot and placed it on her neck, pausing a moment before pressing down, crushing Lisa’s airways.

Just do it, Lisa thought, gasping for breath and finding none. The pain was infinite; it was all-encompassing. The wound in her back burned. Her trachea was collapsing. She lost her vision and her hearing; the world was pain. Kill me, Lisa begged him, just make it all end.

And then it did. Everything disappeared. The pain. The terror. There was only blackness. Lisa waited for death to strike her – but nothing happened. Then, very suddenly, the pressure on her neck lifted. Her airways opened and oxygen seeped in. The pain came flooding back in another wave. The aches and pains of battling returned. The bullet wound sizzled. Death, if it had been approaching, had been frightened off by someone.

Light and sound returned abruptly; still immobile on her back, Lisa heard a boy’s voice scream, “ ANOTHER THUNDERBOLT!” A bright burst of electricity flashed. The ground shook slightly.

Then the boy’s voice came again, “ Oh my God, it’s Lisa.”

Still gasping for a proper lungful of air, Lisa spoke with difficulty. “ G – av – ”

“ It’s Daniel,” said the voice in a panic. “ Are you alright? Can you breathe?”

A girl’s voice nearby gasped. “ Oh my God, it’s that girl – is she OK?”

Lisa tried to say “ I’m fine”, but the fact that she couldn’t seemed to prove her wrong. Daniel’s voice and another continued rattling on for another minute, during which Lisa very gradually began to find her breath, though each breath felt like needles stabbing her throat. Lisa began to panic again, her heart racing. She lost control of her breathing; it became impossible to grasp more precious air when she was panting so heavily from that pain.

Daniel started. He turned to the other girl who had travelled with him. “ Is she … humming?”

The brown-skinned girl nodded, her eyes wide.

Lisa hummed for as long as she could, then took a sharp, painful breath and kept going. She hummed the same note – there was no tune – she was simply forcing air past her vocal chords as best she could. Each breath she took became a little less painful, a little less difficult. She took in lungfuls of air and kept humming. Her heart slowed down. She was still in a great deal of pain, but her mind was clearing. She felt as though her energy was converging, meeting at a focal point around her forehead. The screams and blasts around her seemed to fade away ever so slightly.

She opened her eyes and stopped humming.

“ You’re OK, Lisa!” Daniel’s petrified face swam into view.

Lisa opened her eyes fully, pain still coursing through her body; the wound in her back scorched her with pain.

“ Daniel, listen, I’ve been shot,” Lisa said as slowly and clearly as she could.

He blanched. “ Oh my God, where?”

Mustering all her energy, Lisa rolled herself over slightly, leaving the right side of her back visible for Daniel. He squinted and then gaped, his face a mask of utter horror.

“ Is it bad?” Lisa asked him seriously.

“ I don’t know,” Daniel spluttered back. “ There’s a lot of blood, some of it’s dried I think, or maybe that’s dirt, I don’t know …”

“ It’s too high up to hit your lungs,” chipped in the girl, his companion. “ It’s probably more of a flesh wound, I’d say.”

Her methodical approach was a pleasant surprise to Lisa. She twisted around awkwardly and tried to face the girl, whose name she still didn’t know. “ Are their any first-aid people – paramedics – still around? They had some posted on the mountain for the Contest before …”

As she rolled back onto her back, Lisa saw Daniel and his friend exchange a very significant glance.

“ Lisa,” Daniel said, “ don’t you know what’s happened?”

His face was pale.

“ What?” Lisa said.

“ They rounded up everyone hours ago. The contestants, the helpers, the paramedics, Paddy – whoever got in their way. Only the people who were leading in the race didn’t get snared … until they got to the top. We teamed up with another team, Mike and Reggie, but they disappeared. When we got to the top some woman – we thought she was a helper at first – grabbed Nova’s arm and wouldn’t let us go any further, she told us the race had been cancelled and that we had to go with her downhill – but we were already pretty suspicious by then – and she didn’t count on Nova knowing karate.” The brown-skinned girl beside Daniel winked at Lisa. “ She pulled out a gun – a rifle – and tried to shoot at us, but she missed … we took off, we got away from her –” There was a note of pride and exhilaration in his voice.

“ We made our way down the mountain,” Nova continued, “ and we came across a few contestants we recognised, tied up in some bushes. We let them free – and that’s when we realised what had been happening …” She trailed off, jumping as a Sludge Bomb exploded on a nearby tree.

“ We think it’s Team Rocket,” Daniel said in a rush. “ I know that sounds stupid, because they’ve disbanded – but we saw some people wearing the uniform.”

Nova nodded vehemently.

Lisa paused, trying to think up a way to agree casually with them, but with a bullet in her back she hardly felt like it was the time for cover stories. “ They didn’t disband,” Lisa said simply. “ They reformed. They’re part of an organisation called the Union. They’re here tonight, attacking the mountain …”

Their reaction was predictable.

“ How – how do you know that?” Daniel asked, bewildered.

Lisa winced. “ I just do. I’ll tell you later, OK?”

Nova, however, seemed to be deep in thought. “ Why are they attacking the mountain?”

Lisa sighed; if there was any one question that had puzzled her more than anything that night, it was that. Why? Of all places, why were the Union attacking a mountain? “ I don’t have a clue.”

She surveyed the vast plateau. The fighting continued, as intense as ever, but there were far fewer fighters now and quite a number of shadowy bodies strewn across the ground – many of them, Lisa feared, more than just unconscious.

The pain built up again as she watched the rest of the battle helplessly, like some kind of powerless spectator. Nova and Daniel did their best to protect her, dragging her behind a few bushes so that she was not visible from the plateau, although, in the darkness, it was doubtful that anyone would have seen her anyway, it was so dark. Nova tore the sleeve of her jumper and held it to Lisa’s bullet wound, trying to stem the flow of blood. Frustrated, Lisa watched through the leaves of the bushes. It was impossible to tell from the silhouettes which side was who, but it was clear now that, after the long battle, one of the sides had gained a clear upper hand.

Bursts of fire and electricity and beams of all colours exploded throughout the plateau as the losing team attempted to make a final stand, but they were defeated. It was half a dozen people onto at least ten. Lisa watched the shadows dropping to the ground, Nova and Daniel by her side. She hoped against hope that the triumphant team contained Gavin, Professor Oak, Derek and the man who had helped Lisa. It took all her energy not to leap up and help them fight, but she knew she was in no condition to walk, let alone battle. Restless, she looked on as the fight raged. After an agonising few minutes, Lisa heard the terrified scream of defeat as the final member of the losing team collapse to the ground in a flurry of green light from two Stunners. She tensed herself. Please … please …

A triumphant cheer went up from the remaining people and pokémon in the clearing. Lisa saw one or two of the silhouettes hugging each other; they clearly knew one another. A few of them were still guarded.

And then Lisa heard Gavin’s voice: “ Yes!”

Relief coursed through her like an electric current. Gavin’s team had won! Sure enough, she listened to the whooping and cheering of the people still standing and picked up Derek’s voice and – she was sure of it – the voice of the man with a Growlithe. But she heard nothing from Professor Oak.

“ They won!” Lisa grinned, looking from Nova to Daniel in excitement. They had actually defeated the Union’s agents! “ Go meet them!” Lisa urged. “ Go tell them we’re here!”

After everything that had happened that night, Lisa had steeled herself for the inevitable – that they were going to be defeated, that the Union was going to triumph, that she would die fighting them. But she had survived it all. It was all over.

She peered through the foliage, watching happily as Daniel and Nova burst forth from the hiding place that was the bushes and sprinted across the clearing. One or two of the people held up weapons and called their pokémon to attention, but Lisa heard Gavin’s voice:

“ It’s OK, they’re on our side – they were contestants –”

Daniel and Nova were welcomed excitedly into the fold of the victorious team, the team that had defeated the Union. Over the ruckus, Lisa thought she heard Gavin’s voice, suddenly anxious. Had he realised she was missing? Did he know she was alright?

‘ He’ll have to wait,’ Lisa thought, feeling a renewed surge of pain from the bullet wound in her back. There was no way she could walk all the way into the clearing in her condition.

She reclined slightly, perching herself against a strong branch for support, so that she could sit up without expending her energy. She contented herself with gazing, in a surreal haze, over the dozen weary revellers in the middle of the plateau, clustered at the base of the sheer rock wall that rose above them. Lisa smiled softly. It was so surreal – they had survived, they had made it –

And then she froze.

Twenty metres above the group of people, something had caught her eye. She glanced up to the top of the rock wall and gaped in horror. Even in the weak moonlight, she could see the shadows. There was one person at the front, holding something in their hands that was giving off a faint glow. Behind that person, there was a cluster of no less than a dozen people, all perched on the clifftop, as if waiting for something …

Lisa’s heart thudded heavily. She returned her gaze to Gavin, Daniel and the others – they were still rejoicing, unaware of anything around them. Now that she was on alert, Lisa noticed more shadows on their level, multiple shadows – there must have been at least another hundred again, all lurking silently in the darkness, hiding in the foliage that surrounded the clearing. The hair on the back of her neck prickled. It was the situation at the summit all over again … the Union had them surrounded.

And they didn’t know it.

The pain nearly crippled her as she hauled herself directly into a standing position. Her spine seemed to crumble at the very implication of motion, but this was no time for weakness, Lisa knew. She shook off the shooting pains throughout her torso and took a very painful step forward. And another. She glanced upwards. The cluster of Union agents atop the cliff wall were moving towards the edge – they were going to throw something down, or drop it onto the unsuspecting people below.

Lisa clutched Aipom’s pokéball; he was the only pokémon she had left. She hesitated – opening his pokéball too early would cause a flash of light that would attain the interest of the Union far too quickly. She had to act fast. Holding the red-and-white pokéball to her lips, Lisa whispered, wincing with the burning pains of her flesh grinding against the bullet, “ Aipom, you have to do what I say, alright? As soon as I throw your pokéball, you have to attack the people on top the cliff, OK?” There was no response; she had to trust that Aipom had somehow heard her and would obey.

Stumbling wildly, blood now dripping down her back, Lisa manoeuvred herself around the large bush and stepped onto the hard, rocky ground of the plateau. The shadow of the bush was still upon her; she could not yet be seen, and yet she had full view of the cliff.

Metres away, Gavin was speaking to Daniel and Nova anxiously, “ … but where is she now?”

Lisa knew she had no time remaining; the element of surprise was all she had; gritting her teeth against the intense pain, she gripped Aipom’s pokéball tightly, wound up her right arm and, with all the energy and force she could muster, hurled the ball into the open air of the plateau.

“ AIPOM! SPEED STAR ATTACK, NOW!”