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

[Gavin Luper]

Hullo readers! How are we all?

Tara: Sorry I took so long to respond. (And no, I cannot wait until we become JK Rowlings and John Marsdens ...)

Thanks for the comments on tension. Reflecting on this, I agree that this high level of tension persists in most chapters of LTL, but this is starting to take a toll on the characters, as you'll see pretty soon.

With regards to Gavin ... well, read on!

Mm, I like that point of view on my characterisation. I've always struggled with that aspect of my writing, and although I think I've improved over the years, it's still something I have to work hard to develop and build upon and make realistic. I think - I feel - that the following chapters and arcs will expand upon both Lisa and Gavin's characters in a number of ways ... Let me know what you think.

Cheers for the commentary! <3

Everyone: Okay, so four weeks have passed since I posted the last chapter, which is far too long, so here's Chapter 68!

I hope you enjoy it!

Cheers!

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Chapter 68 – The Colosseum by Night.


From beneath the luxuriant foliage of her shrub, Lisa eyed the fingernail moon with mounting disdain. Its enigma taunted her: it had been hanging there, silent and serene, for immeasurable hour upon immeasurable hour, betraying no sign that the thing humans called “midnight” was approaching – or, indeed, that it had already passed.

It was not until well after she had frantically concealed herself in the thicket of native shrubs that Lisa realised the Union had stolen her watch.

She squeezed her eyes closed in discomfort as her stomach rumbled for the thousandth time that night. She could not even remember the last proper meal she had eaten. She had amused herself for the past few hours with thoughts of a hot plate of pasta, like her grandmother used to make back in Ecruteak, or even a plain sandwich. She had long since worked the remains of the Union’s muesli bar out of her teeth in desperation.

She ran her hand along one of the thin, leafy stems that comprised the bush under which she was crouched. There were little red berries clustered at the ends of each swishy branch, enclosed by a floret of maroon leaves. She clasped the nearest floret, peeled it open, and picked half a dozen berries. Her guts growling, she stared blankly at the red berries in her palm for a long moment before inverting her hand and letting the fruits fall onto the soft red dirt below as she extricated herself from the shrub and, feeling unaccountably exhilarated, stood up. Whether it was the fear of missing the midnight rendezvous or merely hunger that made her abandon her hiding position, Lisa wasn’t sure, but she knew she couldn’t take it any longer, trapped in that tiny bush.

She scanned her environs carefully: the small, suburban park around her, replete with motionless swing sets and a shadowed playground, was devoid of any sign of life. A stream of detached fear mingled with the gnawing hunger in her guts: the Union could easily have spotted her in the town centre earlier and followed her back to the park where she hid. At the same time, though, it seemed impossible for such a danger to exist in such a quiet nook of Red Rock suburbia: across the road from the park, Lisa could see an actual white picket fence at the front of a rickety weatherboard house.

She hesitated for a moment, contemplating the plastic bag nestled beneath the bush that contained her favourite, and now torn and sodden, Ecruteak Fruitbats jumper, and realised she could not bear to leave it behind. She tied it around her waist purposefully before beginning to retrace her steps back toward the town centre. Once she started moving, the fear of Union intervention seemed to melt away. The cover of dark was welcome; the fact that it was almost a new moon emboldened Lisa all the more as she crept, first from tree trunk to tree trunk and then, as she left the park behind, from telephone pole to telephone pole. She failed to suppress a smile as she passed a house with a television programme blaring loudly from its open front window. Her lips curved once again a few blocks later as she passed a drunk middle-aged couple sitting at a table on their front patio, a couple of empty wine bottles resting on the concrete as they gossipped loudly.

“That’s what I said, love, I told her not to keep it. She’s only twenty, for God’s sakes, she’s got her whole life ahead of her!” nattered the plump woman as Lisa passed on the opposite side of the street, feigning a casual night-time stroll instead of her earlier creeping, which she realised, in hindsight, must have looked highly suspicious.

“She’ll come around, love,” soothed the woman’s moustached husband, helping himself to a new bottle of wine. “Refill?”

There were people in the world whose lives did not revolve around the Union. Lisa found herself morbidly fixated on the thought as she moved further toward the darkened town centre. As sordid as the couple’s discussion was, it was gloriously normal.

Presently, she reached the street immediately parallel to the island’s cobbled main street. She took cover under a broad-leafed palm and tried to scope out her surrounds. The fact that she had passed no fellow pedestrians on her walk, nor any cars, seemed to suggest that it was indeed quite late in the evening, but it still seemed like a foolish idea to walk boldly down the main street. If the Union was indeed searching for her, walking past the pokémon centre would be tantamount to handing herself in. She gazed over the top of the centre’s thatched roof at the enormous, shadowed form of the Water Colosseum that presided over the town hub. It was unavoidable: she would have to cross the mall to make contact with the Guard.

Patting the lump of the Buzzball in her pocket and double-checking the silver poképort around her neck, she forced herself to walk at a steady pace from the palm tree to the awning of a fruit and vegetable store across the road. As she approached the shop front, the sounds of distant calypso music jagged her ears: the nearby pokémon centre was still alive with visitors. Abruptly, the terror of being caught by the Union washed over Lisa, an awesome thrill of adrenaline and panic breaking her skin into gooseflesh; woozy, she gripped onto an empty wooden crate to steady herself. All at once, it seemed impossibly stupid to be walking anywhere near the pokémon centre – surely the first place the Union would go to look for her.

Trembling, she looked back at the palm tree, and the winding street beyond it that led back to the silence and security of the residential area. Something awful crawled over her skin, more unpleasant than goosebumps. It was cowardice, and for the first time in her life it seemed like a better choice than courage.

Loathing herself, Lisa breathed in deeply and took a step toward the palm tree from whence she had just come – and at that exact moment, a pair of headlights shone directly on the tree’s trunk.

Such electricity had never coursed through Lisa before in her life. Retracting her foot back into the darkness offered by the awning, she spun round in panic to see a white van, perhaps a hundred metres off, trundling slowly in her direction.

When she relived the moment ten minutes later, Lisa felt her throat tighten in terror at her recklessness, but in the moment, fear dictated her actions; and fear dictated that the risk of being caught by Union members in that van was circumstantially greater than that of being caught by possibly non-existent Union members in the mall. Lisa bolted: pelting away from the awning of the grocery store, she followed the red brick wall of the next shop as it curved around into a narrow alleyway that led directly to the main street. She did not even attempt subtlety, her sneakers clapping loudly on the cobblestones and her arms flailing around her as she fled the oncoming van; as she approached the mall, the dull throb of the van’s engine was replaced by the cacophonous calypso music pumping from the pokémon centre – which, turning the corner, she realised was only twenty metres away.

No longer in the van’s line of sight, Lisa allowed herself a brief pause, leaning against a vermilion letter box as she caught her breath. She scanned the main street in both directions: there were no Union patrols, no nearby shouts of recognition. To the west end of the mall, the bamboo pokémon centre was illuminated by multicoloured party lights, and the raucous singing and laughter of a veritable crowd emanated from the enormous open windows over the chaotic calypso drums. There were three or four figures loitering on the front steps, cigarettes or joints aglow in the dark of the street, and Lisa knew they were looking right at her. Adrenaline still flowing, she about-faced and sprinted east along the open-air mall, the dark shape of the colosseum now pressing in from above.

She racked her brains for memories of the Whirlpool Cup tournament back in November. The trainer’s entrance had been accessible through a promenade that ran off the mall – but where? Lisa scanned the shopfronts as she ran down the street: a patisserie … a pharmacy … a cloistered-off bookshop … Aha! Her eyes fell on the familiar art nouveau signwork of a corner florist’s: Millie’s Flowers and Gifts. Recollections falling into place, Lisa veered off the main street and down the cobbled, tree-lined promenade which wound from the florist’s shop, through a sparse, manicured public garden, right up to the base of the imposing structure of the colosseum.

It wasn’t until she was shrouded in the darkness of the colosseum’s broad, high-ceilinged terrace that Lisa felt the full weight of what she had just done, but even self-reproach couldn’t fight the adrenaline buzz still playing through her nervous system. Nonetheless, she sharpened her sense of purpose and walked briskly around the terrace, which hugged the entire perimeter of the colosseum, scanning the white marble walls closely. She only had to walk fifteen metres before the dull aqua glow of a digital clock came into, fixed above a mesh-enclosed desk that said ‘Enquiries’.

Lisa exhaled heavily. The clock’s luminescent letters and numerals read:

SUN
30.03.03
09:47 PM

Relieved, Lisa strode back along the terrace until she found the trainer’s entrance: a high, rectangular roller-shutter that led to the trainer’s lounge, pre-battle facilities and the battleground itself. There were several small nooks hewn into the marble mouth of the entrance, well out of sight of anyone who might survey the building from a distance. Lisa clambered into one such cranny, sitting herself down quite snugly between two ivory-coloured pillars, and, waiting for her heart to stop hammering, tried to distract herself from the thought of Union agents ambushing her with the memories of Jack the sailor, Anna, Marina and Gavin, and the good times they had had during the Whirlpool Cup.

*

The bang came from nowhere. How she could have fallen asleep, Lisa didn’t know – nor for how long – but her eyes, flying open in shock, immediately fell on a black-clothed figure barely two metres in front of her, crouched at the base of the roller shutter.

She must have made some kind of noise upon waking, because the figure turned his head sharply in her direction; but her fear provoked her battle instinct: she flew into action, wrestling the Buzzball out of the pocket of her jeans and crying hoarsely, “Electrify!”

The male figure before her swore and held his hands out as if to protect him from the attack; the crackling streamer of electricity that exploded from the red Buzzball forked in two, each fork seizing one of the attacker’s arms. He shook for a second before the electric charge broke, and a limp body lay at the foot of the roller shutter.

There was a second of anticlimactic silence. Then, using her arms as levers, Lisa propelled herself from her nook and swung around to face the agent’s partner: aside from Lucas, the agent who had tracked her from Goldenrod, she had never known Union members to operate alone. However, as she scanned the dark terrace, and then the gardens, she was unable to find the second agent. Surely he or she wouldn’t have fled?

“Uuuurgh…”

Lisa spun on the ball of her foot: the man was already stirring. She glanced at the Buzzball, incredulous. She had wondered if it was her own imagination that Joseph Sterling had barely been effected by the electric shock in the helicopter, but it seemed that the Buzzball had, again, only subdued its victim for only five or ten seconds. Nervous, she touched her thumb and forefinger to the silver pendant around her neck and whispered, “Revelum, Altaria.”

A burst of golden radiance moulded itself into the sleek, cobalt-blue form of Altaria. Lisa swiftly appraised the terrace once more – it was still deserted – before spinning back to face the agent, who was now lifting his head.

“Freeze!” she barked. “Don’t move – or I’ll attack again!”

The agent regarded her with a lopsided smirk and said, in a heavily slurred voice, “Who the fuck are you?”

Lisa recoiled. She recognised the young man; he was the one who had pointed her in the right direction at the pokémon centre earlier that afternoon.

He looked even more wretched now than he had then, his peroxide blond hair visibly matted and his eyes red and sore-looking. His black T-shirt was emblazoned with violent splashes of colour and the name of a well-known punk band.

“Stands to reason,” Lisa spat. “I should’ve known you were with the Union, bumping into me like that today. What’d you do, follow me all the way to the park and back?”

The young man – who didn’t look much older than her – rubbed his eyes with his knuckles and surveyed her again, his bloodshot eyes scanning the length of her body, before he burst into a spate of nervous giggling.

“And I thought I got fucked up tonight … What the hell’ve you been smokin’?”
Lisa blinked.

“Nothing…”

The young man burst into a fit of giggles again and, looking away from Lisa, returned to fiddling with a latch at the base of the roller-shutter, completely indifferent.

Altaria craned its head at Lisa, apparently in confusion. Lisa returned the look.

“I don’t know what you’re playing at,” she said, trying not to sound unnerved as the youth turned a key in the latch and removed the padlock. “But you’re not to make another move – I mean it – stop whatever you’re doing …”

Turning her head, Lisa inspected the terrace and gardens once again – if the Union were expecting her to let her guard down, this would be the perfect time for them to launch an attack – but still, the grounds were entirely deserted.

The teenager rose to his feet, pulling the roller shutter up with a tremendous clatter which echoed out into the night.

He turned to face Lisa squarely. “Wanna come in? I’ve got beer.”

She blinked incredulously again.

“I don’t know what you’re doing, but you need to stop now,” she spluttered again, breaking eye contact with the young man to rapidly scan the grounds for a third time, but there was still no sign of an ambush.

The teenager raised a black eyebrow toward his platinum-blond hairline.

“I got a friend who gets real paranoid when she’s been smokin’ shit,” he said. “It’s cool. Just chill out – and join me inside when you’re on the comedown, orright?”

And, delivering a nonchalant wink, he strode baldly beneath the roller shutter and into the dark trainer’s lounge beyond, leaving Lisa, gaping, in his wake.

*

Beneath the same fingernail moon, on the rocky east shore of Cianwood Island, a hooded figure stood at the haphazardly-hewn door of an old seaside hut and knocked three times.

After five minutes, there was no response. He had second and third-guessed himself: could his knock be heard over the roar of the night trade winds and the nearby hiss of breakers slamming into the shore?

Shivering beneath his heavy grey jumper, he raised his hand to knock again; and at that moment, he saw, through the grubby window, a flare of green light within the hut, and heard, within the bounds of his own head, a raspy voice speak:

//Knocking is quite an insult to me, you know, boy.//

The hooded figure leapt back from the door, as if forewarned; a second later, it burst open, swinging back on its hinges and slamming against the wall.

“I’m sorry –” began the hooded figure.

//You have sought me so assiduously for so long, and at the final obstacle, you bother with a pleasantry such as knocking on my door? I am disappointed. You shouldn’t think for a second that you would have been able to find me if I did not wish you to.//

The luminescent green aura emanating from within the hut dulled before changing to a deep violet. From the doorway, the hooded figure could see a gnarled hand beckon him to enter.

//Come in, then, and find out everything you ever wanted to know about yourself...//

Heart pounding, Gavin Luper removed his hood and entered the hut.

*

Lisa’s back was pressed firmly against a marble pillar, her honey-brown eyes flicking routinely from side-to-side, sweeping the Colosseum’s Romanesque colonnade.

“It’s too freaky,” Lisa muttered under her breath to Altaria, who was perched obediently at her feet, still expecting some kind of confrontation. “An innocent bystander randomly showing up in the place where I’m supposed to meet the Guard?” She gritted her teeth. “I don’t think so.”

But the facts didn’t register with her paranoia. What kind of Union agent wouldn’t recognise her, and would actually walk away from an encounter with her? Moreover, how many Union agents looked as though they were seventeen years old?

There was a quiet clink from somewhere nearby. Lisa started; a moment later, she saw a bottle cap roll out from the trainer’s entrance, followed presently by the blond teenager, who seemed to have stuck his face under a tap and who now had two brown bottles of beer dangling from each hand.

“Want one?”

“No.”

The teenager shrugged indifferently and leaned against the pillar nearest him.

“Not a beer girl, then?”

“No,” said Lisa. “I’m also fifteen.”

The teenager cough-laughed and took a swig from his stubby.

“Maybe I got you pegged wrong,” he mumbled. “You’ll get high but you’re too much of a princess to drink beer?”

“High?” Lisa exclaimed. “I don’t do that – what made you think that?”

He regarded her at length, but said nothing at all and took another swig of beer, leaving Lisa’s question to hang limply in the air.

“Look – what are you playing at?” Lisa said finally, her nerves getting the better of her. “What are you up to hanging around here at this time of night?”

The teenager guffawed.

“I could ask you the same question!” he scoffed. “Actually, I think I’ve got more of a right to be here than you do!” He reached into his pocket and produced a small set of keys, which he swung around on his index finger casually. “I work here part-time and I’ve got the morning shift. Sometimes I crash here if I’ve had a big night, if that’s okay with you.” He pocketed the keys and took up his bottle once more. “So, you gonna give me an excuse not to call the cops on you?”

They’re corrupt and out to get me.

“I’m not doing anything illegal …” Lisa said quickly.

“I’m pretty sure you attacked me,” said the teenager calmly, though he seemed supremely unfazed by this fact.

“I thought you were going to attack me. It was self-defence.”

“Self-defence my arse!” he cried. “I wasn’t anywhere near you!”

Lisa sighed heavily, still pressing her back firmly against the pillar. There was nothing more comforting than feeling something solid against her back when she was unnerved.

“You don’t know what I’ve been though,” she said eventually, a wry bitterness creeping into her voice, partly against her will. “People don’t need to be close to you to attack you, you know. Have you heard of guns?”

To her surprise, the blond teenager simply chuckled at her pronouncement.

“Has anyone ever called you a drama queen?” he asked. “Because you know, if they did, they’d be totally off-base.”

He dissolved into a fit of guffaws.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lisa snarled, prickling.

He shrugged. “If you think there’s anyone out there who wants to shoot you, I’d say you’ve been paying too much attention to the mainstream media,” he said, his words slightly slurred. “The way they talk on the news, Jesus Christ! You’d think the Union were walking around the streets gunning little kids down on their way to school.”

Lisa clenched her teeth.

“The Union ambushed Redwood Hospital yesterday,” she said in the most measured voice she could manage. “The danger’s real.”

The teenager laughed again, tilting his head and knocking back the last of his beer in one smooth motion before starting work on the second one.

“No shit, that’s seriously what you’re worried about? Fuck me, what is the world coming to?”

“Joseph Sterling is a dangerous man.”

The teenager threw up a hand in mock-surrender.

“I’m not denying that. Fuck, everyone knows he’s a psycho. But the bullshit that the media’s stirred up …” His voice became impassioned suddenly, almost aggressive. “They print bullshit headlines that make ignorant kids like you actually believe that the Union is after them directly. Seriously, is there anything more ridiculous?”

Lisa bit her tongue.

“Okay, look, I’m sorry if you really believe you’re in danger, okay? It’s just that, once you see through the media paranoia, you realise this whole ‘gang war’ thing is just a construction, you know? They’re trying to create a state of mass hysteria but the fact is most people are safe as houses.”

It was at that point that something snapped in Lisa’s head: the restraint she had exercised over her frazzled emotions broke, and before she knew it, she had lunged forward, pointing an indignant finger at the teenager and screaming at him to shut his mouth; and in the same instant, a beam of brilliant vermilion light exploded into being somewhere in the grounds. Lisa had not even turned when it struck: a column of flames ploughed into the wall of the Colosseum, sending out an explosion of marble dust as the wall crumbled; a massive wave of intense heat emanated from the attack, the force of which was so great that she was thrown roughly to the concrete floor, smashing the side of her head.

For a few seconds, the world was fire and smoke: fighting to keep her eyes open against the heat and airborne dust, not to mention the splitting pain in her skull, Lisa saw Altaria struggling to remain upright, the previously creamy fur on its front and wings now encrusted with embers and charred a hideous black. The pokémon released a melodic coloratura before, stumbling clumsily, it emitted an Aurora Beam from its mouth and collapsed to the ground, motionless.

The rainbow-coloured beam arced uselessly into the ceiling, slicing a sharp shard of marble from it, which fell barely a metre from Altaria’s head.

“Retrahere, Altaria!!” Lisa screamed, touching her necklace.

Vaguely aware of a golden globule of light returning Altaria to safety, she leapt to her feet, hunting for the blond-haired boy. No sooner had her eyes landed on his spread-eagled form on the ground than she saw another explosion of light rapidly approaching; with an involuntary scream, she dove for the cement as a jet of ice-blue light whizzed over her …

“What the fuck is going on?!” whimpered the blond boy from somewhere very close; Lisa uncovered her face to see that she had landed right beside him on the floor. His face was deathly pallid: the sneer that had been on his face before was long gone, replaced by genuine terror.

“Just media paranoia!” she gasped breathlessly, wishing she could have savoured the moment more. “Come on, we need to get inside …”

The boy nodded blankly. Lisa looked up and peered through the plumes of white smoke that were suffocating the terrace: the trainer’s entrance was directly in front of them … if they could get the shutter closed, she might be able to buy some time …

“Crawl on your stomach!” Lisa shouted in the boy’s ear.

Side-by-side, arms grazed by the cement, they commando-crawled the couple of metres to the roller-shutter. Lisa could hear voices shouting to one another in the grounds; just as she reached the other side of the roller shutter, there was another explosion of marble dust as a new attack pounded the colosseum’s walls.

“Close it!” she cried, as the blond boy joined her in the darkness of the trainer’s entrance.

He leapt to his feet and grabbed the bottom of the roller shutter, pulling it down with a clatter. When the shutter was perhaps three feet from the ground, an azure beam of light zipped beneath it and slammed, with a muted crunch like a snowball, into the boy’s knee.

“Aaaaargh!”

He collapsed to the ground, his arms flailing in the air; at the same moment, the shutter slammed shut, plunging them into darkness.

“Lock it!” Lisa screamed. “Illuminate!”

The Buzzball flared to life in her hand, a golden globule of light erupting out of nowhere to orbit around the red ball, casting long shadows on the trainer’s entrance.

The boy was still doubled over on the floor.

“It’s burning, FUCK, it’s burning!”

Lisa held the Buzzball out toward his knee; his jeans had been ripped open by the force of the attack that struck them; his knee was now encased in a ring of ice.

“It’s just an Ice Beam, you’ll be OK!” Lisa cried. “You need to lock this door NOW or we’re stuffed!”

Grimacing, he thumbed through his key ring until he found a yellow-ringed key and jabbed it into the padlock on the inside of the shutter. No sooner had Lisa breathed a sigh of relief than she heard a male voice on the other side of the roller door shout, “Fire Blast again, Blaziken! Melt it down!”

Lisa’s eyes locked with the boy’s.

“Get away from the door!” she cried. He looked bewildered, utterly incapable of movement, one hand still on his knee.

Lisa grabbed his hand and yanked it in her direction. Abruptly, a wave of heat began to emanate from the other side of the shutter; the acrid smell of burning paint reached Lisa’s nostrils and made her want to throw up.

“Let’s GO!” she roared again.

Perhaps the pungent odour brought the boy to his senses: he allowed Lisa to pull him up to a standing position and together, they began to run further into the darkened trainer’s lounge.

“Please tell me there’s an easy way out from here,” Lisa muttered as they jogged down the marble-walled hallway, Buzzball lighting their way.

“There’s – yeah,” muttered the boy distractedly, hobbling slightly and glancing constantly at his frozen knee.

“Well – which way?!” Lisa screeched as they reached the circular trainer’s lounge, with its four exits. Further back, she could hear the shouts of humans and the exultant roar of a Blaziken.

“Straight ahead!” cried the boy. “We can exit onto the battlefield and get out that way!”

Pelting beside him through the lounge and into another marble tunnel, Lisa shivered.

“How are you planning to get out from there? Do you have any flying pokémon?”

He made an odd noise, as though there was something sharp stuck in his throat.

“I don’t train pokémon,” he muttered hoarsely. “It always seemed so – uh – lame…”

Lisa’s intestines turned to ice. “Well, does it seem lame now?” she snapped impulsively, before regaining her composure. “What’s your plan, then?”

They had reached an intersection in the tunnel: they could either continue straight ahead or take a right or left turn into the circular passage that ran the perimeter of the battlefield; Lisa realised they must be directly underneath it.

“The repository!” the boy cried suddenly.

“What?”

“We have a storeroom of pokémon that some regular trainers keep here – we can use one of them!”

He took a left turn into the circular tunnel, with Lisa running in hot pursuit. Her heart was pounding in her chest: ahead of her, the boy was swearing profusely under his breath. Presently, they reached a green door with the word “REPOSITORY” inscribed on a metal plaque affixed to the door. The boy placed his finger on a scanner (“I am so fucking fired, dude!”) and pulled the door open.

A medium-sized storeroom lay beyond, lined with shelves and cabinets. Several Ultra Balls reposed in glass cases on the far side of the room. The boy pelted across to an olive-green filing cabinet and began to hunt around in one of the drawers.

“We need a flying-type or something!” Lisa implored.

“Got it!”

“Already?!”

The boy turned around to face her: he cradled half a dozen pokéballs in his T-shirt.

“Yeah – trust me – let’s go!”

Lisa didn’t bother questioning him: racing from the room, they pelted further down the tunnel. There were other voices echoing through the tunnels: a man was shouting out for back up; another was ordering a Radar Eye technique.

“Here!” gasped the boy, reaching a small enclave in the side of the tunnel. Lisa recognised it at once: it was a sleek metal elevator that took trainers up to the battlefield. She had used it several times during the Whirlpool Cup battles. The elevators were only designed for one trainer, but she didn’t idle: she squeezed herself in against the boy’s body, feeling the pokéballs pressing against her back painfully.

The curved elevator door slid closed with a sleek hiss. Trying to think of anything but the lift at Redwood Hospital, Lisa shut her eyes and felt the slight nausea that always seemed to accompany the rapid ascent of elevators. Behind her, she could hear the boy still muttering the occasional swear word.

The elevator stopped moving; the curved door retracted with another hiss and Lisa and the boy spilled out onto the trainer’s box of the Water Colosseum.

There was just a second of disbelief for Lisa: the fingernail moon was reflected serenely in the sparse pool of water that made up the battlefield; the night air here was still and crisp; the stands were devoid of human life; water lapped gently against the edge of the trainer’s box. Nothing betrayed the fact that they were under siege.

The blond-haired boy shuffled the pokéballs in his T-shirt.

“You’ll need to grab it,” he said urgently. “It’s the Great Ball I think.”

Lisa shone the Buzzball over the collection of balls in the makeshift bag of the boy’s T-shirt, located the blue-and-white one and, prising it open in her hand, said, “Please God, let it be a flying-type!”

There was a burst of radiant energy; the full, regal form of a cream-bodied Pidgeot emerged beside them on the podium.

Tears of relief streaked down Lisa’s face as she clung beside the blond-haired boy on the giant bird’s back and, with a powerful flap, the winged pokémon took flight, soaring up and out of the colosseum and into the freedom of the midnight air.