Well, here's chapter 44. It is technically part of the crossover, but doesn't really have an EBTV counterpart - you'll see. This chapter leads off straight from where the last chapter finished, and hopefully answers a couple of questions for you guys.

Cheers!

------------------------------------

Chapter 44 – Gavin’s Tale.


For a moment, Lisa hovered by the bedside, completely bewildered. Through the window glass she had just unmistakably spied a person whom she had not seen for more than two months; the person whom she had thought about more than any other during the confusing events that had occurred since December. He was very close to the window, looking completely worn out and swaying slightly.

Gavin did not look as thought he knew what he was doing – at any rate, Lisa had no idea how he could have found her at the Hotel – but she brushed this from her mind and almost leapt at the window latch, throwing it open and allowing the humid night air to flow in.

“ Gavin!” cried Lisa, a numb sense of disbelief sweeping over her as she pressed her face against the screen. “ Gavin! It’s me, Lisa!”

The boy’s head jerked upwards and Lisa gasped before she could stop herself; his left cheek was disfigured by a deep gash that ran almost from his ear to the corner of his mouth.

“ Hi Lisa,” he said, as though they were having a casual chat. “ I thought you’d be here.”

Gavin had moved up to the screen of Lisa’s hotel window now; Lisa was grateful she had asked for the ground floor suite.

“ What happened to your face, Gavin?” Lisa gabbled quickly, still astonished that her missing friend had turned up so suddenly in the middle of the night. “ Where have you been? Why didn’t you call me, or send a letter or -”

But Lisa stopped herself; Gavin did not look at all well; he was swaying on the spot, almost like a drunk, and she noticed that he was not moving his left arm at all. Lisa paused for a moment, unsure of what to say or do, then found her tongue. “ I spose you’d better come in, then. Can you help me get this flyscreen off?” she asked him, tugging at the edge of the screen.

She saw something flicker in his eyes, which were bloodshot, before he nodded obediently and gripped the outside of the screen with his right hand. Lisa noticed now more than ever than his left arm stayed firmly by his side. Together, they tried to pull the screen away so that Gavin could come inside. Five minutes of futile shifting and jiggling passed, until Gavin said, “ I think you need to lift that bottom part up, then I’ll pull it out from this side.”

Lisa lifted the base of the flyscreen as high up as she could, and Gavin pulled it. Instantly, the screen slipped out of its position and slid to the ground with a dull bump. Lisa smiled grimly and even Gavin managed a quick grin; they had wasted so much time jiggling the screen around.

Gavin began to climb up over the windowsill but had barely got his leg over when he winced in pain and sharply withdrew his leg.

“ What’s wrong?” Lisa cried at once, wishing he would hurry up and get inside, so that she could find out where he had been for the last two months.

“ Leg,” muttered Gavin, hopping precariously on his other leg. Without thinking much, Lisa clambered over the windowsill and into the warm air of the night, landing softly on the grass beside Gavin. Without a word, he began to hobble over the lawns around the resort, while Lisa followed. They skirted two sides of the hotel in silence before they reached an elaborate gazebo enclosed by many trees and shrubs; Gavin changed direction and headed for the small wooden structure, which lay about twenty metres from the hotel, and had small wooden stools scattered around in it.

Gavin sat down on one of the stools, and Lisa chose once with a cushioned leather seat and perched upon it eagerly. At last – he had not done it yet – Gavin looked directly at her, into her eyes. She noticed not just how bloodshot his eyes were, but how they had changed somehow; they were no longer as jovial as they had once seemed.

“ I’m sorry I’ve been gone so long,” Gavin said at last, “ But I really didn’t mean to be.”

“ I hope not!” said Lisa, emerging from her silent incredulity. “ I’ve been worried like hell, I thought you could have been dead, I mean, you didn’t send any word to say that you were still alive, did you?”

“ No,” said Gavin at once, but he did not look distressed by Lisa’s increasingly accusatory tone of voice. “ Just give me a chance and I can explain everything. Well, not everything, but a lot. Really strange things have been happening lately – and I mean more strange than what happened in December …” He trailed off, but Lisa knew he meant the time when they had seen Entei, Suicune and Raikou fighting; the time Anna had been killed by Entei.

Lisa thought for a moment, wanting to ask a thousand questions of her own rather than have Gavin tell his story at his own pace. “ Alright, then, tell me what happened,” she said in contrast to her own feelings. She wriggled into a more comfortable position on the leather stool and sat still, ready to hear Gavin’s story.

“ Well, where should I start?” said Gavin.

“ How about at the pool in Silver City?” prodded Lisa, almost exploding with her eagerness to hear the story. “ You know, when you ran off?”

Gavin considered this for a second, then nodded.

“ OK, so I was having a swim in that pool, just minding my own business, waiting for you to come meet me and have a swim. But then out of nowhere I heard someone yell my name – I’d just come up above the surface, so I wasn’t expecting it, but then she called again and I looked up and saw Mel.”

Lisa opened her mouth to ask about Mel’s identity; the woman had appeared at Lisa’s hotel door and demanded to see Gavin, and Lisa had seen little more of her than that. But Lisa shut her mouth and let Gavin continue; she was too curious about where the story was going to ask questions at the moment.

“ I hadn’t seen Melanie for ages,” continued Gavin. “ But I knew straight away what she was going to tell me, it’s strange … oh, you don’t know Mel, do you?” Gavin added.

Lisa shook her head.

“ She used to work at the Radio Tower with me, but I knew her even before that. She was one of my Uncle’s friends. Her and my Uncle both worked in an office in Ecruteak, a few years ago. Anyway … well, you know this already, but Uncle Eusine died in December. He was found dead near the Tin Tower.” Gavin’s voice shook very slightly, and Lisa could tell that he was quite determined to keep talking normally. She nodded and he went on in the same tone as before.

“ I didn’t believe it – I couldn’t; Eusine was dead? I ran away, I’m sorry, but I just took off. Ran for a while, out of the city, then caught a bus back to Ecruteak. I got there on Christmas Eve for his funeral … there weren’t many people there …”

Lisa had abruptly realised that she knew very little about Gavin’s family. He had only really mentioned them once, on a boat in the Whirl Islands. He had said that both his parents were dead. For all Lisa knew, Eusine had been one of Gavin’s few living relatives.

“ Mel was there as well,” Gavin went on. “ She told me that you were coming back to Ecruteak for Christmas, but I didn’t really want to see you then, I dunno, I just felt too overwhelmed. On Christmas Eve, though, after the funeral, at night, I went to your place and left your present. I thought maybe I’d go stay at Mel’s place for awhile. I stayed there on Christmas Eve anyway.

“ On Christmas night I decided I might as well meet back up with you. I needed my pokemon back anyway, Lanturn and Staryu. At about eight I walked over to your place, I thought I’d explain why I had just run away like that and left you in Silver City, but then …” He trailed off uncertainly.

“ I got to the edge of your suburb when they attacked me. Three people; I never got to see who they were, but my bet is Team Rocket, stupid pricks. I’d just turned a corner and they’d suddenly charged straight into me. I don’t know how they knew I was against them, as opposed to an innocent bystander, but they tried to attack me. Two were blokes, they pulled out a gun; the other one was a girl, she went straight into attack and tried to tear my face off …” Gavin gingerly touched the scar on his cheek, almost subconsciously. “ Anyway, they got me in the end, I mean, how can I fight a gun – my pokemon were either with you or at Mel’s.”

Lisa had another score of questions she was burning to ask Gavin, but somewhere in her head she still found an answer. “ Your telekinesis,” she said. “ Why didn’t you –”

But Gavin had held up a hand and stopped her at once.

“ Haven’t you noticed how long it’s been since I used anything psychic?” he said sharply. “ At first I just tried not to use it unless I really needed to – I mean, it’s not something you want to draw attention to, and it’s pretty draining. But I haven’t been able to at all lately; I don’t think I have since that time when we teleported from the airport, but that was with heaps of help from Natu.”

Lisa thought hard, and couldn’t remember Gavin using his psychic for quite some time.

“ What, so you just … can’t do it anymore?”

Gavin shrugged. “ Doesn’t seem like it. That’s just another weird thing, though. Anyway, back to my story …” He put on his storytelling voice.

“ The people, whoever they were, knocked me out with the gun, so I was out like a light. The next time I woke up, I was in a van of some sort, and I knew they were taking me somewhere, like headquarters or something. And they did – about midnight the van I was in stopped; we’d come to this big cave thing, dunno where. They took me out of the van – well actually, threw me out of the van …” Gavin’s hand had come to rest subconsciously on his left arm.

“ They were wearing everyday clothes, not a Rocket uniform, so for all I knew at that stage, they were completely unrelated. They made me walk into the cave – whoa! I’d been expecting a bare cave, but no way. Completely different. They had a desk there, and computers, and phones and stuff. And heaps and heaps of files stacked around the place.

“ The guys who kidnapped me pushed me down a few tunnels, but they all had torches in them. It was pretty obvious by then that I was in a secret headquarters or something. Eventually we came to a huge room, it took about half a second for me to realise it was a prison area. There were no windows – maybe we were underground – but there were cells, of course, with huge thick bars. It was like in one of them movies … but not as cool, cause I got thrown a cell.

“ And guess who I met in the cell? I wouldn’t have even thought about it, but there you go – Professor Westwood. Remember him from the Whirl Islands that time?”

Lisa had a fleeting memory of a podgy, balding, middle-aged man with a significantly large nose.

“ He was in the cell too?” she said, unsure of what was going to happen next in this odd story of Gavin’s. “ What did they want with him?”

“ Well, I asked him straight away,” Gavin said. “ Westwood recognised me right away, though he didn’t look to great himself, sitting on a bunk bed, muttering about something. He was still stable, mentally, though – that was the thing that surprised me.”

“ How long had he been there?” Lisa said; it was the question that had escaped her lips first, just before “ Is he all right?” and “ Why was he in there?”

“ Months. I’ll get to that in a second. He told me a fair bit as soon as I got chucked in the cell. I asked him if he was OK, he said that it wasn’t important, it was only important that he told me everything at once.

“ And there’s a lot that he told me. First up he explained what had happened to him. A couple of days after we left to go back to Olivine City on the mainland – you know, after the Whirlpool Cup – he took off to see his mate Joseph on Silver Rock Island. He actually told us about it when we were there, but I forgot at the time. Anyway, his good friend Joseph turned against him suddenly – had him tied up. And he questioned him non-stop for days. I don’t know why, but Westwood didn’t want to tell me what Joseph was asking – only that it was something horrible, something he could not think about, that he would not speak about. I gave up asking him after a few days.

“ But he told me other stuff too. He said that the organization – the Rockets – they no longer have a thing for stealing pokemon for fun, or whatever. For awhile now, they’ve had their eyes on Legendaries: Entei, Suicune, Raikou, Ho-oh, Lugia … but especially, Lunanine.

“ And why else would they kidnap Westwood? He has a more extensive knowledge on each and every creature than a lot of people – and he had just been given a heap of info from you about Lunanine. Luckily he submitted the Pokedex entry before he was kidnapped. Poor bloke wouldn’t tell me anything else about him, but I’m pretty sure that Lunanine’s got something to do with it. All in all, the Legendaries are what the Rockets are after …

“ As for the Legendaries, they’re just as mysterious at the moment, aren’t they? That time we saw them, when Anna died, that was definitely something. Entei disappeared, the other two were against him. And then we saw Suicune at Tom’s Engagement, and Lunanine at your place as well – and what about the fight that Suicune and Entei had? Did Entei really die?”

Lisa thought about it, but she didn’t really need to consider it. It didn’t seem possible that a massive fire-dog, capable of murder and quite obviously evil, could be destroyed and defeated so easily as it had seemed when Suicune fought it in the Ice Path. There was something about how Lisa had not actually seen Entei die, but rather burst into flame that obscured him from view, that made her think that the fire dog was still very much alive and plotting something.

“ I don’t think so,” said Lisa in response to Gavin’s question. “ I think he’s definitely alive.”

“ And so do I,” Gavin said instantly. “ Which means we’re in a lot of danger – not just from the Rockets, but Entei too.”

There was a pensive silence. Then Lisa said, “ So, what happened then?”

“ Oh right,” said Gavin, jerking back into story mode. “ Well, the other thing Westwood told me was that the Rockets are planning something really big. As in, a huge operation. For a couple of months they’ve been almost ignoring him, just feeding him enough to keep him alive, in existence, but lately they’ve been questioning him again, more intensely than before. And he said he’s seen heaps more Rockets in the caves lately – they’ve brought in reinforcements for whatever they’re planning.

“ He asked about you as well, Lisa. He wanted to know if you still had those crystal bells he gave you back on Red Rock Island.”

“ Of course I do,” said Lisa. “ They’re in … oh no!”

With a very sickening jolt, she realised that the Crystal Bells were not in her backpack, but at her home somewhere. And her home had been invaded by the Rockets a couple of days ago – chances were, the Bells were in their hands already. Lisa actually winced when she realised she would have to tell Gavin the story of what had happened to her lately, once he had finished.

“ Where are they?” cried Gavin, apparently forgetting that it was late at night and they were outside a hotel.

“ At home … don’t worry, I’ll explain everything to you once you’ve told me your side of the story.”

“ All right,” said Gavin, casting a sidelong glance at her. “ Well, the day after they put me in the cell, I was taken out by two agents and went into an office to see some woman. I think she was an executive. She asked me who I was, I gave her a fake name but I don’t see how that helps me in the long run. She said I was to remain in their prison for as long as they deemed necessary, because they suspected that I had information that their organisation might find useful. Then they took me back to the cell. I was in there for what I think was another month and a half – yeah, it was February the eleventh when I got out, but in the meantime, a lot happened. Turns out Westwood was right; there were heaps more Rockets patrolling the caves than I even knew existed. They keep getting more guns as well, I saw crates of ammo arrive once, they took them past the cell and into a store room. Something big is going to happen soon.”

“ How did you get out?” Lisa asked him curiously.

This time, Gavin’s face was briefly lit with a smile, as though he was experiencing a good memory. “ It was luck, really. I wouldn’t have escaped if I’d kept my mouth shut. You see, on the eleventh they took Westwood for another questioning, and when he came back the guard – I knew him by name by then, he’s Damek – threw him on the floor of the cell and spat on him. I couldn’t stand that – I told him to piss off, leave Westwood alone – he punched me in the side of my face and yelled and told me to go with him. Since he had a gun, I didn’t really protest.

“ Damek put me in a huge office that was a lot nicer than the woman’s office I went in before. I figured it must be a really elite Rocket. Anyway, he left me there alone, though I was pretty sure he was listening right outside the door in case I tried to escape. I didn’t want to move anyway, I don’t fancy being shot. I sat there for about ten minutes, and then the door opened, and this guy walked in. I could tell straight away that he was the boss, or one of them. He had a heap of badges on his shirt and he had a weird gun. He said that I should begin to respect the organisation and stuff like that. I kept quiet. Then he started asking me who I was, said he knew I was lying about my identity, and that unless I told him, he’d shoot me. There wasn’t really much choice, so I said that my name was Gavin Luper, and that I had no idea why I’d been brought in for questioning. He was still writing my name down when I grabbed the gun of his desk. I don’t know why, I didn’t think, but I just wanted to escape. Prison was so boring and so difficult to bear, I just had to leave – this was the closest I had come to a weapon in ages. So I pointed it straight at his face – he yelled out – I pulled the trigger. I didn’t even look to see what happened to him, I turned round to the door, threw it open and ran like hell down the tunnel of the cave outside. I was sure somebody would have heard the shots, and even if they didn’t, the caves were swarming with Rockets; I wouldn’t be getting far. I didn’t know where to go, so I guessed and took the left tunnel. It went downwards for awhile and I thought I was probably going away from the exit, so I turned down a side tunnel and this one went really steeply upwards. The tunnel got steeper and steeper and eventually it was almost a climb. I looked up after a minute or two and saw daylight above me; I hadn’t seen it for weeks, it dazzled me. It was hard to climb the last few metres up the tunnel – it was practically vertical by then – but I managed it and pulled myself out of a hole in the rocks. I looked around and that’s when I discovered I was on Silver Rock Island. Big silver rocks everywhere. I ran for it – straight across the rocks and a road that’s been built there – I kept going till I reached the shore, then swam for it. I swam all the way to Red Rock, and told the police at the station about the Rocket’s lair. I acted innocent; I said I’d been walking across the island on a holiday and seen a few Team Rocket people in the distance, so I came and alerted them. They didn’t ask many questions – I left Red Rock as soon as I could on the back of a fairly helpful Seaking, and came to Olivine Port.”

Gavin seemed tired out by so much talking; he had never spoken for so long, and about so much – at least, not that Lisa could remember. There was a short pause after Gavin’s last words, and Lisa was about to speak up when Gavin went on, adding what must have been the epilogue to his tale.

“ I got back to Ecruteak five days ago, at Mel’s place, she wasn’t home though. There was a note there for me, from the Ministry of Justice, saying that I had to come here for the trial. I knew at once that there was no point going to your place – I might as well go straight to Port Valeo. I packed my backpack, retrieved my pokemon and headed straight for here. I figured you’d be at the hotel again.”

Lisa didn’t know what to say. Gavin had been through so much over the past month, and so had she, yet neither of them really knew why they were so fervently pursued.

“ That’s it,” said Gavin in a satisfied tone, sounding quite a lot lighter than he had when Lisa had seen him outside the window. His face was no longer creased in worry, and he managed a quick grin at Lisa. She grinned back. “ Well, then?” Gavin said. “ Can I hear your side of the story, or is it too secret for my ears?”

Lisa smiled again and launched into her story, from the moment Melanie had told her Gavin was gone right up to the cruise she had enjoyed with Jessica, Andrew and Olivia that night. Gavin listened with rapt attention, he looked curious when Lisa talked of her Battlemagic Items, he was even more so when he heard about Raikou’s appearance to Lisa, but he was totally silent when she told of the Rockets invading her home.

“ And I was just getting into bed when I saw you outside the window,” Lisa finished after half an hour. Gavin inclined his head slightly to acknowledge that she was finished. There was a long pause, punctuated by a loud yawn from Gavin, who had interrupted Lisa’s story far more than she had interrupted his. Nevertheless, they had not gained any greater understanding of what either the Rockets or the Legendaries were up to.

“ Well, if you ask me,” muttered Gavin after some time, sitting pensively on his wooden stool beneath the gazebo. “ The trial is what we should focus on for now; after tomorrow, we’ll go back to Ecruteak and try to work everything out once and for all. How’s that sound?”

“ Easier than doing it right now,” replied Lisa, whose head was spinning with all that she had heard and said tonight. “ D’you want to go back inside then?”

“ Alright,” said Gavin, standing up and beginning the long hobble back to the window of Lisa’s hotel room. Lisa rose from her leathery stool with slight difficulty (her leg was stuck to it) and left the gazebo just behind Gavin as a weak beam of moonlight speared through the clouds to light their way; it was almost two-thirty in the morning.

Unfortunately, neither Lisa nor Gavin noticed the bushes beside the gazebo rustling as they left.