Ash Ketchum: Battle of the Ampere

Ch. 17 Rock Slide

This chapter is dedicated to @lofiesttoast3 who voted for a chapter when I was reviewing this chapter to publish

   After all the bad news we'd just received, the next few days passed in misery. We were low on food, and edible fruit was not very plentiful where we were camped. Now that we were close to the road, Raihan didn't dare go out foraging. "Too risky," he said. He told us that the army would likely send out an advance patrol before they moved.

   The second day it rained hard and for most of the day we just sat in our tent, with nothing to do but sleep to escape the malaise. Raihan acted calm, but I could tell that he was going crazy inside. Iris was not as stoic. She broke down crying at least a dozen times. The Amacarra tribe was the closest thing to family she had.

   Early in the morning of the third day the rain finally stopped and Raihan led us down the rugged terrain of the south side of the mountain near the highway. We needed to scout the pass to make our plans.

   The road was covered on both sides by thick forest, would be advantageous to us. The biggest question we faced was how stop an army. Actually, we didn't need to stop all of the trucks, just the ones in front, creating a traffic jam.

   The problem was, anything obvious might look like an attack and surprise was vital. If four thousand soldiers dug in for battle, we were through. For nearly an hour we crouched down in the jungle, looking out over the highway, away from the road, in case an army patrol drove by.

  "How many trucks do you think there will be?" I asked Raihan.

  "Many," he said.

  "Like how many?" I asked. "Twenty? Thirty?"

  "Maybe two hundred. Or more."

  "Two hundred? How will we know what truck they're being kept in?"

   Raihan shook his head. "It will not be a simple thing."

  "I can find them," Iris said.

   I turned to her. "How?"

  "I can sense electricity. That's how I knew you were electric when I met you. It's the same way Marnie sensed powers."

  "Marnie could sense powers?"

  "If she didn't, she wouldn't be able to feed off your electricity. Cyrus once had us walk through the academy blindfolded to find the electric kids. Marnie and I are really not that different."

  "Believe me, you're different."

  "Personality-wise," she said. "Marnie's all Emo-Goth and all that. But the scientists at the academy said we were similar in physiology. Marnie was better at finding electricity than I was, but I can still do it. I just need to get closer than she did."

  "How close?"

  "Maybe thirty feet."

   I looked at the lush jungle encroaching on the road. "That will work. We stop the convoy, then we'll move along behind the trees till you feel something."

  "Then what?" Iris asked.

  "I shock the guards, we open the trucks, and we free my friends."

  "How do we stop the trucks?"

  "The question is, how do we do it without causing suspicion."

  "Look," Raihan said. "That sign." He pointed to a yellow, diamond-shaped precaution sign that showed stones showering down on a road.

  "Falling rocks," I said.

  "We could roll large rocks into the road," Raihan said. "They would think it was a rock slide and not suspect us." He pointed to a rocky crag jutting out from the jungle. "There are rocks up there."