Ketchum Chronicles

Into the Mountains

Bonnie

The next day I woke up before anyone else and looked at the clock. 8:00. Later than Aria would let us. Weird. I got up and got my clothes before going to Serena’s mom and having some cereal. Then I went to the Pokemon centre and found Aria, training some of her Pokemon.
“Ninjask, swords dance!”
The flying Pokemon stould still for a second, boosting its attack power.
“Now dual wingbeat! Accelgor, bug buzz to block it!”
Ninjask’s wings started to glow, then swung its entire body, using the movement to create glowing cuts in the air. Accelgor took a breath and then unleashed a sound like a forest at night time increased times a hundred, and blasted it.
“Good, now both of you X-scissor!’
Both Pokemon’s arms glowed green like a leaf and they charged, swinging round and round blocking and striking with speed that made their arms blurry.
“Both of you back off, now Accelgor, prepare hidden power, and Ninjask, U-turn, over and over,”
Accelgor backflipped away and started charging a glowing white orb, meanwhile Ninjask started flying really quickly, and started circling Accelgor, going so fast as if there was a grey ring around Accelgor.
“Don’t do it just yet Accelgor, keep it steady, wait ‘till the perfect moment…”
Ninjask started slamming over and over into Accelgor, going back and forth making streaks of grey lines in its path, hitting Accelgor over and over, but Accelgor kept steady. Then the Ninjask appeared for a final blow, and Accelgor blasted a beam from the white orb it carried, freezing the Ninjask solid.
“Good job at the timing Accelgor, all the practice we’ve done seems to be working!”
“Gor!”
“Thanks for being part of practice Ninjask, I’ll thaw you out,”
Aria layed her hand on Ninjask, which glowed a bit blue, and then the ice melted.
“Woah! Can you make fire too?”
Aria turned around and seemed to just notice me.
“Oh no, aura is more like life force used outside of the body, which I can use to help other living things. I just helped Ninjask break out of the ice faster,”
“Woah!”
“Hey, where’s everybody else?”
“Still at Serena’s house. Why didn’t you wake us up like you used to?”
“Because after what you experienced yesterday I thought you deserved some rest. Also, it feels off to me when I go into someone else’s house. Pokemon centres I’m fine, but somebody’s house? No thanks. I’m not sure if that woman even trusts me. I mean, I’m an adult woman travelling around and tagging along with you…”
“No, I’m sure it’s nothing like that! If she doens’t trust you, we’ll just tell her about how you helped save us from that plane! And that woman in the cloak!”
“I didn’t help after crashing. After the crash I was knocked out cold until the doctor from the Pokemon centre shook me awake. I only helped him find you,”
“Doesn’t change how you helped us in the plane,”
“In the plane it was the Delta Kirlia that helped by shocking the cultist. Where is it now anyway?”
“I don’t know, I thought you knew?”
“I thought you did? Well, no use looking now, it could have gone anywhere, and I’ll have to ask Ash where he saw it,”
“Wait, how are there more Delta Pokemon? I thought there was only 1?”
“Well I don’t know everything, and now there are more than I thought. But we’ll have to ask that question later. For now we’ll go to Matterhorn and find Delta Hoopa,”
“Okay. Wait, one more question,”
“Fine, just one more, than we need to get going,”
“Why do you want to find Delta Hoopa?”
“It’s part of my job. I’m a museum curator, and one job of a museum curator is to find artifacts and bring them to the museum. I found plenty of depictions of Delta Hoopa during an archeological dig in Galar, and if I find where he is, it might lead me to more artifacts,”
“Woah. What museum do you work for?”
“That’s two questions, and an answer for another time. Come on, we wasted too much time already. Let’s wake up the others,”

After I woke up Ash and Clemont and they had their breakfast, we packed our things and said goodbye to Grace before heading towards Helvetia. Luckily Aria had prepared for a route ahead of time and we boarded a train for Kiloude. Kiloude was a nice place, it was no Lumiose City but it was pretty nice. We boarded a bus and from there we went to Matterhorn. At the beginning of the bus ride I didn’t see anything special, but then we exited the town and the sights looked nicer. We passed by a giant lake shaped like a banana, Lac Limon, which I thought was funny, a couple of forests, and as we got closer and closer to our destination the more mountains or mountain-y places I saw. According to Aria, we were entering the Alpick mountain range, which composes the bottom half of Helvetia. Eventually we made it to a town called Berstadt, and there we packed up and prepared for a climb.
"Woah!" Clemont woah-ed at the sights. All around this town were mountains stretching high and scraping the sky (hry that rhymes) and curled upwards like we were inside a giant rocky crown. Even though it was August, snow covered the area like a blanket. Unlike the snow the weird woman in the cloak made, this snow was white and cheery like snow on Christmas, not like the snow that threatened to freeze us all like that woman.
"Cool view huh?" Aria asked me.
"Yup!" I responded.
"Ok then, were- hey Ash?"
Ash appeared to be listening to something else in the distance, but I heard nothing.
"Uh, Ash? What are you listening to?"
Ash didn't respond for 5 seconds, then turned around.
"I think I heard it… Delta Hoopa…"
"You did? Are you sure you did?" Aria asked impatiently.
“Yes, it was quite faint, but I heard it. It came from…" Ash looked around him for a bit then pointed towards one of the mountain peaks.
"Then that's where we're headed," Aria responded
"Wait, don't we need a guide?" I asked. People climbit we need a guide or something?” I asked.
“I don’t think we should. We’re getting closer to our destination, and I don’t want to drag any people into possible danger. Besides, we went with the crew into the plane and thaty didn’t go so well. Imagine that in high altitudes,” she explained.
“For once, I agree with Aria here. We might be able to handle it, but what about others? I think we can handle it considering we handled Team Flare,”
“YOU WHAT? You- you're the peopl who dealt with them? Of all the people I didn’t think you’d do it. You need to tell me sometime,”
“Yeah,” said Clemont, pushing up his glasses. He seemed smug from Aria being amazed instead of him this time “Some other time. But how do we climb the mountain?”
“Well this isn’t my first time climbing a mountain. I’ll get us some gear and we can start climbing. I’ll need you to come with me so we can find the right sizes,”
Soon we were buying helmets and stuff. Then right outside mechanical claws suddenly grabbed Pikachu!
“What the-?”
“HAHAHA!” we heard. We turned our heads and saw a balloon with robotic claws outstretched.
“Hello again twerps!”
“Team rocket? You again?” I yelled.
“Whose Team Rocket?” Aria asked.
“Yeah, I don’t recall anything,” Ash said.
“There's a group of bad guys who try to steal other people’s Pokemon! Well, they try to at least,”
“Prepare for trouble!”
“And make it double!”
“To-”
I heard a thwip noice, and Team rocket looked up. Aria had her arm out, and there was now a hole appeared in Team Rocket’s balloon.
“Ah crap-”
Team Rocket’s balloon suddenly went zipping around everywhere, dropping Pikachu in the process, the basket being dragged around with Team Rocket inside before crashing into the ground.
“Pikachu!” Ash ran and caught him. “Just wait until I get my hands on those jerks…”
Then I heard a siren, and the police arrived.
“What just happened here?” she asked Aria.
“A group calling them “Team Rocket” attempted a Pokemon kidnapping,”
“Team Rocket? I’ve heard of this group before. I’ll take it from here. I’ll get sombody to clean the mess,”
“Thanks officer,”
Officer Jenny then put handcuffs on Team Rocket and put them in a van, and they were gone.
“Okay, I can see why you said “at least they to”. I’m not going to mince my words, that was the most incompetent group of criminals I have ever seen,”
“Yeah, while we were journeying through Kalos they CONSTANTLY annoyed us. They constantly tried to take our Pokemon, but they never really did anything that lasted,”
“Oh. Anyways…”
After that happened we started our journey upwards. From here it was a long hike, and it felt like our normal Kalos journey, except we weren’t in Kalos and Serena wasn’t here, but you get the idea. At first it was like walking. Then it became a ramp, going up, up and away. It wasn’t the walking that was difficult, it was the amount of walking we had to do. My legs started to hurt, my back started to ache, and I started to slow down. I had run ahead, but now I was dead last. Ash was sweating so much he had taken his hat off, which he NEVER did, and Clemont seemed to be regretting carrying his stuff. Aria seemed unaffected.
“Aria!” Ash tried to say. “How are you not tired?”
“Experience I guess. Also, this is the easy part. If you think this is hard, just wait until you get to the biting cold of the actual peaks,”
“UGH…” I yelled.
Eventually we found a place to stop . It was made of stone bricks on a mostly flat bit of the mountain, witha a base filling in the uneven parts made of large rocks they probably got from around here since there were so many rocks. It was such a welcome thing to see after miles (okay maybe not miles) of walking.
“FINALLY!” I yelled and ran inside. Inside it was a combination restaurant and Pokmeon centre and a fireplace.
“‘ravellers huh? Lemme guess: goin’ mountain climbing?”
“Yes sir! How did you know?”
A large man in a black coat with a nice brown moustache and brown hair walked out from behind the counter.
“Well before you go riskin’ your necks, it’s not worth it,”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it’s not worth it! It’s not worth riskin’ ya necks for some rumor!”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t play dumb with me girl,”
“Please,” Aria said, as she walked in, holding her arms out. “We can talk. Just tell us what happened,”
“Alright, take a seat, I’ll be with you in a minute,”
We all sat down at a table and put our bags away.
“Aright, here’s what I know. Around a month ago, a person started hearin’ voices comin’ from over there mountains, askin’ for help. At least, that’s the version I ’eard. Anyway, this fellow tried to tell his friends about it, and they even reported it to a gossip magazine. Now, even the gossip magazine didn’t believe ‘em, so they went ‘out and tried to find the voice. They didn’t come back,”
“Oh no! That’s terrible!”
“Terrible way to go out, yes. Anyway then the gossip magazines pick it up, along with the official press, and they make a huge fuss about it. I think there was a news broadcast ‘bout it too. Hold on… I think I can find one with Galarian subtitles…”
He switched on the TV above and we read the subtitles.

June 15
7 days ago three young mountaineers went up the Alpick Mountain range in search of a mysterious voice they heard. They have not come back.
After prolonged silence between the families of the mountaineers and the families themselves, a tech expert was called to find the phone’s last known location, and found the phone’s last known position in the Peaks, the tallest part of the mountain range, after which the phone’s reported unknown location.
Upon learning that the mountaineer’s locations were unknown, they were reported to the local polic department, reported missing, and then a rescue team was called in. They have not returned either.
Dave Montan, the person who works the rest stop says that he met the three travellers before their disappearance. Hear is what he has said on the matter:
“Yeah, I met ‘em before they went up there. Told them they were probably just thinking up the voices or it was the wind whistling through the canyon, that tends to happen, but they went up there anyway! Kids these days…”
“See! That’s why I don’t want you to go up there. Some say the voice is a ghost, or some Pokemon, or something! Whatever it is, it’s not worth it to go missing in the freezing heckmouth! Sorry about my language. It’s just these rumors have been nothing but trouble. I mean, there were 3 people who just went through here who wanted to go up!”
“I can see why you’re concerned.,” Aria told him “We’ll think about this before we decide to go,”
Then she turned back to us.
“So, when are we going?” Clemont asked.
“Wait, I thought you were going to plan to leave, especially with things like these,”
“No! Normally I would, but the answer to whatever happened to Ash could be there,”
“But whenever I even brought up the topic of aura you seemed very uncomfortable,”
“Please don’t mention it like that! Right now I believe the owner here believes. The voice is probably just the wind, or their thoughts, but travelling with you has revealed things about the world I didn;t know about. If thai does involve something… supernatural, then your experience will be invaluable. We could find where all those people went missing, and help them,”
“Wow big brother!” I said, complimenting him “You’re being brave,”
“Let’s just get through this,”
“Okay then, we rest, then prepare for the journey ahead,”.

A/N
I’m sorry for not writing for some time, school’s been eating up a lot of my time and I had a bit of writer’s block in this chapter. There’s no way for me to make announcements other than making new chapters and putting a notice there, but I felt that would break up the story.
On an unrelated note, do you wonder where I get the region names? Well I don;t amke them up! I use etymology and Google translate to get names. Such as:
Dytiden - Dytika, meaning west in Greek, and Yuruba is another way to say Europe. I forgot where I got this from.
Polaris - refers to the poles, because this the substitute name for the Arctic.
Vitalia - it has Italia, another name for Italy, and Víteliú 'land of calves' which I got from Wikipedia.
Helvetia - the personification of Switzerland. May change the name later.
Matterhorn - real place. May change the name later.