Ash
When I hit my head against the giant ice-ball we were in, I blacked out and had another dream. When can I have normal sleep?
This time, I woke upwalking next to the cultist, not the one from the plane, but from the train: Vaati, the self-called wind mage.
Vaati was wearing a dark purple cloak, with the same yellow constellations floating on some parts of it, but with none of the dark purple wind at the bottom. On hsi shoulder stood the purple wind monster, but shrunk to the size of Pikachu and his tentacles weren’t floating around in the air like it just didn’t care, but instead they were slack all over his shoulders. The weird molten cheese-colored eye was still there, but a lot less bloodshot.
I looked around me. This was definitely not the same base I escaped from earlier. The hallway had a lot less doors in it, the place was slightly taller and slightly wider, more like a proper hallway, like one in a mall. It also… smelled different. I’m not kidding. Even though this was a dream, I could smell the sea. Not an overwhelming scent, but a faint one that I picked up on.
So we’re somewhere close to the ocean. Or who knows? This might be a submarine. After all, submarine bases exist. Wait, from where? Somewhere…. My brain said. Not helpful, I told my brain. I dunnow responded my brain. Stupid brain.
I looked around more. The floor seemed to be made of some dark-grey tile that covered the entire floor. There were light blue lights that added a splash of color to the place that were placed slightly above the floor built into the wall, kind of like an emergency-in-case-of-smoke trail of lights you see in an airplane.
My dream vision kept going next to Vaati. He walked down a hallway, passing a few doors, then a left, left again and then into a door. Behind the door was a library, with tons of books on the shelves, most of which were dark with shiny highlights on the edges. He walked past candles, a few stands where books were, a whiteboard with some stuff that looked familiar, and finally stopped in front of a door.
He was about to knock, but before he did, he turned to the monster on his shoulder.
"If this is the last time I exist, then I want my last words to thank you for your invaluable services,"
The monster chirped a little, which I didn't think was possible, and the whole scene was pretty wholesome. But then I remembered this was the guy who kidnapped Bonnie and Aria.
He knocked on the door, once, twice, and then a voice came.
"Come in,"
He opened the door and entered a room. It wasn;t that large, but good enough for a bedroom. Though maybe it was smaller because of all of the things inside. Inside of the room bookshelves lined the walls, except for the left one, because that one had a small kitchen area, with a mini-fridge and a stove. On the right there was a bed with almost no mattress, with some shelves above that with weird telescopes and other word objects. In front of the bed were a few boxes, in front of that a closet. The main attraction was the big board and table at the end of the room. On the board was a push pin-and-string board with strings to literally connect the dots. I saw a few photographs here and there, but most of them were too blurry to make out properly. On the table were a few charts and books, a few bottles and a crystal. Hunched over the table sitting on a stool was my favourite suspicious neck-choking blanket-wearing mage, Chaster.
“Uh, sire?”
“I prefer not to hie as sirae. Sin implise royalty, which Ich despiaes. Bid me as… summoner,”
“Uh… summoner… I have come to tell you…” He suddenly bowed “I have failed. I have failed to capture the target. I was… foolish and arrogant. I have come to pay the price,”
“...”
This is probably the part where Chaster rushes forward and chokes him. Or he whips out some magic and turns him into a frog and steps on him. Or maybe he just takes his knife and makes cultist confetti.
“...”
“Are you okay summoner?”
“Thou art belike thinking why Ich haven lashede out and taken thy life for failure. But Ich finende that ain waste of loyalty. Why must I kill people who fail? That only discourages people from trying again. Besides, I hast studiede numerous tales and the hand ophe fate preventeth us from stopping the target hider early in the hero’s journey,”
“The what?”
“Not important. The point I’m trying to make here is that killing you would be a detriment not a benefit,”
“Are… are you serious?”
“What, do you WANT to perish horribly?”
“No-no sir- I mean summoner, it’s just that I was expecting to die horribly for my failure, but thank you for your mercy,”
“Hider isn’t mercy, it’s practicality. It’s moe practical to keep good brothers around. Besides, ich hast another use for thee,”
“What is it?”
“You’ve seen them, right? In action?”
“Uh, the targets?”
“Yes. Ich want thou to say to me all's you’ve founede out about 'em. Say to me hwaet pokemon they hath. What strategies they employ. What sort of personality, traits, and most importantly, weaknesses they possess. Thou see me brother, knowledge is power. I hast known ain quote from the east: When you know yourself and the enemy, you need not worry about the result of 100 battles. A wise quote indeed,”
“Well, when you put it like that,” Vaati said, rising and standing up. “I did take mental notes during my time with them,”
“Most excellent! Now let’s- do you feel it?”
“Feel something…? Well now that I know I’m going to live I do feel another one’s presence,”
Both Chaster and Vaati turned towards my dream vision.
“Well well Ash Ketchum, it’s very rude to spy on people!”
And then he chucked a fireball at my dream self, and I suddenly woke up.
I got up and looked around me. Apparently we had landed in some sort of forest, because all around me I could see trees. Long, straight and narrow trees that grew up into a giant roof made of leaves and branches, what was it called… the canopy. Yeah, the canopy. Well the canopy had a bunch of holes in it that led to smoking airplane bits. I blinked and looked around better. Mixed in with nature were a bunch of plane parts. I could see bright blue chairs everywhere, some ripped apart, exposing their cotton like the chairs were bleeding clouds, others were in pretty good condition and would probably make nice backup furniture. Sprinkled in were ice shards, sprinkled like… sprinkles, the light making them shine like diamonds.
Alongside the chairs were parts of the plane itself, I could see fragments of white plane shell everywhere, I even found a piece with the name of the plane: Mairde Kalos. Nice name. I began walking around, calling out everybody’s names. You might call me dumb for calling attention to myself, but at the time I was only concerned for my friends.
“Pikachu! Clemont! Bonnie! Aria! Where are you guys!” I said, as I began flipping over bits of the airplane in case my friends were underneath them.
“Come on, come out wherever you are!”
Suddenly I saw movement underneath a curved piece of plane. I walked over to it, and began lifting it, getting it off and finding Clemont sprawled on the ground.
“Clemont! Oh gosh… let’s see… nothing bleeding, that’s good. Doesn;t look like anything’s broken either… Now how to wake him up…” I took a deep breath. “CLEMONT!” Nothing.
“Pika?”
I turned around, and saw Pikachu nudging me.
“Oh thank goodness Pikachu,” I said, hugging him. “Thank goodness you're in one piece! Does anything hurt?”
“Pika,” he said, shaking his head.
“Okay then, could you help wake up Clemont here? But try not to be TOO violent, okay?”
“Pika,” he said, nodding.
Pikachu shook himself, and then blasted a bolt of lightning onto Clemont, not as bright as the ones he creates during battles. Clemont shook around a bit, then sat up straight.
“I-” he said, touching parts of his body, making sure nothing was broken. “I’m alive… I’M ALIVE!”
“That’s good Clemont,”
“Where’s Bonnie?”
“I… haven’t found her yet,”
“Then let’s go find her!”
Clemont immediately jumped up and started looking through the plane wreckage, faster than someone who had just been in a crashed plane should have been. We looked around, flipping over plane parts, stepping over fragments and shards. Along the way we found the Kirlia that all of them called a “delta” so I guess it is a delta Pokemon, but none of us were focused on that.
"Where do you think everybody else could be?"
"I don't know but I hope it's soon. My watch says that it's around 5pm, which means it'll get dark soon, so it'll be even harder to find them. Other than that, we don't know where the cultists who were trying to kidnap us are. For all we know one is right behind us!"
"Your right,"
We whipped around and were face-to-hood with the ice cultist.
“Ya know, you’ve been a real nuisance ever since I’ve tried to make things easier. But nooooo. You fight off ma men, you break the Anti-Pokeball-Activation-Device, and ya crash the plane. The freaking, PLANE! Now I know why Chaster told me not to underestimate ya, and I did, so I guess I got what was coming. But now that I’m off the plane, I’m not restricted to being in the air anymore…”
The cultist’s robe began to change from the same deep black to a dark blue, and runes began to glow on his clothes, then projecting outward, so he was wrapped in floating, glowing blue streaks made of strange symbols. More streaks began to assemble and wrap into a light blue sphere on his right hand. The temperature started to drop, and I started to shiver.
“I am Ruta, sorceress of frost. What I’m about to give you will make the coldest winter seem like a desert with what I am about to do to you,”
“Wait, you're a girl?”
“Oh, so your gender assuming too? Now to double down!”
“Oh great, I just made things worse,”
Ruta took the sphere and threw it into the ground.
“Huh… what does that mean-”
Then, my vision tinted blue, just like that time when I fell off the Lumiose Gym. WIth my new blue tinted vision, I could see something moving in the ground.
“Get out!” and I pulled Clemont away just as an icicle suddenly came out of the ground.
“Ash… you saved me… but how did you know that was going to happen?”
“Just a feeling,” I said. I decided now wasn’t the right time to try to explain my blu-ray vision.
“AGH!” Ruta yelled. She started throwing icy blue spheres that started exploding in giant ice shards.
“Run!”
We started running away from the crazed ice woman. The temperature continued to drop, making it feel like someone turned on a giant air conditioner. Cold wind started to bite at my face, and snow started to form on the ground, making a nice snowy carpet. I put my hands iun my pockets to keep them warm, and I hid behind a tree.
“P-p-pika…”
“You cold too buddy?”
Pikachu wrapped himself around my head to keep warm. I could feel him shivering.
“Come out, come out wherever you are!” Ruta called.
I peaked out from my hiding spot and saw Clemont’s head pointing out of a bush. He held out a Pokeball and nodded to me. I nodded back. He held out his fingers. 3. 2. 1.
“Pikachu, thunderbolt!”
Pikachu summoned a thunderbolt and it struck forward to Ruta, who generated ice in front of herself and made a wall, causing the ice to glow, then suddenly explode into a thousand shards. Clemont brought forth Luxray, which summoned a hail of stars speeding forward, but Ruta made another ice wall and blocked them all.
“My turn,”
The cultist moved her arms around, generating another sphere, which she split into many different spheres that spun around her like a bunch of icy moons. She threw them towards us which started to follow us, homing in, and the only reason I wasn;t frozen solid was diving for cover at the last moment.
“I would say give up now, but you always seem to ignore that, so I won’t,”
She started to move her arms in motion, and wherever she moved her arms, the ice followed, creating giant ice spikes which seemed to grow into our direction.
“Pikachu, iron tail and break them all!”
“Luxray, swift!”
Pikachu used an iron tail and started hopping from ice to ice, shattering them all, then hopped onto the cultist’s head with an iron tail, but then he was immediately frozen.
“Pikachu!”
Luxray was more successful. Luxray blasted an array of stars at the cultist who was still preoccupied with Pikachu, and got directly hit.
“We got 'em!”
“No, no you haven’t,”
“Huh, usually they get blasted off when we do that,” Clemont told me.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I’ll explain later,”
A twig snapped, getting all of our attention. We all turned the other direction, but then Greninja jumped in with an aerial ace and knocked Ruta aside.
“Greninja!”
“Gren!” he nodded towards me.
“Dammit! Take this ya lapiz-dyed-mutated son of a-”
A purple beam suddenly crashed down from the sky interrupting whatever Ruta was saying. Out from the now snow covered canopy came Coatlith.
“Coatlith!”
“RAAAA!”
“Oh no not you too,”
Ruta started flinging icicles at Coatlith, who whirled around like a Axiang New Year dragon. Coatlith unleashed another purple energy beam, probably a move like dragon pulse probably, and started breaking up the snowy terrain, and following Ruta, who was much more nimble than a person in a cloak should have been. She backfllipped back, then turned adn began running away normally, all while blasting beams of ice towards Coatlith, who was still able to dodge them all.
“Greninja, I need you to follow the cultist and help keep up the pressure,”
“Gren!” he nodded, before dashing away to go find her.
“Alright, Clemont, is there any way we can melt Pikachu out of this?”
“Okay, I think I know how. Luxray, could you use your electricity and start melting him out?”
“Lux!”
“You see, electricity is energy, and energy produces heat, so it should be able to melt the ice,”
Sure enough, Pikachu began to thaw out.
“Pikachu! You’re alright!”
“Pika-pi!”
“Now that that’s done, let’s go kick that cultist’s butt!”
“Yeah!”
Suddenly, a loud crash came from the trees directly in front of us. We ran to where it came from and found Coatlith, laying down on the ground, with bits of ice clinging to its red spines. The once leaf-green hide was now the color of wilting plants, and some of the spines were starting to droop. I ran over and came to its head. It was shivering, with its eyes closed shut. I kneeled down and touched its snout. The minute I did, a chill climbed up my arm and down my spine and shivered.
“You’ll be okay,” I turned to Clemont. “Coatlith needs some help!”
“I’m not surprised,” said Ruta calmly. She walked out of the now snow-blanketed forest, now with both her Pokemon floating alongside her. Her robes were torn, especially near the bottom, where there were so many holes and tears I wondered how she even kept warm. I could even see what she wore underneath, which turned out to be a normal pair of dark pants. With the way her cloak was torn and the ghostly forest behind her, it was like she was walking out of the afterlife to haunt us.
“Coatlith are dragon and grass type Pokemon. I was surprised at all when he could take a hit from me. A valiant Pokemon, he is. Shame,”
“Shame? You did this!”
“And is that any different to what you do? You take your Pokemon, you have them go into battle after battle, nonstop, and wheneve they do fall you just revive them to do it again, forever until you decide you have enough. Or worse, when they don’t fit your expectations…”
“Stop it! What I do is nothing like that! DO you think I treat my Pokemon like slaves or something? Heck no! My Pokemon are my teammates, my friends. Besides, what could people like you do that’s any better?”
“We’re gonna make a new world, a world where… people like us can just live…”
“Amazing. I don’t believe a single word of what you just said. Wait… what did you do to Greninja?”
Ruta pointed to her right, and in a giant ice block, was Greninja, his eyes wide open in surprise.
“Now, I’m gonna ask ya to make this easy for me. I-”
“Never! Pikachu, thunderbolt!”
I never understood why villains kept going on and on in cartoons while the heroes just stood there.
The thunderbolt struck like, well lightning, and the cultist bent over.
“How dare you interrupt my monologue! No mercy!’
The cultist started blasting ice from her hands again, creating giant ice spikes from the ground again. I moved out of the way and had Pikachu blast another thunderbolt while Kirlia blasted more electricity in the form of a thunder shock. Clemont out Luxray again before showering the ice with bright yellow stars. My arms started to feel as if they were being bit from the sheer coldness, so I put them closer to my chest. Sleet started to come into my eyes, which made it difficult to see. Clemont probably had it harder since he had glasses on.
“I-it’s getting really chilly out here…” I tried to say to Clemont, but my teeth chattered, so it sounded more like a typewriter.
“If we don’t get somewhere warmer soon, we could get trench foot,”
“What?”
“It’s a disease caused by low temperatures and moist feet. Snow has melted into my shoes,"
“Now, as soon as you pass out, I’ll-”
“Flamethrower!”
“Fire blast!”
Immediately a blast of range lit up the ghost white snow, melting a patch instantly and getting a direct hit on Ruta, whose light blue rune-stuff immediately evaporated, and she fell to the floor, with a distinct fire-blast shaped pattern on her back. Standing behind her was an Inflagetah and an Arcanine along with Aria, Bonnie and some other guy.
“Sorry we’re late. I hope you don’t have frostbite,”
Journey First Aid: Trench foot
French foot is an illness caused by exposure to cold temperatures combined with moist feet. Trench foot can occur at 15 C if the feet are constantly wet. Wet body parts lose more heat than dry ones, so the body constricts blood vessels to shut down circulation in the feet, and this causes the feet to die. The best treatment is to dry and clen the affected feet and keep them warm.