Ash and Serena were busy kissing when the door to his room was knocked. It had been a few days since the heated conference call with Ailsa and his mother. All of them stayed at the Southern Control Center away from the fights and work.
They didn't have any idea what had been going on outside, in the real world and the one created by their chamber.
Ash had stayed in his room for the majority of his time at the Southern Center, the people on the outside thought he was depressed because he had to postponed the Master's League.
Only Serena was aware of what was going on the inside.
"Hello?" It was the voice of Gary Oak rapping the door, "Ash?"
Both of their eyes stood up in alarm. "Arceus, you need to leave!" Ash exclaimed as he sat upright.
"We're at the bottom of the sea!" She complained, still sitting atop Ash, "what do you want me to do? Swim out?"
Ash considered her advice for a moment. "Oh my Arceus!" She hit his arm, "you're thinking about it?"
"Well, we agreed to keep it a secret, didn't we? I mean what kind of person would you be if you didn't keep up to your end?"
Ash was trying to act cute but she wasn't buying it, "The kind that's going to put a pillow over your face right now!"
Before Ash could answer, the door to his room opened wide. In a hurry Ash rolled Serena down on the bed, she hit the floor with a thump and a cry, leaving him shirtless on a very messed up bed.
"So I was called in with Joanne and you wouldn't believe it—" Gary stopped in his tracts after seeing Ash lay shirtless on the bed, "—why are you sitting...?"
Ash's face was flushed, a sigh escaped his lips as he ordered, "Can't you knock? You useless trash?"
Gary's face made a weird expression, the kind Ash almost recognized. His mind was running a mile a second and not in the right direction.
"Oh... oh!" Gary looked away in shame, "I... I came to tell you that Joanne is calling you... you can come when you're not—" a snicker escaped his lips, "—playing with yourself."
"Wait– Gary no! I'm wearing pants!" Ash said but Gary had dashed off, slamming the door behind with a loud laugh.
Serena sat down on the floor, looking up towards Ash with wistful stares. "You dropped me on the floor!" She complained.
Ash sighed as he walked towards the door, locking it properly this time. "And you didn't close the door!"
"Well I would've but... oh, what are you—"
Before she could finish her sentence, Ash had pulled her up on the bed with a jerk. He placed his hand on her belly, tickling her until she began to scream with violent laughs.
"Stop it!" She said in between the cries of joy, "I'm sorry I'll close the door next time!"
He knew he was screwed when he saw the expression on everyone's faces as soon as he stepped into the conference room. There were familiar faces as well as some unfamiliar ones.
The one he was most shocked to see was of Charlus Oak, who looked beaten and injured.
Next to him was a new yet old face, it was of Alain.
"Oh my Arceus," Ash hurried inside, "Alain?!"
Alain was also injured yet unlike Charlus, he stood up and greeted Ash-like an old friend. "It's been what, 7 years?"
Ash nodded quite happily, "I never thought I'd see you again."
"Well, neither did I."
He sat down next to him, much to Charlus's dismay, who still refused to meet his eyes. He twitched as their shoulders brushed.
Ash curled his lips into a snarl and ignored Charlus's behavior. He kept his eyes etched on the screen which showed Gary's lovely grandmother. His eyes desperately searched for his mother but she wasn't anywhere to be seen.
"Nice of you to finally join us," Ailsa said.
Ash tried not to smile, thinking of the last-minute activities he'd indulged himself in after Gary left.
"Yeah, I was... busy."
Ailsa narrowed her eyes upon him as if she could see right past his lie. "Well, thank you, you did me a favor."
"Welcome," he said after failing to recognize the sarcasm in her voice.
She scoffed, "What I'm about to say must not leave this room."
Ash looked around, there were only three people present, including him.
"Spencer Hale has been captured," her voice was deeply unsettling, "along with the stelae he had dug up from the mountain of the Realgam city."
He was the only person in the room to be shocked by the news. Alain and Charlus had taken it surprisingly well, he couldn't prove it but something about Charlus's expression screamed guilt.
"I thought he was in some other city?"
"He was, they swapped locations when they discovered another in close proximity."
"I thought he had escort?" Ash said.
"He did," Ailsa answered, "we sent some more but by the time our team reached, there was nobody but dead bodies."
He could hear Charlus grunt his teeth in frustration.
"Was it the Apocalypse?" Ash further asked.
Ailsa shook her head, "Why don't you continue, Charlus dear?"
He looked up from his feet, muttered a few curses before telling his side of the tale. "We examined the wounds on the body of the Elementary team, they were wider and more bloodied. The Apocalypse uses weapons that leave behind not a single droplet of blood, much like ours. The heat from the gun severs the ends of the veins and the arteries making them impossible to bleed... moreover..." he scratched his forehead, "just as we were about to leave, they came in for a search for them just like us... it's a third party."
Ash nodded in agreement, he had met with Spencer Hale two times in his life. The first one was when he was presumed dead and his daughter Molly had wreaked havoc upon them and kidnapped his mother. The second one was at the academy when he looked a lot deranged and aged than he was.
"So what do you want us to do?" Ash asked politely.
"Bring them back, of course," Ailsa smiled.
"But from where?"
A wicked smile showed up on her face. "You were the top of the academy in your batch, Ash Ketchum. It's your job to figure it out."
The dimmed lights turned on, Ash felt a sudden burning sensation on his corneas due to the sudden brightness. But as soon as things returned to normal, he would himself sitting next to a gigantic 3-D map of a place located next to a sea. Ash guessed it was the place where Spencer disappeared.
"This is...?" He asked Charlus.
"Realgam city," said Charlus, still refusing to meet his eyes, "weren't you taught this at the academy?"
Ash remembered the boring lectures where they'd been forced to read the geography and the topology of the region.
"Yeah,"
Charlus touched a button on the lower left side of the table and a blue screen showed up in front of them.
"This is the gunshot wounds we found on the elementary team," he dragged his finger across the screen, a picture popped up of a dead person with what seemed to be a gruesome hole in his body, "and this is the gunshot left by the Apocalypse."
There was a clear difference, even a blind person could see it.
Their discussion went on for what seemed to be forever. They covered tire tracts, footprints, DNA samples but found nothing, no evidence. It was like they went in and left like magic. Ash couldn't help but notice that during the whole time, Charlus hadn't looked at him, not even once.
He found it incredibly rude.
"It's the air travels," Alain said for the hundredth time.
"It's not," Ash argued, "if it was, the locals would've heard the noise but you said nothing was heard."
"They must be lying then,"
It was the only explanation but something didn't feel right. Ash sighed as he moved the map to and fro, looking for something, anything which didn't sound so bloody idiotic. But there was nothing, quite literally. It was like they'd vanished.
Like the whole scene was staged.
Just then, a bell rang in Ash's mind.
"How were they supposed to leave?" Asked Ash, "Spencer and his team, I mean?"
"They were supposed to take Route 141," Charlus zoomed in on the map, "this one."
A smile of satisfaction spread across his face as his wild theory finally started to make some sense.
"It's staged," he said.
Charlus sighed, "No offense but that's the most stupid thing I've heard." He still refused to meet his gaze.
Ash couldn't help but feel a little hurt. "You said it yourself that their transmissions were down, what if they'd found it sooner than we expected and set out to leave but then..." he pointed towards the route, "they were taken from here?"
Alain frowned, "It can't be, that route is located near the Gateon Port, and it's controlled by the team Snagem."
"Exactly," Charlus agreed, "why would they take the steale and Hale? They don't even know about their existence."
Ash gave it some more thought. "In Basil, we met with a certain Team Cipher, they said that they worked for bigger people, maybe the team was a part of it?"
"They would've given the unown to the Apocalypse," Alain played along.
Charlus violently shook his head. "It makes sense but Snagem is no friend to the Apocalypse than use, there is no way they could've given it to them!"
"They could've used it for themselves," he suggested.
Charlus shook his head yet again. "Ordinary people can't harness its power, Delia is trying and she spent years devoting to its research."
A mischievous smile took over Ash's face. "Why do you think they took Spencer Hale?"
•—•—•—•
Attention:- This chapter takes place several days after the last one, so this would be Charlus's second mission, the first being with Alain.