A Trip to Ecruteak
Why can’t I be normal? Why can’t I…breathe? I felt something pinch my nose. Ryan.
“Sleeping the day away again, are we? Why did they choose you to carry the Aurora Key, anyway?” he asked me as he released my nose.
“Don’t go there,” I grumbled. I looked out of the window at the late morning sun-drenched yard. Actually, it looked earlier than usual.
“Five minutes after eight, and you’re sleeping while the rest of us are enjoying the sun,” he teased.
“You’re waking me up at 8:05?” I growled.
“Yeah! Char and Feather are taking us to meet some of our fellow Aurora Knights. Aren’t you psyched?”
“Sure I am,” I said in mock enthusiasm, recalling my conversation with Talon. The rest of the night was turbulent, revisiting the Raikou dream when I finally fell asleep. I didn’t even remember my falling asleep; I was too busy hating Char for what he had hidden from me. How can he expect me to leave everything in my life and join something that was starting to sound more and more like the French Foreign Legion?
What about Feather? Shouldn’t I be hating her, too?
I couldn’t hate Feather. She…she…
I’m being biased. I can’t hate Char for something that maybe even he had to endure when he joined the Aurora Knights.
“Hello! Earth to Shonta! Are you there, Shonta?” Ryan yelled in my ear.
I snapped back to reality. “Stop that, will you?” I told him.
“Are you alright? You’re moodier than usual. So has Char. Don’t tell me you two got into another fight.” He sat on the bed, his eyes wearing a slightly concerned expression.
“This Knight named Talon came by and told me how the Aurora Knights made her leave behind everything, even her mate.”
“Oh, Char told me about her! You’re such a baby, Shonta.”
I picked up a pillow and smacked Ryan with it. “I’m not a baby! Why are you picking on me this morning?”
“You’re getting overemotional about something inevitable and natural. To Pokemon, at least.”
“Excuse me? Overemotional? Inevitable? Since when did you use such big words?”
He smacked me with the same pillow. “What I’m saying is that Pokemon aren’t humans. They usually don’t have to hang around their parents as long as we have to hang around ours.”
“Talon wasn’t a child, Ryan.”
“But most of the recruits are. Feather explained that Talon was about the same age as the other recruits when she found her Aurora Crystal, but she decided to try to avoid her fate. When fate caught up with her, she was all the more unprepared. It was considered her punishment.”
“Now that’s cold. We’re talking about the Pokemon version of the French Foreign Legion, not homework!”
“What’s so bad about the Aurora Knights?”
“We almost got killed before we officially joined! Every mission could be like that, or worse!”
Ryan rolled his eyes. “Why did you even want to be a Pokemon researcher, anyway?”
I opened my mouth to answer, and then closed it. He made a huge point; researchers and watchers go through the same risks. I was being a baby. “You’re right. I’m sorry,” I chose to say.
Ryan smiled and stood up. “Of course I’m right. Now get some clothes on, already!”
I put on my usual T-shirt and blue jeans ensemble, this time with a baseball cap. I found a backpack with more of my things, among them a new pair of gloves, fingers cut off. I slipped them on, slung the backpack over my shoulder, and looked in the bathroom mirror.
Ryan sure is looking forward to this, probably because he thought his life was so ordinary until all of this happened, I thought to myself. Even I spent one minute staring into Raikou’s face before I even knew about the Aurora Knights. I took a deep breath and made a dash for the front door, opening it slowly. If this morning was like every other morning, I was to be very careful or…
“You idiotic bug!”
“Pathetic lizard!”
Ripper was picking another fight, this time with Char. I looked at the left side of the porch and saw Reaper meditating, grumbling something to himself. I walked to him and tapped him on the shoulder. “I thought you fought with Ripper at this time,” I said to him.
Reaper opened an eye. “Fortunately Char came and granted me peace of mind this morning. Are you prepared for today’s trip?”
I nodded, showing him my backpack. “Have you seen Artemis and Static?” He pointed to the two Pokemon that were sitting next to Feather, who was trying to calm down Char.
“Thanks. You should stay here and watch over the house. I trust you, but Ripper’s something else.”
Ryan walked out of the house, carrying his backpack. “I should return Ripper while he’s not looking,” he whispered.
“Are you looking for a fight?” Char roared.
“No, I’m starting…” Ripper started, but was cut short as he was drawn in his pokeball.
“I smell a corny line, so just skip it,” I said to Ryan as I returned Artemis and Static. We walked up to Feather and Char.
“Let’s get this show in the sky!” Char yelled excitedly. He crouched so Ryan could climb on him.
“Before we go, where are we headed?” I asked him as I climbed on Feather’s back.
“Ecruteak,” Feather answered. With that, we took off.
We were barely out of the Ilex Forest when Ryan said “We should’ve told our moms where we were going, Shonta!”
“Too late for that! We should be back before they get home, so don’t worry,” Char said.
“Speeding up!” She swept back her wings like a fighter jet. Everything started to get blurry. I felt myself get heavy from the G-force.
Feather moved her beak as if she was talking, but nothing came out. She slowed down to my relief. “I said we should be there in no time now,” she repeated.
“Didn’t we leave Char behind?” I asked.
“He’ll catch up really soon.” She looked down and dropped altitude again. Char flew up from below with a heavily breathing Ryan on his back. “Told ya!”
“I wish you would stop doing that!” I heard Ryan yell to Char. “We almost crashed and you know it!”
“We’re here!” Feather chimed. Below us was the center of Ecruteak City. For a second I thought we flew through some sort of time portal; Ecruteak looked like it was stuck in the Feudal Era. It didn’t change one bit since I was little. A city frozen in time…
“Hey, Shonta! I see the college! Look over to the left!” Ryan yelled.
“Um, guys? Something’s wrong down there. You keep on going while I check it out,” Feather said. She flew down and landed in the middle of the city. A few people were standing and staring in different directions, not moving an inch. I walked to a nearby man and waved my hand in front of his face. He didn’t even blink.
“Everyone’s like this. I wonder what happened,” I said to myself.
“It’s probably a powerful Disable attack,” Feather guessed.
Char landed behind me and looked around while Ryan slid off of him. “I’m guessing that Madame Tussaud came by and replaced everyone with wax dummies,” Ryan joked.
“You’re the wax dummy,” I said.
“At least he’s not frozen,” a Pokemon’s voice said.
“Who said that?” I asked in a demanding voice.
“Look down,” the voice said. Looking down I saw a Meowth at my legs, a female by the looks of it. Around her neck was a golden colored Aurora Crystal with a crescent moon encased in it.
“Hi! My name’s Twilight. You must be Shonta, the new owner of the Dragon Key. Who’s the wax dummy?”
Ryan gave a halfhearted laugh. “I’m Ryan Steele. What’s going on here?”
“We’re not entirely sure, but we think that an Umbra Demon came by and froze the whole city. Circe had Magic, Wobert, Sentret and me search for clues.”
“So Circe’s here,” Char said.
“Circe’s a Psychic Aurora Knight, Shonta. She healed Char when he was nearly killed by Ripper,” Ryan informed me. “So where is she, Twilight?”
“Let’s see. She could either be at the Ecruteak Gym or at Ecruteak College. Maybe she’s just somewhere in the streets. I’m worried about Wobert, though.”
“What’s wrong with Wobert?”
The second I was done with that sentence, we heard distant screaming. Twilight sighed. “That’s what’s wrong.” She ran to the source of the sound. Ryan and I ran after her, leaving Char and Feather behind.
We found Twilight with a Sentret and a very freaked out Wobbuffet. The Wobbuffet was wearing a purple Aurora Crystal with an eye design encased in it while the Sentret was wearing an Aurora Crystal similar to Twilight’s. “Where were you, Twilight? Someone could have attacked me and no one would be around to save me,” he said.
“Wobert, what does ‘split up’ mean?” Twilight calmly asked Wobert.
“I could’ve gone with you.”
“Weren’t you with Sentret?”
“She told me to scan this street while she checked out the next street,” Wobert explained.
“How do you expect to become a full-fledged Aurora Knight when you get scared of your own shadow?” Sentret yelled at him.
“It wasn’t my shadow! Something’s in there! Something moving!” He pointed inside a nearby house. An Abra stepped out of there, wearing an Aurora Crystal similar to Wobert’s.
“Magic, what are you doing in there?” Twilight asked him.
He yawned. “Sleeping.”
“I didn’t know you guys slept on the job,” I butted in.
“We don’t. He does,” Sentret said, pointing at Magic.
“This mission totally screwed up my schedule,” Magic complained.
“I’m telling Circe that you were too lazy to do your job,” Sentret told him as she ran off.
“Gee, she’s a ray of sunshine today,” he grumbled.
Twilight cleared her throat. “Guys, this is Shonta and Ryan. Shonta and Ryan, this is Wobert and Magic. They’re recruits just like you two. They’re going to help us look for that Umbra Demon.”
“We are?” Ryan asked.
I elbowed him. “Why do you think an Umbra Demon would freeze the whole town?” I asked the Pokemon.
“They know that the owner of the Phoenix Key lives here in Ecruteak; they just don’t know where,” Twilight answered. “So they’re probably searching the whole town for him.”
“So where is he?”
“He lives in Ecruteak, but he had to go out of town today.”
“I’m thinking that they just froze the town because they wanted to show us they could,” Magic said drowsily.
“That makes a little sense,” Ryan commented.
“Where did Feather and Char go?” I wondered out loud.
A Pidgeotto landed on a roof near us. “Sorry to desert you, but Char wanted to see Circe. Anyway, I checked out the Ecruteak Gym. Even the gym match was frozen! Some kid with his Cyndaquil was going against the gym leader’s Haunter. It looked like the kid was going to lose that round.”
“So no one’s found anyone that could’ve done this,” I said. Then I heard the sound of chanting. It was the kind of chanting that can be done quietly but can echo over large distances so many people could hear.
“Please tell me that I’m not hearing things,” I told the group.
“Depends. What are you hearing?” Ryan asked.
“Some sort of eerie chanting.”
Everyone nodded.
“Everyone, be on your guard,” Feather said boldly.
The chanting got louder for a while, and then stopped. At that time, a Drowzee calmly walked into view. He also wore a purple Aurora Crystal. In his hand was a bell attached to a string.
“Are you the one that froze everyone in this place?” I asked the Drowzee.
He nodded. “I am Houdini,” he announced.
Twilight growled. “You’re an Umbra Demon!”
“Please, don’t call me such a barbaric name,” he said. “I am a Knight like you. I merely did this to send forth a message.”
“Looks like you were right, Magic,” Wobert said.
“See how I, one Pokemon, could easily freeze an entire city in time? It would probably take five humans to do the same. Humans will never make proper Aurora Knights.”
“What makes you say that?” Ryan asked him.
“Humans are such weak creatures. You won’t make it far, I assure you. Stay out of our way and continue with your pathetic lives.” He rung the bell in his hand and disappeared via Teleport. Suddenly everyone that was frozen was moving along like nothing happened.
“That guy was pumped up with himself,” Twilight said. “He didn’t freeze time. He just used Disable on everybody. No one seems to notice yet; it was only like this for thirty minutes at the most.”
“We should go back to Sunflower Town, guys,” Feather told me and Ryan. “Riku won’t be back until this evening.”
I could almost feel the air around Ryan get hotter. “Oh man! We were here to see him!?!”
“You told me about him, didn’t you?” I said.
“Don’t get me started!”