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Post by sandragon13 on Jun 7, 2009 22:17:49 GMT -5
hey guys...guess what?
Chapter 22: High Tide
Sun, wind, and sea…the perfect union of the three must have conspired to generate this place, this day. Ideal conditions. The barrels were forming without effort, as if preordained by the sea itself. Around her, she could smell the beach air, pungent salt and sunscreen. Summer shifted her grip on the polished wooden board as she held it by her side. A satisfied, excited grin creased her lips, and, surfboard in hand, she charged to the water’s edge, put the board in front of her body, and leapt out into the shallows.
“Summer!” came the shout, as jarring as a wipeout in a heavy curl. The blonde-haired girl suddenly came to, the brilliant blue sky plunging into blackness. She lifted her head upright, eyes blurry from being closed, her face moist and hot where it had lain against the desk. Professor Fisk stood facing her, as was most of the class, turned in their chairs. Most of them were amused by her predicament, though clearly the instructor wasn’t pleased. Summer put on her trademark friendly smile, knowing she had been caught cold.
“Sorry Professor, it won’t be a problem again,” she said in the tone of one who knew how to diffuse the situation, not too sarcastic, not too sweet. The ruse seemed to work, as the bespectacled man cleared his throat and turned back to his board, upon which was a complicated-looking diagram of a Machop’s musculature. Summer sighed with relief and leaned back in her chair. She knew there must be a nice red mark from the flat surface on the side of her face, and was glad that only a wall was to her right. Could they really blame her for nodding off in Fisk’s class, she wondered to herself, the guy’s voice could put her to sleep faster than a Jigglypuff. To her left, Amy’s leg was bouncing; the brunette seemed to have energy without limit. Summer wondered how Amy could pay attention to the exceedingly boring lecture…but as if by some miracle, the tone sounded, indicating the end of the period. Summer stuffed her notebook into her bag and slung it over her shoulder, happy to be set free from the pallid sterility of the lab classroom. Together with Amy, Evelyn, and Ashley, the girls turned to leave the room.
“Excuse me, Ms. Summer? Could I speak to you for a moment?” Summer turned, surprised to hear the Professor’s voice behind her. The other three girls watched as she turned and walked back toward the lanky instructor, shuffling quietly to the safety of the hallway and ducking their heads back inside with curiosity. Summer stood before Professor Fisk by the whiteboard, the labeled diagrams still displayed from the projector above.
“Today marks the fifth time this week that you’ve fallen asleep in my class, is that true?”
Summer swallowed hard, she knew that it was, though she wasn’t keeping count. “Yeah, about that…”
“I know that this material isn’t the most interesting we offer here,” he said, donning his white lab coat over his grey shirt, “trust me when I say that I wasn’t always this much of a nerd.”
I had expected to be in more trouble than this, Summer thought to herself, and could only manage to nod. Fisk reached into his briefcase and pulled out a single sheet of paper, handing it to her.
“I want you to complete this assignment. I have sent my Pokemon out to conceal three items, listed here, around the facility, and it is your responsibility to recover all three and bring them to me, by class tomorrow. You’ve got to do it on your own, no having your friends assist you.”
Summer looked up at the tall, lean professor, half her mind on the task being assigned to her and the other wondering why she wasn’t being reprimanded with more than an extra assignment. She decided it wasn’t worth pursuing.
“Alright, you got it, sir,” Summer said, internally relieved at the ease of the task. She walked out of the classroom and met up with her friends, each displaying varying levels of curiosity as to what had just occurred. As the four girls walked the halls to the girls’ side of the dormitory floor, a trio of swift Crobat flitted noiselessly through empty halls, travelling the well-known paths through the carved rock passages. Each of the four-winged Poison types carried a trinket around its neck, odd shapes of a reddish stone and a woven golden metal. As instructed, they deposited their treasures in the proper locations and took off again, returning to Professor Fisk’s room nearly simultaneously, with no eyes noting their presence above the hallways. As they flapped to a silent hover before the bespectacled man, Professor Preston entered, grinning as he saw the three bat Pokemon. “The assignment?” he asked Fisk as the scientist recalled the three Crobat and walked to turn off the projector. Fisk grinned slightly. “The Headmaster is clever indeed.”
Summer pulled the paper, already creased into disproportionate halves from her pocket, and opened it to its full size. Her sapphire eyes read over the typed lines quickly. Apparently, she had 24 hours to gather three pieces of an amulet called the Amber Stone, all of which had been distributed within the complex of the Academy. She could enlist no help from the other kids, nor any other Pokemon than her partner Flow. “A scavenger hunt?” she wondered to herself, “that’s a pretty weird way to punish someone for sleeping in your class…whatever, guess I’ve gotta do it either way.” She bent and tied her sneaker tighter, slung her bag back over her shoulder, and started down the hallway toward the Annex.
Within minutes the huge open space yawned before her, the wrought-iron banister the only separation between the walkway and a forty-foot plummet to the stone tiles below. She paused near the entrance to the spiral staircase built into the wall, and removed the sheet from her pocket.
“You will find the first piece of the artifact in the most distant place from the front portal,” read Summer, her mind suddenly going back to the exquisitely-detailed glass doors two levels below her. She raised her eyes from the paper, to the back side of the massive, gleaming stone statue, peering through the gap between its wing and neck of the giant black dragon. The entranceway, which was visible at the far side of the annex directly across from where she now stood, stood undisturbed across the quiet forum’s floor. Tracing the doors upwards past the concentric rings of stone, Summer looked upward at the mysterious fourth floor, the highest of the levels accessible by the spiral stairs. “It’s gotta mean the top floor, right?” she wondered aloud, looking back at the sheet in her hands. “There’s no way further down, I don’t think, and going up there will get me as far as I can go from the door.” With that reasoning, she slipped into the carved-stone stairwell and ascended two flights, gripping the handrail tightly. After what seemed a far longer time than necessary she emerged at the last opening in the carved column, a wrought-iron gate with a sizeable lock prevented ascension further. She stepped out onto the landing.
The fourth level looked much like the third floor’s academic-style layout, with numerous doors lining the sandstone walls. However, it was evident that this floor had not been used for classes for quite some time. The tiles of the walkway were covered with a noticeable layer of dust, and Summer could only spot the isolated tracks of a Pokemon leading from the stairs and around the perimeter of the floor. “Oh right, the Houndoom, the guard dogs. They must do their rounds up here too at night.” Summer slowly approached the banister, looking out over the vacuous expanse that spread out before her. She had never truly appreciated the epic scale of the Annex until now, she now stood even higher than the venerated dragon sculpture , the highest point of which reached to the middle of the level below her. The ceiling above, domed, was much closer than she ever thought possible here. She looked around her, nothing but closed doors on all sides. Suddenly, however, she spotted something amiss…the last door in the line was ajar. Pulling Flow’s pokeball from her bag just in case, Summer made her way over to the room, kicking up dusty bursts with each footfall. Peeking into the partly-open doorway, Summer could see only deep shadows in beyond the flickering glow of the hall. Nervously, she reached her hand through the door and felt around on the wall for a switch. With a sigh of relief she found it , flicking on the suddenly glaring light. Even in the sharp brightness, Summer felt like she was in the right place...ah! The low ceiling was adorned along its edge by a wooden molding, and dangling from a nail in the far corner was a reddish jewel on a gold chain. Standing on a desk, the amulet was an easy reach for the young woman. As she clambered back to the floor, she examined the sparkling reddish-brown gem, which was set in a wiry golden housing on a fine chain. “Why would they put something this valuable out here in the open, just as an assignment for me to do?” Summer wondered, it didn’t seem to make sense. “Whatever, I’ve got the first one, two more to go.” Producing the map from her pocket once more, she read the next set of instructions. “You will find the second piece beneath the surface, in the Sea Caverns.” “The…the Sea Caverns? We’re in the middle of the desert, it’s not…” Suddenly it hit her; Summer knew where she had to look. She strode out of the dusty classroom and made her way back to the staircase. As she flipped the lights back off, a pair of red eyes and a wide, gleaming grin appeared in the dark, fading back into the wall as she shut the door behind her. Summer walked as fast as she could back down the winding staircase, her hand gripping the rail on the right side as she descended. More than once she nearly lost her footing on the worn stone steps, but her honed sense of balance enabled her to stay on her feet. “Thank you, surfing,” she thought to herself with a smile. Dozens of steps and three tiers later, she arrived at the level of the Annex floor, the huge room’s checkered floor seemed to stretch for miles. She stepped out into the archway and caught her breath, the effort of clambering up and then down all those steps taking a toll on her legs. An unexpected shuffling noise echoed across the vacuous space, snapping Summer from her reverie against the cool stone wall. She peered to her left, towards the feet of the giant statue, and noticed Maya, the secretary, looking over at her from her desk. The young woman, in her emerald-green dress, waved in greeting, her expression bright. Summer grinned and returned the casual wave before lifting her bag back onto her shoulder and entering back into the staircase. Further and further down into the cool stone shaft she descended, the light from the opening above vanishing and giving way to wrought-iron torchlight. Humidity began to gather around her, beading on the walls and giving everything a warm, sticky feeling. Summer smiled, knowing that she was getting close to her next destination. A last turn opened onto a landing, and Summer was awestruck by what she saw.
In the dim light, a massive room opened before her. Bathed in gentle blue light, the space seemed to be built in a large cavern, rough stone walls and stalactites hanging from the ceiling above. Nearly the entire floor of the chamber was covered in pools of all sizes and descriptions, both naturally-formed and manmade. In the center lay one larger than any Summer had ever seen before. Sapphire-colored lights illuminated the water from below and spotlights that shone from above sent beams of color through the thickly humid air, visible through the drifting mist. There was a comfortable warmth afforded by the humid air and glimmering water, reflections of light dancing on the ceiling high above. I could live here forever, Summer thought to herself. She reached into her shoulder-slung pack and withdrew Flow’s pokeball. She pressed the button on the center of the sphere and it opened, pouring out its contents in the form of red energy. Moments later the orange river crab took shape, raising its claws above its head and looking curiously at its unfamiliar surroundings. The blonde-haired girl smiled at the Krabby, when suddenly her attention was drawn to the far side of the room. Through the shifting mists, something big was moving. A haunting, yet musical, tone began drifting across the chamber, echoing off the slick stone floors and high ceilings. Summer squinted into the cloudy haze, trying to make out the creature’s identity. A Lapras? she thought to herself. It sounds like one, like the ones off Valencia Island at last year’s Orange Big Wave Finals. This one, though, sounded deeper, as if coming from something larger… Flow, suddenly, took off in his sideways gait, a froth of foam gathering around his mouth. “Flow, come back!” shouted Summer, trying to keep her voice low enough that she wouldn’t be heard by the mysterious shape in the fog. The Krabby, ordinarily very mellow-natured, seemed defensive toward the figure, and kept clambering over the puddle-laden stone towards the far end of the chamber. Summer followed the water-type, carefully watching her footing on the slick surface. Abruptly, the Krabby stopped its charge, then slowly began backing away to Summer’s side. Pokemon and trainer stood at the edge of a huge naturally-formed lagoon, the billowing mist hanging substantially over the water’s surface. As if in response to their presence, a slender shape began rising near-silently from the cloudy center of the pool, an aquamarine light shining brightly as it was held aloft. A mournful wail, resonating through the cave and rippling the water’s surface before it, issued forth from the creature in the mist, which now towered ten feet out of the water, taller than any Lapras Summer had ever encountered. This was nothing she was familiar with. The young woman stood unmoved from where she stood, transfixed by the creature before her, her trademark relaxed nature replaced by wonder. Through the thick miasma, she could make out a reptilian head on an extremely long, slender neck, the smooth skin wetly reflective under the lights. The eye of the creature retained its unusual light-blue glow, brightly luminous of its own accord. For a moment it turned, facing directly toward Summer where she stood, before turning away and sinking back into the water without a sound, much less a splash. Just as quickly as it had appeared before her, the creature had vanished beneath the still water, and was gone from sight before Summer could approach. As she searched the clear depths from the surface, her eye caught a glimpse of a shiny glimmer near the rocky bottom of the lagoon. Several dozen feet underwater, she could make out the golden chain and reddish gem of the second piece. “Easy enough,” she said quietly to Flow, who stood nearby, more relaxed now that the mysterious creature had vanished. The Krabby knew exactly what she meant, smiling as well as its exoskeletal face would allow. Good thing I came prepared, Summer mused, as she unzipped her thin sweatshirt and threw it next to her bag, which on a stone elevated above the damp floor. She pulled off the white teeshirt underneath and adjusted the azure-blue bikini top she wore beneath it. She freed her legs from the black bicycle shorts, revealing matching bikini bottoms. Stripping off her shoes and socks, she tested the water with her toes, and finding it perfectly warm, dove right in. Even beneath the surface, it was thoroughly clear, wonderfully balmy, and silent but for her own movement. Thanks to her thousands of hours spent in the surf, Summer’s athletic body propelled herself quickly through the water with effortless strokes. She reached the amulet as it lay upon the uneven floor, grabbed it, and kicking off the bottom, rocketed back up to the surface. Her crustaceous partner, who was already sleeping on the warm stones by the water’s edge, reached into her bag and extracted a folded-up towel, holding it up for his master in his claw. Summer wished she could swim for longer; it had been weeks since she had last been in the water. Unfortunately, she and the Krabby were on a time limit. Reluctantly, she climbed from the refreshing pool and dried herself off. As she replaced her blue barrettes in her hair, she read the list for the third, and final, location clue.
“You will find the third piece near the deepest portal.”
With nothing else to go on, Summer tried to make sense of the clue as she redressed, hurriedly drying herself with her towel. Still in her mind, though, was that creature that had risen from the water before her just minutes before, then vanished without a trace. She didn’t get a really good view of it, but she wondered if the teachers knew that something like that was living down here. As she made her way back to the stairwell, she noticed the bronze plaque on the wall beside the archway, reading “Sea Caverns” in hammered copper. “See?” she said to Flow as she pointed to the sign. “I was right!” Summer and Flow reentered the winding stairway column and prepared the long climb back to the ground floor. The Krabby, however, did not follow her up the first few stairs, and instead drew his trainer’s attention with its raspy voice. Summer turned back at the river crab, who extended his claw to the darkness to the right of the ascending staircase. Yet more stairs wound downward into the darkness beyond, covered in dust damp with humidity from the water-filled cavern nearby. The Krabby, despite possessing limited eyesight in the deep darkness, lead the way down the murky passage for several dozen feet before arriving at a level landing, the very base of the stairway column. At the end of the path stood a wooden door braced with an imposing wrought-iron gate, lit by a single dim lamp from above. Not a sound could be heard but for their footfalls and Summer’s slightly-nervous breathing. Straining to see, Summer flipped open her cell phone, using its brightly-glowing screen to help guide her progress. The digital numbers on the device read 8:54 PM. In the bleak light, however, a faint glimmer issued forth from the dark-metal grate, yellowish against the blackened iron. It was not without concern that Summer plucked the third piece of the amulet from where it hung, when a sudden rustling made both partner and master jump slightly. A piece of paper fluttered to Summer’s feet.
“If you’ve found this third piece, you should now have all three pieces of the amulet. I will now reveal to you the secret of these treasures. These gems are known as the Breloom Spheres, a trio of gems assembled thousands of years ago from some rare precious stone. They are so named because when they are assembled together, the three gems give off a powerful energy that, in humans and Pokemon, causes a hypnotic effect. Though short-lived, it is potent. You will likely be sent to sleep before fini..”
With the three red-brown gemstone pendants in her hand, Summer swooned against the wall, unable to hold herself up against the combined influence of the spheres. The paper fell from her grasp and, landing on the floor, began soaking up water from the damp floor. With her last bit of strength she reached into her backpack and withdrew a single item, fighting the darkness that clouded her senses. Fifteen seconds later, she slumped to the floor, Flow collapsed by her side.
Hours passed as Summer and Flow lay unconscious before the heavily-barred door, the lonely gloom at the very base of the Academy surrounding them both beyond the feeble glow of the lantern. Though rendered asleep by the power of the gems, they slept no deeper than if they had fallen asleep of their own accord. Through the night and the following morning they dozed, undisturbed in the humid, noiseless passage. Suddenly, piercingly loud in the stone hall, the rhythmic strumming of a guitar echoed. The din rang out from Summer’s mobile, the programmed response for its alarm-clock function. Even as she shook off the thick blanket of sleep, a sly grin spread across the blonde girl’s face. Through blurred eyes she flipped the phone open and turned off the blaring interlude, and checked the time. 11:45 AM. The numbers glowed back blue in her face. Though she was just awakening from sleep, she felt far more drowsy than usual. With a start she realized the three amulets lay in a cluster by her side. Summer slapped one of the spheres away from the others, breaking the influence they held when assembled together. Instantly feeling energy return to her as the veil of lethargy lifted, she fought her way to her feet, realizing that she had only 15 minutes to bring the three gems to Professor Fisk, four stories and two hundred steps above her current position. Without thinking she gathered the three amulets and made for the stairs, before feeling the now-familiar lightheadedness of the gems’ power begin sapping her strength. She realized that she couldn’t carry all three without putting herself to sleep, even placing them in her bag would activate their power. Searching desperately for an answer, her attention jumped to her partner, who himself was recovering from the sudden slumber they had been subjected to. Summer grinned.
In Professor Fisk’s laboratory classroom, the bespectacled instructor stood before the Class as his students made their way to their seats. The clock above, precisely accurate, read 11:57. He looked out at the arranged tables, and was not surprised to find Summer absent from her chair. With less than a minute remaining, Amy and Ashley glanced nervously at each other; Summer had not answered her door this morning as they made their way to class, which was unusual for the relaxed, but responsible, young woman. With less than a minute remaining before the strike of noon, the professor picked up his record book for notation of the experiment’s result. From the hallway, however, came the sudden, rhythmic slapping of sneakers on stone. As the second hand passed the 9, Summer, breathing hard, stepped into the room. The Class as a whole turned to face her, most thoroughly confused by her somewhat disheveled and winded appearance. The blonde girl swallowed hard, quickly catching her breath, and strode to the podium before the lanky instructor. She reached into her pack and withdrew a pair of the glimmering gold-and-amber amulets, holding them by their chains, and held them toward him. “And the third?” asked Fisk with a curious tone, inwardly surprised and impressed. With a slight grin Summer snapped a single Pokeball from her belt and sent out her Krabby. Flow gurgled as it regained its physical form, looking up at the tall teacher. Clenched tightly in its claw was the third amulet.
“Well done, Summer and Flow. You managed to accomplish your assigned task in the pre-arranged time period, and somehow found a way through the associated risks.” From behind the podium he produced three silvery velvet bags, and one by one placed a gem in each before stowing them beneath the desk surface. “Curious as I am about how you managed to complete this task, I have a class to teach. If you’d please take your seat, I’d like to begin.”
Summer recalled the Krabby, its crustaceous grin wide on its face. She made her way to her desk in the corner, the eyes of her Classmates following her, as Professor Fisk began his lecture. Once seated she allowed herself a small smile, and leaned back against the molded plastic seat.
-sandragon13
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