In Ruins - Chapter Two
disclaimer
Nintendo owns Pokemon; Pokemon owns me; I own a lawyer, and he tells me that Nintendo doesn't care what I do as long as I don't own money.
In Ruins
let me humor you
Thank you everyone for reviewing. This chapter is going to be wonky. I don't know what that word exactly means, but I have a feeling that you'll figure it out pretty soon. There are no warnings for this chapter, unless you've been traumatized by an incident with ketchup, or you sincerely dislike pokemon; both of these are issues that you'll need to take up with your therapist, and not me. Now, for the rest of you only slightly-more-sane readers, please enjoy the second chapter of "In Ruins!"
chapter two
It was, by all practicality, lunch time when Satoshi made his way to the dinner hall. Of all the structures in the campsite, this room, was the most central, and efforts appeared to have been made to ensure the greater integrity of a clean environment. The white-canvased tent was held up by box and block columns where it wasn't held up by thick metal poles; more importantly, the actual structure rested within two similar tent structures, and allowed the tent to hang more freely on its' supports. And, although the ceiling couldn't be taller than 10 feet at best, the lighting was largely natural and gave the whole dining area a sense of being fresh and cool.
Unortunately, Satoshi had learned that the atmosphere did little to improve the quality of the cooking. It was true that he'd been spoiled by his mother, Hanako, but he'd traveled all over the world and had rarely suffered any food more repulsive than that which was placed before him for every meal in this godforsaken mess hall. Due to the remote location of the ruins, trucks couldn't come too often with their supplies. Kenji told Satoshi that 'researchers simply had to make do with less fresh, and less interesting food'. Satoshi hadn't been able to form a response to that, but only because the food he'd just swallowed had been making attempts to resurface.
He barely had the chance to sit down at a place setting and scratch the mess that was his hair before Kenji discovered him.
"Good morning!" sang Kenji, dropping his breakfast tray abruptly onto the table. Pikachu, who had been sprawled across Satoshi's shoulder, nearly fell off at its surprise by the shocking noise. Satoshi stood up slowly, his face grim.
Of course, Kenji misunderstood this, so he grabbed Satoshi's shoulder and whirled him back around.
"Hey, Sato-chan! The table's in this direction," he quipped, and shoved Satoshi down onto the plastic chair.
Bleary-eyed, Satoshi stared into the space in front of him.
"If I didn't know better, I'd say you were trying to escape!" Kenji laughed.
"Pi-kaa," confirmed Pikachu.
"There's no food," he said, distantly. It took him quite a while to come up with the thought.
"Of course there isn't yet. It's a buffet line!" declared Kenji. "You know that, Sato-chan!"
Satoshi blinked, and Kenji relented.
"I'll let you have some of mine! And what a treat it is! Today's breakfast is.... boiled sand!" Kenji exclaimed with glee. "Or, as some call them, grits, mixed with sand, to the point where the two are indistinguishable!"
Satoshi mumbled to himself.
"What was that? I couldn't hear you," said Kenji moving in closer to Satoshi and cupping his ear for emphasis.
"Grits," Satoshi spoke as a drone. "Gimme some grits."
"Pikaaa," chided Pikachu.
Kenji just laughed and slapped Satoshi on the back.
"What appalling manners indeed, Pikachu!" he joked, and passed over a bowl of grits to Satoshi anyway. He then turned his attention to Satoshi's pokemon.
"Here, Pikachu, you can have some 'boiled sand' grits with your ketchup," he said, and passed the condiment to the yellow rat with dramaticized graciousness.
"I'm sure that this will be more than all your heart could possibly desire."
Pikachu snorted at the absurdity of the statement.
Satoshi failed to follow after that point, as he became engrossed in his own food, and only once he had completely exhausted several portions of grits, cereal, orange juice and toast, did he discover that Pikachu and Kenji's discussion had progressed into a far more serious state of affairs.
It was some sort of bizarre battle of the stomachs. His prized pokemon was competing in a ketchup-guzzling contest with Kenji and one of the cooks. It appeared that several others may have been involved at some point, but had been forced to remove their entries after being unable to consume more than three pints of sauce. There was a crowd of people shouting and laying down bets right in front of him.
He bit into his last course, a bacon-avocado-tomato-and-turkey club sandwich, and watched with poorly masked amusement as the chef dropped out of the competition, and quite literally passed out on the floor.
"Towel! Towel! Towel! Need a towel!" moaned Kenji, holding his stomach with desperation.
He sat on a chair in the infirmary, looking at first glance as if he'd been involved in some sort of great and epic battle. However, the truth was somewhat less heroic.
Kenji's hair hung limply over his hair band and over his face; his bangs were greasy and clumpy in the spots where ketchup had missed the aim of his mouth. His green shirt seemed to have faired even worse, as the Ketchup appeared to have formed a minor galaxy of saucy constellations on Kenji's chest. The trashcan in front of had, needless to say, had filled up in the past twenty minutes since Kenji had arrived in the clinic.
Pikachu sat several feet away, staring into a corner, its tail twitching.
Satoshi, of course, watched it all with a generous smile on his face. He also took great pleasure in his taskwork, evident from the excited way that he slapped a wet towel against the back of Kenji's neck.
With such an attitude as this, it would be difficult for anyone to see him as anything other than an affectionate and loyal friend.
"How's that feel?"
"You're sick, Sato-chan!" bawled Kenji.
"No, you're the one who's throwing up a perfectly good lunch and breakfast!" Satoshi stuck out his bottom lip. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself."
"Pi pika CHU," agreed the electric mouse from its corner.
Kenji gave it a baleful glare. "Oh, don't be a sore loser."
"As opposed to a sore winner?" snickered Satoshi, taking a seat next to Kenji on the stark white cot.
Kenji opened his mouth in reply, but quickly found himself covering his hand with his mouth and leaning over the waste basket once again.
"Gross," said Satoshi.
"That was a terrible pun," Kenji chortled. He tossed back a glass of water and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Satoshi rolled his eyes (Kenji had no place to talk about what constituted a bad pun. He would never forget the horror on Kasumi's face when Kenji had made a joke about how often Ookido-sensei woke up with morning wood. He was pretty sure that the two of them still weren't speaking).
"So, do you think you've gotten out the last of the ketchup?" Satoshi ventured, although the immediate result ade it rather clear that his question had just been answered for him.
"Don't say that word," Kenji said, greening around the gills.
"Which word? Oh - you mean 'ketchup'?"
"Yes," Kenji wheezed out the affirmation purely by his force of will.
Satoshi cocked his eyebrow. "But what's so bad about saying 'ketchup'; it's not like saying the word will magically force more of it into your stomach or anything--"
"-- Urk --"
"-- Well, you're going to have to suck it up and get back to work eventually!" Satoshi began to tease in earnest. "I'm pretty sure I saw some of your crew members betting against you back there, and they lost at least 10,000 yen altogether. Wonder how they'll take to see you skiving off of work?"
Kenji moaned and rested his forehead against the edge of the waste bin. "Feel sick...." he said. If Kenji's voice was too weak, then of course Satoshi must not have been able to hear it, so he wasn't being intentionally mean in continuing his soliloquy.
In fact, the unintentional cruelty was only incident to his Plan. Yes, Satoshi had a Plan to put into action that required a little 'friendly baiting'. But if he was succesful, he would win his freedom! More accurately, if his Plan was succesful, Satoshi would win around a half hour of Having Something To Do. It was actually very convenient that Kenji had gotten sick from drinking too much Ketchup, because before breakfast, Satoshi was worried that he'd have to resort to doing something stupid; something of the likes that Rokketo-dan would do. Something like 'dig a hole in the hopes that Kenji would fall into it'.
Satoshi chose not to consider that although he wasn't digging a hole for Kenji, he was making digs at Kenji.
"It's kind of hard to imagine, you getting sick and not being able to do your work because of a stupid game... I wonder what would happen if Ookido-sensei was to hear about it? He would be so disappointed in you," Satoshi dug.
And his mining was a success - he struck solid gold!
"I'm doomed!" Kenji gaped. "I must deliver the results of my project...At all costs!"
"But Kenji-kun!" Satoshi pasted on a terrified expression. "If you go outside into that hot desert, you'll just get even more sick! All of that hot blowing air and the sticky feeling of sweat... The loud noise of pokemon digging up the ground... Why, it might be so overwhelming, you might contaminate one of the sites, and then what good would all of your data be?"
Kenji's face became very straight at this point, and he looked at Satoshi with the most serious, and rather terrified, expression that Satoshi could remember had ever been directed at him.
"I can't believe I'm about to say this," he said, swallowing, "But you make a very good point."
"If only there was another way."
"If only--" Kenji began, but was cut off by Satoshi's shout.
"I've got it! Kenji, I'll take your data and measurements to the field site!" Satoshi declared.
Clearly, Kenji was not thinking straight enough to remember that Satoshi spelled disaster wherever he went. He was clumsy, forgetful, brash, and occasionally had impulses of curiousity that involved the world tilting from its' very axis. If Kenji did not have blood thickened with ketchup in his veins, it would have been very likely that he would've felt a warning buzzing in the back of his mind. But as Kenji was preoccupied, Satoshi's plan seemed rather rational and worthy of approval.
"That's a great idea, Satoshi. You know where I need you to take those, right?"
"Directly to Shigeru, so he can tell everyone how to attack the next stage of the excavation," he replied obediently.
"Right! I've got it!" Satoshi posed triumphantly. "C'mon, Pikachu! Let's go! We're on a mission!'
Pikachu perked up from its' position of pining, and was trotting at its' master's heels in no time at all. They were halfway out of the room before Satoshi froze midstep. Kenji smirked and pulled out a thick packet from the back cargo pocket in his shorts.
"Hey Kenji-"
"-Forgetting this?" asked Kenji, holding up a tan envelope in the arm that wasn't clutching his stomach.
"Uh, yeah," said Satoshi, slightly shame-faced. He rubbed the back of his neck with a weak laugh, and took the research from Kenji, thanking him.
"It's the other way around," Kenji assured him. Satoshi nodded with a very dead-set furrow of his brows, as if that alone would seal the arrangement.
"Okay! Bye!!" he called out. "I'll catch up with 'ya later!"
It took the briefest of moments for Kenji's addled mind to register the word before it struck him with a new bout of illness and caused him to swoon. He collapsed on the bed, and curled up in a fetal position. He stayed that way for several long, troubled, moments before gritting out a recommendation for how Satoshi ought to mend a flood-prone river.
Shigeru straightened and wiped a damp clump of bangs from his forehead. The path of his gloved hand stained his skin with a smear of orange and miry clay, on top of the light brown dusting from breaking rocks. He brought his hand down, reaching for the near-empty flask of water at his side.
"...Tired out already, Ookido-senpai?" teased an older scientist from several feet away. Shigeru snorted disdainfully at the man who was meticulously scraping between the crevice of two large rocks.
"If you recall correctly, Tano, I've been here since 5 A.M., doing some of the work that you were not able to complete last night," Shigeru rebutted.
Tano leaned out from between the rocks with a smirk. "I don't have much experience in the field of paleontology... or the restoration of fossils, for that matter."
"Strange; it would seem that you don't have much ability in any scientific field," drawled Shigeru. He stepped out of the direct sunlight and took a seat underneath the shadowed side of the hand-excavated trench.
"I will not admit to being half as clever as you," Tano said in his most syrupy voice. Then, "But you can't be telling me that 'Frankensteining' Pokemon fossils is a legitimate field of science. It cannot be done."
"Ah, it isn't possible? But how else were you born?!"
"Magic," answered Tano.
Then, he and Shigeru broke out into matching grins.
"You old fart," said Shigeru.
"Young idiot," said Tano.
By the time Satoshi stepped out into the blazing sun, it was the hottest part of the day. He could see the world around him waving at the edges, shaping mirages over the miles of dunes. It was a desert, after all, and he'd camped in them loads during his pokemon journeys. Still, his earlier experience with deserts didn't change the fact that it took hardly a minute for him to begin sweating. It was about 110 degrees or something and...
"Well so what if it is!" Satoshi curled his hand into a fist as his ruminations vocalized. "I'll just take off my rubber gloves and I'll feel loads better!"
"Pikapika!" cheered Pikachu, running in front of its trainer with a bit of a frolic.
"Besides, at least we're not still inside of there, doing dishes, cleaning laundry, and stuff! We can now be part of the real deal!"
"Chu!"
"Let's go, Pikachu! We've got to--"
And Satoshi unceremoniously tripped and fell face-down into the sand.
"Shigeru! Shigeru!!"
Researcher Tano, huddled over a scientific instrument that was buried partially in the ground, looked up to see Satoshi of Masara town coming his way. The older man didn't recognize the (very much) younger boy by his appearace, but it wasn't necessary. Tano was a scientist, yes; but, put simply, not many people had a Pikachu who followed them around wherever they went.
So, Tano ventured a guess.
"Ah, Satoshi, is it?" he asked.
The boy stopped, several feet away. "Yeah, that's me, um..."
Satoshi's fairly confused eyes darted around for a moment before settling on an elderly man, and by then he seemed fairly flustered. Tano noticed with interest that the boy's Pikachu seemed to have a fairly placid expression - completely unphased by its trainer's intensely expressive behavior.
"Sorry, I thought Ookido Shigeru was supposed to be here," Satoshi apologized, respectfully. "But uh, how did you know who I was, anyway?"
"Excuse me, I should have introduced myself. I am Yamatoshi Tano. Shigeru and I lead the research team that is currently excavating the field here - and as you may be wondering he isn't here right now as he's filling up our flasks with water. Shigeru has told me about you," replied Tano. Before the next question could get off of Satoshi's tongue, Tano added keenly, "From what I gather, you were childhood friends and several weeks ago, you came all the way from Kanto to visit Shigeru here, correct?"
"Yeah, that's right."
"Well, what do you think? Of our work, I mean. As a pokemon trainer, it must be a much slower, less adventurous way to spend your youth."
Satoshi scratched his hair beneath the brim of his hat.
"I've, uh, had to deal with waiting things out before, so it's not that bad." Satoshi shifted his weight on his feet. "Anyway... I'm getting to do something else now, to help out, rather than just doing chores. I have to find Shigeru to give him something."
"So, you've been upgraded from housemaid to 'courier pidgey'?"
Tano smiled to himself quietly. Shigeru had always been one to choose his entrance based on the point at which he could effect the most drama. That he chose to do so with a subtle barb didn't escape Tano's notice, either. After all - age had to count for something, didn't it?
"Hey! Don't make fun of me!" Satoshi defended.
"Then don't make it so easy for me to make fun of you," Shigeru leered.
Tano cleared his throat. "Shigeru, I believe Satoshi had a purpose in seeking you out..?"
It was clear by Shigeru's open expression that he hadn't taken the time to consider Satoshi's purpose in his visit. He let out a small 'hmm' of interest.
"Yeah, so Kenji wanted me to give this to you," declared Satoshi. He reached into his pocket, took out a stuffed envelope and extended to Shigeru. He swiped the parcel and unsealed it quickly. Satoshi and Tano both watched his expression as it shifted from mild interest to disdainful boredom.
"More of these? It figures." Shigeru resealed the envelope flap and let out a huff.
"More of what?" asked Satoshi, moving forward and raising his neck to look inside the envelope.
"The symbol pieces, I assume," said Tano from his seat. "They appear to have engravings of the Unown on them."
Satoshi jumped slightly. "Symbol pieces...? Don't you mean, like the ones that Molly played with back in Greenfield?"
"Yes, the same ones," Shigeru cut in, snidely. "Don't worry, garu-boy, we didn't overlook something that obvious. We know that Molly was somehow able to activate the Unown, but we don't know how. Unfortunately, she was too young to be able to objectively tell us what she did to make them appear... She barely remembers the incident at all.
"We've concluded that those symbol pieces were already activated by Molly's father, when he had entered one of the newly unearthed chambers, deep underground - beneath these very ruins - six years ago. The connection between the symbol pieces and the appearance of the Unown was practically coincidental. None of thousands of combinations of symbol pieces have summoned the Unown. Thus, the contents of this envelope are irrelevant to our research."
Shigeru turned around and began to flip through several pile of folders and stapled papers. Tano watched how behind him, Satoshi bit the inside of his cheek before blurting out his thoughts.
"Well, Kenji told me that it was important for you to see these."
"Did he?" asked Shigeru, raising an eyebrow. "I bet the only thing that he thought was important was getting you to leave him alone."
Satoshi gaped, and Tano felt a flash of pity for him. He'd been on the recieving end of Shigeru's (at times, inexplicable) wrath in the past, and knew it to be fairly harsh. But he was a tough old man, and this boy, on the other hand...
... His expression was too open for Tano not to see that Shigeru had struck too deeply.
"So," Satoshi swallowed, "Are you saying that I came here for no reason?"
"Pretty much," agreed Shigeru. From where Tano was sitting, he could see just the edge of Shigeru's smirk.
"Great. Fine. Whatever," shot back Satoshi. "I'll see you later."
The boy turned on his heel, called his Pokemon to him, and stalked away. Shigeru did not look up from the page he was looking at; it was from some file that Tano could confidently say was irrelevant. Tano said nothing and instead waited for Shigeru to speak in his own time.
And - sure enough - as soon as Satoshi was surely gone, Tano watched as the tension seemed to drop out from between Shigeru's shoulders.
"You were too hard on him," Tano told him.
His young researcher partner took a deep, and somewhat shaky breath as he leaned over and held his palm to his forehead. Tano's attention was immediately diverted.
"Shigeru, are you... are you alright?"
But Shigeru just laughed lowly - and for the first time, Tano noticed a troubled shadow that had been stirred up from the depths of Shigeru's eyes. He knew that it hadn't been there before Satoshi had arrived.
"Don't worry about me. It's just my leg... it's acting up again."
Satoshi ran.
He clenched his fists; his fingernails dug into his palms. He bit the inside of his lip, trying to keep back his tears.
He ran out of the maze of excavation sites and down the wide path that cut through the rock mountain. It was such a strange picture: the dirt road had long ago separated the ancient adobe homes that had been built into one rock face, facing the second, smaller mountain of rock that blocked the desert winds. On one end, the excavations and tents and Satoshi had little reason to stay there now, and so he ran as far as he could, because whether or not he liked it, there was nowhere further that he could go.
Cruel thoughts spiraled through his mind. He felt the whip of wind and sand against his face and it felt more raw than usual. He lifted up his hand and felt two matching paths of tears on his cheeks.Tears? Ha - how immature - getting emotional over just a few insults. He was acting like a stupid child. No wonder Shigeru wanted nothing to do with him.
But why now?
Why did he have to be so cruel about it? Satoshi was so sure that they had become friends, and that they were past this animosity, but obviously he was wrong. He had been wrong in coming here - he had been wrong in approaching Shigeru in the desert, assuming that it had just been too busy for Shigeru to spend time with him; he'd even been wrong in hoping that if he proved himself useful, that would make Shigeru at least look at him like he wasn't a fleck of sand that he wanted to flick away.
There - in front of him! The edge of the bizarre mountain-canyon dropped off into the dunes. Satoshi slowed down and stopped. He could hear Pikachu behind him, calling out with worry.
He slumped to the ground. And still, he could feel the pricks of tears at the edges of his eyes.
At some point, Pikachu crawled into his lap and crooned at him.
And at another, he opened the envelope and dumped all of its contents onto the ground.
There was no one coming; nothing stopping him from letting himself go for a little while. He closed his eyes and let go.
If he cried because he was lonely, then so what? If he cried because he missed his best friends - who had forgotten him - then so what? And if he cried because most of all, he missed Shigeru, and he couldn't even explain that, then so what? Maybe it was the desert; maybe it was teenage angst. But Satoshi had never felt this desolate, not even when he had spent a year refusing to go 'back outside'.
He couldn't turn back time. Shigeru would always be too busy with researching the past, and Satoshi simply wasn't a part of that. The moment of blinding clarity and need forced Satoshi to cry out in pain; it was a terrible sound. The festering wound inside of him had burst open and it shook him to the core.
When the shaking motions didn't stop, Satoshi cracked open his bleary eyes.
There were the blurred shapes of black letters dancing around his field of vision. And it wasn't just him that was shaking: it was his entire world.
There was a strange sound - like a drumroll as it approached; like the rumble of thunder that loomed distantly for far too long. It caused Shigeru to stop in the middle of his note-taking and look up around him.
His heart quailed inside of his chest.
"It's an earthquake!"
The words had barely escaped his lips before Shigeru felt the second, stronger wave sweep across the earth. The It was like a ripple of air beneath a placemat; everything rose in a great lurch, and as it passed, Tano fell to the ground in a heap.
"Tano-san! Are you alright?"
The older man was on the ground, struggling to pull himself upright. In that moment, Shigeru would've honestly sworn that his muscles had been replaced with Jell-O, and not even from fear.
Shigeru whipped his head around, taking in the clods of earth that were pouring down the sides of the ravine, the splintering, cracking noise of wood supports breaking, and the sudden clouds up above, swirling on all sides.
A shout from a ravine nearby; the sound of metal as it bent.
"Tano-san!" Shigeru shakily moved forward, and as the earth pitched he fell to the ground and his bad leg began to clench up.
"Work damn you! WORK!" He shouted as the very earth seemed to break apart around him, and grabbed his leg with both of his hands and yanked it out from underneath him. The pain ripped through his thigh and all the way to his center. He squinched his eyes shut and tried to breathe, but all that he registered were shouts of terror - there was this odd feeling in the air and Shigeru felt like time was slowing down. The air had changed, as if a very vacuum had opened - then there was this terrible ripping noise.- A strange melody seemed to play inside of his mind. Shigeru's eyes grew huge. I'm going to die. I'm really going to die, he thought. At that very moment, he thought of Satoshi.
And then the earth swallowed him up.
TBC!