Chapter 3

Tropical Winter

Seafoam Islands

            Red was beginning to doubt his decision almost immediately, and if he could hear Blue over the roar of the waves and the thunder she would let him know that she was already doubting the decision.  The storm that raged in the waters off of the coast of the Seafoam Islands was fierce.  Rain seemed to soak him all the way to his bones, and at times Red thought he was underwater because of the torrential downpour. 

            Red sat on Lapras with his hands wrapped around the blue Pokémon’s long neck.  Luckily he had his hat which helped to keep the rain out of his eyes.  Unluckily, it almost blew off of his head a number of times as Lapras plunged full speed ahead through the waves and sheets of rain towards the two mountain peaks that loomed ahead. 

            So close, yet so far, Red thought.  He knew they were the Seafoam Islands, which was really one island that launched two mountain peaks out of the sea divided by a river between them that gave the appearance of two.  Red marveled at the speed at which Lapras was able to trudge through the storm.  So this is an Elite Four Pokémon’s power, he thought.  He knew this was only the tip of the iceberg.  Lapras isn’t even battling another Pokémon.  If it can power through this storm without fear, I wonder what it could do in a fight.  Red smiled and he realized that he made the correct decision to steer into the storm around the Seafoam Islands.

            If he was to become the Champion at the upcoming Pokémon League Tournament, he would have to face at least one member of the Elite Four sooner or later in battle.  Had he not turned Lapras towards the Islands, he would have continued to train his Pokémon in his own relatively comfortable way.  Now he knew he would have to pick up the pace.

            Red turned his head to check on Blue.  “HOW ARE YOU DOING?” he asked her. 

            Blue looked up, she had her hands on the raised bumps on Lapras’s shell and her feet pushing against two more.  She looked like she was jockeying a race horse.  She must have heard him, because she mouthed back some words, but the waves and the thunder were too loud for Red to hear her.

            “WHAT?” he yelled.  Blue pointed back ahead and mouthed some more words before she screamed.  Red turned to find the biggest wave he had ever seen or imagined rolling up out of the ocean right in front of Lapras.  Lorelei’s powerful Pokémon let out a cry as if to let the two young Trainers know to “hold on.”

            Red was taken aback when he hugged Lapras’s large neck and Lapras began to pick up speed.  Going uphill (or, up-wave rather) the sheer horsepower Lapras possessed surely rivaled even some speed boat engines.  Lapras used the wave as a ramp and Red opened his eyes to find the waves falling beneath him.  We must be fifty feet in the air. Red could hear Blue’s screams but when he glanced up at Lapras’s face, he could tell the Pokémon was confident and determined that it would make it through the storm alright.

            Finally, after what seemed to Red an eternity, he began to feel Lapras start to descend out of the air.  The thrill made his stomach drop.  As they were falling, the rain stopped suddenly and the sky lightened up a little bit.  Red dared to look down to see how they would land.  The waves were gone.  In their place was a vast sheet of broken ice stretching the rest of the way towards the Seafoam Islands. 

            We’re gonna crash. We’re gonna crash.  Red braced for impact and felt Lapras rear its head and front body up so to land on its rear.  Red felt a little thump and Blue surely felt a little more than that.  Other than knowing they had hit the ice, nothing much had changed, although Red could feel that they were now traveling even faster.  He looked and saw that Lapras’s flippers were a blue blur as they pushed across the ice sheet with deliberation.  Red pulled out his Pokedex to learn more about Elite Four Lorelei’s awesome Pokémon.

            Lapras, he read, a dual Water/Ice type Pokémon.  This rare Pokémon is gracefully powerful, and its cries a haunting song.  It prefers cold waters but sometimes ventures into warmer waters to feed.  Its Ice Beam attack can freeze a foe into a solid block of ice in less than three seconds.

            I’d rather take my chances fighting with Bruno or Agatha, thought Red.  He thought about who he could use to fight against Lapras should he have to face Lorelei in the Pokémon League Tournament.  Wartortle would have no advantage, as they would both be Water types.  Ice was good against flying Pokémon, so Pidgeotto was likely out of the question as well.  Pikachu would probably be the best as to a type advantage, but then again, Lapras had a significant size advantage.  Scyther may be able to dart and dance around Lapras’s Ice Beams, and if it could get close enough, Machoke might be able to wrestle Lapras into submission. 

            The ride into the shore was smooth and surprisingly fun.  Occasionally Lapras would have to leap onto another sheet of ice that was broken.  Red looked around and saw that the dark circle of storm clouds surrounded the area they were in now: a sky of fluffy white snow clouds that seemed to emanate from the peak of the farther Seafoam Island. 

            Finally, Lapras turned to its side as an ice skater would do to stop, and Red helped Blue off of Lapras’s shell.  The cold was intense, and their wet clothes from the rains made it all even worse. 

            “It d-d-doesn’t make any s-sense,” shivered Blue as soon as they set foot on a snow-covered sandy beach.  “It n-never snows this far south.  The Seafoam Islands are supposed to be a tropical paradise.  So what’s next?”

            Red honestly didn’t know what he was going to do next.  “I think there are some small villages that sit near the beaches.  If they have some exotic Pokémon, I want to battle them to toughen up for my next Gym match.”  Red could feel the cold also.  “But first, let’s get our clothes dried off.”

            The first thing Red did was call out Scyther, the green mantis Pokémon with the sword arms, and Machoke, the strong Fighting-type Pokémon.  Red told his two Pokémon to go chop down some trees for firewood, and in no time, they had enough wood for two fires.  Blue and Red each made their own pile on either side of a big rock, and Red also had his Pikachu spark a fire on them.  Red took off his wet clothes and huddled close to the fire.

            “Don’t you come peek at me!” called Blue. 

            Red had hung his clothes up on some more sticks his Pokémon had gathered next to the fire and sat glued to his spot.  “Don’t worry, I’d probably get frostbite if I took one step away from the fire.”

            Red looked at Lapras on the sheet of ice, completely comfortable in the cold weather.  How could this happen? How could all the weather around the region be fine, but it’s completely frozen around the Seafoam Islands? He gazed towards the far mountain peak, where the clouds swirled the thickest.  He remembered old stories and legends he had seen on the History Channel back home, after he watched All Pokémon are Extraterrestrials. 

            He loved the stories about ancient dinosaur Pokémon, whose fossils could sometimes be discovered in deserts, caves, and beaches.  His favorite stories, however, were the ones about the Legendary Pokémon: Pokémon who were seemingly lived forever with awesome might who were sighted now and again.  If that’s a Legendary Pokémon causing this weather disruption, I’m going to find it, fight it, and capture it if I can.

            He was beginning to daydream about being the first trainer to capture a legendary Pokémon when he heard Blue scream.  Red quickly pulled on his pants and a shirt and ran to see what the problem was with a Poke-ball in hand.  Blue had already released Nidorina who was pawing the snowy sand at a man and a strange tall blue duck-looking Pokémon. 

            The man had a torch in his left hand and the other was raised over his eyes.  Blue was covering herself with a big jacket.  Nidorina was growling at the stranger’s Pokémon.

            Red pulled out his Pokedex to identify the Pokémon as Golduck, a four foot tall Water-type Pokémon. 

            “I swear, little lady, I never meant to sneak up on you like that,” the man was saying quickly, I just saw the smoke from my village and me and Golduck went to put out the fire.”

            Golduck just stared at Nidorina, the latter who was not impressed and still wanted to fight.  Golduck, however, had no interest in fighting and looked relaxed. 

            “Just come over to my side of the rock and let Blue get finished,” he said to the man.  He reached over and held onto the torch with him while the man still covered his eyes.  When they finally got to Red's bonfire he took his hand away. 

            “I’m Tony, from South Village here on Rock, the Western Seafoam Island,” he said.  “If you want you can come back to my village, if you don’t mind me asking how you got here.  You’re obviously not from around here.”

            Red told Tony and Golduck all about where they came from: how he were collecting Gym badges, and why he decided to brave the storm to come to the Seafoam Islands. Finally, Blue was dressed and Tony led the way across the beach to his village.

            Staring at the spiraling clouds above the other mountaintop Red asked, “What’s on that island?”

            “Oh, I forgot you’re not from around here,” said Tony.  “That island is called Ice.  Funny coincidence isn’t it.  The elders say a long time ago, our people rode on boats to these islands from Fuchsia.  At that time, the Ice island was home to a guardian, and that guardian was merciful enough to let us humans live on Rock, the other Island.  It used to be the people of Rock left offerings of fruits to the guardian just across the river on Ice, but then we discovered that some people were just living on Ice that were eating the fruits we left for the guardian. 

            “A few hundred years ago we just stopped leaving fruit offerings when we discovered that.  Everyone just assumed that the Guardian legend was just that: a legend.  But now, the villagers on Ice have come to us and they can’t live on their side of the river anymore, so basically we have half of the entire population of the Seafoam Islands just chilling at my village. Ha ha ha ha! Chilling.” Tony stopped to laugh at his pun, and Golduck stopped and clapped for the joke too.

            “I’m going to go up that mountain,” said Red.  Blue looked at him unhappily.  She obviously didn’t want to go up that cold, inhospitable mountain of Ice. 

            “Well going across the river is one thing,” said Tony.  “But nobody has actually gone into the mountain for a hundred years.  If you want to go, you need to speak with our village elders, and probably battle with them.”

            Red smiled as they could see the lights inside straw huts a mile off.  “It’s been too long since I had a decent battle.”

Celadon City-

            They had walked.  The entire way.  Sabrina led Bruno along a path only she seemed to be able to follow.  The first time he remembered seeing her was when he woke up in a bed in the Saffron City Pokémon Center right next to hers.  Sabrina was sitting up, just staring at the wall.  Bruno had been too dumbstruck with her beauty to talk to her immediately. 

            Since then, his best friend Lance and the others in the Elite Four had informed them about how Sabrina had been “possessed” by something and used to be helping Team Rocket.  Apparently, Team Rocket had infiltrated Saffron City, mainly the Silph Building which had since collapsed due to the Elite Four’s efforts to stop it. 

            Bruno had supposed that he had just hit his head during the trouble.  There was no doubt in his mind that he had been there to help Lance, Lorelei, and Agatha bring down Team Rocket.  But why couldn’t he remember any of it. 

            He had told Lance that he would be the one to keep an eye on Sabrina, in case there was any funny business, or in case she came into contact with the Rocket Boss, who they were tracking.  He had gotten word from Lance that the tunnel that led from the hole in the ground led right up underneath the Silph Tower’s ruins.  Bruno and Lance were surer than ever that it was the previously unaccounted for Rocket Boss they were on the trail of.

            Bruno had no idea how Sabrina could keep walking with her eyes closed, telling him exactly where the Rocket Boss stepped.  She always shushed him whenever he tried to break the silence with conversation.  Eventually Bruno trudged on behind Sabrina in accepting silence. 

            They arrived in Celadon City, and instead of taking a break at the Pokémon Center they kept walking.  Even for Bruno, a man disciplined in the martial arts, the pain in his feet was getting to him. 

            “Should we let Erika know that the Rocket Boss might still be here?” asked Bruno.  The Celadon Gym Leader could surely help them lend a hand. 

            “No, she’d slow us down,” Sabrina responded, eyes still shut.  They must have made quite a sight: a beautiful young lady walking with her eyes closed and a muscular man stupidly following.  It wasn’t a conversation, but it was something.  Bruno liked the sound of her voice. 

            They walked past a big hole in the ground next to a casino that city crews were patching over.  Bruno thought he saw flashing electricity in a big room below.

            “That was one of Team Rocket’s hideouts.” Bruno was taken aback.  She must have read his mind.  Any doubts the Elite Four member had about her so-called Psychic abilities were put to rest then and there. 

            Eventually, they came upon a small airport.  The terminal was pretty crowded, but Bruno was sure Sabrina was subtly moving the busy people out of their way with her psychic abilities. 

            They came upon a lone check-in lady away from the busy airline stations. 

            “A man was here,” Sabrina told the woman.  “In a dirty black suit, he got on a plane. Where was the plane to?”

            “I... I don’t know,” said the woman, Bruno could see the confusion in her eyes.  “He gave me some money and told me to keep quiet.”

            “You should tell her where they went,” said Bruno.  “This is Sabrina, the Saffron City Gym Leader, and I am Bruno of the Elite Four.  We need your help in this investigation.”

            “She doesn’t know,” interrupted Sabrina. “Excuse us.” They walked past the check in gate and out to the air way. 

            She must have read her mind, thought Bruno.  She’s cute, smart, and talented.  Wait.  What if she’s reading my mind right now?

            Sabrina probably wasn’t reading his mind right now.  “He got on an airplane here.  He’s smart, he didn’t let anyone know this plan so that I could find them.  But there were two other men here.  One was from Team Rocket, I’ve seen him before.  I don’t recognize the other.” She turned to Bruno.  “What are you waiting for? You should call Lance.”

            “Yes, ma’am,” obeyed Bruno as he picked up his communicator.