Quest for Life, Part 1 ( A Pokémon Story)

Chapter 11: The Next Step

(Sarah)

My name is Sarah, but I'm pretty sure you already know that. I'm a red Absol with quiet the reputation as being the tactician of our little group. However, as of recent events, some certain beings have refused to listen to my orders. I can't blame them though, if I was in their feet, I might have done the same thing if under the same circumstances. I won't bore you with what's happened in the past, you can tell what happened by reading what Caius and Kathrin have written down. I instead will tell you about current events. And no, I don't mean those historical events that are going on in your world today, I mean events that are happening in our time. Well before yours even came to be. But basically, to keep this short, and somewhat sweet, after Kathrin had plunged Lofn and her group two miles underground, the guards proceeded to capture and detain them, including the Machamp, Atol, and the Gabite, Sar. After the incident had happened, Caius and Kathrin were taken to a hospital immediately. Kathrin was treated for exhaustion and was released when she regained conscious after eight hours. Caius, on the other hand was in critical condition, as I feared. We were informed that it may take anywhere from several hours, to multiple days before he recovers. This put all of us on high alert, and when we had told Knud about how long Caius would stay in, he looked depressed and saddened. I will admit, seeing Knud evolve into a Sylveon was quite Onyx-pected. Yes, I did just make a joke, but what are you going to do about it? You don't even know where I am. You can't touch me, so the joke is on you. Anyway, the depression wasn't just in Knud, it was in our group as well. We decided one thing we could do to lift our Spiritombs was to escort the Espeon that I had released from Lofn's prison, Elizabeth, as well as Knud, back to Mark safe and sound. As we reached the outskirts of the town, Mark was waiting inside the factory as patient as he could be. When we reintroduced Mark to Elizabeth, we could see tears fly and a long search of seven years looking for each other coming to an end. Elizabeth had been captured and held in the prison for scavenging through information she wasn't supposed to look at, or to be more exact, the same documents that Lofn's captain held up earlier. It took some time to explain a few things to those thick-headed numbskulls, but we eventually got them to look through the files and find what Elizabeth had found. When Mark was introduced to his son however, Mark was completely staggered to see that his son had evolved into a Sylveon! Mark embraced his son in a hug, then proceeded to scowl at him for leaving without telling anyone, and that what he did could have gotten himself killed. Ayah ran up to us, waiting for Caius to return, but when she saw that he wasn't with us, she began to panic and started crying. It was "fun" trying to calm her down, but we got her to be quiet when we promised that we were going to visit the hospital and check on Caius, and take her with us. After some more bitter-sweet moments, Kathrin had returned the Z-Ring to Dinh. Dinh was pleased to know that the plan had succeeded, but was sorrowful for Caius' current condition. Dinh had Kathrin hold onto the crystal, seeing as it didn't belong to them. Many families were reunited from our run at Ai's capitol building. Before we said our farewells Mark and Dinh wanted to talk with Caius, but we also had to promise Knud that we would return back to here when Caius had recovered enough to come back. As we walked back into town, now starting to calm down from what happened hours before. As we walked down the streets, we were so tense, that we didn't even try to hide it. Ayah was the only one in our group that was relaxed in a sense. Kathrin volunteered to be her caretaker until we arrived at the hospital. Kathrin made multiple attempts to shield Ayah's eyes from some of the more vulgar parts of the city. At first, Ayah questioned why Kathrin was doing this, but after we told her that if you saw what we were hiding her from, she could risk her head exploding. That caused her to keep her eyes shut the entire trip over to the hospital. After we reached the front desk, we received some news on Caius.

"His condition is improving, he'll survive, but he's ..." The Audino paused.

"He's what?" I persisted.