Following the events of last book, everyone is back in the Protego Base. Quinci Laciasal, the heir of Team Valor, and Shelly Yangtze, the heir of Team Mystic, had both had their powers removed from them because an mysterious villain called The Guy h...
Bell awoke to find herself next to Ravisu whom was still unconscious. Bell yelled in Ravisu's ear, "WAKE UP!"
Ravisu stirred, and pushed herself up. She shook her head and grumbled, "Ugh... what happened?" She suddenly recalled her last memory, of saying 'Oh well. It's very thirst-quenching though' to Pichu.
"Ooooh. Uh, sorry about that." Ravisu said sheepishly, "But what did happen?" Bell quickly explained their odyssey that had taken place while Rudia and her were hallucinating.
"...and now, we're here." Bell waved upward, and the two friends looked to see a glossy bubble of water from above. Like a skylight, colored sunlight escaped through of pale yellows and blues. It shimmered faintly, a tiny pocket of illumination in the otherwise pitch-black darkness.
"That's the lake. After it pooled down here, it collected itself again. So from above, this just looks like a normal oasis. And that," Bell pointed to the long vine circling down, "Is the blooberry. Do you see these bushes around us? They're all part of the blooberry. What I think is that the bushes are a maze, and that vine is the middle where the blooberry fruit is."
"Hmm," Ravisu thought aloud, "Then what should we do?" Bell was already climbing the sides of the wall. Ravisu cried out a warning, but Bell fell to the ground even before that. The bushes had sprouted sharp thorns, and vines suddenly mutated grotesquely from the sides.
"What?! Aw, come on!" Bell huffed.
Ravisu rolled her eyes, "Listen to me. The blooberries went critically-endangered from overharvesting 241.5 years ago! People would use them as a pokemon cure--" "Like us," Bell remarked.
"Hey! I'm not done yet! But... yes, like us. However, they would use it as an everyday use, but the blooberry's effects are too powerful for something so casual. Pokemon got overdoses and became addicted, which caused some of their owners to harvest even more blooberry. Other pokemon would become sick, and at extremes, would die later."
"Ouch," Bell said.
Ravisu continued, "Anyways, when many plants are under attack, like tamatoes, they send out chemical alarms to their neighboring species to ready their defenses. The blooberry takes it one step further. They only send out their alarms when their species are in critical-danger globally. These chemical alarms spread all over the world and warn the other blooberries to take up their defenses. Blooberries, you see, are able to manipulate the environment around them. That's what's going on here." Ravisu concluded her lecture.
"So our only option is to find a way through this maze?" Bell asked unhappily. Ravisu sighed, and nodded a yes. Ravisu took out her vivillon.
"Vivillon! Use light screen!" Ravisu said. The butterfly-pokemon flapped its wings quickly in approval, and created a purple-glowing barrier. So the two friends and their pokemon set off.
***
"HELP!" Rudia and Quinci screamed.
Rudia frowned in dismay, "This is getting us nowhere." "Yeah, plus my throat is even more dry from shouting." Quinci complained.
"Then let's hurry up and try to find the others in this maze!" Rudia said.
Quinci's stomach growled. She sighed, "I'm starting to regret not drinking the cactus juice."
"Don't do drugs kids!" Rudia replied cheerfully.
She took out her monferno. In a flash, the pokemon's glowing tail brightened up the maze. Quinci put her hands around it's flame, "Mmm, that's warm."
The two friends continued to move forward, taking turns and loops. For every step, Quinci's jumpluff left a dandelion seed in the ground, so that they would know where they had already been.
Quinci's legs began to ache, worn from all the walking. Rudia was still going strong, but she too was beginning to tire.
"Can we take a break yet?" Quinci whined.
Rudia wiped a drop of sweat from her forehead, "Yeah, okay."
Quinci collapsed to the floor, while Rudia slowly sank down. Monferno lay down on the rough dirt, while jumpluff floated lightly down.
"Hey, I have a surprise for you!" Rudia took out a zip-lock of dried mangoes from her backpack. Quinci's eyes widened. Rudia smiled, "I swiped these from the pokestop from earlier!" "Jeez, that felt like ages ago," Quinci said sorrowfully, "Back when we still had food and water."
"Monferno!" Monferno whined. Jumpluff leapt into Quinci's arms and huddled for warmth. Quinci squeezed the fuzzy pokemon tightly.
"Well maybe we can be like Cowlisha." Rudia suggested. Cowlisha was one of their friends back at school. Since we was a Muslim, she had to fast every time it was Ramadan.
Quinci remarked, "I nearly forgot about her! Do you think we'll still be able to go to school after this?"
"Hmm, I don't know." Rudia sighed, "We've been in the middle of soo many important fights. If we're still treated like little kids-- I would tear my hair out! Ah, nevermind, let's eat!"
The two and their pokemon began to devour the mangoes. Though they were sticky and hot in their mouths, the four still ate ravenously.
Eventually they finished, and Rudia put the baggie back in her backpack. The two stood and continued on their way.
***
"Soo... what a coincidence that we're together!" Raichu said, as he and Shelly journeyed through the maze. Shelly's starmie cast a bright blue light over the bushes. Even though the climate was inhospitable for water types, it only limited their water-based moves. Raichu's phanpy was leaving a small trench with its trunk behind the two.
"Mm... yeah," Shelly said as she looked around the corner, "The writers probably have something sneaky up their sleeves."
"Or something nice?" Raichu said optimistically.
"I doubt that will ever happen," Shelly sighed.
"Why not?"
"Coz they always want to make things hard on us. All the time. Especially my counterpart."
"So..." Raichu said after a while. "How do you think the water does that?" He looked up at the water churning above them, defying gravity.
"Easy," Shelly rolled her eyes. "The plant is in danger, so it releases a pollen into the water making it have high polarity. That's why it was so strong before. We're polar, so we stick to the pollen-water. Doi."
"How big is this maze anyway?" Raichu wondered.
"Judging by the width of the maze and the size of the lake," Shelly answered. "VERY big."
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"Any ideas how to get through this maze?" Shelly asked.
