21Chapter One – Leaving this world behind.
Summery: It's one of THOSE stories, you know, boy falls into Pokemon and destroys the world... Ok, so she doesn't destroy the world, but she does have a great adventure.
Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with any legal rights to Pokemon in any way, shape, or form, I do not own Pokemon or any part of the merchandising, gaming, manga, anime, characters, or anything of the sort. Please do not sue me as I do not have any money. The only things that I own from this fic are my own original characters and the weird situation I thought up.
1) I'm not planning on ever having a pairing in this story/fic, but if I ever change my mind and decide to put one in, it will be Het – M/F – Male/Female.
2) Yeah, I know, I used a similar summery for one of my other fics, so please don't go sending me PMs about it. My only excuse is that they are both 'falling into an anime' type fics, so why ruin a good summery?
3) Please note that the crystal hall is a theme that runs in all of my 'I fell into another world' type of fics. If something happens in the crystal hall that you want more detail on, just know that it isn't really relevant to the fic. I'm only writing things in this fic that have to do with it, if you want information on the crystal hall, read the second chapter to 'My Life In One Piece'. It all about the crystal hall and the things in this story that seem random were caused by what happened in that fic, so it's not really all that related to this fic and is just in here because I felt like having the two events happen at the same time..
Oh, and this chapter was edited 9/10/10
'thoughts'
"Words"
A young girl of approximately sixteen years of age sat on a pale white painted metal bench outside of the St. Louis south county mall, covered in sweat from the unbearable St. Louis mid summer heat. For over and hour she had been sitting out in the blazing sunlight in front of the mall, waiting for her so-called-friends to show up.
A whole freakin hour.
Most of the hour hadn't been all that bad and had gone by relatively quickly since she had her brand new Pokemon Platinum to occupy her time, but unfortunately, she had forgotten to recharge her Nintendo DS before she left the house, which meant that it didn't actually have enough power to keep her happy for very long and ended up going dead over fifteen minutes ago, leaving her bored, over heated, and incredibly pissed. When it had gone dead she had been have tempted to just head home but, knowing that her lucked sucked and that her friends would probably show up as soon as she left, she had decided to give them fifteen more minutes to show up.
Unfortunately for them, those fifteen minutes had come and gone and they stilled hadn't showed up yet, which meant that they were going to die a very slow and painful death if they didn't show up soon.
"Dang it guys." She growled angrily, running an incredibly tanned hand through her shoulder length dark brown hair as she stood up and started looking around for them again, though her view was mostly obstructed by parked cars. "Where the heck are you guys?"
She was getting really tired of waiting for them and the heat was really starting to drive her nuts. The weather man had said that it was going to storm like crazy, but, for some strange reason, the clouds were almost as hard to spot as her friends were.
As for her friends themselves, they were all supposed to meet her in front of the south end of the mall over an hour ago, and yet, she was still the only one there. Even though she had been waiting for over an hour, there still wasn't a single sign of even one of her friends ever showing up, and now, thanks to all the cars that now filled the parking lot, it was getting harder and harder for her to search for them. When she first got to the mall, the parking lot had been completely deserted because most people were either still at work or were just getting off or out of school, but now it was so full that people were having trouble trying to find a spot.
And that meant that it was almost impossible for her to see any part of the parking lot at all.
"Dang it guys, where are you?" she growled again, scowling at the hoard of cars that were passing her by.
If her Nintendo DS hadn't gone dead, she probably would have given them another half hour before giving up and heading home, but it was dead so five minutes was all they were getting. If they didn't turn up by the end of that time, then she was going to have to either head home or go hunt them down and kill them.
Why?
Because boredom, in all its forms, really sucks.
Tapping her foot on the ground out of sheer boredom, she waited the five minutes in complete silence, watching as car after car passed her by. When the five minutes were finally up, she stood up, dusted herself off, and started walking, choosing to head home instead of hunting them down. She had waited long enough for them and if they had a problem with her not waiting another few minutes then they could just go jump off a bridge for all she cared.
There was no way she was going to wait there for them for another five minutes.
"There's no way I'm waiting five more minutes this time." She growled angrily as she walked down the street, pausing only for a moment to decide which way she should go.
Should she head to the left, or to the right?
It might sound like a simple question, but it wasn't really. Both directions had their benefits and set backs. The street chain that she lived on, which was actually a combination of about seventeen city blocks that were all connected, was shaped like an S, with her house being in the very center of it and the mall being at he bottom tip. If she headed to the right, then she would have to walk eight blocks to get to her house, but if she went to the left, then she could cut across an abandoned construction site and cut that distance down to just over one block.
So what's the downside of the shorter route?
Well, while the sky was incredibly clear and it was so hot that it was seriously doubtful that it was going to rain any time soon, the weather man did say that it was supposed to storm sometime today, and if that happened, then the shortcut through the abandoned construction site would become a death trap. When the guy that originally owned started working on it, he never actually got around to having the construction team put down cement because of all the weird things that he kept having to deal with, so it's pretty much just a fenced off patch of dirt with a bunch of unused or half used construction junk in it.
Which means that whenever it rained it turned into a giant mud hole, and once you got trapped in it, it takes you a good forty five minutes to get out of it again.
Alex spent several seconds thinking about her two choices before she finally glanced up at the sky and decided to just go for it. There wasn't a single cloud in the sky, so why worry about it? Besides, the sooner she got home, the sooner she could call her friends and yell at them...
So, with that thought in mind, she started walking, not knowing that she was headed for a really nasty surprise.
About five minutes after she made her decision had made her way over to the wooden fence, she found that the weather man, though he had always been a bit of an idiot in her opinion, was a lot smarty then she gave him credit for. Almost as soon as she got over the eight foot tall old wooden fence that surrounded the construction sight, the sky suddenly turned black and the heavens themselves opened up, pouring like it always did in those old movies, making it very apparent that she should have gone the other way.
"Erk." she grumbled in an annoyed voice as the rain started to fall, getting more and more annoyed as it started raining harder and harder.
The only reason she had chosen to take the shortcut in the first place was because the sky had been completely cloudless when she started walking, but now, even though it was only five O'clock, it was already so dark that it was hard to tell that it was even daytime and it was starting to rain like crazy, which meant that her short cut had just turned into the long way home.
To make matters worse, the construction site hadn't had any one working in it for several years since and had been abandoned because of a bunch of unexplainable disappearances. Even with all the horror stories that were told about it she always took it whenever she could because it cut her twenty minute walk home from the mall down by fifteen minutes, but with it raining like it was, there was no way it was going to cut her time down by anything. While she was still willing to walk through the place during the day despite the horror stories that plagued it, she had always stayed away from it at night or whenever it was dark for whatever reason,so she had never seen the place when it was dark or raining, and now that she was seeing it in the rain, there was only word that she felt adequately described it...
"Spooky..." She said in a lazy tone, unfazed by the creepy looking field.
The horror stories might have kept her out of the place at night, but actually seeing it at night was totally different. While it was still kind of spooky, it only rated about a four on her spookidometer, and that's just sad. The time her mother bought her a cheerleader uniform had even rated higher then that on the meter, so a four is just...
Sad.
Rolling her eyes at the construction sites pitiful attempt at looking spooky, she started making her way across the muddy field, knowing that she heading back was kind of pointless. She was already there, so why turn back now? The rain would probably wash all the mud off her clothes by the time she got home, and since she was already wet, a few more minutes in the rain and mud didn't really matter all that much.
Unfortunately, her estimate of 'a few more minutes' was way off. By the time she finally managed to get across it, forty minutes had passed and she had gotten stuck in the mud four times, had almost lost her shoes three times, and had fallen on her knees in the bud seven times. Luckily, the rain did exactly what she had thought it would and had washed away most of the mud, though not all of it.
Sighing heavily when she finally reached the other side of the field, she hopped over the tall wooden fence and walked across the street to her house. Was she was in front of the door, she opened the door, shook the rain out of her hair, and wiped her feet on the welcome mat so that she wouldn't get mud all over the clean white carpet, and made her way to the living room to call one of her so-called-friends to chew him out.
"You're home early." Her mother said in surprise as she walked past her before she caught sight of her daughters pants, which instantly caused her 'clean freak' side to come out. "Alexandria Moira Haze, what on earth happened to your pants?!" she demanded as her right hand started inching towards a bottle of fabric cleaner.
Cringing slightly at hearing her mother's use her full name, Alex turned around and quickly started to explain what had happened, hoping to pacify the angry redhead.
"You mean they just left you there and never showed up?" Her mother asked incredulously, her tone softening slightly and her bright green eyes widening in surprise.
"Yep, they completely blew me off." Alex said in an annoyed tone, her own green eyes filling with anger as she walking over to the phone and started dialing her friend Jack's number.
Her mother seemed to understand that her daughter was about to let loose her own furry because the moment Alex picked up the phone she instantly turned around and headed into the kitchen to give her some room to vent. It wasn't the first time her friends had left her waiting for them. They tended to get side tracked easily, something that Alex herself even did from time to time. As soon as she was about to leave, if some of her friends were meeting at the house, they would never actually get around to leaving and the other friends they were supposed to meet up with would be left waiting for them.
Unfortunately, if it was Alex that was left waiting for it, everyone in the whole city usually found out one way or the other because she had the kind of voice that caries, something that she had inherited from her mother.
Luckily, Jack was the smartest person that Alex knew, so he was smart enough to pick up the phone before it went to the answering machine, because if he had let the machine get it, it would have been about a thousand times worse then it was.
"WHY THE HELL DIDN'T YOU SHOW UP?!" She demanded angrily as she went into a long winded rant about how they had left her there, the anger in her voice actually managing to make a picture on the wall near her fall over and her her bright green eyes darkening so much that Jack would probably have peed his pants if he had been there to see it.
No one pisses off a Haze woman and lives to tell about it.
"Dude, I'm so sorry! My mom totally freaked." Jack explained, hoping to calm the brunet down so that she wouldn't kill him over the phone. "When the earthquake hit, she said she wasn't going to let anyone out of the house until she's sure it was over! I swear!" he explained, only to pause when a thought suddenly occurred to him. "How did you know the gang was all here?"
"Where else would you guys be? Maryann isn't aloud over at Brendan's house, and Tasha and Kally don't let people over at their place, so your house is the only place that everyone can hang at besides mine." She replied angrily before moving onto the other subject. "What Earthquake?"
"Dude, you're kidding, right? The quake hit over an hour ago!" Jack said exasperatedly, unable to believe that Alex was really that oblivious.
How the heck do you not feel an earthquake?
"Yeah right, if a quake hit, my dad would be freaking out and mom would have tied me to a chair as soon as I walked through the door, so don't give me that crap." the short brunet said in an accusing voice, thinking that he was making the whole thing up.
Unfortunately, that thought turned out to be wrong, because almost as soon as she accused him of making it up, the whole house started to shake, proving that he wasn't making it up. When it hit, the quake was so strong that it caused many of the things that were on the wall to go flying off and onto the floor, with the glass frames and every other breakable thing shattering on impact. The quake also made the power flicker on and off, causing the phone in the brunet's hand to go dead at almost the same time that the television on the living room exploded.
As the quake went on, it got stronger and stronger, causing even more things to fall over, such as the chairs in the kitchen, the lamps in the living room, and the bookshelf her mother had let her use for all her anime sets and her manga along with several other things. When it finally ended, Alex was surprised by the damage it had caused. While it was the strongest earthquake she had ever felt, it was only a St. Louis quake, which only happens once every sixteen to seventeens years and never reach more then a two or a three on the rector scale, but it somehow still managed to almost completely destroy the house.
It was like nothing she had ever seen before. Sure, she had seen a lot of things get destroyed on TV, but it just wasn't the same thing. Seeing it all happen in front of you, especially when it's your stuff that got destroyed, is just... Different.
Looking around, she saw that her father doing exactly what she had told Jake he would do if there was an earthquake, he was freaking out. He wasn't exactly easy to freak out, but when it comes to natural disasters, he has this 'you can't fight it, and you can't stop it' kind of attitude that was almost the same as the idiot in 'Little Nicky' that's always screaming 'we're all gonna die'. Put him in a car accident, or set off a few bombs around him, and he was completely fine, but if a river over flows and the city starts to flood, then you're looking at one hell of a nut. She had never been able to understand how he could be like that, it just didn't make any sense at all, especially not when he was married to her mother.
Why would being married to Mrs. Haze make it so odd for him to freak out during natural disasters?
Because Mrs. Haze is the world's greatest 'Natal Disaster Fighting Queen'. Seriously. In contrast to her husband who was freaking out over the earthquake, she was limply walking calmly from room to room, checking to see what was broken and what wasn't and taking everything that hadn't been destroyed and setting them on their sides on the floor so they wouldn't break if there was an after shock. That was it, no freaking out, no panicking, nothing. The only thing that she was probably going to do that counted as 'freaking out', was that she was probably going to try to tie Alex down to the nearest chair as soon as she could in an attempt to keep her safe, but apart from that, she was pretty much unfazed.
As for Alex herself, well, she wasn't freaking out, but she wasn't unfazed either.
"OK, so maybe I was wrong." the short brunet finally said once her surprise finally started wearing off a little, though it hadn't left her by much.
Her surprise was actually over the earthquake itself. It was actually over the half destroyed room that was in front of her. The hallways that had the phone in it opened up into both the living room on the left, and the kitchen on the right. From where she was standing, the only part of the kitchen she could see was the end of the table, so she couldn't see to much of the damage that had been done to it, but as for the living room, that was a completely different story.
As stated before, the Television in it had exploded, some of the lamps had fallen over, and the bookshelf her mother had given her was also laying on the floor, however, those weren't the only things that had been destroyed. There was something that was way more notice able then that. The glass windows in the living room had all shattered, though not from the quake itself. They had all shattered because of the larger crack that had formed in both the ceiling and the floor by the quake, which had completely split the house in two.
While she was staring in horror at her neerly completely destroyed home, her mother came up behind her, sighing heavily. She knew what she was thinking about, and she couldn't help but agree. They had lived in this house since before the younger Haze woman was even born, but now... With the house actually split completely in two, they would be forced to move into another one. It was only a matter of time before it collapsed now, and all because of one stupid earthquake. They had never had even one problem with the house. It was old, but it perfectly followed the old saying:
they just don't make them like they used to.
Sighing heavily and know she had to get her daughter's mind off of their freshly destroyed house, Lauren Haze decided to try and occupy her daughter with something to do.
"Come on, we need to take everything still up down off the walls, I don't think it's over yet." she said, getting a nod from her daughter.
Unfortunately, as soon as the words 'I don't think it's over yet' left the red headed Haze woman's mouth, another quake hit, one that was much, much bigger then the previous one. The fact that it was stronger then the one that had happened just moments before it signaled that the other one had only been a fore-shock and explained why neither Alex nor parents had felt the one that Jake had told her about. The farther and farther away you are from the source of an earthquake, the less and less likely you are to feel it, and for-shocks tend to be a lot weaker then the main quakes, which means that people that live fifteen minutes or more away from someone that did feel an earthquake might not feel it at all.
Basically, where ever the earthquakes were originating from was on the opposite side of Jake's house as her's was.
Then again, where the earthquake was coming from doesn't really matter, all that matters is the fact that the Haze house once again getting destroyed, which meant that the huge six inch wide crack in the floor and ceiling got even worse. As the quake continued, the crack got wider and wider, going from being only six inches wide to being almost a foot big. At the rate the house was splitting, it was starting to look like the house was going to fall apart while they were still in it.
Oddly enough, Alex realized that she was standing it what had to be the worse spot possible almost as soon as the earthquake started. She had seen the crack that had appeared in both the floor and the ceiling when the first quake she had felt had ended, but her shock and surprise at seeing her destroyed home had kept her from realizing that she was standing with both of her feet on either side of the crack in the floor. It wasn't until the second had started up that she actually realized it at all, but unfortunately, because of the shaking ground under her feet, she was unable to move so she was forced to continue standing on her spot both above the large crack in the floor and below the huge crack in the ceiling.
For several minutes the earthquake continued, shaking the house violently. As the house continued shaking back and forth, everything in it was bumped and raddled, including a large object that had been hidden in the floor of the story bathroom.
Guess where it landed.
"Alex!" Lauren Haze shouted as the large object fell from the ceiling and hit her daughter in the head, bounced off, and fell onto the floor.
Luckily, the object wasn't that big so it didn't do anything more then give Alex a small bump on the head.
When the quake finally ended, Alex was relieved that it was over, though she knew that there would be several more before it was over. When there's a fore-shock or two, there's usually a few after shocks as well.
"Alex! Are you alright?" her mom asked frantically, grabbing her head and turning it in every direction she could, checking it over for injuries.
There wasn't any.
"Mom, I'm fine." Alex said sternly, somehow managing to pull her head out of her mothers iron tight grip while waving her father off, who was still freaking out and would probably cause her more damage in his panic if he got to close to her.
Which was why her mother frantically waved him off as well. Never trust someone that is freaking out to check you for injuries, they tend to create more of them in the process.
Once her husband turned the direction of his panic attack towards the living room, Lauren Haze turned her attention back to her daughter with worry evident in her eyes.
"Are you sure you're alright?" she asked her, still worried that she might have gotten a concussion when she got hit.
"Yeah, I'm sure. " Alex sighed heavily, wishing that her mom would just go help her father already instead of fussing over her like she always did.
She hated it when her mother fussed over her. She had always been way to over protective, and if it didn't stop sometime soon, Alex was going to go insane.
Plus, if someone didn't help her father soon, the poor man was probably going to have a heart attack.
Luckily, her mother seemed to be thinking the same thing about her father because she gave her one last worried glance, turned around, and headed off into the living room to try and calm her crazy husband.
Now that her mother was giving her some room to breath, Alex shook her head and started looking for whatever it was that had hit her in the first place. It didn't take her long to find it, mostly because it was laying on the floor between her left foot and the crack. When she spotted it, she was more then a little surprised to see what it was.
Knowing that the bathroom was above her, she had expected it to be a bar of soap or something, but it wasn't even close to being something you would expect to find in a bathroom. Instead of being a small bar of soap, the object that had hit her on the head was about the same exact size as a Nintendo DS Lite, both in height, length, and thickness. Apart from its size, however, there was nothing else about it that was like a NDSL. One all of the three quarters of an inch wide sides were little ports, making it appear as if it could connect to something.
When she flipped it open to see see what it was, already knowing that it wasn't a NDSL, she was surprised to see that the inside actually was like an NDSL as well, with only a few minor changes. The screen on the top part of it took up the entire thing, while the screen on the bottom took up half the panel and was positioned all the way to the right instead of being in the middle. As for the buttons, instead of there being six buttons and one direction pad, there was only three buttons and no directional pad.
Part of her thought that it might have been a game of some kind, but that didn't rea33y make any sense because there wasn't an off or on switch on it anywhere, the three buttons only had up, down, and enter written on them.
If she didn't know any better, she would have said that it was a mini computer. With its size it could have been a large cellphone, but that didn't make any sense either because it didn't have any holes or speakers.
"Maybe it's one of dad's things." She whispered confusedly, looking up at the large crack in the ceiling, thinking that she was going to be able to see her father's suitcase in the bathroom above, only to find that the crack didn't actually go through the floor above, meaning that the object had come from under the second floor floorboards above.
Unable to believe that that was the case, she started moving her head back and forth in an attempt to see up into the next room at any angle possible, but found that she really couldn't, which meant that the thing really had been under one of the second floor floorboards.
And that was impossible.
Her family had own the house since before she was born, which meant that it would have had to be under the floorboards on the second floor for over fifteen years because, as far as she knew, the bath room had already been tiled when they moved in. That meant that it had to have been there since before the moved in, and if it had been under the floorboards for years, then the green color would have dulled a little and the whole thing should have been covered in dust.
And yet, it wasn't. In fact, it looked brand spanking new.
"That's impossible..." she stated, her voice filled with confusion as she started to flip the little machine over and over again, trying to figure out what it was.
Just as she was about to press the enter button in an attempt to figure out what the little machine was, another quake hit. It wasn't nearly as strong as the last one, which meant that it was actually just and aftershock, but was strong enough to almost make her fall over.
"I think this is the last one." she heard her mother shout from somewhere in the kitchen, surprising her slightly as she had thought that her mother was still in the living room.
Unfortunately for Alex, that wasn't the only surprise she got.
The moment her mother's statement ended, another voice started up. It wasn't coming from the kitchen like her mother's was, and it wasn't coming from the living room or from down the hall, instead, it came from the little NDSL like machine in her hands, nearly scaring her right out of her skin.
"Ding ding ding, ding ding ding, transport, transport! ding ding ding, ding ding ding, transport, transport!" it chanted loudly, surprising the heck out of Alex, who nearly fell over in surprise. (A/N: see Comment 1)
Though the earthquake might have helped a little.
Even though the earthquake was still shaking the house back and forth, causing the game in the floor under Alex's feet to widen, she didn't notice it at all. Even when the floor under her feet started to crack and crumble, about to collapse, she didn't notice it. For some reason, though she wasn't really sure why, she wasn't able to take her eyes off of the little machine in her hands. There was just something about it that made her want to keep her eyes on it, something that she couldn't quite put her finger on, but yet, somehow, she could tell that it was just... unnatural.
As she continued staring a the double screened machine in her hands, the floor finally gave way, crumbling into a thousand little pieces and collapsing beneath her feet, sending her plummeting downward. The instant the floor gave way, the two black screens on the little machine suddenly came to life, lighting up with a blue light that was so bright that it was almost blinding. When it had come on, it had nearly blinded her because it was so bright, but as the chanting ding ding dings and transport transports continued, the glow grew, getting stronger and stronger until it completely engulfed her.
The last thing she heard before everything suddenly went black, was her mother and father screaming for her...
(Comment 1) : lol, after hearing what the phones in Pokemon say in episode two, I couldn't stop myself from writing this. The phones in the anime say 'Ring ring ring, ring ring ring! Phone call! Phone call!', so I ended up imagining the same voice going 'ding ding ding, ding ding ding! Transport, transport!' over and over again. XD, I know, I'm a dork.
Anyway, I decided to split this chapter up the way I originally wanted it. When I posted it the first time, the first two chapters were so short that I just decided to put them into one thing, and I never got around to posting the other chapter that I already wrote. Unfortunately, the PC I was writing it on, as many of my usual readers know, crashed on me and the unposted chapters were all lost. So, since I had to rewrite a bunch of the story anyway, I decided to edit it so that it was exactly the way I wanted it to be in the first place instead of taking a bunch of crap out and adding a bunch of junk that was suggested to me. You can still give me suggestions, but just so you know, if I can't work it into the story without changing the plot, I'm not going to do it. I should have done it that way last time, but I didn't, which was why I gave up on the fic when I posted it on another site. This time around, I'm writing for myself, though I still would love it if you people review, :3, that would be really nice.
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