From: Dryad (dryad48@aol.commoner) Subject: [PW!] Exploring the Crisis - A Fork in the Road Newsgroups: alt.games.nintendo.pokemon Date: 2000/06/20 IV Exploring the Crisis [PW!] A Fork in the Road Written By Dry Deep and dense blackness surrounded with faint, brightly dim colors shrouded and shifting through the air like a heavy mist. The scent of the air swishing throughout was of foul seaweed. There was a muffled bitter taste in Derrick's mouth. The surface he lay on felt firm, soft, rough, and flimsy at the same time. He could hear the roaring stampede in the distance and the sighing breeze flowed throughout his ears serenading him back within his deep trance. It almost felt like there was no need to ever wake up. Perhaps what made Derrick want to rise from his slumber was to see why he was where he was. His left leg felt like it had crumbled and was reassembled by an illiterate and blind goomba. His mind drifted off as it tried to recollect what had happened. All he recalled was a bright hallway, a cylinder shaped room with many compartments, two dark shaped figures, and a thud. He rubbed his forehead and found a bleeding bump. Finally, with his eyes wide open, he looked around. The sea in many shades of green lay a few yards beyond his bruised feet. Beneath his feet were tiny grains of sand and glass and a puddle being washed away that smelled of alcohol. He didn't remember drinking. The sky was littered with violet cumulus clouds which streaked across the sky and through what appeared to be a Helicopter making its way across the sea. It looked like it slowed in the middle of nowhere but Derrick squinted his eyes. Now only resembling a minuscule dragonfly, it appeared to have landed on a giant floating rock with termite towers. Derrick seemed minorly stunned, but somewhere in the back of his head he could search for a reasonable explanation. ".......Ivory Island?" "Yes," something replied. Derrick spun around, startled, which made the pain in his leg sting even more. His Exeggutor glared angrily down at him. The other pokemon were behind it. They looked very pale like ghosts. "What happened?" Derrick caught his breath after a few seconds. "There was an intruder in the island and he hit you and you went down." The Exeggutor seemed dissapointed in Derrick's failure to stand up and fight for himself. Or was it dissapointment that the rockets didn't ta...... Derrick stopped his wandering and tried to block out that possibility. "Did you guys save me?" "No. I was telepathically watching what you saw." Exeggutor added, "And they had big guns." Derrick knew any of his pokemon would probably cower at gunpoint. "Then what happened?" "Well on their part," Exeggutor inched his eye to the other pokemon, "We all felt a sudden feeling like we were falling from the heavens." He sighed as he was forced to recap on all of what happened just because the others wanted him to. "Then there was a lot of tossing and turning inside our pokeballs like we were rolling down and up mounds and hills. After it all stopped, we came out and found ourselves back on land..." Paras crawled up to Derrick's leg and hugged it fearfully. "So shouldn't we hurry up and find a way to get back on the island?" Exeggutor asked. "Hm?" Derrick looked back to the sky to catch a glimpse of Ivory Island as it broke through the clouds for a few seconds. It seemed closer this time, in its dark, isolated, cringed, boring, desolate sort of way. He looked back into the woods in its light, frantic, meditated, flourishing, beauty. He sighed as he picked up the pokeballs and returned each of his yawning pokemon. He turned to Exeggutor as it glared down to him angrily again; and when Derrick pointed the pokeball at it, the Exeggutor rolled its eyes as it faded away in a bright red flash shrinking smaller and smaller. Paras climbed onto Derrick's shoulder as he walked towards the woods. It gave him a confused look and Derrick caught this out of the corner of his eye as he gawked at the drops of dew skidding off the tips of the faintest leaves sleeping at the bed of the forest. He gawked at how long stretched the dirt path led, and at how wide it was with no dead ends. He gawked at what freedom he had been missing for months. "Good riddance, I say to leaving ATR," Derrick answered Paras' question proudly yet he was still unsure of himself. "Over here, it's a beautiful day, or I heard everybody say." *The sun shines down on all of us,* Paras grinned. Derrick sighed. "It's just the same, you know I like the rain." *.....That isn't so obvious.....* To Be Continued