From: Dan and his army of Kirbys (kirb9701@aol.computer) Subject: [PW!] Digging Up the Past Newsgroups: alt.games.nintendo.pokemon Date: 2001-03-25 16:26:11 PST [Well, a new timeline, and a new storyline. Hope it turns out okay.] Slow. Quiet. This was the mood that pervaded Dan's house in Pallet Town today. It had been that way for years. Dan had explored Johto country, but concluded that years ago and returned home, where very little excitement awaited him. The Ditto dilemma still plagued him, but he was confident a way would be found to end it. "To separate our cells and our minds..." Dan muttered, staring at the logbook he had been keeping track of the Ditto episodes in. "There must be a way to do it...what have I been overlooking?" His thoughts were interrupted by the slamming of the door downstairs. "Dan!" his mom called up the stairs. "There's a letter for you!" Dan threw down the logbook and ran from his room, down the hall, and launched himself down the stairs. "A letter for me? Who's it from?" "I don't know," his mom said. "I don't recognize this address from anywhere..." "Hmm..." Dan said, studying the envelope. "I don't know this address either. Guess I should open it." He tore open the envelope and pulled out the letter inside. He scanned the first few lines of the letter and gasped. "I don't believe it! It's from Dad!" "He'd better be writing to explain why he's been gone so long," Dan's mom said. Dan began to read: "Hello, son... It seems I've been gone a lot longer than I expected. It must've been a shock when you came home from your journey and found me gone, with no explanation. The fact is, my past had caught up with me. I was no longer able to stay in Pallet, and now must be constantly on the move. Wherever this was sent from, I have long since departed." "But to get to the point. I want you to understand my past....you're older now, perhaps you can help. But there's too much to explain right here. I have left instructions to point you to something that can explain. My belongings are still around the house, correct? Find an old gray and black-striped suit of mine and look in the pockets. You'll find the instructions there. Good luck, Dad." "Not good enough..." Mom mumbled. Dan ignored her and started racking his brain. "Gray and black suit...I know I've seen that somewhere..." he thought. "...hmmm. Oh! Of course! The basement!" Dan ran to the basement door and ran down the stairs, leaving his muttering mom behind. "Now..." Dan said, standing before his great disguise collection. He had started this collection after meeting Duplica, who imitated people with a huge set of costumes. Dan's collection was nowhere near as big as hers, and he was not as good at imitaing, but both things were passable. The collection had started off with some duplicates of Duplica's favorite costumes, donated after she heard that Dan wanted to take up her hobby. Old clothes belonging to his parents were later added as space-fillers, but were seldomly used. "I'm sure it's here..." Dan said, searching the racks of clothes for Dad's old suit. "Ah! Here it is!" He removed the suit from the rack and reached into the left pocket. "Not here..." He reached into the right pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. "Bingo!" he said, and hung the suit back up. He unfolded the paper, which two diagrams were drawn on. One was apparently a picture of a brick wall. One brick was marked with an X. The other picture was a cross-section of a house. An arrow pointed from the picture of the wall to the basement of the house. Above the diagrams was a single written line: "Home is where the book is." "Now what is that supposed to mean?" Dan said, puzzled. What was meant by "home?" The walls of the basement here were made of solid concrete, not bricks. Another mystery. Dan ran up the stairs an slammed the basement door. "What did you find?" his mom asked. "Just this," Dan answered, handing his mom the paper. "I can't figure out what it means at all." "Well..." his mom said, studying the diagrams, "This picture...the house, it looks like our old house." "Old house?" Dan asked, raising an eyebrow. "Oh, you were too young to remember it," Mom replied. "We used to have a house in Saffron City, when you were about a year old. Your father made us move for some reason...he never explained why. He just said that we had to get out of the city..." "Where was the house?" Dan shouted. "I...I can't remember," Mom said, shaking her head. "Maybe there's something in our old records..." Dan snatched the paper and sprinted up the stairs into his mom's room. He opened up the closet and started pulling out the boxes that cluttered it. "Where could I find something to tell me where the house is?" he said to himself, and started looking at the box labeled. "Pictures? Looks like a good place to start." The picture box was big, and for good reason. The box was filled with tons of pictures, some interesting, but most not. Baby pictures of Dan...wedding pictures...school pictures... One struck Dan as very interesting, a picture of Mom and Dad standing in front of a house, with a large volcano looming in the background. Cinnabar Island, obviously. Mom and Dad must've lived there before Saffron. Another picture showed Dad with a group of scientists in a lab, holding an award of some sort... Finally, a picture of the Saffron house. "Oh, great. The number's too small. There's no point in trying to read this..." He threw all of the pictures back into the box and closed it. "Let's try this one," he said, and opened another. This one was full of letters and envelopes. Many of them were addressed to 35 ESP Av in Saffron City. "Sounds good to me," Dan said, and shoved the boxes back into the closet. "So long, Mom!" Dan shouted as he ran out the door. "I'm off to Saffron!" "That boy...Always running off, just like his father..." "Is this really the place?" Dan asked himself. He was standing in front of the house marked 35 ESP Av in Saffron. "This looks nothing like the picture..." He released Alakazam. "Alakazam, be ready. I may need a distraction, so be on alert." "I will be ready when you need me." Dan walked up the steps of the house and knocked on the door. After 10 seconds, a woman opened the door. "Oh? Who might you be?" she asked. "Sorry to bother you, but I used to live in this house," Dan began. "I recently learned that something that belongs to me may be here, and I'd like to ask if I could look around for it." "I'm sorry," the woman said. "But we completely remodeled the house about 10 years ago. Whatever you left here would be long gone." "Oh..." Dan said, trying to hide the disappointment in his voice. "Yes," the woman continued. "All that's left of the original house is the foundation, and the basement..." Dan's eyes lit up. "Alakazam, I need you now!" he thought. The pokemon read the thought and sent back another message. "I will initiate a distraction." In the house's kitchen, a table lifted off of the ground and dropped with a crash. "What was that?" the woman cried, and ran to the kitchen. Dan took the chance to slip into the house and look around. There was a flight of stairs leading up, with a door near it. Dan ran to the door and went through it. "All right," he whispered, and turned on the light. At the bottom of the stairs was a wall made with large bricks, 25 bricks long and 10 blocks high, just like in the diagram. "Now, let's see..." Dan said, looking at the paper. "14 blocks from the left, 6 from the top..." He found the block marked on the paper and, as he expected, it was loose. He grabbed the edges and started pulling it from the wall. As more of it was extracted, Dan could see that the top of it was hollowed out. He reached in and pulled out a book. There appeared to be nothing else, so he pushed the block back in. The door at the top of the stairs began to creak. Dan's heart leaped. Someone was coming! He quickly pushed open a window and jumped through. "Ugh...why couldn't they have made these windows a little bigger?" he said, trying to squeeze through. The creaking of the stairs was getting louder as the person coming got closer to the bottom. Dan pushed against the wall with all his might. POP! Okay, maybe there wasn't a POP sound, but Dan was free from the window and out of the basement. Alakazam was there waiting for him. "You could have requested that I teleported you from there," he said. Dan glared at Alakazam, then looked at the book in his hands. "Never mind that," he said. "Let's see what exactly Dad wanted us to find out." TBC.... -Dan