Ash Ketchum: Hunt For Jade Dragon

Ch. 23 Swamp Eel

   Even though we had hurried back to the airport, we still ended up sitting around for several hours before the pilots returned. Waiting wasn't awful since the terminal was pretty nice. Not that I was any kind of expert on airports. Before I'd gotten involved with the voice, I'd never been on a plane, but Zeus and Iris said this place was a lot better than regular airport terminals. It reminded me of an expensive mall. Iris and Korrina even got massages.

   Since no one had ended up eating much at the taco stand, we ate dinner at an expensive steak house-everyone except for Marnie, who ate alone at an Italian restaurant at the opposite er terminal. After we ate we walked back out to the gate to wait. Clemont read his book while Calem found some cards and he, Serena, Iris, Brock and I played Texas Hold'em. It was a pretty bizarre game since Brock could see through the cards and with Iris so close Serena could read our minds without touching us, so she always knew if someone had a good hand or was bluffing.

   Marnie sat away from the rest of us. I didn't really blame her. Everyone was treating her like she had a virus. Most of them wouldn't even look at her. I know they all had their reasons for hating her--so did I--but still something inside of me pitied her. She had been with the Galactic longer than any of us, and their world was all she knew. If Cyrus had raised me I probably would have turned out like her as well.

   I eventually gave up playing cards (since, no surprise, I was losing) and walked over to Marnie. She was sitting on the ground with her back to the wall sketching something in a notebook she had bought at one of the terminal stores.

  "Hey," I said.

   She glanced up at me, then went back to drawing. "Hey."

  "Mind if I sit here?" She shook her head without looking up.

   I sat down on the linoleum floor next to her. "What are you drawing?"

  "Nothing." She took a few more strokes with her pencil, then held the notebook up so I could see. Her drawing was bizarre--a skeleton of what looked like a lizard with lightning bolts coming out of its eyes and rosebushes growing inside its rib cage. Truthfully, she wasn't bad. She would probably make a good tattoo artist. "What do you think?" She asked.

  "Cool," I said.

  "Thanks," she said, going back to drawing.

  "So what have you been up to since we left you?" I asked.

  "Surviving."

  "Us too," I said. "Cyrus was holding my mother in Peru."

  "Yeah. I knew that." We were both silent a moment. Then she said, "Did you save her?"

  "Yes. But we had to take down an entire Starxource plant to do it."

   She looked up. "You destroyed the Peruvian Starxource plant?"

   I nodded. "Yes."

   She looked happy to hear this. "That was Cyrus's favorite. I bet he's crazy with rage."

  "I doubt I'll be on his Christmas list this year."

  "If Cyrus did Christmas." She suddenly seemed a little calmer. "That electric bubble thing you do is new."

  "Electro Balls," I said. "Or technically Lightning balls. That's what Clemont calls them. I just figured out how to make them."

  "You've gotten more electric since I last saw you."

  "I know," I said. "I keep getting more electric."

  "You're the only one of us that does that. What does it mean?"