Adventures in the Insane: A Pokemon Story

Road to Nowhere Fast

     "What the hell was that, Kristen?!" Sam was yelling at me. Should I be surprised? No. Should I wonder what for and argue my case? Every time. 
     "What?! What, Sam?! What could I have possibly done?! We haven't even left the city yet!" I shouted back. 
     "What was that interjection in our story?!" Her arm did the thing where it kind of gestures at the whole world like whatever she's yelling at me about is a global problem. "What is the importance of some boy finding a new pet to make him feel all warm and fuzzy inside?!" 
     "What are you talking about?" How was I supposed to argue my case if I didn't know what she was talking about? I slanted my eyes and tried to judge her mental stability through her forehead. Needless to say, it didn't work. So I just came to the conclusion she was nuts and was going to go on with my life forever wondering. 

Kai
     Can we please stop starting our paragraphs with what?
Keiko
     What?

     "What?" No, the twins were not out of their pokeballs last time I checked. 
     "Alright, before this gets any more ridiculous, Kris," Jay started pushing me through the snow, leaving a nice little ditch where my heels dragged in futile resistance. Alan passed right by us, just out of arms reach, Ken and Rebecca ahead walking together deep in conversation. 

Kai
     Oh, the horror!
Keiko
     I'm blind! 
Kai
     Villain! Look what you've done to my dear sister!

     Jay heard the ruckus, may have not understood it, but he definitely heard it. I on the other hand understood perfectly what was being said, but not going on, so I slipped out of Jay's grasp and turned towards my two wailing Squirtle who happened to be rushing toward me. As they headbutted into my well padded shins, I noticed Sam's flushed face and Alan's grin, the obvious assumption thwarted by how far they stood apart. No, not a considerably large distance, but he definitely would have had to lean over quite far to do it. 
     "What did you do?" My eyes became slits as I looked between them, my voice hanging off at the "oo" with suspicion. Alan was just grinning and I could see the physical effort Sam was making to turn her shade of pink to a shade of blind rage usually a redish color that boiled the brain. I turned my gaze to the twins at my feet. "What did they do?" 
     "We're getting nowhere this way," Jay sighed. 
     "What's the problem?" Ken and Rebecca, now a significant number of blocks away, had stopped to see if we were following and had come to the realization that we were, in fact, not following. Congrats to them. 

Kai
     Alan is making googly eyes at Sam!
Keiko
     And they did something icky! 

     "Did they now?" Ken smirked. "Tell Alan to stop making Sam uncomfortable and let's get this show on the road." Yeah, like that was easier done than said. 

Kai
     I like him. He gets things done. 

     "Yeah, yeah, you always say that." I rolled my eyes. 

Kai
     No I don't. We just met him yesterday. 

     "What?" Something scratched at the back of my mind like this side dilemma should bother me when I was completely okay with disregarding it. 
     "Oh for the love of-!" Jay grabbed my hand and gave a stern look to the twins. "If you're coming along, I suggest clambering up into jacket hoods or returning to your pokeballs." A rare sight to see: the twins looked frightened. Jay's look sent Keiko back to her pokeball and Kai into the hood of my jacket where he used my hair as a curtain to hide from the strong gaze.
     I was very cognizant of Jay's hand in mine, though he seemed very nonchalant about the link as he barked a rude order for the two in the back to straighten up their act and start walking. Roughly at first, he pulled me along and I didn't make any attempt to protest mostly because he looked mad. Wasn't this trip, in part, his idea? What was he getting so upset over? So we had a slow, bumpy start. It was nothing new in our group. 
     "Jay?" I squeezed his hand a bit. 
     "Sorry." He let go of my hand, a small apologetic smile adorning his face and helping the anger fall away. "Just a little eager to get moving." 
     "Why?" Kai tickled the back of my neck, my shoulders raising in response and my face contorting into some ugly expression I'm sure was hilarious, but no one was paying close enough attention to laugh- excluding the giggling Kai. 
     "I don't know," he turned away, though I could see his ear turning bright red. For all you aspiring psychologists out there, that usually means a romantic ulterior motive; for the rest of you who need plain English and are not familiar with body language, that usually means the guy likes you. However, those previous theories were very brutally destroyed when he turned to face forward again and the tip of his nose was red as well. To get to the point, he was cold. Extremities go first, kids.
     "FINALLY!" Alan and Sam had caught up, Alan racing pass us to a spot just a few feet away where he abruptly dropped to his knees. "We're out of the city!" He fell face first into the snow and started work on a snow angel. 
     "Yeah, but I wonder if today was a bad day to start," Rebecca said. 
     "Having second thoughts already?" Ken chuckled. He was a distinguished man after all: he did not giggle, he chuckled manly. 
     "No," she smiled apologetically, her gaze wandering up to the gray sky nervously. "It's just I've-"
     "-Seen the same sky just before I knew what Hell really was?" I finished for her. 
     She nodded gravely. Our shared theme in childhood trauma creeping back to us in shivers and sympathetic glances between the rest of our party. I'll save the details on it until later. 
     "Anyway," Rebecca put on a fighting smile. "It should be fine. The weather is supposed to be a little cloudy, but no reports of any snowfall. What's the worse that could happen?" 

~12 Minutes Later~

     If you're thinking to yourself, "Oh no, Rebecca jinxed them and they're stuck in a blizzard now," you'd be right. Here have a cookie. 
     "You had to ask!" Sam (obviously) yelled- mostly at me, partially at Rebecca, but more so at the Universe. 
     Wind was blowing right through us with sleet stinging our faces, all around there was just a wall of white spotted with the occasional tree trunk as long as it was in a ten foot radius. The temperature felt like sub zero but was probably only negative ten, so you know, as long as we didn't do something stupid like fall into an unfrozen lake or start taking our clothes off, we would be fine. At least for the next twenty minutes. Humans are not made to live in ice! 
     "Stuff it, Sam!" I hollered over the howling wind. 
     "We need to find some shelter!" Alan ingeniously suggested. 
     "No shit," Rebecca darkly commented. 
     As fate would have it, something dark hurtled toward me- and seeing as my visual range was limited to twenty feet- by the time I noticed my face was in danger of being smashed in, I had no time to react. In greeting, my face let my brain know it was pain, then my vocal chords let out a shrill 'ouch!' leading up to the grand finale of me falling on my ass. Again. However, this time I landed on something breakable: a lake thinly coated with ice. This was it. I was going to die of hypothermia. 
     "Kris! Don't move!" Jay shouted at me like I had other plans. 
     I would have responded curtly, but I was in the process of peeling the dark mass that had thrown my ass to the fate of certain frigid demise. When I say dark, I mean green. Dark green. White claws were slowly coming into my periphery as I detached them from the back of my skull and a red feather like appendage slapped me in the eye for my efforts. 
     "OW, DAMNIT!" Ripping the sucker as far away from my face as possible with the length of my arms I gave the Sneasel a good hard look, opening my mouth to reprimand the damn thing, when it took the opportunity to spit in my mouth. "OH ARCEUS! IT'S IN MY MOUTH!" 
     What happened next can only be described as horrific. First, the Sneasel escaped my clutches before I could give it a good throttling. Next, the ice began to crack underneath my sudden choreograph of flailing and spitting; finally, the ice broke and I was submerged, the nice slab of ice doing a little spin so I was under the water and it, the slab of ice, was above me. 
     Let me explain something to you: the sensation of drowning is one of the worst things you could ever experience. It's like being suffocated with a pillow, if that's not conveying it clearly enough, imagine the worst cold you've ever had and that tiny fraction of a moment where you couldn't breathe through your nose or your mouth. Now multiply that by ten and add another twenty seconds to it. You're close to understanding my fate. 
     Of course, I panicked. Not much else to do. Trapped under a slab of ice just thick enough that it's not feasible to punch through with the addition of the fact that the entire lake is in a similar state so precious air is slowly spilling out of your lungs. You always have more air in your lungs than you think you do, unless you screamed and gulped down more water than air in your transition from dry to wet. The consequences of my decision to scream were rearing it's ugly head quite quickly, the edges of my already greatly hindered vision becoming even darker and fuzzier. I was passing out. My lungs battle for air was stronger than my body's desperate disapproval of the sudden change in temperature, so I can at least say I died with that warm thought. 
     Into darkness I went. 

~~~~

About time something epic and dangerous happened, right? What journey doesn't have danger?! None! What journey doesn't have battles!? This one.... I'll work on it... Hope you enjoyed this little chapter and Kris's doom.