Chapter 14: First Assault

November 16

When Lance jumped from his cover and fired the first shot, all hell immediately broke loose. He downed two of the grunts before they could return fire as Brock threw himself on top of Dawn and Pikachu, both of whom were in hysterics. Ash had his gun pointed at the grunts as well, but something, and Ash didn't know what, but something kept him from firing. Was it the thought of having to kill more people to save their own skins? "They're trying to kill me, sure," Ash thought, "but is that really a reason to kill them?"

He decided it wasn't. At first he resolved not to fire, keeping his gun raised as Lance picked off the grunts one by one, both of them ducking and popping up behind their cover repeatedly to avoid the gunfire.

"ASH, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!" shouted Lance. "DON'T JUST STAND THERE! FUCKING SHOOT, WILL YA?"

Ash said nothing in return as he fired a few shots at a tree stump near the Grunts. He didn't care about Lance thought of him. He didn't even care if their lives were in danger. He would not take another human life.

Firing at the stump must have been enough to convince Lance that he wasn't wussing out after all. They both fired a few more shots, Lance taking out two more Grunts as Ash ducked to avoid a bullet aimed for his head. The remaining Grunts were pushing forward, continually firing as they neared ever closer to them. Ash wasn't sure, but he thought that he counted three of them left.

He continued shooting near them as Lance managed to finish them off. When the last one dropped dead, Lance said, "They were a worse shot than you were, Ash. Seriously, what the hell was that?"

"I wasn't about to kill them for no reason!" Ash retorted.

"Your reason was right there!" Lance said angrily, pointing to the dead Grunts, "When you're being shot at, you don't worry about morals, you worry about saving your own goddam life!"

Before Ash could apologize, a Grunt leaped from behind a tree in front of them and began firing his Sleeping Syringe gun at them. Lance quickly put him down, but not before taking a Syringe to the stomach.

"Shit!" Ash screamed as the orange vial quickly emptied its contents into Lance's blood stream. He yanked it out of his stomach and threw it aside as Brock, Dawn and Pikachu ran up to them.

"You guys OK?" Lance asked, acting as if nothing had happened.

"Are we OK? What about you? You just took one of those Sleeping Syringe thingy's!"

"Don't worry about me," Lance assured as he wobbled and lost his balance, propping himself on a nearby rock. "Just get us the hell…huff…outta here. Don't take any of their things, just get us away from here. Downriver would be best."

"How long does this stuff last?" Brock asked.

"A full vial will…huff…keep me out…a day or so. Just get us away…and hide…" With that, he slumped his head on his shoulder and closed his eyes, the Sleeping Syringe obviously having done its job. If Ash hadn't known better, he would've thought that he was dead.

Ash threw Lance over his shoulder, almost crumbling under the weight of his body. "C'mon," he grunted, "we need to get away, before more of them show up."

"But Ash," said Brock, "we can loot their stuff, we can-"

"There's no time for that!" Ash interrupted. "We need to get him out, and that's gonna take too much time as it is!"

"Why don't we just leave him?" Dawn said.

Everyone in the group who was conscious stared at Dawn like she was insane. "Why would you even think about that?" Ash cried.

"Look, I don't care if he's saved our lives," Dawn argued, "I still don't trust him. For all we know, he's leading us into a-"

"IF HE WAS LEADING US INTO A TRAP, HE WOULD'VE LET US DIE JUST NOW!" Ash shouted his fury unable to be quelled. "HE WOULD'VE LET THOSE GUYS SHOOT US DEAD! WHY THE HELL CAN'T YOU JUST LET IT GO!"

"Because we don't need him!" Dawn replied. "We can ditch him, we can go find someone that'll help us out!"

"No one's gonna want to help us, Dawn! With a fifty thousand dollar bounty on our heads, why would they? They'd just turn us in, or at least pretend to help us until they turn us over!"

"Excuse me, but isn't that what Lance could be doing?"

"After he killed those grunts, the Empire would probably put a bounty on him, too! And frankly, I'm getting real tired of your shit with Lance, and I won't discuss it further!" He turned around and began to walk. "If you don't want Lance around, then you'll have to give me up too!"

Dawn looked at him, then back at the dead Grunts, then back to Ash before sighing in exasperation as she followed him, the others following suit. Ash found it hard to keep up a steady stride with Lance's weight on his back, but was able to do so nonetheless.

After walking on for a few miles or so, Ash fell to the ground, landing on his face, unable to break the fall with Lance on his back. Brock began to pick him back up, but Ash shoved him aside.

"We can stop here, I think," Ash panted. "I think we're far away enough that we can hide up in one of these trees or something."

"What's the point of hiding?" Dawn cried, "we're just gonna run into those Grunts over and over until they kill us!"

Ash couldn't say that she was wrong. He couldn't even count how many times they had run into a group of Grunts and barely made it out alive. What could they do to keep from having to see them again? Could they do anything?

"No, that's not gonna happen!" Ash assured. Brock was silently looking on with concern. "We can try hiding for a few days, and then they won't find us."

Dawn shook her head as she began to climb the first tree that she saw, not checking to see if the branches were big enough, or even if they were safe to climb on at all.

"Brock, I need your help to get Lance up in the tree. I can't lift him up on my own."

Brock nodded as Ash reached into his backpack and pulled out his strand of rope. With a stroke of ingenuity, he tied one end of the rope around Lance's chest. He then took the other end and climbed up the tree about ten feet or so. He wrapped the rope around a branch before bringing the rope back down to the ground, effectively creating a makeshift pulley.

Back on the ground, Ash tugged on the rope to make sure it would hold before giving a hard pull on it, hoisting Lance's upper body into the air. After a few more pulls of the rope, his entire body was floating in midair, his feet barely able to touch the ground. Ash continued to pull until Lance disappeared into the canopy of the tree. He grinned, taking pride in his own quick thinking.

"Brock, hold this rope while I tie him to a branch."

Brock silently did so as Ash began to climb the tree until he was level with Lance's limp body. Untying the rope that was around his chest, he quickly tied the rope around him and the branch, the same way that they had done last night.

"OK, Brock, you can let go!"

Ash felt the rope below him go loose as Brock released the rope. He pulled the rope up into the tree as Brock and Pikachu joined him. Pikachu ran up to Ash and perched himself on his shoulder, where he was most comfortable. He gave him a lick on the cheek, which struck Ash as funny, the first time he felt genuinely happy in two days, given the circumstances.

"Now we get to wait, I guess…" Dawn said. Brock nodded in agreement.

"Once Lance comes to, then we might be able to get moving again. Until then, we're staying put." Ash settled himself down on a branch next to Lance, setting his backpack on his lap.

The day that they spent in that tree was unbearably long, to say the least. The hours they spent in silence felt like weeks, the only sound coming from a chopper that flew overhead during that afternoon. The overhead chopper was quite literally the highpoint of their day; besides that brief moment of worry and fright, the rest of the day was filled with absolutely nothing; no speaking, no sound, no mishaps. Nothing.

When the sun began to set and the sky grew dark, Ash had decided that he had had enough of the silence. "I'm turning on the radio," he said, "to see if there's any more news."

Neither Brock nor Dawn objected, meaning that they were in favor of some entertainment or simply just wanted to be able to hear anything that had something to say. He pulled out the radio from his backpack and flipped on the switch as the radio greeted him with its familiar static hum.

He fiddled with the dial randomly, hardly able to see the markings on the console in the darkness. He tried for several minutes, silently rejoicing when he heard a low, grim voice speak from the box.

"…killed a total of 19, I repeat, 19 Rocket grunts singlehandedly before she was to be executed. In the impending riot, 84 civilians were killed, as well as an additional 12 Rocket grunts, not to mention the extensive damage to the city of Snowpoint. It is believed that Zoey McHale has since fled the city, as her whereabouts are currently unknown."

"Zoey?!" said Dawn incredulously. "Why was she about to be executed?" she wondered aloud.

Ash shrugged as he turned the volume up on the radio. He wasn't exactly surprised that she had fled with a fight. She was a real tough trainer, and her abrasiveness was the only reason why she had won the Grand Festival in the first place. He had no idea why she would be put to death, though, or why someone would try and put her to death.

"A bounty of $10,000 has been placed on McHale's head. Meanwhile, the search continues for the four trainers on the Rocket Empire's Most Wanted List. Ash Ketchum, Brock Harrison, Dawn Berlitz, and Lance Luxforde are all wanted by the empire for theft, murder, and assault. So far, their party has killed an estimated 10 Rocket grunts, as it is believed through the Grunts' radio transmissions that they were killed by gunfire from the group. The bounty on their heads has just been raised to $200,000, dead or alive."

"That's not very surprising," Ash said, turning off the radio. "I'd still like to know what the hell we stole from them. It's not like the egg is theirs!"

Above him, Brock grunted as Ash put the radio back in his backpack. When he did so, he realized that, even with everything he needed, his pack was still somewhat roomy inside. He looked over at Pikachu, who was nibbling on a poffin in Dawn's lap.

"Pikachu, come here," Ash whistled. The pokémon pounced off of Dawn's lap and into Ash's. "Listen, I wanna keep you safe. I know you're not gonna like this, but I'm keeping you in this backpack." Pikachu immediately grimaced at the thought of being hidden in a cramped space like his pack. "In case something like this morning happens again, I want to be able to keep you safe. You understand, right?"

He still wore a sour face, but nodded anyways. "Good," Ash said. "I'll cut out a slit in the side so you can poke your head out, that way it's not so stuffy."

Pikachu nodded again, his sour look slowly fading from his face. Ash took his knife from his waist belt and cut a slit in the pack about four inches long, strategically placed on the top of it, so that nothing would fall out.

Pikachu crawled into the bag, completely disappearing until his head appeared through the slit. Ash laughed at the sight of his head popping out, yet was saddened at the same time. Pikachu had never been in a Poké Ball in eight years. His backpack was the closest to a Poké Ball that he would get, but the idea of him having to do this for the sake of protection still crushed him emotionally.

Ash sighed. "Let's just go to bed. Maybe tomorrow we'll be able to get moving again. I'll take first shift for watch."

Dawn and Brock said nothing as they prepared for bed, digging in their bags for rope and blankets. Ash did the same, careful not to jostle Pikachu too much in the pack. He tied the rope around his waist, as usual, and settled in for the night. Ash placed the backpack in his lap and, inserting his hand into the slit, grabbed hold of Pikachu's paw, never letting go until he fell asleep.

November 17

Ash and Pikachu were the only ones in the tree when he woke up the next morning. Even Lance was missing from his resting spot. "Where's everyone at?" he thought.

He could smell a faint wisp of smoke, and the scent of burning meat as well. A hushed voice was barely reaching his ears. He jumped from the tree to see Lance, sitting upright by a fire next to the others. Lance turned his head when he heard Ash land on the ground.

"Well," he said, "look who's finally awake!"

Ash smirked. "I could the same thing about you," he replied. Pikachu cooed as he poked his head out of the backpack. "How you feeling?"

"I'm conscious, so in a sense I'm feeling better." He grinned. "You slept in for quite a while. For a second we were thinking you took a Sleeping Syringe of your own!"

"Funny," Ash said sarcastically. "So what's the plan for today?"

"Stay alive." Lance's expression suddenly turned serious. Dawn and Brock looked on uneasily. "We'll find that riverbank again, and then hug that southward. That way we'll have somewhat of a path to follow."

"As long as we don't get sidetracked by those Grunts again," Dawn pointed out.

"I don't understand why we're dealing with them so often," Ash wondered aloud. "There's so many of them!"

"Beginner's luck," Lance said, "or in your case, beginner's bad luck."

Finding the riverbank proved to be a formidable task. Since they had walked so far from it the previous day, not only did they have to cover that distance, but they had to try and retrace their exact steps back to where they were the previous day. They hadn't gotten to the river until mid-afternoon, and by then everyone was more than willing to take a short break for some water.

"The river is flowing that way," Brock said as he pointed to his left, "and rivers always flow south. That's where we wanna go, right?"

Ash was somewhat surprised that Brock had spoken. It was the most that he had spoken all day, or even in the past two days, for that matter.

"Right," Lance confirmed. "Let's finish filling our bottles and get back on the road."

Ash didn't know what road Lance was talking about, since they hadn't been on any actual road in several days. "Must've been a figure of speech," Ash realized.

Sure enough, when night had fallen that day they never came in sight of any roads, only a dirt path that they didn't bother to follow.

Surprisingly enough, this day had been even more boring than the last. No encounters with any Rocket grunts, no serious injuries…Ash didn't know whether to be relieved or bored out of his mind.

He would end up choosing the latter. What he didn't know was that the next week would play out exactly like that day had – boring. For a whole week absolutely nothing had happened that was out of the ordinary. They followed the same routine every day for that week without any interruptions.

They would eat breakfast at the crack of dawn before trekking off for a few hours. After taking a short break, about fifteen minutes, in the afternoon they'd keep going until dinner, which almost always consisted of cooked Stantler along with some other canned food. Everyone went to bed after dinner; by then it would be too dark to keep going, and there would be nothing else to do in the darkness.

November 24

Adding to the boredom of that uneventful week in flight was the overall somber mood of everyone in the group. They all had reasons to be mad at someone, or something. Ash was mad at the Empire for messing up their lives so much. Brock wasn't mad at anything; he just seemed depressed, hardly speaking at all as he stayed in his own personal bubble. Dawn was continuously mad at Lance, and for basically no reason either. And Lance? He wasn't mad at any particular thing, but he had a rather gruff attitude, no matter who was talking to him or what he was doing.

One night at dinner, ten days after the invasion, Ash finally noticed that Brock's demeanor had changed drastically. He hardly talked anymore, he noticed, and when he did, it was in a low pitch that would barely be audible.

"Alright, Brock," said Ash, "what's going on?"

Brock slowly looked up at him. "What do you mean?" he mumbled.

"You know what I mean!" Ash exclaimed. "Why are you always so depressed? I mean, yeah we're on the run for our lives, but at least we're trying to keep morale around here!"

Brock sighed. "It's my family. I can't help but think that they're…well, dead."

It was Lance who spoke up this time. "Look, I know that you're worried about your family. We are, too. But you need to understand that there's nothing that we can do about that."

"Yes, there is!" Brock shouted in anger, flinging his bowl of food away. "We can at least try and leave Sinnoh, get to-"

"We went over this!" Lance interrupted, "you can't leave the region, or get into any other ones for that matter. You'd get shot down in a minute!"

"How the hell do you know this? It's not like you've tried it, so how would you know?"

"I DID TRY!" Lance shouted, "I TRIED TO GET BACK TO MY COUSIN, AND I THINK WE ALL KNOW HOW THAT WORKED OUT!"

Ash stepped in at this point. "And newsflash, Brock, but you're not the only one whose family is probably dead, so stop acting like you are! Dawn and I both have mothers at home, and they're probably dead, too, but you don't see us bitching about it!"

"So you're saying that you don't care at all about your families?" Brock shouted.

"Of course we do!" Ash replied, his frustration coming to a boil. "But we've accepted that we can't do anything about it, and that's what you need to do, too!"

"ENOUGH!" roared Lance. Everyone stopped the commotion in fright. Lance was slowly calming down as he said, "We're not running for our lives to kill each other here! Now, if you guys are done, I'm going to bed, and I don't want to hear any more about this!"

As he climbed up a tree with his stuff, everyone else silently cleaned up their stuff as they got ready for bed. Dawn was the first one up the tree, followed by Ash, then Brock. Not a word was spoken as they all tied themselves in and fell to sleep faster than they had in a long time.