Pokemon Fan Fiction / Pokemon Fan Fiction ❯ 37 P.S. ❯ Over the River and Through the Woods…. ( Chapter 3 )

37 P.S.

By: bsmart

Disclaimer:Why the hell am I writing this? Nobody reads them and they have no legal weight. It's a complete waste of time and bandwidth and yet I'm still typing. If you're under the legal age where ever you are don't read this, but since you're going to anyways at least don't let your mommy catch you. This fic is very much NC-17. Copyright? Ha! Just don't be a dick. If you got this anywhere besides mediaminer.org, the official Pokegirls Yahoo group, or adultfanfiction.net then you likely haven't seen all of it as those are the only places where this story is officially distributed.

Note: This might be an Orange League fic it might not. To be honest I don't know a damn thing about pokemon and I want to keep it that way. If I make a dumb mistake feel free to point it out. I've done as much research as I can into this to keep it consistent with what seems to be the accepted canon of the pokegirl world. Also no one that I know of has done anything with the Orange League so I'm making it up as I go along.

"…" Normal Speech

"This was a bad idea," Jeremy said as he flicked another fern frond out of his face.

"I don't remember anyone ever saying it was a good one," Misha said. "Do you Alan?"

"Nope."

"Oh great, so this was a shit idea right from the beginning," Jeremy complained.

"Yeah basically," Alan said as Misha swatted the latest bug to try and suck her blood out of the air. "What did you do, take a bath in bug bait or something?"

"I can't help it if I'm sweet," Misha shot back.

"Heh, yeah. That's the problem," Jeremy said just loud enough for Misha to hear.

"I'm just surprised that you're not covered in flies yourself," Misha said back happily, "With you being so full of shit and all." The innocent tone of her voice did little to mask the sarcasm in her words.

Alan grinned at Misha's favorite type of teasing, playing the sweet little blonde while being as vicious as she could be. "Hold up a minute." He adjusted the carbine's strap on his shoulder and took a moment to wipe the sweat off his brow before reaching into the map case at his side and withdrawing the set of maps they'd been given as well as a compass. The map of Malaysia before the war was simply for reference, very little of what was shown on that map still bore any semblance with how the archipelago looked today. The second was a laminated copy of a satellite photo taken nearly thirty years ago, when the Rangers still had the ability to communicate with the orbiting network. The coastline of the peninsula had been reformed by the rising seas and turned it into an island.

The city they were heading was once called Kualla Lumpar and it had been kilometers from the coast. Now according to the satellite photo a portion of the cities southeastern district was underwater. The final map in the bundle was crude and hand drawn but it was the most useful. The map was made from the reports of patrols that had scouted the area around where the Rangers would eventually build their village. It only showed the area within about ten kilometers of the village but it gave enough details and landmarks to make navigating the area easy.

The map hadn't been updated in decades, the Rangers activity had eventually drawn the attention of every pokegirl within what seemed like a hundred kilometers made making forays just to the forest edge chancy and journeys into it suicidal. Over the years the pokegirl sighting diminished and the area became safer but even the most adventurous people didn't stray out of eye sight of the clearing surrounding the village and those feats of daring were almost always done in the company of several tame pokegirls.

Even after thirty years without an update many of the landmarks remained and Alan was having no trouble keeping them on course and making good time. 'Unfortunately we'll be off the map in a another hour or two.' Alan was especially nervous about the map's western boundary a river.

"So where are we," Jeremy asked as he peered over Alan's shoulder.

"Well I'm pretty sure that rock out cropping is this one," he said pointing towards a twenty foot high dislocation in the earths surface which formed a picturesque overhang and then to the map. "Which means we're here."

"So another two clicks and we're off the map?" Misha asked.

"Yep, which is what I wanted to talk to you guys about. This river here marks the western edge of the map."

"What you can't swim?" Jeremy asked.

"No, I can swim. The problem is that that river's the only source of water on this map," Alan declared.

"Ohhhh," Misha said grasping the problem.

"Uhhh, what, what's the big deal?" Jeremy said looking back and forth between Misha and Alan.

"Pokegirl's don't eat as much as humans right?" Alan led.

"Yeah, so," Jeremy replied.

"But they drink just as much as we do," Misha explained.

"Do either of you have a point?"

"Yes, aside from the wells in and around the village this river is the only place around here that there's any water for the pokegirls to drink. There could be whole lakes that are just off the map but there might not be so we have to assume that this is it," Alan explained.

"So all the pokegirls around here are probably going to have to go there to drink," Jeremy said.

Misha's shoulders drooped a little. "Exactly."

"So what do we do?" Jeremy asked nervously.

"Well I would say that we'd cross at night but it's been two weeks since the full moon, it's going to be pitch black and we'll get in more trouble stumbling around out here in the dark."

"So we're going to cross during the day?" Jeremy asked.

"I don't see that we have a choice, this river runs from as far north and south as the map shows so we aren't going around it."

"This idea just keeps getting worse," Misha mumbled to herself.

"Look, we'll head to the river and get close enough to see it, then we hole up until sundown and then we cross," Alan said with all the surety he could muster in his voice.

"Why sundown?" Jeremy asked.

"Well hopefully all the pokegirls who are out during the day will be bedding down for the night and the nocturnal ones won't be up and about yet. It should also give us enough time to get away from the river before it gets to dark and we have to settle down for the night."

"So we run for it and pray, great," Jeremy deadpanned.

"If you've got a better idea I'd love to hear it." Alan looked back and forth between his companions. "No? Then let's go, and stay quiet." Alan found his idea about as thrilling as Misha and Jeremy did but it was the best he could come up with. He quickly put the maps and compass back in their case and they headed out.

The forest wasn't nearly as oppressive as Misha had expected it to be. From the village it was a rich green blanket that smothered the landscape for as far as the eye could see. The edge of it was a thick tangle of vines and underbrush that formed a virtual wall separating itself from the clearing the village sat it. But out here, in it, it wasn't nearly as foreboding. The trees were tall and had most of their limbs and branches high overhead where they meshed with the limbs of other trees forming a canopy overhead. Misha wondered if they'd even get wet if it rained. The underbrush was thick but short and it consisted mostly of different types of ferns so it offered no resistance to their passing. Aside from the occasional vine hanging down from above there wasn't much to impede the view through the forest. 'It's actually really pretty in here,' she thought as she watched the few sun beams that had managed to fight their way though the canopy cast golden shafts of light down onto the fern bed. 'Might be nice to stay out here if you didn't have to worry about being eaten.'

Jeremy wasn't nearly as happy about their condition. Even though the forest kept the sun directly off them it also kept all the humidity in, turning the area beneath the canopy into a steam bath of the first order. He'd initially scoffed at Alan's choice of a simple olive drab t-shirt and Misha's cut off affair but now as he trudged through the thirty five degree ninety nine percent humidity air under the leaves he realized that his own choice of a standard issue jacket and t-shirt was the poor one. He'd given up on going without a hat after the first hour of constantly wiping the sweat out of his eyes and he'd pulled out a cap similar to Misha's and had crammed it down onto his head. As he tripped over yet another root hidden by the ferns he cursed the forest, the ferns, and everyone on the village counsel by name. 'I hate this fucking place.'

Alan wasn't paying the scenery much mind at all, he was too busy scanning the area for pokegirls. His eyes scanned back and forth snapping from one moving object to the next. The fact that they'd been on the move now for over three hours and had yet to see a single pokegirl had him on edge, something that was not lost on his friends.

"Alan," Misha asked quietly as she hurried forward to walk at his side, "what's wrong, you see something?"

"Nothing," was his terse reply.

"So what's wrong?"

"Exactly that, where the hell are the pokegirls?"

"I thought we came this way to avoid them," she replied. In fact she was right. Most of the pokegirls around the village had been sighted to the southeast, where the livestock was allowed to graze and where over three kilometers of open terrain separated the forest from the village. To the west there was only a kilometer between the village and the forest and the area was used exclusively for farming. Alan figured that most of the dangerous carnivorous pokegirls would stick to the southeast leaving their route west clear. He doubted that any of the vegetarian pokegirls would bother trying to sneak food from the fields when there was obviously plenty in the forest. Also the vegetarians seemed to scare easier and tried to avoid humans when they could.

"I'd feel a lot better if we had seen a couple of pokegirls, even if they were just running away. I just get this feeling like we're about to get bushwhacked."

"So you're nervous about your plan working?" Jeremy asked.

"Of course I am, plans never work," Alan snapped back.

"Chill man, luck's on our side at the moment so don't go jinxing it."

"Fine," Alan whispered, "but I'd still feel better if we'd seen one or two."

"Yeah," Jeremy said before pausing and cocking his head to once side. "Hey, you guys here that?"

Alan and Misha both stopped walking and concentrated for a moment. "Yeah, sounds like we're getting close to the river," Misha answered first.

It took Alan a moment longer but he too was able to catch the faint sound of rushing water. "Alright, let's keep quiet, watch where you step, and keep a look out for someplace that we can hole up until sundown."

When Alan unslung his rifle and cradled it in his arms Jeremy and Misha did as well, as best they could the group moved through the forest trying to stay as quiet as possible. After several hundred meters the group approached a rise in the sound of the river was loud enough to mask the sounds of their approach. Before starting up the rise Alan paused at the bottom of it and kneeled down concealing all of himself but his head in the ferns, Misha and Jeremy soon followed.

"So what's the plan chief?" Jeremy asked.

"Just stay low in the ferns up to the top, we'll take a quick look around and then we come back down. Either of you seen some place we can hide out?"

Misha pointed off to their left, towards the south and said, "I saw something back there, looked like one of those overhangs that are all over the place around here."

"What the hell is up with that?" Jeremy asked.

"My Dad wrote something about a couple of massive earthquakes in his journal, maybe they're what did all this," Alan said.

"That woulda done it," Misha agreed.

"I wonder what this place was like before all that happened." Jeremy said.

"Who the hell knows, let's get moving," Alan said.

The rise wasn't very high, maybe fifteen meters but it was slow going. The thick blanket of ferns continued right up the sides of the long hill hiding the ground, and their footing, from the three travelers. Just before he got to the crest Alan flopped down on his belly and crawled forward until his head was just over the top. Unlike the side they had come up the side of the rise facing the river was a steep, nearly shear drop to the ground twenty meters below and devoid of vegetation. The ground on the far side wasn't covered in the carpet of ferns that the rest of the forest was, only a few of the feathery shrubs covered the ground, in most areas the leaf covered forest floor was visible. The ferns weren't the only plants that started to thin out, the closer you got to the river the fewer trees there were and the rockier the ground got. The bank of the river itself was a few meter wide swath of polished river stones, with only the occasional boulder to break it's black and rust colored monotony.

The river itself was a good eighty meters away and by Alan's best estimate a good twenty meters wide. The thick blue line on the map he held in his hand bore no resemblance to the churning mass of white water before him. As far as he could see the river was a mass of boiling froth, the only areas of smooth water were along the banks or behind some of the large rocks that managed to push their way up out of the swirling waters.

"Daaammmmnnnnn," Misha whispered as she crawled up beside Alan.

"How are we supposed to get across that?" Jeremy asked.

"Well, if it's that turbulent then it can't be that deep," Alan said.

"You sure about that?" Jeremy asked.

"Heh, no," Alan said as his eyes looked up and down the river for a calm place to cross.

"Wonderful."

Alan's eyes paused in their wondering as he spied movement a hundred meters up the river on the far bank. "Shhh," he hissed and flattened himself even more against the ground.

"What is it?" Misha whispered.

Alan pointed up river towards what he'd seen. Misha didn't see what the fuss was about until she spotted a molted green hand emerging from the brush near the river bank. The girl that soon followed the hand would never have been mistaken for a human, if her splotchy green and brown skin wouldn't have given her away the small red flowers growing out of the tangle of thick green hairs on her head or the leaves emerging from her back would have.

As they watched her the pokegirl made her way cautiously across the river bank, her head in constant motion, always searching for any sign of danger. When she neared the edge of the river she dropped down onto all fours and crawled forward with as much ease as when she walked. She crawled out onto a large rock that projected out over the river and cautiously bent down to drink from the still water in its shadow, her eyes scanning her surroundings even as she drank, occasionally stopping to bring her head up and scan the area behind her.

"Feel better?" Jeremy asked quietly.

"Not really," Alan replied. There were several girl like this in the village, girls that looked like living plants. They seemed harmless enough, lazing about in the fields soaking up the sun, tending the crops with nothing but their hands, but Alan had seen them in action. Two years ago a small pack of reptilian pokegirls attacked some people farming in the north fields, out there with the farmers had been a pair of these plantgirls. They'd sent a spray of leaves flying towards the intruders and to Alan's amazement the leaves hadn't bounced off the attacking pokegirls, they'd actually embedded into them. With a tormented howl the reptilian girls had retreated and a few hours later everyone returned to work after they were sure the pokegirls were gone, the plantgirls had returned to wallowing on the ground around the crops humming happily to themselves as they fertilized the ground around them in a way nobody could explain. Out of curiosity Alan had gone to where the attack had occurred and scoured the ground for a few minutes before finding what he was looking for.

The blood covered leaf wasn't remarkable as vegetation went, only a half dozen centimeters long, maybe two wide, the plantgirl's backs were covered in hundreds of leaves just like this one. The only thing remarkable about it was that it was hard as steel and had an edge on it that looked sharper then any knife Alan had ever seen, not to mention that it had done what one of their rifles couldn't, it had stopped a charging pokegirl in her tracks. It was a short leap of imagination to realize how bad it would have been for a human to have been caught in a hail storm of these like those girls had unleashed.

And now a girl just like the ones at the village was no more then a few hundred meter away.

"Down there," Misha whispered as she pointed off in the opposite direction. Farther down the river in the opposite direction, and on their shore, was another pokegirl. Small and covered in fur in several areas the girl didn't look like she had a taste for meat or was she particularly intimidating. 'But neither did Newt's new Boobcat,' Alan thought, at least until you remembered that one of her pack mates had killed a full grown heifer with a single swipe of her claws and two of the girls who couldn't have weighed more then eighty five kilos, combined, had dragged the seven hundred kilo still struggling body back into the woods by themselves.

"Alright, let's get out of here before any more of the wildlife shows up," Alan whispered. "Lead the way Misha."

*********************************

The overhang that Misha had spotted had turned out to be perfect, a shear drop of ten meters had exposed a rock wall with a small cave at the bottom. The cave wasn't deep, only a few meters, but its entrance was hidden behind several large rocks and bushes. They had to stoop over to get inside and sitting down was the only option but Alan doubted that they'd find a more suitable place to wait for nightfall.

It had been Jeremy's idea to take shifts on watch so that only one of them had to be up and on look out and the other two could sleep or eat or whatever. Though they hadn't made anything approaching good time, covering only ten kilometers in a little over hour hours, they were still going to have to kill more then seven hours before the sun started to set.

Alan had taken the first shift and the two hours he was on lookout passed quietly. Once or twice he thought he saw a group of figures moving through the trees but they were far enough not to hear and to barely be seen so aside from staying a tad more vigilant than normal he let it pass without warning his companions.

When Misha relieved him Alan scooted back farther into the cave and ate lunch, now with the empty plastic and foil wrappers stuffed away in the back of their hideout with the remains of Jeremy and Misha's meals Alan settled back with his father's journal and started to read it again, from the beginning, hoping that maybe it would offer some insights into their current situation.

******************************

April 24th, 2005

Losing blows.

I doubt that'll go down in history as the most astute observation made by man but it's the truth. Losing a football game or a hand of cards or a video game sucks, but in the end it's only your pride and maybe a little money. Losing a war is a whole different matter.

You spend three years of your life fighting constantly terrified of being blown up, incinerated, frozen, ripped apart or eaten. You spend three years in the mud, in the rain, in the snow in the heat, fighting in a place that you can't even pronounce the name of, for people you don't even know, against an enemy that's everywhere but can't be seen, and then you find out it was all for naught.

That blows.

We all expected that any day we'd hear the news over the radio that a way to fight back had been found, a weapon, a drug, anything that would give us an edge. After all this wasn't the way it was supposed to go. The good guys didn't lose, even if things looked bleak somebody always came through with a miracle cure. It never came, and we fought on with weapons that are practically useless. I never thought I'd see the day where some little girl could take ten rounds out of 240 and still keep coming but I have. Hell, the only weapons we ever had that even seemed to phase them were the ones that were meant to be used on armored vehicles. The only reason we're probably still alive is because we're here on the ass end of the planet. Here the attacks are random, small scale, rarely more then a hundred or two of those monsters at a time, according to the reports on the radio in some places they're organized into armies. Suddenly I'm glad I'm here.

The call came in this morning, on every damn freq, civil and military, what time that would be where ever the President is I don't know since Washington doesn't exist anymore. I don't think I've ever heard anyone more beat then he was when he told us it was over. Told us that coordinated resistance against the threat hadn't succeeded, billions dead, the planet completely reformed. He told us to stop trying to fight them off, just try to find all the survivors you could and try to start over. We had a way to fight back now of course, turn the girls against each other, turn them to our side, but it didn't matter anymore he said. There's no point in anyone else dying for a country, a nation, a people, a way of life that no longer existed. He told us to try and start over, save ourselves, make sure that the human race survived.

I don't suppose it was really a time for a 'win one for the gipper' kind of speech but fuck that was depressing. Still, it's nothing we didn't see coming. How couldn't we, even out here in boonies against a disorganized bunch of 'em we couldn't win, Rangers the best in the army and we couldn't win.

So why am I bothering to write this? To kill time I suppose. I could claim to be laying down a record for the benefit of future generations but fuck'em, with that damned plague I doubt there will be much in the way of future generations and even if there are I doubt they'll care to much about what I write, they'll be a little busy trying to eat and avoid being eaten. Mostly I'm just looking for something to do to pass the time.

I suppose there might be some cause for hope, we're fairly well supplied, the last freighter to make port carried enough supplies to keep a brigade in the field for a month and there's less then a battalion of us now. We've found survivors, lots of them, mostly women since every man that could walk and hold a gun was forced into the army and summarily slaughtered. The language barrier is a bitch but we've got some translators and some of them speak passable English. The major has a plan, in our roving all over this god forsaken spit a land we ran across a clearing, well clearing is a bad word since it's about five clicks by three clicks but that'll have to do, that has a hill in the middle of it. The major says that it looks good and defensible and that it'll be a good place to try and start over.

A hundred clicks of jungle to get there though, I suppose that there was a time in my life that this might have bothered me, I still want to go home, to curl up in my bed and forget all about this, but I don't have a home anymore, or a bed, everything I grew up with is now under fifty meters of water. So to hell with it, this is my life now, I've got nothing left and nothing better to do.

This fucking blows.

***************************

Alan sighed as he closed the journal for a moment. He'd read that particular entry, the first in the journal, a dozen times and it never ceased to amaze him just how tired his father sounded. A quick check of his watch showed that he still had plenty of time until it was time to leave so he decided to read one or two more entries and then he'd try to get some sleep.

***************************

April 29, 2005

The most god awful earthquake anyone in the battalion has ever heard of hit last night, and a bunch of these guys are from California. The shaking was so bad that nobody could stand up for a good five minutes. All we could do was just hug the ground. I swear it felt like god himself had picked me up and was trying to rattle my brains right out of my skull.

This morning when we woke up half the towers in the city to the southwest, Kualla Lumpar I think it is....was, were gone just gone most of the rest were leaning over a bit, some are shorter today I think. I doubt there were many people left in the city before last night, now I know there aren't.

May 1, 2005

Well maybe life doesn't suck quite so hard after all.

Last night a group of refugees wandered into our lines. They came from what was left of Kualla Lumpar, they said that the shaking had brought down their shelter and that they decided to take their chances with the pokegirls rather then with the gangs.

Pokegirls, it's a weird ass name for the monsters, doesn't seem nearly threatening enough but it seems to have already caught on with the guys.

Since our platoon has one of the last free translators the Major assigned us to watch after them. The lieutenant wasn't nearly as bent out of shape about playing nursemaid as I thought he'd be, everything seems to piss off Simms these days. Personally I'm loving it, the only women I've seen in the last three years have been wearing olive drab and caked in dirt, not to mention already spoken for, the chance to escort around a bunch of women who don't smell like us is a relief. I'm sure that to any civilized person they probably stunk something horrible but to somebody whose been out in the back country for months on end, who hasn't had a bath in weeks or washed his clothes in days they smelled better then any rose. Not to mention it means we're in the middle of the column with the supplies. I've done the point man thing before and I'm happy to let somebody else do it now.

These fifty or so girls bring the total number of refugees we've found up to nearly two hundred.

Right now one of them is in my sleeping bag. Pretty little thing, damn young too, maybe eighteen but that might be stretching it. Sheeit! Young? I'm barely twenty four, maybe war does make you old. She doesn't speak a word of English and aside from being able to ask where the crapper is I don't speak a word of Malay. Best I can figure her name is Ami, course Ami could be slang for dress since that's what she was pointing to when she said it so who the hell knows. I'll ask Jamal in the morning how the hell you ask what somebody's name is.

The sleeping bag, here I thought I was being all chivalrous by offering it to her, wasn't until the poor girl scrunched up her nose that I put two and two together, I stink, I sleep in or on that thing every night, it gets left out in the rain all the time, I hadn't washed it in a month or two. Probably smells like she's sleeping in a pile of dead cats. I'll have to wash the damn thing next chance I get.

***************************

Ami, his mother. Alan smiled as he thought of how his father had met his mother, probably not the most romantic of settings but apparently it had worked. He reverently put the journal back into water tight plastic bag he kept it in and put it back in his pack. After a quick check with Misha who confirmed that she hadn't seen anything Alan pulled his hat down over his eyes and did his best to take a nap.

A few hours later Misha's hard elbow in his side woke him. "Come on, get up you lazy bastard."

"I'm up, I'm up," he groaned. He wasn't too sure he'd actually fallen asleep but the sharp pain in his back confirmed that he'd been laying on something for a while. Still, waking up with Misha's red clad chest in his face made it seem not that bad.

"It's seven, time to get going."

The blonde was telling the truth, the light coming into the cave was certainly dimmer and it had taken on a much redder tone. "Ok, grab your gear, let's get moving," he said as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

When everyone was up and outside the cave Alan led them back up the rise and to the spot where they'd surveyed the river from before. As he made the climb a second time he noted that just like him, Misha and Jeremy both had their rifles in their hands and while he was asleep Jeremy had decided to get rid of the heavy jacket he'd been wearing and just get by with the black t-shirt he'd had on underneath it.

The view from the top of the ridge was much the same as it was before, only the shadows were longer and deeper. For several minutes everyone scanned the tree lines in both directions, searching for more thirsty pokegirls.

"So where we gonna cross?" Jeremy asked.

"How about there, just down stream of that big line of rocks," Misha offered pointing a dirt smeared arm towards her suggestion.

Alan looked at the suggested crossing for a moment before saying, "Yeah, that looks good. There's plenty of still water behind them and they'll give us cover on at least one side. That's where we'll do it."

"How much longer before we go?" Misha asked.

"Not to much longer, the sun's pretty close to set, give it another half hour and we go."

The wait wasn't easy, sitting there doing nothing aside from looking for pokegirls that may or may not be there made it seem like every second took a minute and every minute was an hour. Every twitching branch, every moderately loud noise brought them to full attention and sent another surge of adrenaline through their veins only to be let down again. The constant surging and receding was more tiring then any part of the hike so far. Finally Alan glanced at his watch and decided that twenty five minutes was close enough to thirty and he gave the order to move out. The sharp cliff down to the river basin was tough to negotiate and involved more slipping, sliding, and falling then it did actual climbing but they were able to descend it with out getting killed though ever clink of metal on stone or every pained grunt sounded like a gunshot in their ears.

They hurried across the relatively open ground between the base of the rise and the river as quickly as possible, trading silence for speed since there were precious few places to hide out on the leaf covered ground. They finally skidded to stop behind a large boulder on the river bank and made one last check of the area to make sure they weren't exposing themselves to a pack of hungry pokegirls coming down for a drink. Too late to do anything about it Alan realized that by waiting so late to cross the light was so dim that anything more then a hundred meters in either direction was hidden in shadows.

Author's Notes

1) The journal will be making a regular appearance from now on.

Acknowledgements:

Lighthawk - My designated pre-reader, who subjected himself to this way too often.

Warpwizard - Who's given me a lot of advice on the mechanics of my writing.

Notes:

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