Chapter 19
The Midnight Struggle

The only problem with removing that panel was it was fifteen feet in the air, and there was nothing for me to even get close to it. I had turned to the bunk bed unit, which would reach high enough for me to remove the panel, but how would I be able to move it? If I were still human, it wouldn’t have been a problem, since the metal bunk bed wasn’t exactly the sturdiest thing in the room. But as a Pikachu, it might be next to impossible.

Suddenly, to my surprise, the vault door had clicked, and slowly swung open. By the time I had turned around, I had seen a red, clawed hand holding a pewter bowl just suddenly drop the bowl it was holding by the door, and then just like that, it was quickly shut again. Was this how they kept prisoners fed?

Just for curiosity, I had walked over to the bowl, and I could have gagged. It looked and smelled like hot, salty vomit. It was a musty brown and orange color, as if someone threw up and then took a diarrhea dump all over what was there already. I wouldn't have appreciated a nice, warm meal, but I wasn't starving enough to even think about eating that. However, I knew I only had a limited amount of time, and I highly doubted rejecting this... whatever it was, would mean an exchange for something better.

I had grasped one of the metal poles supporting the upper deck and tried to pull as hard as I could. At first, I thought I was making absolutely no progress whatsoever, but I did notice that when I looked down, I made a little bit of progress and moved the bunk bed unit a few inches. After hours of struggling, I must have pulled it five feet away from the metal wall before falling on my hands from exhaustion. I then tried pushing to see if that would change anything. It was a bit better, and I went a few more feet, but it was still at least twenty feet away from the wall, and I needed rest. It felt like pushing a truck in neutral. Not to mention I wouldn't get too far if I tore my paws apart in the process.

After a few hours of rest, I gave it another shot, only to go seven more feet before my hands and feet were aching. I couldn’t go on, and I needed to stop for a while or my hands were going to start bleeding. But for now, I needed to get rid of that vomit soup, before they began to assume I was going to try and starve myself.

So, I grabbed the bowl, held my breath after getting a small but appalling whiff of the nausea-inducing soup, walked with it across the room, and dumped the stuff out the window. It was disgustingly lumpy and it smelled even worse as I poured it out. I then promptly took the bowl, put it by the door to make them think I finished off the whole thing, and then headed for the lower bunk of the bed. I didn’t care for the fact there weren’t any pillows and only one sheet. I was too tired…

I woke up around midnight, still feeling a little disoriented. However, after I came back to my senses and remembered what I was trying to do, I quickly headed back to try and move the bunk bed. I pushed as hard as I could for as long as I could hold out, and soon enough, I finally made it to the other side of the wall. I then climbed my way up to the top bunk, which wasn’t any better than the first. I had made my way to the loose panel, and saw there were only three bolts I had to remove since one of them had already fallen out. I had put my hands on the first of the three, and turned it counter-clockwise. This one hadn’t been in too tight either, and after about twenty spins, it came out. The other two were a bit harder, but after I tried hard enough, all the bolts came out, and the panel fell from the ceiling and onto the top bunk, revealing a hole in the ceiling.

The hole that was left was only a foot by foot square. While I might have had an easier time pushing the bunk bed as a human, there was no way I could fit through that hole as one. But now, being a Pikachu made all the difference. I ducked, positioned myself under the hole, and looked up.

It appeared to be some sort of ventilation duct of some sort, which was surprising since I didn’t see any vent grates in my cell. I figured keeping the prisoners comfortable was not a strongpoint of this place.

I put my hands on the edge, and hoisted myself into the duct. It was somewhat tight, but I could manage. As a human, forget it, I'd be stuck eating vomit soup until they found some other use for me.

The vent was very dimly lit, so I had to first get adjusted to the darkness, and use the dim light coming from the other vents to see. I slowly crawled my way through the vent, making sure to be as quiet as possible. As I made my way about twenty feet, I had come across a vent leading to another room. When I looked through the vent grill, it looked like a guard’s lounge. I took a quick glance around the room and noticed the only ones in the room were an Ampharos and a Skarmory just standing by the table, talking to each other. Oddly enough, the Ampharos was wearing what looked like crudely made combat armor and gear, which was surprising. It definitely seemed military in nature, but who goes through the trouble of making armor for Pokémon?

The room was completely metal as well, and I figured it must have been a break room with several metal chairs of varying sizes and shapes and tables at different heights. That was quite a surprise for me, but then I realized why that was. Furniture and utilities came in different heights for different Pokémon sizes. Regardless, everything was crudely made of metal, and there were two electronic storage containers that I guessed were some kind of vending machines judging by the display windows showcasing what I guessed were some kind of drinks and snacks.

It was nearly empty except for a single Ampharos and a Skarmory. They had laid out several bags on the table containing what looked like military hardware including even what looked like a crudely-made metallic rifle. It actually looked like it was just right for the Ampharos's size, but... since when do Pokémon use firearms?

"So what's the story?" The Skarmory asked the Ampharos, taking a glance at the contents of the bag. "There's a rumor going on that some of those new prisoners aren't actually Silver Rebellion soldiers. Where the hell are they from then? Conda? Crescent Moon?"

"I have no clue, I just process them," the Ampharos shrugged. "We don't keep records on these chumps. Besides, at the rate we've been sacking their cities, it won't matter."

Silver Rebellion? Conda? Crescent Moon? What exactly was that and why would two Pokémon be talking about it?

I listened in, quietly keeping by the grate but still out of sight. Something about all this really didn't add up, and I was really beginning to worry I really was on a whole different world. I've never heard of a Silver Rebellion before and definitely no mention of a place like Conda or Crescent Moon near Kanto. Not to mention it didn't make too much sense for two Pokémon to be so directly involved with something like that. Where the heck was their trainer anyway?

"Did they have anything useful?" The Skarmory asked, looking closely at the bag. "Doesn't seem like you kept much of it."

"No, mostly just useless clothes and broken technology," The Ampharos replied, bringing out the few belongings. "The quartermaster ordered for most of it to be incinerated. He told me that if it doesn't look like anything like Crimson Stars technology, burn it. The last thing he wants is us using enemy technology that would sabotage our operations."

I wasn't sure what he was talking about, or if these guys were in fact affiliated with the Crimson Stars, whoever they were. With the few pieces I had, it seemed like there was definitely some kind of war going on between these two, but I wasn't even sure why. I wasn't sure why Zander would drop me off in the middle of this, but I had no intention of playing along.

“I sure hope we fight again soon,” The Skarmory muttered, looking away from the Ampharos. "I thought our rotation was almost up."

"Still got two weeks left," The Ampharos told him, grabbing and looking over the rifle that seemed to be an appropriate size for him. "Don't count down the days, trust me. Besides, the Silver Rebellion doesn’t have any real leaders left. The only ones that actually posed any kind of threat are all dead or in jail. Once we attack their capital of Symarix, it isn’t even going to matter any more. The rebels are fading.”

Who were these rebels, and what were they rebelling for? Regardless, I checked down the vent and this was as far as it would go. The only other choice was to head back the other way, or barge in on these two. I was just about to check down the other side of the vent when I noticed something. After checking out his rifle, the Ampharos went through the rest of the equipment. One of them kind of looked like a crudely-made communication radio, then two hand grenades, a few other strange-looking devices that I couldn't tell what they were for, and a few other belongings that I could only guess what their purpose was.

"So what's all this junk?" The Skarmory asked, glancing at each of the items on the table.

"Most of these are Silver Rebellion weapons we confiscated off of the prisoners..." The Ampharos replied, checking through each item. "If we can identify it, the quartermaster says keep it. If we can't, it gets incinerated."

He then pulled out a strange looking hand-grenade that was painted orange and shaped like an aluminum soda can, covered by a metallic grid-like covering.

"This looks like one of those two Inferno Grenades I've heard about," The Ampharos said, looking over the orange-painted grenade. :As for this..." he continued, picking up a strange, metallic tube-like object, "...pretty sure this is one of those pain-killer devices. And this thing..." he said, picking up a Poké Ball, "...I really don't know. Never saw anything like this before in my life. Makes me wonder if this is a new kind of grenade."

Now that was very, very strange. Almost all Pokémon instinctively knew what Poké Balls were. Any time a human trainer came along to try and catch a Pokémon, most Pokémon were quick to recognize a Poké Ball and fight against being captured in one. Many of them even knew how to destroy them so they wouldn't be caught. But here, we had two Pokémon obviously very in tune with civilization with no clue as to what it was.

There was no doubt about it. This had to be a completely different world...

I looked at the Poké Ball closely, and I recognized it as the one that held Latias in it. I almost gasped, worried about what it was doing in this Ampharos's possenssion. It was strange, but like Latias herself, the Poké Ball that contained her was recovered from Randy's dream world, making it look the same, but I was able to recognize that it was very different from any other Poké Ball.

"Shouldn't it have been destroyed with the rest of the junk?" The Skarmory asked.

"I was just about to get to that," The Ampharos told the metallic bird with a bit of a surprised expression. "It's weird, but this was the only one that wouldn't burn in the incinerator."

My heart sank like a rock when I heard that.

No... they didn't...!

"Odd..." The Skarmory nodded.

Was he seriously telling the truth? Did they stupidly just toss all four of my Pokémon into an incinerator and just mindlessly kill them that way!? I trembled with fear and anger, and I just couldn't hold it in anymore.

"NO!" I shouted and screamed.

They both looked in my direction, suddenly surprised and alarmed. I had no choice now, I leapt and tore my way through the grate, which was easily accomplished just because it was barely fastened in the first place. I then landed on a metal shelf that was right below while the Ampharos and the Skarmory immediately looked up at me.

“Who the hell are you!?” The Ampharos exclaimed, slowly trying to inch toward his rifle.

I wasn't in the mood for a conversation with these two. If they really just tossed Raichu, Ariados, Jolteon, and Weavile into a god-forsaken incinerator and never even gave them a chance to defend themselves, they weren't worth the breath it would take to talk to them.

I angrily charged toward the Ampharos, not caring if he was almost four times bigger than I was. He quickly grabbed the rifle, but his attempt to quickly take aim and fire failed when I slammed right into his chest. Unfortunately, the armor absorbed most of the impact and the recoil did hurt a bit, but it did cause him to stumble and crash into a smaller-sized table behind him.

The Skarmory quickly charged in to help his companion with his blade-like wings fully spread, forcing me to be wary those things might be capable of instantly decapitating someone. I quickly charged a powerful Thunderbolt attack at him, which while it was nothing like what I was capable of unleashing back in Randy's dream world, it definitely did have a lot more electrical power than what an average Pikachu was capable of. Everything in the room was hit hard, including several of the metal tables and the metallic shelf, causing dozens of small metal cans to be sent rolling and rattling in all directions. The Skarmory was hit hard, but after having hit the metallic floor, he got back up on his feet and gave me a deathly glare.

I shielded myself from the barrage of metal cans, and seconds later they had all hit the floor, creating a loud, clanging noise. When it was all over with, Ampharos had turned to me, not looking very happy at all.

“Boy, you are one dead puppy,” Ampharos sneered. “Do you really think you can take us down?”

“Yep, simply for the fact your electrical power can’t hurt me," I told him, knowing one electric type Pokémon against another was a bit of a stalemate.

"You dumb idiot, what do you think the gun is for!?" The Ampharos laughed, quickly reaching for it again.

Suddenly it all made sense. If that Ampharos really could use that rifle, what would he ever have to worry about fighting other electric type Pokémon? Or heck, with it, he could even stop several ground Pokémon with no trouble at all, making up for his weaknesses easily. It was a grizzly thought to think here, Pokémon showed no fear or hesitation about shooting and killing other Pokémon.

He took aim and fired twice only to just barely miss and hit the metallic wall instead, forcing me to charge with blitz-speed to avoid getting shot. Going for anything that was armored was a bad idea. I quickly charged and leapt up to his head, grabbing onto his back in the process. He tried to shake me off, but he couldn't use his hands while they were still on the gun. In the time he had dropped it again, I had slammed his ears with my fists, causing an immense amount of ringing pain to him. I then attacked another pressure point in his neck, striking his throat painfully.

He threw me off, winded all of a sudden and barely able to breathe. While it would have been ironic for him to be shot by his own gun, the rifle was made for him, and to me, it was too big to handle. Unless I only wanted to shoot his feet, there would be no way I could actually aim and pull the trigger.

The Skarmory charged at me again, spreading his wings and prepared to use their slicing power against me. I didn't have much choice with where to go, so I quickly used one of the metal tables as a shield. I was shocked when his wings sliced through it and cut it completely in half. Not only that, but they cut so far through that my chest had been lightly slashed and was bleeding a bit.

The pain stung, but if I hadn't used the table as a shield, I would have been easily dissected alive...

"Come on and fight me!" The Skarmory taunted. "I swear, you Silver Rebellion worms are nothing!”

“I’m not part of the Silver Rebellion,” I told the Skarmory as prepared to strike back.

For a moment, they actually seemed shocked that I wasn’t. But nonetheless, it was the truth. I didn’t even know who the Silver Rebellion was…

“Really?” The Ampharos asked in surprise, “Then where the hell are you from?”

“Heh, don’t bother asking,” The Skarmory smiled to his companion. “I swear, these Rebellion idiots have gotten even worse at lying.”

I immediately charged up as much electricity as I could and directed it right toward Skarmory, casing my red cheeks to flare with a violent amount of electrical power. He only had a split second to react as he saw the incoming thunder, but it wasn’t fast enough…

Skarmory had been struck hard, and he glowed like a white-hot flare from the blast. After a few seconds of intense electrocution, I released my power, and Skarmory stumbled over and fell to the floor, landing on his chest with his thin, metal wings spread out.

But, even as that happened, the Ampharos looked to his fallen companion, and knew Skarmory had the disadvantage and couldn’t help it. But taking down an armored Ampharos wasn’t going to be as easy…