Eddies

Chapter 1: Right place, wrong time.

DISCLAIMER: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

Many things about the entire situation remain confusing, even to this day.

As an example, after the initial fallout following their arrival had subsided, where did the creatures go?  Given only speculation remains as to their eventual fate, was the government involved, or had they simply vanished as mysteriously as they arrived?

Or are they living amongst us still, hidden from the prying eyes of the general populace by those sworn to protect them?

Perhaps we'll never know, just as it's as unlikely we'll ever be told the real truth as to their mysterious presence in our world.  The government has covered it up, the people involved remain mute, and the creatures themselves; these pokemon; are the biggest enigma of the lot.

At least their presence here has answered one important question that's plagued humanity since the dawn of its creation.

We are not alone.
Perhaps we never had been.

_______________________

Why, exactly, Chris had chosen that day to go into the mountain park was uncertain.  The weather was not particularly pleasant, with the threat of rain hovering menacingly within the thick cloud cover above.  The temperature was chill; 16 Celsius by the thermometers reckoning.  "Clement" wasn't a description he would have used for it at all.  Then again, in hindsight, very little of what occurred on that day was particularly ordinary, so his odd compulsion to pack his camping gear and ride to the summit of Mt Moreton was perhaps just another odd coincidence in a day filled with them.

Why there?  As good a place as any, he reckoned.  He knew the state forest area backing his parents farming lands quite well, having spent much of his earlier years exploring the place.  While his initial adventures with friends involved simply walking or riding his pushbike, when his parents eventually relented to his incessant nagging and purchased him his first motorbike for his 15th birthday, suddenly a whole new expanse of exploration was made available to him.  Barely a day went by without his spending hours tearing through the fire break tracks at break-neck speeds, sometimes with his friends accompanying him, but most often times alone.  Hell, he liked his friends, for sure.  Most of them had been his close companions since his earliest years.  But Chris was a loner at heart, as happy to spend the time in his own company as with others.  His parents had often worried about his lone forays, but his dogged determination to keep his freedom won out, and with sighs of exasperation, they bought him a hand held radio to keep in touch should he become lost, and simply let him go his own way.

That suited Chris fine.  He liked his freedom, and having his parents somewhat tentative approval of his activities kept things happy around the house.  Even at 18, his part time work at the local hardware slash general store kept his occupied time to a minimum, and as he was always telling his mother somewhat drolly, had he not taken the time trail bike riding, he might have occupied himself with less healthy alternatives, such as computer games, the internet, or dating hot chicks.

His mother never felt this was all that amusing.
Sometimes he worried about her in that regard.

Fuelling the bike took only a few minutes, although he spent longer checking the essentials, including the tyre pressure and oils.  His rear tyre was looking a bit ordinary, he thought, wincing at the fact he'd need to come up with yet more money to replace it.  While serviceable, the low tread tended to slip badly in the mud, and with rain imminent, continuing with his plans may have been a bit reckless.

What the hell, he thought, shrugging off the risks.  At worst, he spent a few extra days up there while the ground dried out.  His folks were more or less used to that, and wouldn't go screaming to the police if he was not back as planned, although the screaming he might receive as his dad chewed him out over it would likely be worse than anything the local cops would dish out.

Oh well.  C'est la vie.

At least the bike kicked over on the first go.  It may look an ugly piece of shit, but mechanically he kept it meticulous; no point tempting fate any further than he already did.  With gear stowed in the saddle bags, and his kevlar body armour tightly cinched about him, he gunned the throttle, sending a shower of loose gravel against the garage wall as he tore off down the dirt path linking the property to the forest trails.

It was the freedom he cherished most; the ability to spend hours or days just simply exploring somewhere he hadn't been before.  It wasn't that he was antisocial, or particularly introverted.  He liked people well enough.  Just not so much as he felt he had to spend all his waking hours surrounded by them.  While he shared close bonds with his friends, they often were a bit puzzled at his insistence on having "alone time".  Why he couldn't be alone while they were accompanying him while they got plastered, or stoned, or as they flirted with the checkout chicks at his work sometimes confused them, but he again shrugged off their complaints.  SEP, he told himself; someone else's problem.  Definitely not his.

It was late afternoon before the weather, which had been threatening to turn bad all day, finally made its move.  The cloud cover descended, plunging the upper reaches of the park into a murky fog dense enough that Chris couldn't see 10 feet in front of him.  Not willing to risk hitting something disastrous, Chris decided to call it a day, heading slowly through the bush tracks towards one of the few clearings he knew were close by.  However, whether it was the driving rain or the sudden freezing gusts of wind that seemed to spring from nowhere caused his momentary loss of attention, when the "whatever the fuck it was" bolted across the path before him, he barely had time to lock the brakes before the bike skidded off the track and crashed into the deadwood lining the trail edge, sending him flying over the handle bars as the front forks buckled under the impact.

Head buried in the mud, it took a few moments before his jumbled mind cleared enough to pull it free of the sticky morass he was caked in.  Scraping the worst of it from his goggles, he cursed fluently as he surveyed the wreckage of what was left of his steering forks, both twisted at angles normally impossible to achieve.  Typical that the good front tyre was now cactus, he grumbled, pulling on the wreckage to untangle it from the tree branches as the rain intensified, sending rivulets of mud to trickle their icy path beneath his body armour.  When it refused to budge, he kicked the wreck angrily, cursing further at his foul luck.  Clearly it wasn't going anywhere at all any time soon, and with his present location being so distant from anywhere civilised, the chances of recovering the wreck at a future date were next to none.

 Shit.  Shitty shit shit!
Guess he was walking from here.

Most of his gear had survived the impact relatively unscathed, although several of the tent poles were shattered, and the lot was as heavily caked in mud as the rest of him.  Thank God for small blessings, he mused, staring at the tent glumly.  Accepting it was a write off, he decided to keep the fabric as an option for some sort of shelter, dumping the shattered fibreglass shafts in the mud near his bike, and turned his attention back to the situation at hand; namely, his now being stuck up a mountain in the freezing rain.

With that, his thoughts returned back to the whatever it was that had ran across the path before him.  There were plenty of critters plaguing these upper reaches, where the encroachment of humanity had pushed them.  While he'd thought he had encountered pretty much everything living up here, this one was certainly new.

Not to mention bright canary yellow.

OK, he thought to himself, lifting his pack and shouldering the burden with a sigh.  Perhaps he'd just been seeing things.  It had been a long day, and yellow critters running around could have simply been his imagination.  Deciding to take the safer option, he reached into the chest pocket of his armour for his radio, ready to call in and let the local rangers know he was safe and well.  It was waterproof, thank the Gods, so should function fine.  That plan died soon enough, as his fingers encountered the remains of his crushed two way, smashed into fragments during the impact.  Pulling the pieces from his pocket, he cursed again, throwing the remains to join those of his bike laying abandoned in the mud nearby.

Shit!  What a cursed shitty day.

The cloud cover continued to hover menacingly overhead, while the heavy rain seemed to increase, if anything.  Staring through his fogging goggles, he ripped them off in anger, pushing them roughly into the vest pocket recently vacated by his radio.  He knew leaving the site of the wreckage was the less smart option than remaining nearby, but given his frequent intentional disappearances into these very forests, he also knew that it'd be some time, days even, before anyone considered his absence suspicious.  With the choice being staying in the pouring rain waiting for rescue, or seeking shelter nearby, the decision was easy.  Shelter first, and then think about getting home when the weather cleared.

Knowing leaving his bike abandoned like this was stupid, he searched through the surrounding mud for a sharp rock from the muddy ground, giving himself a mental reminder to add a permanent marker to the tool kit he carried with him.  He scrutinised the edge of the stone carefully, hoping it was sharp enough to work as he planned.  With the bike's future being scrap, he smiled grimly as he used the stone's edge to scratch into the fuel tank paintwork "I'm fine.  No Injuries.  Looking for shelter.  Don't freak!" chuckling at his wit as he tossed his makeshift writing implement into the nearby trees.  At least when someone found the bike, they knew not to go overboard in their search and, with any luck, he'd be home before they had a chance to even commence looking for him.

The rock face loomed nearby, tempting him with the possibility of sheltering beneath.  Shouldering his backpack again, he decided to keep his armour on for the time being; at the least because it offered further limited protection from the elements presently battering him.  Better than nothing, he thought, and it didn't restrict his movements overly.  Might as well keep it on, at least until he had a chance to store it somewhere for later recovery.  The bike may be toast, but the rest of his stuff was still quite serviceable.

Hell, the day had turned expensive enough without the extra cost of replacing his gear to add to it.

Keeping an eye out for the yellow thing, he pushed his way towards the cliff base, cursing as the branches tore at his clothing.  Thank God for the armour, he swore, as yet another twig scratched at his face.  Otherwise, I'd be a bleeding mess by now, instead of a drenched, bedraggled and mud caked one.

Reaching the loose scree at the base of the cliff, Chris peered through the murk looking for anything resembling shelter.  Seeing nothing nearby, he decided to head to the right, for no other reason than the course through the brush seemed easier.  After an hour of stumbling and cursing through the loose gravel and shale, his efforts were rewarded as he spied a dark opening in the rock face; possible shelter at last!

In the dimming twilight of early evening, the opening seemed unusually uniform; a rectangular patch of midnight breaking the dull ambers of the granite around it.  Not considering the unusual appearance in his eagerness to get somewhere dry, Chris stepped across the threshold, halting as the lack of light made his progression impossible.  Unslinging his pack, he fumbled for his torch, the Cree LED flaring into brightness as he found the switch.

Otay, he thought.  This is now seriously freaky!

His initial impression this was a natural cave vanished as the smooth polished walls around him reflected the torch light back at him.  The floor, too, was smooth and level, although dusted lightly with a fine layer of sand blown in from outside.  Running a hand along the walls, his fingertips detected no discernible imperfections in the surface; no joins or rough areas; nothing.  Just a smooth expanse of cold, polished granite.

His mind dwelled on the fact the cave had clearly been tunnelled into the mountain by someone, or something.  Unable to stop himself, curiosity won out over common sense, and he continued further and further into the darkness, the dim light from the entrance soon fading from view as the passage slowly curved downwards into the mountain depths.  He'd been walking a good twenty minutes before the fingers he'd been running along the walls encountered unexpected texture, which his torch light revealed as detailed engravings etched into the smooth rock surface.  Images of what, exactly, eluded him, as the beam picking out increasingly fantastical figures of every shape and size imaginable to his incredulous eyes.  They continued along the walls before reaching a round stone opening at the hallway's end, framing a pool of utter blackness that absorbed all light striking it. The powerful beam of his torch was simply swallowed by the inky opening, and he cautiously poked a tentative finger into the space, sucking in a quick breath as it appeared to simply vanish before him.

So intent on his examinations, he didn't hear the light footsteps softly coming up behind him, until a soft scuff on the floor alerted him to the fact he was no longer alone.

Turning slowly, he drew a bead on the source of the faint sound with the torches beam, which revealed the huge yellow rat thing he'd spotted outside just feet away, staring at him angrily with red cheeks ablaze.

He had barely a moment to confront it, before it charged towards him, as a loud clap of thunder echoed through the cave, throwing his senses into disarray.  A sharp pain, like a thousand needles piercing his body, accompanied the flaring flash of light surrounding him, and he was thrown backwards through the midnight portal.  As his nerves screamed in agony from the electrical assault engulfing him, with his last conscious moments, the strange, garbled words that had reverberated through the chamber rang through his ears, before the darkness finally descended over him.

"Pika, Pikachu!"