• Published 6th Sep 2014
  • 2,531 Views, 134 Comments

New Faces, New Friends - ZephyrStrife



Fire burning in the depths of a frozen wasteland, our heroes will need to overcome the challenges of a whole new world!

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Chapter 15

Mick let out a groan as he struggled to come to his senses, he couldn't even figure out where he wa-... oh wait, he was definitely still on the train. Blinking a few times, he slowly looked around him, one moment he had been fast asleep... the next there was the sound of an explosion before he was tossed around the cabin like a doll. He let out a small hiss of pain as his body protested getting out from under the bench he had come to rest at.

"E-emma!?" he called out weakly, his voice sounding much like a hoarse whisper as his everything seemed to hurt. Each step felt like he was stepping on pins as he stumbled his way out of the cabin, there was even an annoying ringing in his left ear to accompany the headache that began to build as he grunted against one of the stuck doors. He could smell smoke choking the air even if he was okay for the most part, though once the door was jammed open a biting cold made its way over his fur, forcing him to the ground to curl up out of the way so that he could keep from freezing.

"I couldn't get put somewhere warm... we just had to get put in a frozen wasteland..." Mick mentally groaned as he let out a particularly choice curse before slowly getting back up to try and brace himself against the cold. He shivered with a small shuddered breath before making his way out into the cold, What greeted him was like a nightmare...

The train had been thrown off its tracks, some of it laid on its side like a snake that had shed its skin, windows were shattered and boards were bent or broken, even the metal of the tracks and wheels were twisted and bent out of shape. Light and cold filtered in from a massive hole in the roof of the tunnel and some snow even dripped in every so often. As his breath came out in chilly wisps Mick continued to make his way forward, his senses sharpening a bit now that his body had to react to the cold. It was when he came to the edge of the second car that he actually had to stop, back up, and work down the urge to lose what food he had. There was a smell of death in the entire wreck that repulsed him as he slowly continued, wondering why it was only the unmoving bodies of the unlucky that were here.

Ponies, Diamond dogs, he even saw a few pokemon... but there was one diamond dog that intrigued him. When he had opened the door to the dining car the scent of alcohol and copper assaulted his nose, it had nearly forced him to turn away and search for a way around the car until he had noticed the robed dog slumped over the counter. Something about the dog made him brave the stench and inch forward, trying to breathe as little as possible through his nose as he could. While there hadn't been anything typically remarkable about the dog, his brooch was something that caught Mick's attention immediately, moreso the symbol on it but nonetheless he took the brooch. He quickly made his way out of the car into the biting cold again so that he could check if his backpack was still...

"OH NO! MY BACKPACK!" He yelped as he stumbled his way back to the passenger car that had his cabin, worried about the supplies he had been given by Cousin Vinny.

With a loud *Clunk* the door slid open and then proceeded to fall off its hinges, making Mick wince a little at the noise before proceeding into the cabin. His shivers were coming a bit faster now, with his breath lasting longer in the air before dispersing. "Oh that's not good..." He thought timidly as he started searching for his bag. He let out a sigh when not a trace of the previous occupants of the room or any gear turned up. "They couldn't have gone far..." He tried quietly reasoning as he gently eased himself into a sitting position against the wall, trying to regain enough strength to walk now that his senses were sharpening.

With each passing second the pain all over his body seemed to grow as well, like he was tossed around the way clothes were tossed in a dryer. He looked around the cabin for anything that might help him locate his friends, his nose was no help since it only seemed to be getting a bit numb and all he could smell was smoke and blood.

Every muscle felt slow, each movement sluggish, as he tried to move from where he had sat down. He could feel his eyelids drooping and getting harder and harder to force open as the quiet embrace of sleep called out to him, cooing sweet lullabies without the need for music.

"Heh... Where's that Jigglypuff..." He groans out with a weak chuckle as his vision starts to blur again, the seductive darkness of sleep calling him to its embrace once more as the shadows danced at the edges of his vision. A larger blur filled what he could see before a sharp pain collided with his right cheek, snapping his eyes open and putting him back into an alert state so that he could see who had struck him.

Amber eyes met his sapphire ones as he realized that Gewnneth had been the one to keep him from going to sleep. It was still a few seconds before his ears registered that she was talking to him.

"...Okay?" Gwen asked, "Mick?" Her voice was thick with concern as she quickly looked him over, not realizing that he hadn't heard most of her question. "Come on Mick! Answer me... Let me know you're alright..." The whimper at the end of her sentence was enough to snap him out of his stupor.

"I... I'm alright now..." He stuttered a little as he began getting his mental faculties back in order. "It... It's really surpri... Surprising just how fast... A pokemon can recover... from anything..." He rapidly blinks his eyes to clear away the blurred vision. "... You have a surprising amount of strength in your tail..."

"Actually... I did just a little more than a light slap... you're just around the same strength as a baby pokemon..." Gwen replied with a slight frown of embarrassment. "I was worried it would be too light..."

Mick frowned a little himself. "After all that training... I'm still not strong enough to hold my own..." He let out a sigh. "That's fine... It just means I need to train... more..." He trails off a bit as he starts looking around the cabin a bit more. "Do... Do you know where Emma is?"

The Ekans shook her head sadly. "I tried searching around the cabin at first... I was lucky that I didn't get more than a few bruises from being thrown around... but the cold made it really hard to focus and if it hadn't been for your yellow belly fur I wouldn't have noticed you the second time I had gotten here."

Mick nods just a little bit as he continues to look around, trying to find his bag. "Come on... It has to be around here somewhere..." He grumbles as he searched the dust and debris. With each passing minute his searching became more and more frantic until he was trying to toss the already loose benches around.

"AHA!" He exclaimed as he held up a slightly damp and very rigid shoulder bag, "Aww... There's only one jar left... and everything else froze... oh?" He slowly pulls out the one item that Cousin Vinny had given him before the trip...

"...Huh... Never expected this to survive..." He says calmly as he holds up a slightly-thicker-than-average metal spork with two small buttons on it, one red and one blue. "Welp, that's at least one plus side so far... I have a swiss army spork." Mick chuckled as he tried to see what he could salvage as a temporary shoulder bag.

Author's Note:

Wow... This... Took... Forever!!! but I finally introduced the new invention... sorta. Now I have to work on the next chapter, I want to get that one out a lot quicker.