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Unable to recover quickly enough, Djinn went spiraling to the earth and landed harshly. It took him several seconds, but eventually he rose, slowly regaining the energy he had flung at Synapse with such vehemence.

Ulysses, meanwhile, rushed toward young Aaron Cummings, very concerned. As Aaron explained his intentions, the geezer found himself torn: he wanted those answers almost just as badly, but just as direly he needed Aaron to live. It wasn't difficult, then, for him to use a deeply worried tone of voice. "Aaron, please, don't do that." He refused to get any closer than a few feet, however.

Did he think Aaron would follow through? No... but then again, young men were rash creatures; he knew well from experience. Ulysses also knew that sometimes it paid off, but this situation was still far too eccentric for him to adequately judge.

That idea hadn't panned out - at least not in an obvious way. It was stretching into the realm of speculation, but it occurred to Schraeder that Dr. Terrian's focus had been dangerously close to being shaken when Aaron spoke. In fact, the doctor had nearly lost control, his head whipping towards the sound at first, but with an extreme measure of restraint Dr. Terrian had paused. At that point, Schraeder noticed a conscious effort on Dr. Terrian's part to maintain rigid focus on Synapse - the same point where Synapse began to recover from the assault and make a comeback. Coincidence? No such thing.

So the doctor had some kind of connection to the raichu. It was also clear that it would take quite a bit of effort to shake the attention that Terrian had zeroed in on his pokemon, which meant Schraeder had to try a little bit -

Or not. There was Aaron, talking once again, and this time oh for the love of God what was he doing. Schraeder's jaw literally dropped, his face betraying his disbelief and lack of comprehension for about two whole seconds before he regained his composure. If there was one thing that Stetson Schraeder did not appreciate in the people around him - especially if he had to rely on them in some capacity, as he likely would be required to with Aaron - it was the unfortunate trait that made them go for the most extreme option first. Now that Aaron had a knife to his own throat, it would be impossible to use a less dire measure and expect results. Aaron was a fool!

Schraeder stopped himself before he opened his mouth to attack Aaron verbally. It was hard, so very hard, not to lash out at the other young man, to use his words as a switch and to berate Aaron until he was beaten into submission. The businesslike side of Schraeder's mind mobilized with the mechanical efficiency that characterized it, locking down his emotions (and his mouth) before he made things even worse. After all, Aaron had asked the same questions that Schraeder was about to ask, as well as the fact that his method would almost certainly grab Dr. Terrian's attention more assuredly than Schraeder had been able to do. Instead of attacking Aaron, Schraeder would give him his support.

"You always have answers, eh?" Schraeder asked, allowing a tone of amusement and something close to mocking to enter his voice. It wasn't enough to really notice, not unless you were an outside observer, but it was there. "Well, he's asking what I wanted to ask. I think you'd better hurry and answer him, too; he doesn't seem like the type to mess around, and this is hardly the situation to gamble with."

Of course, not everything can go to plan, especially when that plan is thrown together on the fly. Roger began to shriek, wail, and screech in frequencies that made Schraeder's eyes sting, fillings vibrate, and testicles wish they were turtles and could retreat into a shell. He clapped his hands over his ears and cried out, though his own relatively small noise was completely swallowed by Roger's.

Alyssa noted the strange lack of shots coming from behind her as she faced down the highway moping. Her mind was still filled with not wanting to be there, but two intrusive thoughts were pending in her brain. The first of these thoughts was wanted to bathe, and badly. She needed a shower as only a metaphor could illustrate. The second of these thoughts was that of the cubone that had followed her for the longest time, but she hadn't seen in a few weeks.

In essence, she missed a traveling companion that did not put her in mortal danger and whose rash decisions simply led to being caught in low-hanging branches. He was not much of a traveling companion either; disappearing for days on end, coming back with a triumphant look and some animal for eating, getting caught on other things, making mournful noises at night that she could hear from far away.

Alyssa could not help but sigh when she remembered giving him a metal bat to replace a scraggly old branch.

That was the only pokemon she had ever liked, that and her mom's Meowth.

She decided to turn around and look down the road after Paul. Her point of view was not great, but from where she was standing he did not look like he was killing anyone. Or doing much of anything for that matter.

Jason was watching Aaron as he walked towards Terrian, and when he put the knife to his throat he almost sent Joy to stop him, but decided to see how it panned out. That was when Roger started shrieking. Jason clamped his hands over his ears, and joy shrieked in pain, while Mist dropped from the air. When Synapse hit Rodger she rose back into the air and gathered ether in preparation for Psybeam, but before she could release the attack she was hit by the raichu's electric shock, and she froze, unable to move. It only took her a few seconds to recover, but when she did the ether she'd gathered had dissipated, so she began to gather more. It was only a few seconds before she was releasing the multi-colored Psybeam, aiming just in front of Synapse, counting on him hopping into it.

Ian nudged Gary into a closer circle around the battlefield and pulled out a pair of binoculars. He brought the binoculars up to his eyes and squinted as he tried to pick out the state of things through the slowly settling dust from the explosion. A cursory look noted that all hostile onix in the area had been neutralized. He continued his search, scanning everything he could see.

Gary grunted as they circled around again. Ian smiled softly and murmured reassurance to the dragonite's discomfiture. "I'm sure that the Oaks will have a little something for you to help with your ether reserves a little bit, buddy. If not, I'm sure there will be something in that sidecar I see down there. At least I hope so..." Just a little food of the right kind should go a long way.

With the dust settled enough to get a hazy look at things without binoculars, on the third ring around the battlefield, Ian spotted Toby and Juno hiding behind a boulder. He frowned and then shrugged as he signaled Gary to descend and land nearby. The faithful orange dragon glided to the ground and landed with a soft thud. Ian dismounted and rolled up the armor to store it on pouches near the dragonite's belly.

Once he had made his mount comfortable, Ian turned around and approached the teens, a soft smile indicating friendship on his gruff, stubbly face, the expression even seeming to go up to his hard grey eyes. The dust had settled, and Ian's hands were giving off the slightest twitch, an indicator of long addiction to caffeine, exacerbated by the adrenaline in his system. Kneeling in front of them, his gyrados-leather duster dragging in the dirt, Ian spoke. "Heya, 'kids of destiny'. Name's Ian Kimball. Rufus paid me to keep an eye on any of you kids if I saw you on my way to Riverdale. Apparently he had a good idea that his escorts might have been slightly outmatched. Dunno about that though. But anyways, I ramble. You kids okay?"

Aaron Cummings, A State of Confusion

One heartbeat, that's all it took for Aaron's carefully (and perhaps not so carefully) laid plans to completely fall apart. His knife seemed to reject his grasp and thrust itself into Mother Earth with the single-minded magnitude of a bullet. Barely able to comprehend what had just occurred, two things happened simultaneously. Aaron's cane--which had been severed in half by the Elty when they first met up with Ulysses and his gang--jumped to his hand of its own accord, whole once again. The second thing, much more mind-boggling than the first, was that he heard the initial warning from Maddy to 'cover' something before the world went silent. Well, perhaps silent is not the correct term. He could still hear himself; the rustle of grass under his boots, his frantically beating heart, the rumble in his intestines from lack of food. But, he could not hear anything else.

He began to wonder if he had been killed. He relied on his hearing so much that without it he felt, well, blinded. He smirked at the irony of that thought when whatever it was that had blocked his hearing lifted.

"You're dumb and really there's no reason for me to answer you if you can't trust me. But I'll tell you this, because I'm generous: stardust precipitates with the right software. Which is AWESOME. And actually answers like seven of your questions."

Stardust.. That seemed a strange thing to say when he supposedly was being generous. The statement seemed to be a word puzzle. Stardust precipitates with the right software... Answers like seven of your questions... Aaron tried to think back to how many questions he had actually asked. Three, he had asked three questions but all three, his whole rant in fact, was really asking only one question; why me? Apparently there were six other questions that were being asked and Aaron only held one of them. Stardust precipitates with the right software. What was 'stardust'? Aaron had never thought of the word in terms of reality but precipitates was very much a concrete verb. The right software... This statement supposedly answered Aaron's question. So the reason that he was important was because stardust precipitated with the right software. That didn't make any sense because Aaron was horrific with computers. They generally required a skill set that he lacked; his eyelid twitched in annoyance at this thought. So, it was software that even someone who was blind could use. That's it! I've been using it this entire time! he thought with glee. The software was his mind, there was something about his mind that made him special. If Aaron's question was wondering why he himself was important, perhaps that is what Alex meant by 'seven of your questions'. There were five people in their current group, two of which who were supposedly important and who were also younger than their guardians. So perhaps there were seven total young people that were special because of their minds.

"I understand Alex. But, you are a tricky one aren't you? There are seven chosen ones aren't there? People like Stetson and I. Those are your seven questions. I realized it when I understood that I really only had one question; why me? I'm sure the other six are asking themselves the exact same question." He stopped for a second to collect himself before continuing. "Which brings me to your answer to the collective question: stardust precipitates with the right software. I understood that this could not mean software that is used in technology. It wouldn't make sense with me because I can't see to use computers anyways. No, you are saying that our minds are the software. There is something special about our minds, something that 'precipitates stardust'. Thank you Alex. I may not know what you are talking about yet, but I feel that part of the answer lies in Glenville."

((edited out paragraph above name because I used it for creating the post and forgot to delete it out))

Like Tsuki, Lexi realized she was caught by the time she reached the Jeep, but she had to hope that luck would stay with her just a little bit longer, and that Dirk was enough to keep the two creeps occupied. This was most definitely a bigger mess than she was used to being in, and in a much more wide-open field of combat than she would have preferred, so she was pretty much operating off of instinct and the first thoughts that came to mind. Of course, the written out thought process sounds so much more logical than it was. She was freaking out, and was just extraordinarily happy that she made it to the truck in one piece.

She exhibited her relief by piling into the vehicle as quickly as she could, ending up crouching on the floor of the driver’s seat, glad to be small so that there was actually space down there. After insuring that the keys weren’t anywhere obvious or useful, her shaking hands dug into the mass of wiring underneath the dashboard, trying to sort it into a configuration that would result in an operable vehicle. With her panic now directed towards (hopefully helpful) action, and her worry focused on the most immediate problem of getting shocked by the car’s battery, space finally freed up in her mind to realize Tsuki hadn’t been on the same track she had been, and to consider all the other reasons her plan could go south. She really hoped the two guys had actually planned on using the truck again and hadn’t booby trapped it. Finally getting close to what she hoped was going to start the truck, she looked to see if Tsuki was seeing her plan now, waved at him to climb in if he hadn’t already, and touched two wires together.

With a spark and a rumble, the Jeep came to life and a smile crossed the girl’s face before she realized that she had probably just attracted a heap of attention, and that she had better capitalize on that before the two creeps started shooting. She didn’t have time to adjust the seat, but she took a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel and sent the truck off towards the two gunners. Hopefully once they mentally computed the accelerations that would result from an inelastic collision between two mostly squishy hundred-kilogram objects and one very solid two-thousand-kilogram object, they would be too busy preventing such an exchange of momentum to fire anything anywhere. She kept her head low in case the gunmen had forgotten their basic physics.

Ian observed the girl's reaction with a raised eyebrow and sat back on his haunches. A pensive look crossed his scarred face as he looked closely at the two teens. He frowned. "I know you two from somewhere..." A second later he smiled. "Ah! Two years ago I got a haul from a newly refurbished Canadian toy factory. I seem to remember selling a bunch and dropping them off at an orphanage in Riverdale. That must be it. Yeah."

Ian shook his head and blinked. "Oh... Right. Questions. Yes. I speak of Rufus Oak, and as for proof... Umm, I have a basket full of food, pokeballs and some gadgetry that I got off of him that I haven't sorted yet, but he didn't make me sign a contract or anything. The mailman gets around on reputation you know." He sighed and turned to stare at the sky.