All for You

Chapter 68

As soon as the elevator doors opened, Ash dashed down the halway to find room Z-00.

Luckily enough, the door was right there. But as soon as he opened it, he found the entire room filled with dusty inventions.

Since the lights were already on, he immediately plunged into the room to try and find the bomb. It didn't take long for him to notice the only part of the room that wasn't covered in an inch of dust.

He headed over to a bright blue tarp on the ground, and beside it found a large machine with a digital readout that was counting down: 7:28, 7:27, 7:26...

He picked up his phone. "Guys, I found the bomb! It's definetly here." He imediately set to work clearing the items around it so that they'd have more room.

Gary sighed in relief. "Good, we're not just heading deeper into the building for no reason. How much time is left?"

"A little more than seven minutes." Ash glanced at the timer as he made some more space around it, piling dusty robots in the corner. He had quite a bit of space around it now.

"That's not good." Gary noted helpfully. "Paul and I will be down in a few seconds. Where are you, Serena?"

"I'll be there soon, too."

"Good, we'll need all the man power we can get if we can't directly defuse the bomb. Alright, I'm at the floor, so I'm hanging up."

Gary dropped from the call, and a few seconds later he and Paul opened the door to the basement.

"Hey, Gary. Hey, Paul." Ash greeted his friend and Paul as he finished clearing away the robots from the bomb.

"Hey, Ash. Long time no see." He joked.

He and Paul weaved through the piles of abandoned robots before eyeing the incredibly large bomb.

After taking it in, Gary went white. "Well, Ashy-boy, it's a good thing you convinced us to come down here." He noted.

"Why?"

"Because that bomb looks big enough to not only blow up this tower, but send the top flying high enough to land back in Kanto." He noted.

While Ash figured (or at least hoped) that was an exaggeration, he was glad he had made the right decision in trusting Team Rocket.

Just then, Serena arrived as well. "Hi, Serena!" Ash said hapily.

Gary noted his greeting to Serena was much more enthusiastic than his had been.

"Alright, let's check this baby out." Gary headed over to the bomb, eyeing the multiple wires.

"I'll call Clemont." Serena volounteered. She facetimed Clemont and after the phone rang for a few painfully long seconds, the blond gym leader answered.

"Alright, Clemont, we found the bomb." She held up the phone to the bomb so that Clemont could see it, including the digital readout that now read 5:33.

"Alright, can you get closer to the wires?" He asked.

Serena moved the phone closer to the wires, where some connected to the timer and other plugged back in to other parts of the bomb.

"Hmm..." Clemont looked at the wires until the timer read 4:52.

"Well?" Paul asked impatiently. He didn't like being in the same room as a giant ticking bomb while the only person here who had any idea how to defuse one sat on the phone silently.

"This bomb is hard to understand." Clemont replied.

"What do you mean? There's less than 10 wires and two of them are connected to the timer. Shouldn't it be easy?" Paul replied impatiently.