Author's Note: There have been substantial changes to the format of this story. What was originally the second chapter was moved to be included in the first. The substance of this new second chapter is completely new. I don't claim to own Pokémon.

Day Six

A bell rang as the front door opened.

"Welcome to Verdanturf Day – oh, it's you." The blonde woman returned to her logic puzzle, disinterested. "Once again, the answer is no, no, no, and 'over my cold, rotting body'."

Brendan winced. He had been trying to convince Regan to let him breed some of her pokémon for months. There were trainers in Hoenn who would pay big bucks for a shinx, sneasel or yanma. His efforts hadn't been received kindly. Regan and Tori were both of the mindset that it was wrong to control the life of a pokémon so closely that you decided its mate and children. It was a hot topic in recent years, often dividing society along generational lines. That wasn't why he had come today, though.

"I have two pokémon for you." He pulled two poké balls from his belt, and slapped them on the counter. "I'm going out of town until next week. And if one of them should happen to lay an egg–"

"You'll never hear about it," Regan said. He knew she was joking; the woman might disapprove of his business, but she had never directly interfered with it. She grabbed one of the poké balls and began to copy the serial number into the computer. "We're going to need to copy your trainer card," she said. That was new. "And they'll need to pass a health examination before they're allowed to mingle with the others."

That was fine with Brendan. For his purposes, it was better that his pokémon didn't hang out with others. It was strange, though. "New security measures?" he asked.

"There have been some changes."

Brendan quietly observed Regan as she typed, providing information when required. The woman looked more worn out than he had ever seen her.

"You haven't been to the circuit lately," he said, at last. "I thought maybe you were just avoiding me, but nobody else has seen you either. Sammy's raring for a rematch."

Regan sighed and combed her fingers through her hair, a nervous tic she had kept since childhood. "I've had a lot on my mind –"

"Yes, the changes."

Regan met his eyes and bit her lip. Brendan did his best to look like somebody you could trust with secrets. The woman leaned forward. "If you breathe a word I'll tear your tongue out," she said. Brendan mimed zipping his lips and throwing away the key.

"A mightyena went crazy a week ago. Broke Tori's arm and nearly killed another pokémon. All of the trainer's information is fake, like he hacked the system." Her expression was stern. "This can never be allowed to happen again."

Brendan understood why they didn't want people to know. How many people would trust their pokémon with these two, if they knew this had happened? "I won't say anything," he said.

Regan nodded and kept typing.

They'd been in the desert for a week.

Sure, they had left a few times, running back to the Pokémon Center in Mauville with their exhausted pokémon before heading straight back. For the most part, though, their time was spent here. Mara and Arthur woke up every morning at sunrise and explored until it was too dark to see, at which point they would make their way back to the camp they had set up in an abandoned secret base.

Both of the children knew that Seth was long gone, although neither said it. They still held hope that there would be some kind of trail. If there wasn't, the eevee was likely lost for good.

Mara had given Arthur a trapinch she caught. "He might not seem that cool right now," she had explained. "But they can be pretty great when they evolve."

Right now, Arthur wasn't sure about all that. He stomped, getting his foot stuck deep in the sand. Not smart. "How am I supposed to win any battles if he's so slow? He can't catch anything!"

He'd just lost yet another battle against a wild sandshrew. The pokémon chirruped and hurried away before the trainers could challenge him again.

Mara sighed. "Trapinch are successful hunters in the wild because they're patient. They build traps and wait hours for their prey to fall into them. You shouldn't just throw away a pokémon's nature and fight in a style he's completely unused to." She was thinking of the hours she had spent building her own traps to catch her first pokémon. She had thought that this might teach Arthur a valuable lesson, but maybe she'd overestimated him.

Arthur frowned. "Okay, so maybe that will work for a wild pokémon. But what about a trainer battle? You can't just dig a cone and wait for hours for your opponent to wander into it then!"

"That's why you adapt strategies! You watch the way a pokémon acts in nature and integrate it with your own knowledge to make a game plan that works for each situation!" Mara had never been to a fancy pokémon university or had a tutor to take baby steps with her, but that didn't mean she hadn't learned. Until she was ten, she had spent every second watching the pokémon that lived around Fallarbor Town. Then she had begun to usewhat she had learned.

The trapinch had picked himself up off the ground. Arthur could tell he was exhausted, but the pokémon still waddled over to his trainer. Arthur knelt. "You did as well as you could, Storm," he said, recalling the trapinch into his ball. Mara said that you should always congratulate a pokémon on its efforts, even if it failed.

The sun was beginning to set. Mara wiped off her dark goggles and adjusted the brim of her hat. When the pair first entered the desert, they hadn't been prepared at all. They had returned to the Pokémon Center dehydrated and covered in sunburns and spent hours shaking the sand out of their clothes. Now they were dressed in reflective, porous cloth that protected their skin and kept them cool in the unforgiving heat.

But what had they gotten out of this trip besides some new clothes? They didn't know any more about the mysterious boy who had robbed them than they did a week ago, and the one pokémon they had caught between them didn't jive with its partner. Their spirits were quickly sinking.

"Let's head back to camp early," Mara said. "We can head back to Mauville in the morning. Decide what to do from there." We can part ways, she thought. It lay between them, unsaid but understood.

"Maybe that's for the best," Arthur responded. The two didn't speak for the rest of the way back to camp.

Wesley had been crouched in this tree for over an hour. He had a pretty good grasp of the defenses by now. The couple had their own pokémon in the yard with the others, ready to break up fights and scare off predators or thieves, but they were far enough from Wesley's goal to be insignificant. As far as he could tell there weren't any in the house. A strange balloon-like pokémon stood guard over the storage cellar, but he could be taken out easily enough.

The man at the restaurant had sworn that the blonde one was a great battler, and the dark haired woman had been a champion back in the day, but he had been far from sober. After all the other ridiculous stories he had told, Wesley had been afraid that even the tale of the "crazy mightyena at the Verdanturf Day Care" would be false. He wasn't sure if he had been relieved or disappointed when he had heard an unnatural, strangled howl through the door of the cellar earlier.

His plan was simple. Once he was certain the couple was asleep, his kirlia would use hypnosis on the weird guard, and Wesley would sneak into the cellar easy-as-you-please. He had taught Cosette to open bolts using her psychic abilities in preparation for a situation just like this.

All he had to do now was wait.