Chapter 1
It was cold like an ivory tower in the midst of winter, with no fires to keep you warm. Not the most ideal place for a vacation, but when you'd been training in solitude up a mountain in a cave for a very long time, cold had a very skewed definition.
Red rolled his shoulders back.
Pikachu twitched his nose but didn't move from where he rested half over Red's head, half on one of Red's shoulders.
It was good, Red thought, that even now, they were one and the same, halves of a whole. He couldn't have imagined a life without his constant companion. There was just something very reassuring about having Pikachu by his side, as always was.
"Chu!"
Down went another member, who scuttled away as though lambasted by his own mother.
Pikachu let out a satisfied noise, and then climbed back up to Red's shoulder, uninjured and brimming with impatience.
The two of them wandered up the stairs, leaving a trail of distressed operatives behind them. Red's pokeballs lined neatly on his belt as they'd always been, though with the dropping temperatures as they headed up, it seemed like an ideal training area. He made a note to come back later, but for now, he'd do as he pleased.
The door swung open with the card key he'd won from the executive, though it took several more codes to bypass the main security vault. Red had no idea what was so valuable, but he supposed he would find out.
It was the smell that hit him first of all. Like putrid rotting flesh, it curled around his nose and threatened to suffocate him. Red fought the urge to gag, whereas Pikachu, with the more sensitive nose, made a small whine at the back of his throat, and buried his face into the crook of Red's shoulder.
Red's hand reached around until he could hit a light-switch. Once hit, the lights above flickered before turning on completely, at which point the next one did the same, until it repeated for over an entire row of the house.
What he saw alarmed him. Cages, so many of them, lined the floor, connected to some kind of observatory, and as well, each area had a small control panel before it. The lights weren't perfect—they only lit the walkway, while the cages were lined in neat little rows, like prison cells, side by side.
He checked the first one. It was empty, but it showed signs of having been lived in recently. Red wondered where the Pokemon inside of it had gone, but dismissed it, and the feeling in his stomach. It wouldn't do to linger.
The second and third cages yielded no results to his relief, but Red could no more stop the gnawing feeling of dread in his stomach than he could stop the anticipation of a good opponent during a Pokemon battle.
Nearing the fourth cage caused some huge, bulky mass in the half-enshrouded darkness to suddenly jerk forward and slam against the cages. To say Red was surprised in the least was an understatement. He jolted, but otherwise didn't say word.
From the inadequate lighting overhead, he could pick out red eyes looking out at him in the darkness. Pikachu had long since leapt off his shoulder. Now, the electric mouse pokemon was drawing closer to the cage, nose twitching, making little sounds in his throat.
Red felt like a blind man seeing the light as his eyes adjusted, and his mind filled in what else he hadn't seen before.
The weak ring of fire bursting slightly and pulsing against the Pokemon's neck was more than enough of a clue to its identity.
"A Typhlosion?" He murmured.
It turned out that the Typhlosion was severely injured, and ill with infection from what appeared to be several wounds inflicted by all sorts of Pokemon types, and as well as some artificial means as well. Red couldn't get near enough to administer an Antidote or a Max Potion without the threat of losing his entire arm or leg, but Pikachu was able to calm it down with some docile tones.
Despite everything, it wouldn't let them near where it was curled up around something. Red tried to use Flash, but to no avail. There was a howl of rage and then Typhlosion let out something that smelled like smoke and charred dust from its throat, before it heaved out what appeared to be something disgusting that could melt through the bars of its cage.
If it could do that, Red wondered, why bother staying?
Fire Pokemon to Fire Pokemon ought to have done it. It would make sense, being that they both could breathe fire and were both formidable in a fight. Charizard was actually quite reliable despite his initial temper, but the two of them had long established a trust. However, nothing worked.
No matter how long they waited or how nicely Pikachu asked or how annoyed Charizard was at this whole thing, the Typhlosion refused to talk. It refused to give reason of any sort why it wouldn't leave the cage, why even shivering with half of its skin melted off by something that shouldn't have been capable of melting off skin because it was a Fire Pokemon and they were supposed to have the damage cut in half by Fire-type moves.
"Should we move on?" Red asked Pikachu. His long-time companion shook his head. "Alright."
They did have enough food and water to last them a while, but Red didn't like the look of this place. For one, it wasn't sanitary. For another, it gave off a foul smell almost like burnt things and rotten eggs. Charizard could blow away the air with hits, but there was nowhere for the worse parts of the smell to go. No windows, no anything. Just complete darkness and cages, flickering lights and a sense of foreboding claustrophobia, like the walls would close in and the darkness would swallow them whole. If they stayed for a while, he did have an Escape rope, but coming back here would be a pain.
Red left Charizard behind with the now unmoving but still breathing Fire Pokemon, while he and Pikachu set about exploring the rest of the room. Flash was very useful for things like this, but asides from an Ultra ball someone carelessly left behind and some Golbats still lingering about, along with several Geodudes in hiding, there wasn't much to look forward to. They let him be once he turned off the light, and it was just Pikachu helping to lead the way.
The Typhlosion turned out to be the only Pokemon in the room still caged, and other cage bars left traces that they two had been melted open. Red stared, and traced the now molten cold metal with his fingers. Whatever on earth had gone in this room?
From the remains of the data that was left in each control panel and accompanying screen, there were several types of Fire Pokemon in here, all in their final stages of Evolution. It seemed as though they were testing for something, but eventually, perhaps from neglect, the experiments stopped and the Pokemon eventually freed themselves.
He found a switch. With a sudden buzz, a generator flipped on and electricity was now coursing through the circuits. The light jolted on, and to Red's horror, every cage lit up in electricity.
There was a howl in the air. Racing back there revealed that the Typhlosion was now curled further into the center of the cage, whereas Charizard was nursing his tail. Evidently he'd been trying to goad the other Pokemon, so it served him right, but there wasn't much anything an aside from returning Charizard to his pokeball that Red could do for him now. The Typhlosion wasn't leaving, but then the light revealed just how bad his state was.
Red couldn't believe such a Pokemon was still alive. What was keeping it there, still hanging on?
"We need to cut the circuit," he began, but Pikachu was already at it. It leapt at the cage, hoping to short it out with a good shock—
Blzaatt!
Red caught Pikachu just as his old friend nearly was jolted out of his life. The electricity was inhumanely and extremely powerful, so much so that an electric mouse Pokemon like Pikachu couldn't handle it. It was beyond ridiculous.
"We're cutting the power," Red said darkly, and turned to Charizard.
There didn't need to be any spoken words. Charizard let out a roar and Blast Burned the side of the cage. It went out with a flash, and then molten lava drifted away and slowly hardened on the floor.
So that was how the other Pokemon escaped, Red realized. They burned each other's cage—there must have been a weak link somewhere for the first one—so then, why was it that none of them had helped this Typhlosion?
Nearing the Typhlosion proved to be hazardous. He wouldn't let Red come near at all for any reason, and there was nothing Pikachu could say or do that would make it move.
Red wondered why it was that it was curled into a ball. Surely standing would've been easier, or at least lying on its side? So why was it-?
Wait.
Was that-?
He caught a glimpse of a baseball cap and his fingers tightened.
"Ethan-?"
The Typhlosion looked up, eyes tired, half-crazed but hopeful.
"You're Ethan's," Red realized. "You're Cynders."