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Chapter 4: Escape

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It had been a few months since our futile escape attempt. As the last bit of sunlight faded, I adjusted my gloves and took a deep breath. She, too, drew a deep breath as we prepared ourselves. Tonight, our months of planning would pay off.

We were going to escape.

Blue and I had noticed that once every few months, the Masked Man would not show up for a day or two, and when he came back, he didn't have as much energy as he usually did. This was our chance – while he was weak. For all we knew, he might not even have been here this day. We hadn't seen him all day today – it was our best chance to escape.

We were still in our bedroom – the last time we would be in it. Both of us were filled with confidence and hope.

"Let's take out Sneasel and Jigglypuff," Blue said, releasing her Pokémon. "If we get spotted, the other children are going to come after us."

I nodded as I let Sneasel out.

Blue walked over to the door, holding it with her hand.

"Are you ready, Silver?"

I nodded briefly, going over the plan in my mind. We were going to take the spiral staircase to its very bottom, and then go into another staircase after that we were forbidden to take. Blue and I had assumed it led to the outside – but that would not be the end of it. The Masked Man himself had mentioned that psychic Pokémon have a barrier in place around us; we both knew the Masked Man wouldn't let that barrier down for even a second, and we also knew that he had to get out of here sometimes. Furthermore, Four – one of his most loyal servants – had mentioned something about an underground complex. That was our chance.

Together, we took hold of the door knob, and pushed open the door. Swiftly and quietly, we made our way to the staircase and hurried down. Blue, in front of me, tightly gripped my hand.

After exiting that staircase, we entered the forbidden door and, much to our suspicions, headed down another one. We both froze when we were almost at the bottom though – a lone window was in the wall, so we looked outside.

There was ground, grass, bushes. We were on the ground, we were nearly there. We both looked at each other in happiness – even if we couldn't see each other's faces, we knew the elation that probably covered them – but continued on our way. There were high chances that one or more of the children had heard us and were giving chase.

We burst through the door and onto solid ground. I hadn't seen it in so long.

A voice bellowed from the top of a hundred-feet wall a bit of aways from us, and a spotlight shined on us. "Someone's escaped!"

Instantly we dashed away, carefully navigating around the spotlights that frantically searched for us. I followed right behind her, our hands still tightly interlinked.

We rounded a corner of a building. "Silver, are you okay?" She asked me as we looked for a place to sit for a minute. We were both out of breath. At the same time we saw a group of bushes, and we nodded at each other before jumping in.

Silence covered us for a moment. "Let's try getting these masks off before we escape."

We looked at each other, and I blushed. I was really going to see her. I had wondered ever since we met what her face looked like.

The two of us slowly brought our hands to each other's masks. I gulped as she said, "Ready..."

We both tugged, pulling the masks of our faces. For a second neither of us said anything – we just looked at each other. She was smiling but I was blushing and my lungs stopped working as my heart skipped a beat. She was absolutely gorgeous, and without the mask to cover most of her face, her glittering sapphire eyes became even more radiant.

"So this is how you look like..." She said as she studied my face and smiled, stroking my cheek with one of her hands. I couldn't say anything; my throat wasn't working.

"Oh! We must hurry!" Blue said as suddenly as she stood. "We've finally gotten out of the building... but psychic Pokémon have created a barrier surrounding this place." She looked around. "The only way to get past it is through..." Spotting something, she ran out of the bushes and I followed here. "Here!"

At our feet stood a metal square. We both knelt and together we pulled at it, moving it to the side. What was under it was a ladder, leading down into the depths of the ground.

Blue smiled. "An underground passageway!" She lowered herself onto the ladder and began her climbing down, and I stayed right behind her. Though it was below ground, it looked like the inside of a white building. Sighing a bit as we finished our descent, Blue said, "It's too complex... I have no idea how to navigate it." And so we began heading in one of the two options, the way that would lead away from the building in which we were kept. "But..." She continued, "I suspect we'll have to bypass his room at some point."

We passed a right turn and kept heading straight. With the fork to our backs, we went to keep going.

But we whirled around in an instant as a voice yelled behind us. "There they are!"

We didn't want to stick around to see who it was, so we zoomed through the corridors as fast as we could, taking several turns to try and through them off. They stayed on our trail though, shouting at each other. "Over there!" "Get them!"

We came to another fork, and Blue glanced down it.

"Gotcha!" Said a voice from the corridor's end.

I looked to see who it was, but Blue dashed in front of me as we continued to run. "Don't let them see you face!"

I heard them give commands to their Pokémon, and then I realized it was the other children – One, Two, Three, and Four. We couldn't send Sneasel or Jigglypuff into fight; not only because they'd be outnumbered but also because we couldn't risk leaving them behind.

Suddenly, something his me in the leg, one of the Pokémon's attacks. I fell forward as I was torn from Blue's hand. "Silver!" She shouted, panic in her voice. I looked up as she backtracked to grab me again, pulling me to my feet as our pursuers gained on us. I barely had time to see her slam her fist against a switch on the wall. White smoke flooded in through the ceiling, covering the children behind us. I heard them coughing as we came to another two-way fork, dashing left. We headed through a large archway, and suddenly Blue stopped to face the passage.

"Jigglypuff, hurry and blow up really big to make them think it's a dead end!"

We watched as her Jigglypuff expanded to a great size, filling up up the space with its body; to those on the other side, it would appear to be a dead end. Then, we stood in silence and listened.

"A dead end?"

"Are you sure you saw them head this way?"

"Of course!"

"Let's check the other paths."

Their footsteps gradually fell into silence, and Jigglypuff deflated to her normal size.

Blue smiled. "Yes! We should be safe now... because I think we're near the exit."

We turned around a corner and jumped as a large silhouette faced us. However, it did not move or make a sound. Blue stepped forward, reaching out and touching it.

"Oh, scared me there... they're just ice sculptures. They're sculptures of us, too. This must be that man's room."

I took a minute to survey it – there was indeed a large ice sculpture in the middle, a sculpture of him and all of us with our masks on. The floor and walls were covered in ice. Then I realized –

"Blue, we don't know where he's hiding," I said in a hushed tone. "He could be nearby..."

Her eyes looked not at me, but dead ahead, at a curtain on the wall. "Yeah... very near indeed. He's sleeping on the other side of that curtain."

"Eh?"

I peered closer; I could see beyond the curtain was the silhouette of a man lying down.

"But don't worry," Blue continued. "He can't move a limb today. That man becomes weak once every few months. According to my calculations... that's today!"

There was only one other way out of the room, so Blue and I made our way to that door. Suddenly, she stopped, glancing around the room again. Spying a wooden desk, she walked over. "We can't just go away like that. ...Hmm." She paused and took two items from the desk into her hand. "Ho ho ho... we'll need mementos!" Her head turned to me as she winked, and I blushed. She was really pretty. I quickly glanced at what was in her hand – two feathers, one rainbow and one silver.

Swiftly, she came back over and we put our hand on the door knob together, and then pulled it open.

It was a long tunnel ahead of us, dark, but at the end was a light.

At the same time we took each other's hand and gripped it tightly as we began to dash down the tunnel, our Pokémon beside us. "See that light?" She ecstatically said. "We're home free!"

Together, we shouted out of pure happiness: "The outside world!"

We continued our sprint as the outside air enveloped us, running onto a grassy field. I looked around and noticed she was, too – out here, there were no walls, nothing keeping us trapped or confined. We were free, absolutely free.

Eventually our legs became exhausted, and together we tumbled onto the ground, laughing. Our hands still linked us together as we laid on our backs and our laughter died out. We stared up at the sky, with nothing between it and us – no walls or windows or despair. Countless starts dotted the sky and the moon was full and bright.

"Come on," she said softly. "Let's find a place to sleep for the night."

Together we stood, glancing around. "Over there," I said as I pointed to what looked to be a small hill; there was an alcove inside it, like a mini cave.

We walked over and into it, sitting next to each other against the back wall. It was very late now, and we were both exhausted.

In that instant our fingers interlaced, it hit me how much I had changed and how much she had changed. I blinked as I looked out at the sky through the entrance of our shelter; we had finally escaped, we were out of the darkness and into the light. And best of all, we were with each other – we had fulfilled the promise made so long ago.

I bit my lip as I glanced at her. Her eyes, too, were fixated on the sky.

I wanted to ask her something, but I didn't. I didn't know if it would sound weird. But I had to know. I wanted it more than anything.

"We'll be together forever, right?"

I swung my head to face hers when I realized that it wasn't only my voice that asked that question – hers had too, at the same time.

We stared at each other in silence. Her vivid eyes were filled with unreadable emotion. I had known it through even the tiny slits in her mask, but without it on, her eyes were fully visible – their gem-like qualities shone to me with unbelievable clarity. They glittered and glowed, as sparkling as sapphires yet as deep as an ocean.

Then she smiled, and I couldn't help but smile too. I thought she was really pretty when she did that. She pulled me into a hug, which I gladly returned.

"Let's be together forever," she said quietly as she stroked my hair.

I nodded and huddled close to her. Her body was warm and her touch was as gentle and loving as always.

"Promise?" I asked, barely audible to even myself.

"Promise." She paused. "You have to promise me, too."

"I promise."

Our fingers were still interlaced as we began to drift off to sleep. I remember that my last thought was that one day, I hoped we could forget about everything that happened; we could live happily, together, forever. Together, forever, with Blue, this girl who needed me and who I needed back, this girl who – even if I didn't realize it back then – I loved with all my heart.

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Chapter 4 end.

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A/N: Well that's it, kind of the end, I suppose. There's going to be an epilogue and I have a pretty good idea what's going to happen in it so far, but based on where I go it might actually be kind of more climatic than the actual story, so it wouldn't really be an epilogue... but yeah. There's more to come and more of a conclusion. Obviously, I based this chapter heavily on round 268 of the manga. A lot of the dialogue from the actual escape and the events thereof come from there. Reviews are always appreciated. I hope you enjoyed!

- Medli