Chapter Nine

By the time they got out of the forest, it was the middle of the afternoon. The moment they stepped out of the cover of the trees, Nathaniel breathed a sigh of relief. He'd never been so happy to see the sun. "Finally," he said. "We finally made it."

"Oh, man up, will you?" Hailey teased, poking him lightly in the ribs. "It's not like that was hard or anything. We didn't even run into a single pokémon."

"Hailey," he said, looking down at the young girl, "you have no idea what that forest can be like."

"You mean the forest that leads straight to the easiest gym in the region, the one that rookies usually take on first?"

"Uh, yeah," he admitted.

"Sounds to me like you were making a big fuss over nothing." She held her head up high and stalked off down the path, as if to show that she had won. In fairness, she probably had.

He hung back, partly because he knew it was pointless arguing further and partly for the benefit of their newest companion. For all the way through the forest, Harry had lumbered slowly along with them, almost as if he was sleep-walking. He'd kept his eyes planted on the ground and he hadn't so much as spoken a word. Apparently the loss of his pokémon was hitting him pretty bad.

"Hey, you okay?" Nathaniel asked. Without lifting his eyes, the boy gave a small nod. "We're going to get Abby back soon, alright? I promise."

The boy nodded again. His lip was quivering, as if he was doing his best not to cry. If this was his attempt at hiding his emotions, he wasn't doing a very good job.

Not that Nathaniel was totally unsympathetic. He understood exactly how attached trainers could become to their pokémon. Sure, he'd never felt that close to his team - they were his pets, not his friends - but he understood. And if getting that abra back was going to put a smile on the boy's face then, dammit, Nathaniel was going to do everything he could to make sure they returned her to him.

"Hey, Hailey, wait up!" he called out, suddenly realising how far down the path she was. Another couple of steps and she'd disappear around the corner.

She didn't seem to hear him, though. She just kept skipping along, adamant to get to Petalburg before him. It was only when she made to turn the corner that she stopped, and that was only because she walked head-first into another trainer.

"Hailey, watch where you're going!" Nathaniel said, hurrying to catch up to her. He was fond of the kid, but he was really beginning to feel like a parent instead of a friend. "I apologise for my friend. She's in a bit of a rush."

"Hey, don't worry about it," the trainer said. To his credit, he didn't sound at all bothered, almost as if people ran straight into him every day.

Indeed, there wasn't a single thing about him that seemed bothered by anything. There was so much gel in his slick black hair that it stayed perfectly still in the wind, his shirt was so form-fitting and so tightly tucked into his jeans that it didn't rustle at all, and his dark brown skin was perfectly smooth and unblemished. It was as if the world had no effect on him at all.

"Sorry, Sir," Hailey said, stepping away from him. "It's just, we're trying to help this boy find his pokémon. Apparently it was stolen from him."

"Wh-what!" he stammered, his cool composure suddenly breaking. "That..." He took a breath, composed himself, ran a hand through his slick, black hair and slipped right back to being laid back. "That's unforgivable."

"Yeah, we've been trying to help him find it, but we haven't had much luck so far," Nathaniel said. "Say, you wouldn't have happened to see a man in a green cape floating about, would you?"

"Hmm..." The trainer cocked his head to the side, apparently deep in thought. "Now that you mention it, I think I did see someone like that back in Petalburg. I only got a passing glance as he left the town, but I do remember thinking that the cloak was an odd choice."

"Do you know where he went?!" Hailey asked, almost jumping with excitement.

The trainer gave it another thought, then shook his head. "No, I'm afraid not. But I only saw him about half an hour ago, so I doubt he's gone far. He was heading up this way, actually."

"Strange," Nathaniel said. "You'd have thought we'd have ran into him. Unless..."

"Unless what?" Hailey asked.

"Unless he took the boat to Dewford Town. Which would have left..." He paused to check his bracelet. "Which would have left about fifteen minutes ago. That's got to be it!"

"Well, if you guys are heading to Dewford," the trainer said, crossing his arms in an attempt to look as cool as possible, "then I guess I might as well tag along. After all, I can't just stand by while there's a pokémon thief on the lose, can I?"

"Very well," Nathaniel said. "We'll get the three o'clock boat. Until then, I suggest we wait here and think up some kind of strategy, just in case we run into this thief."

"Sounds good to me," the trainer said. "But first, I should probably introduce myself, shouldn't I? The name's Gavin. Gavin West."

Nathaniel offered out his hand. "Nathaniel," he said as Gavin shook it. "Nathaniel Smith."

"And I'm Hailey!" Hailey said. "And this here's Harry, although I don't think he's much in the mood for talking."

"Well, that won't do, will it?" Gavin said. "I guess we're just going to have to work even harder to find your pokémon." He gave the kid a wink and, to Nathaniel's surprise, the boy's lips curled into something almost resembling a smile.

Whoever this Gavin was, Nathaniel was beginning to like him.


As much as Amber hated to admit it, her situation seemed totally hopeless. Despite that, she ambled along in the darkness, dragging what she was now convinced was a sprained ankle behind her. Emolga was back in his ball. He was a reliable partner most of the time, but she couldn't count on him being quiet.

She had no idea how long she'd been out for. The cave was, naturally, still as pitch black as it had been before, and she no longer had a bracelet to tell her the time. Still, it seemed like a worthy sacrifice. After all, she had woken up to the sound of several very frustrated guards, which could only mean that her plan had worked.

Now all she had to do was find a way out of the cave, a task that was proving to be much easier said than done. Every time she felt a wall, she turned to the right, not for any particular reason, but more because she had to turn in one direction and the right seemed as good as any. For all she knew, though, she'd been walking in circles for the last... however long it had been.

How long had it been? She had no idea. The rumbling from her stomach told her it must have been a while, though. Then again, she hadn't eaten anything since the jam roll that morning. There were still a good few rolls in her bag, but she could tell just by feeling them that they were hopelessly crushed, most of them practically fused with the cellophane wrapping. They didn't feel very appetising right now, but in another few hours they would probably seem pretty appealing.

Now, though, she had settled to living with the gnawing hunger. The groans from her stomach, the crunching stones underneath her feet, the painful scraping sound as she pulled her ankle along behind her, after a while it just became white noise. It all blended into the background and before long she stopped noticing it. A short time later, she stopped feeling anything either. She just walked, her thoughts rolling around in her head.

You're going to be down here forever. Not even those guards will find you now. No one will ever know. Not your sister, not your mother, no one. Your body, your skeleton, will lie on this cave for all of time.

Eventually those thoughts faded too, until there was nothing but the path ahead of her. She just walked, not hearing, not seeing, not feeling, not thinking. Every time she hit a wall, she turned as if on instinct. She might have been down there for minutes, or for hours, or for weeks. For all she knew, she'd already died. If that wasn't death, she wasn't sure what was.

And then she felt something, and everything snapped back into place. Once again she was hungry, and scared, and so very, very tired. But for the first time since she'd been in that cave, she felt something else. Hope. For the thing in front of her wasn't the cold stone wall she'd grown so used to.

It was rope.

She felt around frantically, trying to work out what it was in front of her. Now that she'd been brought back to the real world, she could see a faint flicker of light coming down from above, but it wasn't enough to tell what the rope was attached to. She only prayed that it wasn't just dangling there from the upper level. Sure it'd technically be a way out, but the rope climb had always been her least favourite part of P.E.

It wasn't just a rope. It was a ladder. She breathed a sigh of relief. A ladder, she could manage, even with her messed up ankle. She placed her foot roughly where she thought the first rung was, and just about cried out in sheer joy when she realised she was no longer standing on the cave floor.

Her ankle didn't make things easy, but she knew she could do it. She knew it wouldn't be pleasant, but she stepped up onto the rung, gritted her teeth and did her best to bear the pain. I can do this, she told herself.

She repeated the words in her head with every step. I can do this. One more rung. I can do this. Another step up. I can do this!

It was far from an easy climb, but it wasn't a long one, and soon she could feel herself getting near to the top. The light was getting brighter now, and she could see the edge of the next floor. With one hand, she let go of the ladder and grabbed onto it. Confident that she had a good grip, she did the same with her other hand and heaved herself up.

It didn't work. Her fingers slipped, her ankle buckled and she fell. She'd have hit the bottom, except something else grabbed onto her wrists and, with a single yank, pulled her all the way up.

She'd made it. Sweat was pouring off her face, and her ankle was absolutely killing her, but she'd made it. There was light, there was warmth, and, more importantly, there was a person. Under normal circumstances she'd have been worried that they were another guard, but these were not normal circumstances and she was too relieved to think of such things.

"Well, well, well," the person said. "What have we here?"

She forced herself to look up at them. They were a man, older than anyone else she'd seen so far. Possibly mid-twenties? She couldn't be sure. His long, black hair was pulled into a tight ponytail, and it might have just been that her eyesight was messed up but she could have sworn there was a streak of green running through it. Then again, maybe her eyes weren't to be trusted, because strangest of all, the man seemed to be wearing a cape, and that didn't make any sense at all. At the very least, she hoped that the fire that was burning behind him wasn't just a figment of her imagination.

"Ooo," he said as he stepped out of her line of sight, "that doesn't look too good. Let's see..."

"Ah!" she screamed, pain bursting through her ankle.

"Sorry, I imagine that must have hurt," the man said. "Still, it doesn't look too bad. A bit swollen maybe, but I think you've just twisted it. Here, give me a second."

She wanted to ask what he was doing, but her throat was too dry. When was the last time she'd had anything to drink? She had no idea. If she'd had the energy, she'd have grabbed a water bottle from her bag.

"Okay, this is probably going to sting," the man said, "but I promise I'm trying to help you."

She felt him lift her leg up. "What are you..." she managed to say, but before she could finish she was overcome with pain.

There was an immense pressure on her ankle, as if he was squeezing it under his armpit. Even as he put her leg down, though, the pain didn't fade. "I've wrapped it in bandages," he said, "which isn't the ideal solution, but it's the best I can do. I wish I had some ice for the swelling but, alas, I have yet to find any."

He moved back in front of her and offered her his hands. Before she really knew what she was doing, she took them, and he helped her into a sitting position.

"Now," he said, "I would highly recommend that you don't walk on that for a good few hours. Normally I'd suggest a few days, but I'm afraid that the circumstances are a little too... dire for that, aren't they?"

She nodded, but she could barely make out what he was saying. Why was he still talking anyway? All she wanted to do was get some sleep.

"Here, take this." He lifted his cape, unclipped a bottle and handed it to her. "I imagine you've been through some shit. Why don't you tell me what happened?"

She took a huge gulp of what she was pleased to discover was water, then wiped the rest off of her face. Immediately she felt much better. Not good, but better. At the very least, she'd be able to talk. "It's... a long story."

"So I would think," he said. "After all, I hardly thought there would be a short story behind a young girl travelling through a dark cave on her own, especially when there aren't any pokémon to catch."

She wondered if she should tell him what happened. He had, after all, helped her a great deal. It wasn't too much of a stretch to say he saved her life. She at least owed him some sort of explanation. "I pissed off the moderators. They came after me, I hid in this cave, and now I'm here."

"Ah," he said. "So I suppose those cloaked figures I saw at the entrance were looking for you, then? You must have done something really bad. They looked furious."

She shrugged. "I... might have helped someone steal one of their boats."

"That boat at the docks?" She nodded. "And I suppose you're the reason it was on its side?" She nodded. "Wow."

"Are you going to turn me in now?"

"And why would I do that?" he asked. "I mean, do I look like a moderator to you?"

"Well, you are wearing a cape..."

"Oh please. Theirs are bright orange. Hideous, garish things. Does mine look anything like that?"

He seemed genuinely offended, but she really couldn't see why. "I... guess not?" she tried.

It apparently satisfied him, and he gave her a warm kind of smile. "So, I don't believe I've asked for your name yet."

"It's Amber," she said. She wasn't too keen on the fact that she'd given out her name to a total of four people in the past two days, but she felt like she could trust this man. "Amber Sky."

"Pleased to meet you, Amber," he said. "As for me, you may call me Quinn."

"So, Quinn," she said, pausing to take another swig from the bottle. God, had water always tasted that amazing? "I've told you my story. Now I believe it's your turn. What is someone like you doing in a cave like this?"

"Well," he said, giving her a cheeky little grin. "If you must know, I came here after I found a poor, abused Abra all the way back in Rustboro City."

"And that brought you here... why?"

"Simple. I came here to liberate her."

Liberate. It was funny how a simple word could change so much. Because, with just that one, single word, all of that trust melted away, along with just about everything else. The pain, the hunger, Amber felt none of it.

Instead, all she felt was anger.