Part One: Chapter Eleven
At what level does a grimer learn Disable?
"15? 27? 9?"
Flame sighed and settled down on the cold floor, placing Ignus in his lap. The small pokemon had slipped into unconsciousness soon after the battle and had remained that way for the past half hour or so. The only pokemon that was still on their feet was Kojo, but he could barely stand. Paranoia hadn't taken long to sink in and he found himself checking behind them more often in case something was trying to sneak up from behind. He could see the others doing the same thing. Nobody had said it yet, but they were defenceless. If Flame had ever thought they were at their most vulnerable before, he was so wrong.
"21? 2? 43?" Sparky hissed in frustration and slapped her palm against the rectangle, "Come on! 15? Have we guessed 15? 14? 13? 11?"
Rain rolled his eyes, "Grimers learn the move later, stupid." he said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"50!" Leaf piped up, "51-"
"Not that much later!" he snapped, crouching down beside the shape and placing Quinn on the floor, "16, 17, 18, 19-"
He was cut off by a loud buzzing sound that made all of them flinch. A robotic female voice coming from the rectangle cut through the following silence. "Too many incorrect answers have been inputted. The correct answer is Level 1. Access permanently denied. Find a new Recovery Centre and try again."
"Well, that's never happened before." Rain muttered, sitting back on his haunches. Flame stared at the locked door of the 'Recovery Centre' in numb disbelief. They'd never had a limit on how many guesses they could make until it was locked for good, why were they getting one now? Whatever could have been inside, they needed it bad. Food, water, medicine... How long would it be until they found another one? There was no way they'd be able to put up a fight with their pokemon in this condition and they could only run for so long until exhaustion overtook them.
Maybe he was just overreacting. He chewed his lip as he look down at Ignus's snoozing form and stroked her warm orange scales. He undoubtedly didn't underestimate the charmander, but that day had proved that he was beginning to overestimate her instead. He had faith in her abilities, but perhaps a little too much faith. Ice was the strongest person in the maze and he didn't want them to forget it. It looked like they needed to be more careful.
Sparky got to her feet, running a hand through her hair, "Looks like we're going to have to keep moving until we find another one." she paused, "'Recovery Centre', huh? So that's what they're called."
"Who cares what the dumb rectangles are called?" Rain muttered, kicking the shape and placing Quinn down on the floor, "There's gotta be another way to get them open. Skull Bash!" Quinn flopped tiredly to the ground and yawned. "Skull Bash! Skull Bash! I said Skull Bash! ARGH!"
"That's not going to work." Leaf mumbled half to herself, hands toying with the rim of her white Premier Ball hat. Flame noticed that the edges had begun to fray slightly and the material turn grey with dirt over the past few days.
Rain rounded on her, "What do you expect me to do, then?" he demanded, "I don't see you doing anything useful."
"Well what do you expect me to do? Make Kojo try and break it open? If you can't do it, there's no way I can. I thought we'd already established that."
"Shut up, both of you." Sparky groaned, straightening up, "We're not going to get anywhere if you spend all this time whining at each other. Now we have two options: we can either keep looking until we find another one of these things or we could let our pokemon rest here and hope we don't get attacked."
"We're defenceless either way." Rain stated, "Though I have to admit, the first option sounds a lot better. It'll at least feel as if we're doing something productive."
"Fantastic! Now let's get going." Sparky turned to look at Leaf and Flame in turn, "Are you ready?" The half-hearted nods and Leaf's murmur of 'yeah ok' seemed to be good enough for her, "Good, let's get going."
Flame was glad that Sparky had taken charge; and not just because he knew he'd be unable to bear it if it had been Rain instead. There was no way Flame himself could be any kind of leader when he couldn't even talk and the idea of Leaf taking charge was almost laughable. Sparky seemed to give off the air of somebody who would listen to what you had to say. She wasn't a control freak, but she also wasn't a complete pushover. She was the kind of reasonable authority figure that Flame liked; kind of like Professor Oak.
Thinking about Pallet Town made him homesick. How long could it have been - a week? It was impossible to tell. How would his mother be feeling? He tried to shove away the thoughts as he trudged after Leaf on the path taking them deeper into the unknown. It wouldn't do him any good to dwell on the outside world in here, all it could do was make him feel even more terrible about his current position. As difficult as it was, he had to force himself to think about whatever future he had in getting out of here.
He could hear Ignus mumbling in her sleep as he walked, too soft for him to make out the words. He tried his best to be gentle and not wake her as he trailed behind the others, casting an occasional glance behind him.
"Shut up and keep moving!"
Flame stopped in his tracks. He could have sworn he'd heard a whispered voice coming from behind one of the walls. Hesitantly, he looked around before noticing how far behind the others he'd fallen. For a few seconds, he hung behind and strained his ears for any sound apart from the footsteps of the other kids ahead of him but was met with nothing. He shook his head; he must have been imagining things. Still, he couldn't help but feel a prickle of unease as he hurried after his companions.
"Do you think the boy can hear us?"
He stiffened. That time, he definitely hadn't imagined it. Somebody - or something was nearby. And by the sound of it, they were hunting them.
No longer caring if he woke Ignus or not, he ran ahead to where Sparky was leading and tugged on her arm. The girl looked at him in confusion, "What is it?"
He jerked his head in the direction that he'd heard the voice. It was silent at that moment, but he knew that something was lurking there.
Sparky studied him quizzically, "I don't- Do you want us to go in that direction?"
Flame shook his head and tried to reach one-handed into his pocket to retrieve his notepad and pen. He fumbled for a moment as Ignus squirmed under his arm and he handed the charmander to Sparky to hold.
"I don't see why you needed to wake me up." Ignus protested tiredly as she snuggled up next to a disgruntled Captain, "Hello there."
Flame ignored her and Rain's disgruntled muttering at them having to stop as he scrawled his message down on the paper.
'We're being followed by a pokemon.'
Sparky read it, a look of concern spreading across her face, "Do you know what species it is?"
He shook his head. How was he meant to know that? Leaf and Rain approached them and took the notebook to read for themselves.
"Well, this is just great." Rain said flatly, closing it and handing it back to Flame, "Now we're well and truly screwed. It was nice knowing you all." he looked around without changing the almost bored expression that was plastered onto his face, "I'm just kidding. I can't stand any of you."
"Why would Ice do something like this?" Leaf asked, her green eyes wide and fearful, "I don't understand, what does he want?"
Sparky sighed loudly and ran both her hands through her hair; Flame noticed this appeared to be a nervous habit of hers. "I don't know, okay?" she said, her voice tight, "But we need to keep moving until either our pokemon have rested long enough to fight or we find some healing items. Hopefully whoever's following us is just as lost as we are."
Losing their pursuers in the maze wasn't the best plan they could think of, but it was the only viable option at the moment. Attempting to fight whatever threat was nearby would be suicide and it appeared that their only options when faced with a threat in the maze was to either fight or run.
Flame took Ignus back from Sparky and they carried on. Occasionally, one of the girls would look over to him and ask if he could still hear the voices, to which he'd shake his head. Eventually, he began to wonder whether or not they'd really managed to lose their followers when a scuffling noise sounded from ahead.
The four of them stopped to listen. Ignus perked her head up and her eyes narrowed slightly. "Are those what I think they are?" she questioned.
Flame's mouth went awfully dry. All he could hear was the unmistakable sound of sharp claws against stone. It was the exact same sound the raticates made as they slunk through the maze with terrible purpose.
He hadn't noticed, but the other three had frozen in place. Leaf was hugging Kojo so tightly that the bulbasaur was squirming for breath. On any other occasion, Flame would have felt a rush of smug satisfaction at the obvious discomfort radiating from Rain, but at that moment he was too panicked himself to care. Sparky somehow looked ready to both flee and punch somebody in the face at the same time, standing with her fists clenched and her body half turned in the direction they came from as if she was about to bolt.
There was a squeak, a spine-tingling scratching noise like nails being scraped down a chalkboard and then everything was quiet.
Nobody moved. Nobody dared to breathe. Something appeared around the corner, crooked whiskers twitching. Flame had never imagined to see a creature whose pelt was riddled with so many scars. Thin, pale lines sliced through its fur and several claws were missing from its gnarled paws. But the thing that caught his attention the most was that the raticate only had one ear. The other was a shredded mess of ribbonlike scar tissue dangling from one side of its head.
"That's him." Ignus didn't sound excited at all. Flame himself had been expecting to feel some kind of fulfilment when they would finally come across the one-eared raticate; as if they'd discovered the key to escaping. Instead, only dread had filled him from the moment he'd laid eyes on the pokemon in front of him. He'd assumed that this wouldn't be easy, not that their awaited guide would be delivered to them like this. Something seemed very wrong.
"You."
Flame involuntarily flinched as the raticate addressed him. The rodent's voice was unexpectedly smooth, Flame had imagined it would come out as ragged as his appearance.
"I don't have much time, we don't know when our master will return." His eyes narrowed into slits, "Stop looking at me like that. You can understand me, can't you? You are the Hashimoto boy, aren't you?"
"Y-yes. Yes, I am." Flame swallowed thickly, "We were hoping-"
"Can you hear it?" Leaf's voice cut him off, "What's he saying?"
Flame cast her a look that he hoped would shut her up before continuing, "We were hoping you could help us. We don't know how to get out-"
"Well, that isthe purpose of a maze." The raticate said dryly, "You wouldn't be in here if it was easy to escape. The whole point of this entire thing is to challenge you and your pokemon. That's what Ice wants."
"But why? Why does Ice want to challenge us?"
The raticate made a noise that could have been a snort, "How should I know? Do you think Ice is the kind of person who has in-depth conversations with rats? We're just his lackeys, we do his dirty work when he doesn't feel like challenging you."
Flame chewed on his lip and tried to ignore the expectant looks coming from the other kids, "Ignus tells me you captured her."
The raticate studied him for a moment, "Sit down." It wasn't a request. Flame hurriedly obeyed and signalled for the others to do the same.
"Oh, so now we're taking orders from a rat." Flame heard Kojo say snidely, "Fantastic. Does nobody here have a brain?"
"I'm sorry not everyone can be as perfect as you." Flame told him sarcastically, turning to the raticate, "How did you find us? If you can navigate the maze, maybe we can too."
The raticate flicked his intact ear, "There's no secret to it. This entire place is monitored, we always know where you are. The hardest part is actually reaching you. Ice knows his way around here better than any of us, so-" He broke off and something that looked like a frown passed over his features as he turned his head back to where he had come from. "Kelli, I told you- This is perfectly safe! They're harmless, come on out!"
At his words, a small female raticate tiptoed out from behind the wall and scurried over to where he was sitting. She mumbled an apology and ducked her head as she sat down beside him.
"Can you please tell us what's going on?" Sparky asked Flame, making a gesture for him to start writing. Flame held up a hand to tell her to hold on for a minute as he turned back to the raticates sitting before him.
"Are you..." He hesitated, searching for the right word, "Are you rebels?"
"No!" Kelli exclaimed.
"Yes." the scarred raticate said bluntly.
"Yes." Kelli agreed shamefully, "Sorry, Peralta."
Peralta just sighed and shook his head, "Listen, I said it before: we don't have long until Ice gets back. I need you kids to know that I'm on your side. I don't know what Ice is planning, but whatever it is, it's not worth you guys getting hurt. So I entrusted these kids - you call them Ignus, Captain, Quinn and Kojo - to you. But it looks like they're not going to be enough."
"What are you talking about?" Flame demanded, thankful that this communication was completely mental. Otherwise, his voice would have been unbearably high at that moment.
"He's been testing you. You think you're safe just because you've beaten a few of his pokemon? All that's told him is that the eight of you are ready for the next phase of his plan." Peralta's words made Flame's blood run cold. "He's going to try and break you, kid. He's going to break all of you. That's what he wants to do."
"But why?"
Peralta let out a snarl of frustration that made both Flame and Kelli reel back in shock, "How am I supposed to know? Now you need to listen to me, and listen well. Don't - under any circumstances - split up. You're safe as a group and you're safe with your pokemon. But if any of you find yourselves alone, he'll be upon you like a houndoom on a fresh piece of meat. Do you understand me?"
Wordlessly, Flame nodded.
"What's going to come isn't just strong pokemon. Ice is a man who knows how to get to people. He knows how to get to each and every one of you, and he'll take great satisfaction in seeing you hurt. Kelli and I are going to try to keep an eye on you, but there's not much we can do. You four kids need to learn to work with each other and your pokemon. And you-" He turned to their pokemon that had been listening silently during that time, "You need to learn to work with your trainers. I'm looking at you, Flower Boy." Kojo glowered back at him.
"So what are they-" Rain began but Flame held his hand up again, feeling slightly queasy.
"This maze- Does it really have an exit?" The question had been bugging him for some time. After a week of endless wandering, the idea that perhaps escape was nothing but wishful thinking plagued him, and Peralta's pause didn't help in the slightest.
"Somewhere. Don't ask me where, but you can escape."
Flame wasn't fooled, "There's got to be a catch somewhere." He said, "There's no way Ice will just let us up and leave."
The two raticates looked at each other, as if silently debating whether or not to answer. It was Kelli who finally spoke.
"You see... The only way you can leave is if Ice decides you're ready..." She trailed away, eyes flickering nervously down to the floor.
Captain had crawled from Sparky's arms to stand unsteadily in front of her, "Are you telling me our future lies in the hands of a madman?" She demanded, head whipping around to look at Quinn, "Tell me she didn't just say that!"
Quinn's eyes were wide with an almost pathetic looking sadness, "So we're stuck in here forever?"
Kojo huffed an aggravated sigh as he pulled himself out of Leaf's grasp, "Fantastic, just fantastic." He muttered, "I've hated every minute I've been stuck here with you freaks and now you're telling me I might have to spend the rest of my life here?"
Ignus stood up as straight as possible, though she swayed slightly on her feet, "You told me I needed to look after my trainer." She said, her voice hard, "How am I meant to do that when everything's up to that scary masked person?"
"Well, I'm sorry but I don't make the rules!" Peralta snapped and the other pokemon immediately fell silent. He glared at each of them in turn and they shrank away from his withering glare, "Ice makes the rules, we're all nothing but players in his little game. As far as I can see, you can either whine about how unfair life is or you can tough it out until he sets you free. I don't know when that might be or what you'll need to do to get there, but unless you want to stay in here until you die, that's your only option. Do you understand this or do I need to tell you again?"
Nobody said anything. Even the other humans seemed to realise that now wasn't a good time to ask what was being said.
Peralta sighed and flicked his tail. The tip of the appendage was missing, presumably from a previous fight, "I just want you guys to know that you're not alone. You have Kelli and I on your side, and there are a couple other of Ice's pokemon that don't like what he's doing. But they're all scared of him, they've seen what he's capable of. If you think he's scary now, you should see him when he's not holding back in a fight.' He paused and shared a look with Kelli, 'I guess what I'm trying to say is that Ice is a powerful enemy. You're no match against him and I'm not sure if you ever will be."
"You're not exactly helping with our confidence." Captain said flatly, looking as unimpressed as Flame had ever seen her.
Peralta ignored her, "But I know that he wouldn't have chosen you for... For whatever this is, if he didn't think you could make it. You need to be strong if you want to survive, and I know you can. And maybe one day, you'll be strong enough to pay Ice back everything took from you. Believe me, I would love to see that happen."
When nobody replied, he got to his paws and looked over at Kelli, "We should get going; it'll look suspicious if he catches us with you." He turned to leave, but hesitated at the last second, "Remember, stay together. Ice will do everything he can to separate you. And whatever you do: survive."
And with that, they were gone.
Ignus sighed and flopped down into Flame's lap, exhausted from forcing her tired legs to stand for so long, "Well, that was underwhelming." She mumbled, curling up into a tight ball, "Don't worry about Ice, Flame. I'll... Protect... You..." She was instantly asleep without another word.
Captain folded her arms, staring distrustfully at the spot where the two raticates had been sitting a few moments ago, "I still don't trust them."
"Me neither." Kojo agreed, "I think they want something from us. They probably expect us to owe them something now, bloody raticates. They think they're all so high and mighty when in reality, they eat trash. Literally. I've seen it and it's disgusting."
"Peralta's a funny name." Quinn mused as he rolled backward to lie on his shell, "Peralta Peralta Peralta Peralta..."
"So do you care to tell us what pearls of wisdom were bestowed upon you while we sat here and watched you stare at a rat?" Rain drawled, picking Quinn up and setting him upright only for the squirtle to roll onto his back once more.
Flame tried to summarise what had been said as best as he could. It was disappointingly easy considering the fact that there wasn't much information to be revealed from the conversation. They knew Ice was powerful and had already doubted that the raticate with one ear would be able to get them out easily. But all the same, there was still some insight to be gained.
"So you're saying that some of Ice's pokemon are rebellious." Sparky said, shrugging her jacket off and folding it to make a nest for Captain, "Well, that's a bit of a relief. At least we now know that not everything is trying to kill us."
"Oh yippee yay hooray." Rain snorted, rolling his eyes, "How do you think we can tell apart who's trying to kill us and who isn't? If they've been sent to fight us, they'll fight us. And who cares if some of Ice's pokemon don't agree with him? It doesn't matter how they think if they don't act."
Sparky rolled her eyes back at him, "Well, aren't you a bright ray of sunshine. Try being a little optimistic for once."
"There's a difference between optimism and being an idiot. I prefer not to be the latter."
"So we can only leave here if Ice thinks we're ready." Leaf took the notebook from Rain's hands and read over it a few times, "What did they mean by 'when we're ready'? Ready for what?"
Flame shrugged and tried to keep his expression blank. He didn't want the others to see how sick that detail made him feel. 'Ready for what', indeed. The phrase implied that the maze wasn't all Ice was planning. It almost sounded like this hellhole was just the beginning and there was something even bigger waiting for them in the real world.
Not wanting to look anyone in the eye, he pulled off his vest and rolled it into a pillow. Careful not to disturb Ignus from her slumber, he set the sleeping lizard down on the ground beside him, lay down, closed his eyes and tried to shut out the sound of Sparky, Rain and Leaf contemplating whether or not they'd make it out alive.
