AN: I'm terribly sorry that this is late. I've been procrastinating writing this for a really long time. I've gotten out of the habit of writing for over four weeks… Wow, that's a real long time… I have no idea how I'm going to work on this fic this year as I'm going into my final year at school with four major projects but I have the powers of procrastination on my side, I suppose.

So without further ado, I give you the latest instalment in Singular.

Part One: Chapter Fourteen

"Where are we going?"

Ignus's question was plain and simple. Unfortunately, Flame had no answer for it.

"I'm not sure." he confessed, keeping his eyes fixed ahead of them, "I guess all we can really do is just keep looking for food and try to endure whatever Ice throws at us." his response wasn't terribly optimistic, but it really was the only thing that they could do. They had to stay alive, that was all.

It was strange. A little over a week ago, his biggest concern was what pokemon he'd chose as his starter when the day he was meant to start his journey finally rolled around. Well, he had started some kind of journey, all right. It just wasn't the kind of journey that he'd prepared himself for. He'd anticipated wild pokemon that he could capture and train for himself, with fair battles against other trainers and restful nights in hotels. Not... Whatever this was supposed to be.

Ignus mumbled in discontent and settled down onto his shoulder, "That doesn't sound like much fun."

"Are you honestly worried about having funright now?" Captain demanded from where she was walking beside them, casting a look mingled with frustration and confusion up at the charmander, "I think we have more pressing matters to think about right now. Won't you agree, Flame?"

Flame didn't want to be the one to take sides, but he had to agree with Captain on this. "Having fun won't hurt," he said carefully, "but that's a little hard to do when we're stuck in a place that looks like it's been specifically designed to hurt us."

He heard Ignus sigh, "That's a pity. I had hoped this would be a little more fun."

"What exactly had you been expecting?" Flame questioned curiously, "What did Peralta tell you before you were taken here?"

He felt Ignus shift on his shoulder as she thought up a response, "I can't remember everything since it was a while ago-"

"A week or so ago." Captain put in.

"- But I remember he told me that no matter who chose me, I had to protect them." Ignus went on as if the pikachu hadn't said anything, "He said that my trainer - you - were going to suffer. We all were going to. But he said that the suffering was going to make us all stronger."

Flame rolled his eyes, "I don't feel any stronger." he said, "If anything, this place is just making me feel beaten down and miserable." Another thought occurred to him; a question that he - for the life of him - couldn't answer. Why would Ice want them to become stronger? Why should Ice care? Flame knew that he would have gotten stronger if he'd been allowed to go on a normal training journey like any other kid.

There had to be something special about the maze. Ice must have been doing something that the Gyms couldn't provide. But what? Traumatising experiences? Maybe Ice was a believer of the phrase 'What doesn't kill you makes you stronger', but Flame knew that to be bogus; an aunt of his survived a house fire but since then needed a machine to breathe. He'd hardly call that getting stronger.

Then there was also the conclusion that Ice was simply a madman. But Flame knew that that wasn't the case. A madman wouldn't have been able to organise this entire scheme and maintain this level of control over the four of them and their pokemon.

Flame sighed, the more he thought about Ice and what the man's true intentions were, the less sense his actions made. Why did he sometimes attack them directly but other times simply send out his pokemon? Why did they have to do a pop quiz every time they wanted to eat? Why did he at one point stop them to ask how much they knew of the Gym leaders? Why did he even want to make them stronger? Ice seemed plenty strong enough to Flame.

Ignus carried on as Flame mulled over Ice's seemingly random actions, "There was also something he said, I don't know if I misheard it or not since he said it just as I was going back into my Poké Ball."

"Did you now?" Captain mused, "I'm amazed that you were actually paying attention to anything that filthy raticate was saying. I was too busy fighting tooth and claw to listen to his foul words."

Flame turned to Ignus, now intrigued, "What did he say?"

Ignus opened her mouth to respond but she was cut off by a new voice.

"Are you guys talking about something?" Flame jumped, almost sending Ignus flying. After hours of walking in silence, he'd completely forgotten that Sparky was with them. He tried his best to wipe the guilty expression off his face as he turned around to look at her from where she'd been walking behind them.

'Just something about Peralta.' He wrote in his book. He felt a stab of unease when he noticed that he was running out of pages. At home, this was hardly an issue as he'd always have spare notebooks. Even then, his mother and a few of Pallet Town's residents had become experts in deciphering his body language. It was becoming a trek to have to write down everything for the others to understand him and by the looks of it, he would soon have to find another way to communicate.

Sparky read Flame's message, "Oh? What about him?"

'Nothing important' He had a feeling that this was a lie and that whatever Ignus had to say was incredibly important. But at that moment, he really didn't have the patience to write down everything that he was being told, especially since Ignus hadn't had the chance to tell him anything in the first place.

"Nothing important?" Sparky read, her voice dripping with skepticism, "How exactly is that the case?"

Flame tried to pretend as if he hadn't heard her, keeping his eyes fixed ahead of him. "Sorry about that, what did he say?" he asked Ignus.

"I apologise on behalf of my trainer." Captain put in, "Perhaps we should fill her in on the details later."

"Perhaps." Flame conceded, glancing at Ignus, "Sorry again. So you were saying..?"

"I swear I heard him say-"

"Flame, I know you heard me." Sparky groaned, grabbing his shoulder and spinning him around, "Why isn't Peralta important? If our pokemon know something about him that we don't, I want to be told."

It took all of Flame's self control to not sigh in frustration as he scrawled down, 'I don't know anything about him because you keep interrupting Ignus before she can speak!'

"So how do you know if it's important or not?" Sparky demanded, folding her arms.

'Ok, wrong choice of words.' Flame wrote, 'Can you be quiet and let Ignus finish?'

Sparky frowned and looked at Flame, Ignus and Captain in turn, "Alright." she said at last, "But I want you to tell me exactly what she's saying. If we're going to be a team, we shouldn't start keeping secrets from one another."

Flame almost sighed again. There was a big difference between keeping a secret and not wanting to waste his limited supply of pages because Sparky was feeling left out. He didn't complain when nobody spoke to him during their long days in the maze. She had no reason to complain that he wasn't speaking to her. He had half a mind to write all this down and show it to her, but it was a lot easier to just close the book, place it back into his jacket pocket and nod.

She didn't look completely satisfied as she nodded back. Did she really think he'd break his promise? If she did, she didn't say anything. She simply turned her gaze to Ignus, "I'm sorry if I interrupted you." she said cooly, "Please continue."

"He said-"

"Look at this!"

Flame groaned aloud and Sparky turned to him. "What did she say?" she demanded.

Flame shook his head to signify that she'd been once more interrupted and pointed at where Captain was standing by one of the walls. The pikachu had wandered ahead and apparently spotted something embedded in the wall above her. As Flame approached, he caught sight of something bronze in colour glinting beneath where stone fragments had crumbled out of the wall. Flame reached out with one hand and peeled away small pieces of the wall, drawing back when a particularly sharp shard sliced his finger.

"Hang on." Sparky nudged him to one side and braced herself before delivering a kick to the area. Cracks deepened and spread, spiderwebbing across the section where the strange bronze object was buried. Pieces of stone clattered to the ground, revealing text inscribed on the foreign object. Flame helped her clear away the parts of the wall that still covered it and took a step back to survey what they had found.

It was a plaque, the date on it read that it had been created ten years ago. The surface that may have once been smooth and shiny was scratched and dull from being hidden beneath the stone wall, making the inscription itself barely legible. Sparky squinted at the words and leaned closer to the plaque as she read what she saw aloud.

"For great acts of... De... Ded... Dedication toward the... Region of... Kanto, the Indigo League... Ah... Celebrates Gym Leader G... Gai... Ger... Oh, Giovanni-" she rolled her eyes, "Can't believe I got that wrong..." she muttered to herself before continuing, "- and his fer... Formation of T... Team Rocket in an act of... La... Loyalty toward Kanto and its people."

Well, that was... Useless. Flame couldn't help but feel his heart sink in dismay. He'd been hoping for some kind of clue to get out of the maze or at least something that would tell them how to find the others. Heck, he'd settle for some kind of taunting message from Ice at this point if it actually meant that they'd be making progress to get closer to whatever he deemed to be 'ready to leave'.

Ignus's voice broke through his thoughts, "Flame?" she sounded concerned, "Listen, I'm not entirely sure what you know about them, but Peralta told me that-"

"Look at this!" Sparky cut her off before the could continue and Flame slammed the palm of his hand against his forehead. This had better be important because he was at his wit's end with all these interruptions. By the sound of Captain's sigh, he knew that the pikachu was, too.

Sparky was too preoccupied with peeling away the pieces of wall beneath the plaque to notice Flame's irritated expression, "Look, there's more writing beneath!" she tore away a handful of stones to reveal a shining part of the plaque that looked as if it had been recently installed.

All the world's a stage / And all the men and women merely players
Enjoy the show.
- Your cold-hearted friend

If the man was there at that moment, Flame wouldn't have hesitated to punch him, no matter what kind of authority he held over them or the powerful pokemon he had in his arsenal. Was that really what everything Flame and the other kids were going through was to him? A show? Something to entertain himself with? Were they nothing but toys for him to play around with until he got bored?

He took a deep breath to compose himself. No, that couldn't be the case. If he had wanted to simply torment them, he wouldn't have gone through all the effort of organising the maze. And the fact that they needed to be made 'ready' didn't add up.

"Flame!" Ignus was beginning to sound ever so slightly annoyed at the fact nobody seemed to be letting her speak, "Tell everybody to shut up and not interrupt me, because I think what Peralta might have said is really, really important!"

Flame held his hand up just as Sparky opened her mouth to tell her to shut up and nodded at Ignus, "Carry on."

Ignus took a deep breath, "Before you chose me, I didn't think it was important at all." she said, "But the longer I've been in this maze, the more I hear you and Ice mentioning this 'Team Rocket' thing."

"So? What does that have to do with anything?"

"What Peralta said to me - I swear he said 'Down with Team Rocket'."

Kojo's vines wrapped around the leg of the last raticate and he flung it across the hall. The raticate hit the ground with an ungraceful thud before scrambling to its feet and darting into the unknown after its comrades.

Leaf took a step back and ran a hand through her tangled hair with an air of disgust. She was covered in filth and her hair was disgustingly dirty. She couldn't imagine how grateful she would be for a shower at this point. However, knowing Ice, said shower would most likely have acid instead of water.

But hygiene and appearances were the least of her problems. In the (approximately) three days since she and Rain had been separated from the others, a pack of six to eight raticates would come out of nowhere and attack them every few hours. Leaf was eternally grateful for Kojo's power boost from his evolution, but the continuous fighting was wearing on the ivysaur and Quinn. The fact that healing items were suddenly becoming more scarce wasn't helping in the least. They now had to rely completely on their pokemon getting a semi-decent 'night' sleep, which was more difficult than usual due to the fact that the raticates had a nasty habit of popping up at bad times for them.

"Left?" Rain's voice broke her out of her thoughts, jerking his head in the direction of the intersection they'd stopped at for the battle. Leaf opened her mouth to respond but he had already taken the turn, Quinn trailing behind him.

She heard Kojo huff a sigh and he looked at her as if to say 'Can you believe this guy?' as he waddled along beside her on his stubby legs. Leaf couldn't help but smile a little. The ivysaur's sudden change in behaviour was unexpected but not at all unwelcome. Leaf hadn't expected him to warm up to her so quickly, though she did have her suspicions on how sincere he was being. She'd occasionally catch him casting her an exasperated glare that she had been getting used to, or see him instinctively take a few steps back when he saw her approaching before he caught himself and stayed still.

She'd never intended on being a pokemon trainer, much less being forced into it by a man in a mask. She hadn't even been interested in pokemon at all for most of her childhood, save a few times when she'd begged her parents for a new pet, only to be turned down before finally giving her and her brother a meowth. Plenty of kids at school had a pokemon, trained one even, but Leaf hadn't even considered going on a journey. They'd always sounded so unappealing to her. You would be hiking across the region, being attacked by wild pokemon as you went and were challenged to battles by other trainers before taking refuge in a Pokemon Centre or two-star hotel to escape from the brutality of it all.

That sounded like Heaven compared to where Leaf was now.

At that moment, she would have given anything to be strolling through a lush, open grassland instead of between the cold stone walls of the maze. To feel the warm sunlight on her face and gentle breeze through her hair with a backpack filled with food weighing on her back. If she was lucky, there would be nobody but her and her pokemon for miles and they'd be alone with nothing but the sounds of birdsong to keep them company.

That would be the life. Who cared about wild pokemon? She could capture whichever ones she liked and have them fight for her. Who cared about the trainers? She could train her pokemon to be strong enough to scare them all away. Who cared about the dirt? She could bathe in the cool running springs every morning. After putting up with whatever the maze threw at her, she could survive the Kanto wilderness with ease.

She stayed beside Kojo and a few paces behind Rain, lost in her own thoughts. She wouldn't travel alone in her journey, no doubt. She would bring Flame along; he'd been pleasant company despite interacting little with the rest of the group. Sparky could probably come along, too. As she was the daughter of a Gym Leader, she was bound to have invaluable knowledge about all kinds of areas regarding pokemon training. And Rain would have to be make the journey by himself. There was no way Leaf was going to let him ruin all their fun.

She stopped in her tracks, an involuntary frown crossing her face. She turned around and looked left and right.

"What is it now?" Rain had an irritated edge to his voice. But then again, he seemed to always have a somewhat irritated edge to his voice.

Leaf stared down the empty path, narrowing her eyes in confusion. For a moment, she could have sworn that she'd felt an uncomfortable prickling sensation at the back of her neck. As if she was being watched by invisible eyes. But the feeling was gone from the moment she'd turned around.

"I thought I heard something." she said, facing him again, "I thought the raticates might have come back, but maybe they haven't." It was only half a lie. She had her anxieties that the raticates were only a few turns behind them. She just knew that she'd sound stupid if she'd said that she'd 'felt them staring at her'. Rain was making fun of her considerably less due to the fact that she now had an evolved pokemon on top of the type advantage she already had over him and she didn't want that to change.

Rain just rolled his eyes and kept walking, "If we're going to fight them again, it's going to happen whether we want it to or not." he said flatly, "There's no point in getting paranoid over it."

Leaf heard Kojo snort, which she interpreted to mean 'Typical Rain. The guy needs to lighten up a little' as she hurried to catch up to him. Although she tried her best, she couldn't shake off the uneasy feeling that they were being followed for a long time.

She caught sight of the Recovery Centre before Rain about half an hour later. She called him over and crouched beside it to read the question inscribed within the rectangular outline of the compartment in the wall.

'At what level does a meowth learn the move Pay Day?'

Rain groaned in annoyance, "I hate these." he muttered half to himself, "Nobody ever remembers this kind of thing..."

But Leaf felt her heart leap as she processed the words. She remembered when her parents had given her and Root their meowth: Holt. It was right in the middle of a huge pokemon craze that had swept through the school, when all the kids brought any pokemon that so much as lived within a kilometre near their house to school to battle with. The teachers had eventually had to start confiscating pokemon at lunchtime as the entire thing soon got out of hand. But while it lasted, Leaf had been trying to research everything she could about Holt's moves so that she could battle the other kids for pocket money. The move Pay Day had stuck in her mind so much because she'd always found it so inconvenient. A move that produced money. What more could you ask for? And all you had to do was wait until your meowth grew to level-

"Seventeen." she said and the Recovery Centre's door swung open. She somehow managed to hide her victorious smirk when she caught sight of Rain's astounded expression and turned her attention to the contents of the Centre.

There was water, and a lot of it much to her relief. They'd so far managed to avoid drinking the water that Quinn produced for his attacks. Judging by the fact that it came from his mouth, Leaf didn't count on it being completely hygienic. As well as that, there were a couple of Super Potions that Leaf wasn't at all expecting. But the thing that really caught her off guard was the cake.

It was covered in blue frosting, with the words Happy Birthday written clumsily across it in rainbow chocolates and eleven unlit blue candles had been stuck into it. By the looks of it, the cake wasn't store-bought. Leaf couldn't help but snicker at the thought of Ice actually baking and decorating a cake of all things for seemingly no reason at all. It had been Leaf's birthday just a week before she'd woken up in the maze, so why would he bother-

Her gaze darted to Rain, who was standing beside her with his expression unreadable. She bit her lip and quickly glanced away, praying that he didn't think that she had been laughing at him.

But whatever he felt, he sure didn't voice any of it. "I'm not hungry, you guys can eat that." he muttered, shoving his hands into his pockets and storming down the hall. Quinn cast him a confused look before digging in. Leaf wisely decided it was best not to say anything on the subject as they carried on.

They didn't see a trace of the raticates for what Leaf estimated to be an entire day.

Ordinarily, she would have considered this to be something to be celebrated. At least, Rain appeared to be less sour and sarcastic before he went to sleep slumped against the wall as Leaf stayed up to keep watch. But she couldn't help but find the sudden silence eerie. She stayed up through the 'night', eyes on either side of the path they'd camped in, wired up to react at the slightest of movements and the softest of sounds. But as the hours dragged by, she was met with nothing more than stillness and silence.

The raticates should have been back by then. They had never left them alone for so long since the separation. As Leaf woke Rain up and lay down on the hard ground to sleep, two disturbing thoughts occurred to her.

What if the raticates hadn't attacked yet because there was something more dangerous lurking in the maze?

And if it wasn't the raticates watching her earlier, then what was?

AN: I know that meowths learn Pay Day at level 30, but back in the first generation they learned it way back at level 17. This kind of thing seems to change with every passing generation.

And some of you may have noticed by now that Peralta and Holt are named after characters from Brooklyn Nine Nine. This was actually unintentional, I only noticed after I'd named the two of them and I liked the names just the way they were. Although this Peralta is nothing like the one from the show.