The rain clouds that had stubbornly hung over Mahogany only moments ago had now mostly dispersed, with a few still unloading their burden down onto the earth. She didn't know exactly how hard though, since she could only gauge by the speed water droplets dropped down from the Pokemon Center's overhang.

She sat in the waiting area, legs drawn together to try to keep as much warmth as she could. She had already checked in a room and changed into a dry set of clothes, but she still felt soaked to the bone from the long span of time she was in heavy rain without any sort of protection.

Elizabeth sat next to her, simply looking at the ground. Arella knew she was worried for Daniel, though she was starting to think her feelings went a little past the norm. Matthew wasn't out anymore, deciding that he needed a break too after the strong headwinds they had faced getting up to the Lake of Rage.

Both trainer and pokemon looked up as one of the center's nurses walked up to them, clipboard in hand.

"You're the Pidgeot's trainer, correct?" she asked, smiling as she did.

"Yeah. . ."

"He'll be just fine, he just needs to stay here a little longer for further examination," she nodded before checking her clipboard again, "You can visit him if you want."

"I will," Elizabeth spoke up before she could even think of answer, turning to Arella, "You go do whatever you need to do, I'll stay with Daniel."

Arella almost protested, but the Beedrill seemed to have sensed it coming.

"Team Rocket uses mainly Poison types anyways, right? I won't be of much help in there even if I did go with you."

"I guess you're right," Arella laughed nervously, getting up as well, "I'll see you soon then."

"Of course."


She admitted, she never expected to see the scene inside the building in the center of Mahogany that she did when she entered.

It looked relatively inconspicuous, besides the stairway that led down below that was probably hidden before.

What surprised her, though, was what was taking place on the other side of the room from the staircase. A man was slumped against the wall, obviously in excruciating pain as his friend hovered over him. When he noticed Arella walk in, he managed to smile.

"You got a real tough ally, kiddie," he grinned, before coughing. Arella could only stare before heading down the stairs.

The house above was relatively like any other home, but below it screamed 'secret hideout'. The hallways were completely made of metal, echoing as she started to walk down it. She passed various gizmos and gadgets of all shapes and sizes, none of them she was exactly sure of what purpose they actually served. In fact, it almost looked like they did nothing at all.

As the hall echoed with her footsteps, she started thinking about what she saw upstairs. The guy looked pretty hurt, and told her that she had 'a real tough ally', which meant it definitely wasn't any of the other Team Rocket grunts.

Had Lance done that? He didn't seem like the kind of person to do that, but then again, she barely even knew him in general.

As she was thinking, she failed to notice the rather odd looking Persian statue sitting at the side of the hall, it's eyes glowing a bright red, casting a nearly invisible beam across the hallway. As she passed, the beam suddenly disappeared, and an alarm began to sound.

Surprised, Arella quickly turned around, then turned back, her brain quickly trying to register the fact that there was a wave of Magnemites heading her way from both directions.

It looked like she would have finally have to bring the new guy out.

She took the unfamiliar pokeball off of her belt, quickly releasing its contents into the hall. Before the red light could even fade away, a group of Magnemites were already down, and more so as it slowly faded off.

A disappearing red light revealed a Sudowoodo with a cigarette in it's mouth as it quickly bashed two more Magnemites together, grumbling as it did. After dumping rocks on the rest, he turned to his trainer.

"Seriously? You had to call me out of my ball for this?" he raised an eyebrow, "I have better things to do with my time."

"It could be worse, Harris," Arella smiled at him reassuringly, "I could have let you out in the rain."

Harris only grumbled, taking the cigarette out his mouth with two of his branchy fingers before smoldering it on the eye of the Magnemite that had tried to sneak up on him.

"Come on, we need to keep moving," Arella gestured towards the end of the hall before both walked towards it, Harris's footsteps echoing out a lot louder than Arella's.

Just as the end, she stopped short as she saw a shadow approaching the corner from the other side. Of course, she couldn't tell if she was relived or not when she saw that it wasn't a Team Rocket grunt, but rather Silver, his Meganium standing next to him.

"What're you doing here?" he asked, his eyes narrowing.

"What do you think I'm doing here? Taking a sight-seeing tour?" Arella raised an eyebrow.

". . .You aren't seriously thinking about getting Team Rocket out of here, are you?" he stifled a laugh.

"Well that's certainly what you aren't doing right now."

The red-head grumbled, "I would, but some trainer named Lance wiped the floor with me, then started talking about the same pussy shit that you do," he eyed the Sudowoodo ,"What are you doing with one of those anyways? Don't you already have a Graveler?"

Arella's eyes turned wide, before she looked down. After a moment of silence, she walked straight past him without saying another word, Silver only watching her go.

"Smooth," his Meganium commented, chuckling as it's trainer glared at her.