Chapter 15 - The Escape Part 02

Castelia City – Main Street – South Section

As instructed, Aqua and I ran as fast as we could through the alley, wanting to put as much distance away from the hideout as we could within a matter of minutes if not less before Purrloin realizes we are not inside the building anymore and then she would send her gang out into the city to search for us.

The alley was slightly dark, lit up dimly by one overhead streetlight flickering on and off. Overturned trash, old mattresses piled up against buildings, yet the path forward towards the main street remained clear for a straight shot out of the alley, and then after heading right, it would be a straight shot once again towards the eastern gate we would be out of the city, and we would be free.

But before we had reached the exit of the alley, Aqua pulled me back stopping me and dragged me behind a nearby trashcan. Before I could protest, she whispered. "Quiet. Look… I think…" I waited, not knowing the reason Aqua had stopped me and hiding behind a trashcan, but then we saw it; a dark figure walking past the entrance of the alley with another. It was human, but not just any human; these two were the same armed soldier's as the ones from the Savior's building two days ago. Leaning over the trash to get a better look out into the main street, I noticed that it wasn't just the two armed soldiers; it was over twenty of them.

"Another vision?" I whispered, hiding back behind the trashcan.

"I got it when I was daydreaming in medical this morning. If we did run out there…" she gulped. "They wouldn't capture us. They would only kill us by shooting us."

"So what do we do?" I asked her, hoping another vision would pop up and help us get through this. But she shook her head. With the soldiers out there, back then I thought they were searching the city for me, Aqua, Leafeon, and Noctowl after what we did by taking all of those supplies in the Savior's building, revenge probably. So they would kill us if we were seen by them. No other option but to sneak our way through the city to escape. It would be tricky and it would take a lot of time we would need to get as far as we could away from the city. Looking to where the soldiers had walked off to, I noticed there were a few trash cans almost near the wall of the building to the left. A closer, but cautious look around the corner next to the trash cans I could see a line of cars leading right down the street. Looking back down the alley where the hideout was, I didn't want to chance going back down there, not wanting to see Purrloin's gang there, or her bodyguards. So going through the main street was our only option, hiding amongst the shadows staying as low as possible to try and get ourselves to the east gate.

"Aqua, we must go through the main street, we can't go back. We just have to keep moving forward." I whispered. Aqua shook her head.

"No, we'll be killed. My vision showed me this morning that those humans will kill us if they see us. Look how many there are out there." She pointed with her paw. "I don't know when the vision happens. All I know that it does happen in a place like this one, or similar. The visions I see can be changed, we can go back and try another alley, but going out there and my vision will become a reality."

"Purrloin's gang is back there. And who knows where that alley will take us, it may lead us to a dead end, and we'll be back here." I whispered back. I didn't want Purrloin's gang to get a hold of Aqua or let Purrloin hurt her like she was going to do earlier with a mallet. We had to get out of this city and fast, I didn't like it either, wanting to find an alternative way through this, but we had no choice. I turned to face her, "Aqua, it's either this or… trying our luck with heading back down the alley, past that hideout to check whether or not the alley would lead us to a better and out of sight path towards or out of the city instead of a dead. By the time we return, the courtyard would probably be live with Purrloin's guards. And let's not forget; we do know some moves that may help get us through this, to defend ourselves against the human soldiers. I know you don't want to, and I certainly don't want to either but we have no other option if we want to escape this city. I'm sorry."

Aqua slowly turned her head towards the exit of the alley and out towards the main street, a look of uncertainty on her face mixed with fear. It took her a moment before she turned back to me and nodded her head. "Okay, Zack…" Quickly, she walked up to me and held my left before we began with this. Taking one last look back at the alley now, perhaps our last moment together, our last moment alive and temporarily safe, we left the alley together.

Leaving the alley and into the unusual dark street illuminated by only two streetlights at one end of the street; one next to the east gate, and the other a little bit to the left near the center. Twenty guards I could count, seven patrolling near the center, six walking in pairs of two a few meters distance apart patrolling the street, their flashlights searching shop windows, inside car windows they passed but never straying from the path or walking down an alley they passed, and finally seven standing right in front of the east gate with a van parked beside it.

With her paw in mine, we crouched down low after leaving the alley and crawled to the trashcans on the left providing us with good cover from the soldiers. After peeking my head out to look at the east gate, from how many there were and how close they were to the gate. We couldn't go through there, especially not with this many soldiers patrolling the area. "There are guards standing outside the gate." I pointed, but Aqua didn't look, too anxious of being caught by the soldiers. "That was the only route out of the city we wanted to go and it's blocked… I guess our only other option is to head up north from here." Aqua stayed silent but nodded her head, clutching my paw a little bit tighter, refusing to let go. I kept her close while we crawled to the cars staying close to them so the guards patrolling the street while they passed wouldn't notice us on the other side. We only stopped a few times when they shined their flashlights on the cars we were hiding behind, then they would move on to the next one, and then the next one repeating every circular loop they made up and down the street.

Aqua and I came to a stop after we reached the final car parked outside a closed down restaurant of some kind near a street which if followed would get us to the north gate, but that would be a problem with how many guards were patrolling that street, a sight which made mine and Aqua's eyes widen in shock at the amount of soldiers patrolling the street. There were so many of them, maybe more than fifty of them patrolling the street, opening the doors of the stores they approached, searching for something, issuing commands to certain teams of soldiers to search the store across the street, the business two buildings down, to check out one of the parked trucks in the middle of the street. Yeah, that street was a one hundred percent no on going through there, so we had to come up with something else to escape this city. Being seen would only cause trouble, and that was something we didn't want, so we had to be smart about this and think of something else, to search for an alternative route. A slower route perhaps, but a route that doesn't have this many soldiers.

Carefully peeking around the boot of the car, the last two guards out on patrol was already passing us ready to circle back around. And then I saw it, just across the street on the right of behind a building at the corner was another alley. "Aqua, look!" I pointed out the alley to her. "If we take that alley, we can get out of the city that way, I think."

Aqua looked where I was pointing, then immediately moved back behind the car completely. "But we'll have to get to the other side; with all of the guards patrolling the area… how will we even do that? They'll see us if we try to run across." She was right, they would see us if we tried, even if we tried to hide in the darkness they would definitely see us before we could make it halfway across, and then most soldiers would be alerted to us. If we tried to use any moves to get across to distract soldiers leading them to another part of the street it would probably arise caution amongst the guards, and we didn't have a move that would provide us with a small enough of a projectile to hit a car on the other side of the street. Aqua's Ice Beam was too broad to use and still fresh, not yet mastered. The guards would see, no matter what we used it for.

Carefully, I took another look at their patrol to see if I could see anything that would help us. After some time of staying hidden behind the car, I saw it.

There was a blind spot in their patrol; their loop up and down the street wasn't a continuous one of three pairs of two guards patrolling up and down the street one after the other. By the time they reached near the east gate, two in fact group of guards would stop to talk leaving the last set of two guards alone out on patrol up and down the street. It had happened twice now, I really didn't think they did it that often but I suppose walking up and down the same street for a long time they would stop at some point. I told Aqua about this, pointing out how some stopped while one set of two continued on patrol alone.

Aqua glanced at the other group of seven soldiers on the left side us near the center, they were busy with something, not looking our way. "Do you think we can do this?"

"It is risky… we just gotta wait for the opportune moment to make our move, to time it right. And with a little luck we should make it across without them seeing us. But if they do, we just gotta run for it and dare I say it; hope that the soldiers don't see us or find us." Her paw tightened in mine, her breathing a little fast when we crouched closer to the edge of the car, watching the guards patrol the street. When two sets of guards stood at near the gate, the only two guards made their rounds, walking closer to our car before walking back around to return to the other side. No other guards were looking our way, we had the perfect opportunity to make our move to the alley across the street and continue from there, and so we did.

Crouching low, we moved as fast as we could, keeping my eye on the guards on the right walking back to the east gate if they decide to look back or return, then at the guards on the left. All of them were busy. Then by the time we had reached the halfway point, we heard it from the guards on the far right near the gate of the city. "Got 'em!" Both of us froze, almost panicking and jolting up immediately to make a run for the alley, until…

"Get off me man, I work here!" We looked, at a building beside the east gate; several soldiers could be seen dragging a man and woman outside pointing their guns at them. "We still have two more days here! You can't do this!"

"Shut up! You were warned to leave earlier!" One of the soldiers yelled, wrapping their wrists together before dragging them off somewhere else. Quickly, we crouched as fast as we could, almost jogging now to the entrance of the alley, passing one of the parked cars beside the building, until we were finally through. After going farther in, we hid behind a set of trashcans to catch some air… yeah, not catching any fresh air with the trashcans next to us, but it was a relief that we got passed them.

"I-I can't believe we got passed them…" I sighed, glancing towards the street, no soldiers were in pursuit of us, and so this was good. "All we gotta do is move up and continue on."

"It felt like we just walked up those stairs again in that Savior's building. Remember?" She asked. "It was exhausting, I was nervous just going further up fearing we would be caught. In some way with the street and all of those guards, it was kind of like that. But we have nowhere to run to, no building for us to hide inside this time." We looked at one another. "It's just the two of us out here, we need to be careful. Let's not do something like that again; I almost had a heart-attack."

I nodded. But with this many soldiers out here, we would most likely encounter more soldiers from here to the north gate.

It was a miracle that we had managed to get by without any one of them seeing us. A miracle we had walked throughout the majority of the city without being sighted. Maybe I had Aqua on that to call out the few close calls we had with the soldiers appearing all of a sudden in an alley to search for something I caught from a few talking about something as the 'Target' not being located yet. I wasn't sure why they were killing everything or kidnapping everyone they saw or who these even guys were but we slipped by them. Through the dark streets, passing each building staying as low as we possibly could proved to be a difficult one, a long walk through the city with its population only being the soldiers on the hunt for their target and not much else. But there was bad news for us, both the east gate and north gate had patrol guards standing outside them, so there was no way we could escape through either one of them. But we refused to give up, there was one other way we could get through, a place we heard a few times while sneaking past the guards not yet being patrolled by any guards at all; the train station and that the trains were still running.

Castelia City – Train Station

The station unlike the streets wasn't patrolled by any of the guards we saw out in the city, but instead it had several humans, some workers there at the station, and a few trying to get on some trains to leave the city. The station was old going as far back as almost fifty years old, built by old bricks that have been here since keeping the place up still strong. The walls painted a lime green color all over, kiosks selling muffins, donuts, coffee, and cafes at the side near the station entrance and just opposite the platform where a few passengers were just about to board before the trains left. Some trains would be leaving within the hour all heading to various places of the region, although one train that garnered interest for Aqua an I was one heading directly to Black City, a city on the opposite side of the Unova region, and going south from there would eventually if not a long trip would lead us to Nuvema Town. It looked as though that train would be the best one to get one since the others were all heading north of here by one or two cities apart.

Holding Aqua's paw, together we walked to the train, hoping to find some place for us to hide ourselves in until we arrive. Passing the barriers and walking towards the platform where the Black City train was heading to, leaving the station within thirty minutes, we stopped, and then quickly ran back. Five guards near the front of the train stepped off the train and began walking down the platform and towards us. They would've seen us if we lingered there any longer, so we hid behind a bench and crawled away to another platform with another train, a larger train with many boxcars attached and ready to go. When we approached the next platform, thankfully it was empty, giving us time to catch a breath or two and see where the guards were and what they would do next.

"Zack, what do we do?" Aqua clutched my arm close to her. I looked over at the guards on the other platform from the side of the boxcar; they remained there and patrolled the area, checking the IDs of all the people that passed through to board the train. I looked up at the timetable. This train we hid by was going to go to a city known as Nimbasa City in ten minutes from now.

I pointed my paw up at the timetable. "Aqua, this is going to be leaving soon. We should take this one and get out of the city. It doesn't look like the guards are going to be moving any time soon. We have to take this one. It'll be a longer journey than we originally planned, but at least we'll be safe." Aqua sighed happily, smiling at me but stayed silent, as if to say we finally made it.

"Hey, I found them!" We heard behind me, but it wasn't the guards, it was a voice we recognized; Jolty. Looking back, we saw Jolty the Umbreon running at us stopping a few meters apart from us with Leafeon and their son Eevee catching up

"W-what are you guys doing-" I was surprised at seeing them here, but even more surprised when I saw Jolty taking up a fighting stance, as if ready to strike at something, or at us… "J-Jolty, what are you doing?"

"Stay back Leafeon," he growled, "I got him! Just keep Eevee back and this will be over in a minute."

"Jolty, what's going on?" Aqua squeaked, but Jolty only growled more in response. "Why are doing this? There are guards just right over there on the other platform. If you start fighting they'll notice and come after us. Why are you doing this?" Audino said Purrloin's gang would come after them, but I never expected Jolty and his family to come after us like this.

"Leafeon, grab Aqua with your Vine Whip, make sure she doesn't run away. I got Zack, he won't run from-" A Vine Whip did come, but not at Aqua. Instead Leafeon used Vine Whip to strike Jolty across the face, and hard. Jolty shocked, slowly turned back to Leafeon as she approached him, a glare in her eyes with some tears leaking, and instead used her paws to slap him across the face. "L-Leafeon… I don't…"

"Jolty, stop it!"

"Leafeon, I-I'm only doing this to help us." He tried to explain, covering the slap mark Leafeon made across his face with his own paw. "Purrloin is offering the one who finds them and bring them back to the hideout a lot of caps. So many caps we'll be set for life. Eevee will have everything he'll ever want and we won't have to worry about the guards anymore."

"No! No…" She spat, before sobbing, shaking her head and slapping him across the face with her paw, but there wasn't much force to it and instead only looked as though she were patting him instead. "I don't want to go back to that place… that awful place, I hate It." she sobbed, looking up at him as she did almost breaking down into tears. "I never wanted to be a part of her gang. Purrloin's cruel, nasty gang who punish those that make a minor accident, breaking a cup and then having one of her thugs or her beat them senselessly. They almost went after our son after he left the hideout. Did you forget that? Did you forget all of the things they said they would do to our son if he or any one of us went out of line?" Jolty stared at his mate, his ears dropped, but stayed silent. "They would kill him… make us watch while Purrloin would torture him, our son until he died. And Purrloin knows how to make it last a long time. I wanted to leave that place a long time ago with our son so he could have a better life out of this city, away from Purrloin. I had even asked Audino and Metagross if they would help us to escape, she accepted. I just want my son to live a happy life. Don' you want him to live a happy life? Away from the gangs? The fear on having Purrloin or her bodyguards from ganging up on you and attacking you just by glancing their way for a moment? I don't ever want him to become like her, to be included as a bodyguard, pushing Pokemon around like they are nothing. What kind of life is that for anyone?"

Jolty looks to his son to see him shivering behind his mother. He did that a lot when they argued. The young Pokemon had seen a lot of bad at the hideout. Jolty did want him to have a better life, and he thought by getting caps he could accomplish that. He would be teaching his son that this was the way he should be living. "B-but if we did escape… Purrloin or her bodyguards would come after us." A tear trickled down his cheek. "They would hurt you again, Leafeon. I don't want our son to be hurt or you. I don't know what to do."

Leafeon walked up to him and hugged him with her paws. "Jolty, we'll be alright if we stay together and always be on the move. I'm sure Purrloin won't ever find us, that one day she might give up on us. We'll find someplace where we can be safe, we won't ever have to run ever again."

Jolty then asks "Are you sure this is what you want? To do this right here and now, escape the city before Purrloin realizes we are gone?" Leafeon pushed away and nodded with a smile. Jolty and Leafeon looked at us, "Zack, Aqua… I'm sorry, I was stupid. But you guys need to get out of the city while you can. Her bodyguards are everywhere."

"What about you three?" Aqua asked, before all of us jumped immediately after when the freighter had blown its horn ready to depart.

"It'll be safer if we all split up. We'll find a way out of the city ourselves."

Leafeon quickly moved in to hug the both of us, with Eevee following to hug Aqua. "Good luck, you two. I'm sure if luck is on our sides we'll see each other again somewhere out there. Take care." And with that, all five of us ran in our separate directions; Aqua and I running as fast as we could towards one of a few open boxcar doors, and Jolty, Leafeon with their son in the opposite direction and back out of the station through the entrance, earning the attention of a few soldiers noticing the family escape the station, and hopefully soon the city safe from harm.

We finally climbed up inside one of the few open boxcars, setting down against a sack of seeds stored inside stacked in a pile at the back as if they were all thrown inside. A little uncomfortable to rest against, but the best thing we had to celebrate our freedom from the city. We looked at each other and smiled without saying a word, I guess we were just exhausted after everything that day. But we were free from Purrloin's gang and our goal to get to Nuvema Town was still set. It would be a long one, perhaps weeks or months, but it felt good to be away from their knowing we were safe.

Castelia City – North Gate

Thirty armed guards stood aiming their weapons at many of Purrloin's Pokemon including Purrloin herself at the front with Lucian kneeling beside her with their paws on top of their heads as instructed to them or else they would have their heads blown off, an order some of Purrloin's gang had to do in order to not just survive but to continue with their game.

Valentine still wearing his lab coat yawned as he exited the van adjusting his glasses as he approached one of the soldiers aiming his weapon at the Pokemon. "So, what the heck happened here? Pokemon, huh? Didn't think there were any left in this city after we came. Not this many, but less than this."

"We found them wandering the city. Orders were to capture any remaining Pokemon within the city, by orders of the cap-"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah we get it." He interrupted the solider. "The Cap decided to go AWOL on us not two days in. He and his daughter are gone so we can assume he took his daughter and ran off… somewhere. So now I am in charge, a little early but expected because of how predictable the captain was; lack of sleep for days, glancing at a photo of his daughter every day, pacing up and down the city almost nonstop. The signs were all there, and no one pointed it out, except for me that is. The man was scared for not his own life but for his own daughter. Any parents would be if their child's life was on the line, which his daughter's life was. And so he upped and vanished."

When the scientist had walked further down the line of soldiers, the soldier Valentine had talked too glanced to another soldier on his right, and he looked at him whispering. "I liked the captain a lot more than this nut."

Then all of the soldiers had stopped as they including Purrloin's gang noticed high above the city Shiny Latias at top speed fly down towards them stopping directly in front of Valentine, sending a small gust of wind almost knocking off his glasses, from which he easily adjusted with his index finger.

Shiny Latias, still wearing the Latias headed helmet turned her head at Purrloin's gang staring at each member in the eye as they too looked directly at her, some with confusion, others anxiety for what the humans were about to do to them and who the Shiny Latias was. "And who are they, Valentine?" She asked, levitating closer towards the Pokemon, searching for a Pokemon amongst the crowd she wanted to find, but couldn't because I was not there.

"Pokemon we found left in the city still."

Shiny Latias levitated a little closer to the Pokemon and asked "I am looking for someone. He is a white Dewott with black and red eyes." It was all she said to them, noticing that all of them reacted to that; she even caught some of them saying the name 'Zack' she smirked. "We are looking for him. Tell us now where we might find him and we will let you all go."

"We're looking for him too." Shiny Latias lowered her head down at Purrloin to find that she too was also smirking, readying her claws. Something Shiny Latias noticed. "I take it you are his friend?"

"You could say that. Are you his friend? Someone he cares for? Are you his ally?" She asked, but Purrloin didn't answer either one of them, not willingly. She instead swiped her paw at her throat, intending to stab Shiny Latias with Purrloin's claw. Purrloin had figured she was the human soldier's leader, and with their leader dying, she assumed it would leave the rest of the soldiers all too shocked for her to order the rest of her gang to attack the humans and continue with the game. She was wasting so much time already, that every second she wasted felt like hours had passed granting Aqua and I more time to get away.

Purrloin's claw had touched the Latias' throat, but it didn't pierce the skin to draw even the slightest of blood. She gasped as a purple-like aura completely surrounding her paw, and then she glanced up at Shiny Latias' visible through her open visor staring at her. "Nice try. You would've succeeded if I hadn't seen you ready your paw like that when I asked. Now who is Zack Raines to you? Why are you all after him?"

"We are trying to get him back from that venomous Oshawott bitch!" She fought, still trying to push her claw into Shiny Latias' throat. "She took him away from us! She needs to die!"

"Oh? And where does that leave Zack then? Do you plan on killing him?"

"No. Only the Oshawott needs to die. So unhand me at once you stupid Latias so me and my gang can catch up to- gak!" Shiny Latias grabbed hold of Purrloin's throat with her Psychic, strangling her while lifting her up off the ground.

"Are you calling me stupid?" She asked in a voice rather dull, holding Purrloin up closer to her face. "In my position, you and you gang are helpless against me alone. I could easily wipe all of you out with a single blast leaving nothing but bits of flesh. I don't take too kindly to insults directed at me, or else they'd be punished for it." She glanced over Purrloin and at her gang. "Maybe I should kill all of them leaving you alone. Do you want me to? Or do you want to apologize to me for saying I am stupid, which I am obviously not?"

Purrloin, despite being held up by Shiny Latias' Psychic grasp struggled out words Shiny Latias could identify as 'I'm s-sorry' as best as she could, then gasping for air once Shiny Latias released her, dropping her to the ground.

Shiny Latias lowered herself to be at Purrloin's level, helping her up with her paw. "I forgive you. I believe you and I could become allies." She said, making Purrloin raise an eye. "You see; Zack… he… well I need him- I mean, I want to find him as much as you do. Now I if Zack has already escaped the city, where would he go? Do you have any idea as to where he might have gone to?"

"N-no…" Purrloin coughed, kneeling now. "He didn't say where he was going. The Oshawott just grabbed him and ran off!"

"An Oshawott you say?"

Purrloin nodded. "A shiny one, a female one, Zack came into our gang together on the same day we found him injured washed up on the beach."

Shiny Latias turned towards Valentine, standing there amongst the soldiers with his arms crossed as he listened in, only to Shiny Latias who spoke in the human tongue almost all the time except for Purrloin. "Could this Oshawott be your one you have been searching for Valentine? The same shiny Oshawott that you experimented on years ago?"

Valentine adjusted his glasses again, it wasn't really necessary. "Well it could be. Although the chances that this Oshawott being the same one that I had the fortune on treating at my lab with Team Annihilation all those years ago teamed up with your white Dewott… well it is kind of slim. Although not impossible since over the years we have had reports of intel seeing a family, one family of Oshawott's similar to the three that had escaped the lab… very curious indeed."

"Hm, I think this could go both ways then." She said, turning her head back to face Purrloin, a smile hidden in the helmet. "You and I both have the same goal; you are looking for him, and so am I. We can help each other by searching this city first, then out of the city and beyond for Zack and his little Oshawott friend. We'll be a team helping each other out." Shiny Latias moved her face closer to Purrloin, their eyes locked. "You will help me search all over the Unova region with your gang to look for Zack and his Oshawott companion." Her eyes glowed brighter, her ability to control all who looked her in the eyes had taken hold of Purrloin. "You will not stop until they are found. You must not kill Zack. However, do as you want with the Oshawott. Understand Purrloin? Say that you understand."

Purrloin nodded her head first before saying "I understand. With my gang, we shall search all over the region to find and capture Zack. The Oshawott will die for taking him away from me." Shiny Latias smiled and patted Purrloin on the head.

"Good. I believe you and I will become quite the team."

To be continued...

Trivia:

Zack like the previous stories were supposed to get more travelling companions, but i wanted to try a duo team in this one.

AN: Castelia City is done and the duo are about to take on the Unova region. This chapter would've been chapter 10, but i wanted to explore more with Purrloin's gang first. Well, next chapter should be up soon. Again, thanks for reading and until next time.