As James dreamlessly slept through the chilly night and Jesse occasionally woke up and cried for her partner, Meowth crawled up into a tree and looked for his friends while atop the perch. He realized that he had left the pair behind, but at that time he had thought they were going to eventually catch up. Now Jesse nor James was in sight.

Jesse awoke at daybreak. Each time she blinked, her eyes burned horribly from the salty tears of the night before. Dusty dew covered her hair, making her once-gorgeous rose-colored hair look like a dirty clump of matted rugs. Her boots were now a brown tint because of the hardened swamp mud covering them. She sat up quickly and glanced quickly about her. Seeing no sign of life around her, she stood up, brushed off her clothes, and began to search around on the ground for footprints. She then came up with a great idea to find James. Her pokemon Arbok had a keen sense of smell, far better than hers, and would most likely be able to smell out Weezing in James's pokeball. Smiling a hopeful smile, Jesse pulled out the pokeball and through it into the air.

"Arbok, Go!" she yelled happily.

"Charrrr-bok," Arbok hissed. It looked around to see whom it was supposed to battle, but found no one. Jesse could see that the snake was confused and told it what to do. "Arbok, you know what James's Weezing smells like, right?" Arbok nodded matter-of-factly. "Bok-Charrr-bok!"

"Well, could you track Weezing down by smelling him out?"

Arbok nodded again and began to sniff the air with its burrow-like nostrils. It slithered around excitedly, trying its best to catch a whiff of the poisonous gas Weezing gave off. Within a few minutes, Arbok was onto a scent. It began to slither deeper into the forest to where Jesse supposed it would find James and his pokemon.

James sprang up, hearing the sound of something monstrous heading towards him.

"Ahhh! It's going to eat me!" he screamed frightfully.

Before he could even see the gigantic creature that was making the sound, he sprinted off as fast as he could away from it. As he ran, he looked back continually to see if the pokemon was gaining on him. While he was looking back, he couldn't see what was in front of him. Somehow, he avoided close encounters with trees, but within a few seconds, James had run himself right into a briar patch. Sharp briars ripped into his clothes and the thorns pulled him back, preventing him from moving. The sound of slithering and cracks of tree limbs came closer. James, terrified more of the creature than of his being stuck, managed to unhook himself from the briars as he pulled away, tearing much of his skin and hair out. Scraps of his clothing hung from him in tatters as he attempted to pull the extra thorns out of his face. In this wild struggle for escape, James had dropped his two pokeballs, including the one holding Weezing.

Arbok eventually came to James's dropped pokeballs. Jesse picked them up hastily, and let Weezing and Victreebell out of the pokeballs to make sure that they were James's. Weezing and Victreebell came out. Jesse immediately grew worried.

"Where's James? Why would he leave his pokemon here? He had to have been kidnapped!"

Sadly she took a wilted rose of his off of her belt loop and studied it.

"Oh…. Where is he?" Her eyes began to fill up with new tears as she paced back and forth examining the pokeballs. She walked about with her hair covering her eyes so the pokemon wouldn't see her crying. She still had to be tough and mean.

"Weezing, do you know the scent of James?"

Weezing looked confused and coughed smog. "Damn it, Weezing, you're just as stupid as J--" She stopped in the middle of her sentence, realizing what she had just said and openly sobbed to the two pokemon, who had never seen her act this way before.

"I can't believe what I almost said! What the hell is wrong with me?" she wailed. "Someone as sweet and innocent as he is doesn't deserve a wretch like me!"

James ran and ran until he was exhausted but sure the thing had stopped pursuing him. He collapsed, panting on the cool, fern-covered dirt of the forest.

"What was that?" he gasped between pants. "It sounded huge!"

Pulling himself up to a slouched sitting position, he ran a trembling hand through his periwinkle hair and realized that it was knotted and ratty now.

"Oh, I shouldn't have pulled out of that briar bush so fast." He attempted to comb his cut-up fingers through his destroyed strands, but they just wouldn't untangle.

"Owww! Oh, I can't do this!" He whined. Seeing no good coming from complaining, he thought long and hard for a minute, then decided to let out Victreebell. Maybe Victreebell could use his vine whip to whip out the tangles in his hair.

He looked down at his belt loop to grab his grass type's pokeball, but it was gone! Both of his pokemon were gone! In his last-ditch effort to find them, he looked all around where he was sitting for the pokeballs. Within a few moments, he gave up, disgusted. Not only did he lose Jesse, but now both of his pokemon! He wouldn't be able to protect himself from any wild pokemon he might encounter. James was in grave danger!