Chapter 4

Sitting at a two-person table in a shabby little restaurant, gazing absently out the window, Visora tried to remember how long it would take to reach the next town, but found that her thoughts kept wandering back to wishing that she had something other than soup to eat.

Visora wasn't really sure what kind of soup it was, but it didn't look appetizing. Little chunks of meat floated here and there, and dissolved bits of lettuce stuck miserably to the sides of the chipped bowl. She dipped her finger in the broth. It was cold.

Across from her, however, Elva devoured her own "breakfast" with an enviable gusto. Visora knew that it was because Elva had spent much of her time the night before swimming laps by the lake's edge and had probably worked up a hearty appetite, but it was still lamentable that her half sister could stand to eat such things.

Visora stood up. "When you're done, meet me outside, okay? I was thinking that we could go look for some stronger practice out in the denser forest today."

"Mmm-hmm!" Elva responded from behind her bowl, opening one blue eye to acknowledge her.

Visora stood up, wiped the crumbs from Elva's toast compulsively off the table, and headed out the door to the resentful stare of the cook in the back.

It was still kind of early in the morning, around seven, but since it was June the sun was already feebly shining over the eastern mountain ranges. Saffron City was a nice place for visiting, but Visora liked it for a different reason. Saffron was essentially the mid-point of Kanto, and if she and Elva were here, they could head out to any one of four different towns and routes to capture or train pokemon; Cerulean to the north, Vermillion to the South, Lavender to the East and Celadon to the West.

She and her sister had already been to Cerulean and Celadon; they wouldn't need to return there in any hurry. Vermillion was always an option, but for some reason Visora felt inclined to trek the lonely path to Lavender town. She had heard that the pokemon tower there was severely haunted; which usually just meant that there were tough pokemon in the area. Something that she needed more of.

Elva exited the diner then, wiping her washed hands on her jeans, and, spotting her sibling, waved energetically and bounded over. It was time to head off.

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Branches. Always with the branches. Visora swatted away what felt like the thousandth bramble as it reached desperately for her already marred and scratched face. Heaving a sigh, she stomped quickly through more underbrush, still looking for a clearing. She didn't care how big it was, so long as it was a clearing.

Perhaps this route hadn't been as good an idea as it had seemed before. Visora had had no idea that the unconventional path to Lavender would be so… unconventional.

Elva bounced happily behind her, every so often exclaiming as she thought she saw a place to sit, only to take it back a moment later and confirm that it was just "a kind of flat looking bush."

The two sisters had started out into the underbrush about half an hour after Elva had come out of the diner. It was one in the afternoon now, and there was no sign of rest–or pokemon–anywhere.

Visora sighed again. She knew that all this "roughing it" would pay off tremendously if, if, they found any pokemon here to battle. In theory, the deeper one got into the forests or caves, the stronger the wild pokemon would be, and the more their own teams would learn from the experience of battling them.

Elva, who was SOMEHOW undaunted by all of this, had now taken up the most annoying practice of jumping up and down to see over Visora's red haired head into the brambles that lay before them.

"Ooh! Ooh! Sis, I think—I see—one!" she shouted enthusiastically, voice distorted from jumping.

"Great," Visora said, half-listening. She could have sworn she heard—

Visora didn't even get a chance to finish her thought, for they were interrupted by an explosive snapping noise, the sound of air being cut by something very fast, a shrill scream from Elva, and suddenly something crashed down all around Visora.

Her first instinct was to shout like her sister, but Visora bit down on her tongue. She spun around to see her sister hanging by an ankle from a tree, desperately shoving her shirt down into her jeans, as it was flying up over her face.

Visora herself was in a cage of some sort, makeshift, obviously. She reached instinctively for the bars to lift it off over her head, but halted when she saw the nasty, two inch long razor edged barbs lining everything. The structure had no roof, but the walls were around eight feet high, enough to stop her from trying to climb out unless she wanted to get lacerated.

"Hey 'Sora?" Elva started uncertainly from above her, voice distorted and shaky. "Who do you think made these things?"

"Shhhh…!" Visora hissed angrily. "Be quiet. Maybe they didn't hear us--"

However, a rustling in the bushes to their left said otherwise.

A boy emerged from the line of trees a moment later, looking bewildered and lost.

Visora took in his features: long black hair held back in a ponytail, save for one stubborn looking lock that fell over a forehead of smooth, darkly tanned skin and a strong jaw, leading down to a sculpted collarbone. He wore no shirt beneath a thick gray mountaineering vest, odd for their climate. The boy's eyes were a warm shade of brown reminiscent of chocolate, and the fluid way he moved through the brush, blinked benignly at her, and then her sister, spoke of someone who was usually very calm and dealt with stress well.

"Um… hello there," the boy said conversationally, as if coming across people hanging upside down from trees and clamped under makeshift cages was an everyday occurrence. "You wouldn't happen to be with Team Rocket, would you?"

"Gav!" a voice hissed before Visora could open her mouth to retort. "You can't just go around asking that!"

A second figure, female, stepped into Visora's line of vision from the bushes opposite of the boy, Gav. Visora instantly figured that the girl and boy had to be siblings… they both shared the same long, silky black hair (although the girl's was styled in a flyaway, longer manner), the same bronzed skin and somewhat short-fingered hands, and—Visora thought that her eyes must be deceiving her—their eyes looked very similar in color… although the new girl's appeared to be blood red.

She supposed it must be her shirt. The girl was adorned in a cherry red t-shirt, something that would have made the inventor of camouflage clothing roll over in their grave.

But the boy was speaking now, so Visora cut off further thought and paid attention to their captors, for she now realized that these were the people who set up the damned traps. If they weren't, surely they'd be making a little more fuss about finding two girls caught in them.

"Oh, come on Ciara," laughed Gav in a soft rumble. "You overestimate TR's intelligence. I'll bet my life that if these two really WERE with the rockets," he jabbed either thumb at Visora and Elva respectively, "that they'd answer with 'uh, yeah! We sure are with Team Rocket—hey, how'd you know?'"

Ciara gave an appreciative snort and said, "Still. They may breed a new set of SMART Rockets now-a-days, you never know."

Gav however, was already reaching up and yanking at a rope and pulley attached to a tree and the top of Visora's cage, which raised it a few feet and allowed her to crawl out from underneath it. "Let her down, will you Ci?" he addressed the girl and pointed at the lazily swinging Elva.

He gained a few brownie points as he extended his hand to help Visora up, and said in an apologetic tone, "I'm so sorry… are you alright, miss?"