Heading out to the next route, I got an unexpected surprise.

"Hi, Red! Nice to see you, did you get a gym badge too?" Green called, happy as ever.

"Yeah," I replied. "From Brock. I guess you've got a Boulder Badge, huh?"

"Oh, yeah. Rock types are no match for Bulbasaur's grass attacks. It even learned Leech Seed!" Green said proudly. "Anyway, I was wondering if you would help me out?"

I smiled. "Name it."

She leaned in closer. "I'm trying to catch a Nidoran, but I can't find one. Maybe you could help me look? Please?"

"Is that all? Sure Green, I'll help."

So we looked around in the grassy areas bit. Green was off looking in the other side of the area when I spotted something in the grass. I quietly sneaked up to get a closer look.

There it was, a small, purple Nidoran, just sitting there taking a nap. With any luck I could catch it without even waking it up. I creeped a little closer, readying my pokeball.

Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain in my right ankle. I turned in surprise to see another Nidoran had bitten it and was coming back for more. Right behind came Green chasing after it yelling, "Come back! I just want to catch you!"

The Nidoran from before had woken up and was now attacking me from the other side in a grumpy rage. Needless to say, I had to curl up to soften the blows.

"Kitty! Use Confusion!" came Green's voice.

The Nidorans stopped attacking and fell to the ground, clutching their heads. I rolled over to see Green and her Butterfree staring down at me.

"Are you okay, Red?" she asked, helping me up.

"Yeah…I guess we're even now, huh?"

"I guess we are."

I looked down at the Nidorans. "Do you think we should catch both of them? I mean…we went through all the trouble."

Green thought a moment. "Yeah…yeah, I think we should. That way both of us can take one. The more pokemon the better, right?"

We pulled out our pokeballs and threw them at the pokemon. They immediately clicked.

After sending out all our pokemon to let the two newbies get acquainted, we noticed something strange. The two Nidorans were constantly staying by each other and were very protective of each other.

"You know what I noticed?" Green asked. "One's male and one's female. Do you think they're…?"

I shrugged. "Maybe."

After letting everyone play a bit we sent them back into their pokeballs and headed for the cave entrance.

"So this is Mt. Moon, huh?" Green said, staring up at the cliffs above. "We go through here to get to the next city?"

I nodded. "Go through here, we get to Cerulean and the next gym leader. You ready?"

We stepped in to the sounds of Zubats flapping about. We could see Onix and Geodudes lurking around in the shadows and we heard distant voices chatting away about who knows what.

We decided to make our way through the cave and began wandering about, looking for the way through.

After a while I stopped Green and whispered, "Do you hear that?"

I could barely see her shake her head, but I could have sworn I heard something.

"Listen." I again whispered. Indeed, there were voices coming from farther inside the cave. One sounded pleading, while the others sounded arrogant and hostile.

"Give it back! It's not your pokemon!" a familiar voice of a little girl yelled.

"No way! If you want it back you'll have to take it from us, little girl!" came a woman's snide voice.

"This is like taking candy from a baby! Wouldn't you say, Meowth?" This time a man's voice.

"Yeah, yeah. Just hurry up and nab the other one before someone sees us." Who did this voice belong to?

"Yellow?" I called, getting concerned.

"Someone's here! Let's get outta here, ya numbskulls!"

The sound of footsteps shuffling away as we ran to see what was going on told me all I needed to know. I arrived, panting hard, to see what had happened.

It looked as though Yellow was on the verge of tears. She was just barely holding back her sobs. She saw me and seemed to be trying even harder not to cry.

"H-hi, Red." she said, finally managing to calm herself down.

"Yellow, what happened?" I asked.

"Red! Wait up! What's going on?" Green came running up to us, but stopped short seeing Yellow. "Oh, who's this?"

I ran through introductions as quickly as possible.

"This is Yellow. We met in the Viridian Forest. Yellow, this is Green. She's a childhood friend."

Green eyed Yellow. "So, she's a friend of yours?" She looked uncomfortable.

"Never mind that!" I turned back to Yellow. "I heard someone say something about stealing a pokemon. Yellow, did they…?"

She nodded. "They took my Pikachu. What am I gonna do?"

Green snapped to attention. "What did they look like? If we can find them somewhere in this cave, we can get your pokemon back."

Yellow looked a bit taken aback, but quickly regained her composure.

"Well, it was two people. A man and a lady. The lady had long, red hair and the man had blue hair. They were wearing these white clothes with a big, red "R" on the chest. Does that help any?"

"Alright, we'll look for someone wearing those clothes." I said. "We should split up to cover more ground."

"Good idea!" Green exclaimed. "We can each take a cave path. I'll go left. Yellow, do you have any other pokemon that can battle?"

Yellow smiled. "I just caught this little one here." she said, sending out a Clefairy.

"Great," Green said as she turned in the direction of the left cave "Send me a message on the pokedex if you find anything!"

"But I haven't got a-" But Green was already gone. "Your friend seems like a serious person." Yellow mused.

I shrugged. "When she wants to be."

It seemed like hours before we got any sort of lead. We seemed to be going around in circles just trying to navigate the caves as well. Yellow seemed to be getting disheartened.

"Red," she said in a worried tone, "What if they've already made it out of the cave? They could be anywhere by now."

"We have to at least try." I insisted. "I'm not giving up until we-"

A ping told me there was a message on my pokedex. I looked down at it.

"It's from Green! She says she's found something."

We ran, following her directions, until something caught my eye. Right in the clearing in the catacombs was a pokemon that for sure shouldn't be there.

"What's a Meowth doing in a cave?" I said aloud, beginning to approach it from behind.

Yellow's face filled with shock. "Red, don't!"

But I was already there. "Hey, little fella. You lost?"

A second later, I felt a slashing pain go down my face. It had bared its claws and scratched! Now it was standing on it's hind legs and…cackling?

"The twerp's dumber then he looks! Good thing we nabbed this pokedex, huh?" it exclaimed.

I began to pull out my pokeball to fight back.

"Ah-ah-ah!" came a woman's voice. "You don't want your friend to get a taste of Koffing's Poison Gas, do you?"

There was Green with an Ekans coiled around her and a Koffing next to her head.

"Red, don't listen to them!" Green yelled. "They have Yellow's Pikachu!"

"Quiet, you little brat!" came a man's voice.

The two came out of the shadows and struck a pose.

"Prepare for trouble!" the woman said.

"Make it double!" came the man's response.

"Now be a good little boy and hand over your pokemon!"

"Wha- Who are you?" I tried to figure it out.

"Jessie!"

"James!"

"We're Team Rocket! Blast off at the speed of light!"