Time for a multi-chapter miniseries!
Rescue Effort Part 1:
Vermillion City, Kanto, 10 am…
A small group of Dex Holders was gathered by the Pokémon Center. Red stood leaning against the building, watching the two juniors in front of him while occasionally scanning the skies. Platinum and Y were seated on a bench in front of the Pokémon Center, chatting to pass the time.
Y still looked a little rigid. The Kalos girl had only met her seniors a few days ago, and understandably, she was incredibly nervous around them. She was quite eager to impress them and was trying her absolute best to not disappoint them. But the fear of accidentally offending or disappointing them was preventing her from relaxing, and ended up as rigid as a military boot camp graduate. Red tried his best to let her feel at ease, but so far, it hadn't worked.
Although, Platinum was like this too, when he first met her. She had warmed up rather quickly, however. But then again, the heiress had 10 seniors. Not 17. And not to mention the age gap.
Platinum was being very friendly to the newest junior, as she understood her feelings. She was the one to suggest on this Kanto tour. The idea was that, with the help of a couple of Kanto Dex Holders, she could take Y on a tour around Kanto, and allow her to befriend her seniors really easily. Throughout the trip, there would be plenty of opportunities to bond with the senior Dex Holders, and in time, Y would begin to relax and be more confident.
Red had mentioned this to the other Dex Holders, and Blue volunteered to come. And so far, she had yet to arrive.
"She sure is taking a while," Red muttered as he glanced at his watch. "She wanted to come this time. So she wouldn't be late."
Y looked like she wanted to say something, but closed her mouth as she felt that no one was talking to her. In order to not appear rude or up-front direct (she had been told she did that from time to time), she would not speak unless spoken to.
"Did you have something in mind?" Platinum asked her, noticing her expression.
Y jumped a little in surprise and sat up even straighter. "Oh! … Um… Perhaps we should give her a call?"
Red took out his Pokégear. "Good idea. Maybe she's just running late. But it can't hurt to check."
Y let out a short sigh of relief, and Platinum once again began to converse with her. At least Y was a bit more comfortable around her. Though just barely, thanks to the Sinnoh girl's status. Something about being an unapproachable heiress was intimidating the younger juniors.
"… She's not answering," Red said as he hung up. He tried again, and again a minute later, but still nothing. "Huh… Something's not right…"
"Perhaps we should visit her," Platinum suggested.
"Yeah. Maybe something happened." Red sent out his Aerodactyl. "Alright, let's go then. One Island isn't too far away if we fly."
Platinum sent out the Staraptor she had borrowed from her home, and Y had her Fletchinder. With their aerial transports, the 3 Dex Holders quickly headed towards One Island.
…
Red landed on the clearing in front of Blue's house. Platinum and Y followed him down, and the 3 Dex Holders returned their Pokémon.
During the flight, Red had tried to call Blue a few more times, but there still wasn't an answer. Blue didn't call back either, and he was getting more and more worried.
He approached the house and knocked on the front door. As feared, there was no answer. While he tried again and again, Y took the time to briefly check over her appearance, making sure that she didn't look unkempt. In the event that Blue was inside, she didn't want to look messy. Platinum noticed the motion and gave her a helping hand.
Y gave her senior a polite bow, thanking her for the assistance. But as she rose, something caught her eye from inside the house. Platinum saw the sudden change in her junior's expression and looked up as well. To her surprise, she saw a man in the second floor, briefly looking through the window before hastily disappearing from sight.
"Senior, there is someone inside!" Platinum said.
"What? Who?" Red asked.
"I do not know," the heiress answered. "A man who I do not recognize."
"What? … Blue's parents are in Johto for a vacation… so who could…" Red's expression turned rigid and he turned to face the door again. "… You two, circle the house. See if you can spot anything unusual."
Platinum and Y quickly began to circle around the house, going opposite directions, scanning every detail. There were no movements from inside the house. So whoever this intruder was, he was likely hiding.
Y soon spotted something. There was a window that was broken. It appeared as if the intruder had broken the window in order to unlock it from the inside, thereby allowing him entry into the house. Y quickly ran back towards Red to inform him.
"Um… sir," she said as she approached him. "I found a broken window. I think it's caused by whoever's inside."
"Then we're going in," Red said. He glanced at the door for a second before he began to move. "Normally, I'd suggest in having someone posted out here in case whoever's in there decides to run out, but right now, with just three of us, it's too dangerous. We're all going in."
Red reached the broken window, which Platinum had been guarding. Red quickly opened the window, being careful with the broken shards. Since the intruder inside knew they were coming, there was no need for stealth. He entered through the opening and then quickly opened the backdoor to the house to allow the two girls in.
The three Dex Holders charged upstairs. As they ran up the stairs, the noticed various traces of blood and dents on the walls, indicating that there had been some sort of a fight here recently. With Red in the lead, they soon reached Blue's room.
He opened the door and charged inside, getting ready for a fight. Y entered as well, covering her senior's blind side, while Platinum remained behind.
There was no one in the room, but Red froze upon seeing its state. There was a lot more blood here, and the desk and chair were broken. All drawers and closets seemed to have been ransacked as well, as all sorts of clothes were strewn around, some absorbing the blood on the floor.
Red crouched beside Blue's bed and spotted a bloody handprint on the wall. The size of the handprint indicated that it belonged to a girl. … Blue…
Suddenly, there was motion from behind, as if someone was bolting out of their hiding place and making a mad dash towards the exit. The three Dex Holders spun around and saw a man rushing towards the stairs.
Red jumped up to his feet and ran after him, but Y was faster. The girl leapt towards the intruder and managed to grab his leg before he reached the stairs. The intruder ran down the stairs anyways, dragging the girl with him. Y held onto his leg to try to stop him, but the man overpowered her and she ended up holding on as she slid down the stairs, and gasped as each stair slammed into her chest.
Thanks to her efforts, the man tripped on the final couple of stairs and crashed into the floor. Y hit the floor next to him, and she scrambled up to her feet with her arms wrapped around her chest. The intruder jumped up to his feet before the girl could recover from the tumble and smashed the back of his hand into her face to push her aside. Y still remained on her feet, so the intruder kicked her on the chest to knock her onto the stairs, hoping to delay the other two Dex Holders enough to make his escape.
Platinum quickly knelt in front of her junior to check her condition. Red couldn't allow the intruder to escape and he jumped over his two juniors to continue his pursuit. The intruder slammed the door shut on his way out, forcing Red to spend the time to open the door and thereby lose all of his momentum. By the time the Kanto Dex Holder had charged outside, the intruder was nowhere to be seen. Red didn't give up so easily and circled around the house to see if he could spot the intruder running away, but found nothing.
After circling around the house for two full rotations, Red cursed and entered Blue's house again. Platinum was seated next to Y on the stairs, with a hand on her junior's back, trying to help her catch her breath. The Kalos Dex Holder was coughing repeatedly with her hands on her chest.
"Y, are you okay?" Red asked as he crouched in front of her.
The girl coughed again, but tried to sit up straight. "Yes. I – I can manage…"
"Senior, did you catch him?" Platinum asked, although she knew the answer given Red's expression and the fact that there was no one behind him.
"No. He's gone. He just disappeared. Probably had an Abra or something for Teleport," Red answered with a sigh.
"I'm so sorry," Y murmured, lowering her head in shame. "I could've held on longer. I could've stopped him."
"That's not true," Red said. "You did everything you could, and more than what you should. You shouldn't risk yourself like that, being dragged down the stairs with him."
"But because I couldn't hold onto him, he's gone," Y said.
"While I do believe that Y should not have risked herself so dangerously, I am afraid that we have lost our only lead on knowing what has happened to senior Blue," Platinum said worriedly. "Capturing the intruder would have provided us critical information."
Red lightly shook his head. "Not necessarily. While catching that guy certainly would've helped, I wouldn't say that we lost our only lead. Knowing Blue, if something bad was happening to her, she'd have multiple contingency plans in motion. I know that she programmed a little beacon on her necklace pendant in case she's in trouble somewhere and need us to reach her. And that is when she's on the move. This is her house. There are bound to be clues left behind for us."
"I see. While we do not know what senior Blue has left for us, she has left something for us to find. This… may be difficult," Platinum said with a short sigh.
"Yeah. … Let's split up and start searching," Red said. "I'll search around Blue's room. You two find the other places with blood and search the area."
The three Dex Holders scattered around the house to begin searching. Red searched Blue's room as he said. Platinum searched the stairs and the areas leading up to the front and back doors. Y searched other areas, such as the kitchen and dinner table, in case something of interest would be there.
After an hour of searching, Red found something. Underneath Blue's bed, he found one of the girl's earrings. Blue only had 3 pieces of jewelry that Red knew about. Her necklace and two earrings. She would never drop any of them. And it would certainly not end up underneath the bed, close to the wall, with no dust on it. … Blue must've tossed this as whatever had happened to her.
Red rotated the earring around, trying to spot something unusual about it. But like most of Blue's stuff, whatever tampering she had done was invisible. He went over to Blue's laptop, and found it on. It seemed that the intruder was trying to access something from her computer, but failed, either due to time restraints (as Red, Platinum, and Y were making their way inside), or due to encryption and other restrictions that Blue had created.
Red accessed the camera feature on the laptop and moved the necklace towards the small camera lens on the monitor. As hoped, the camera detected something specific on the earring, and the pre-programmed routine started to run.
A video file was downloaded from somewhere and a video player program opened up to play it.
It was a recording of what happened. So Blue had indeed left a trail for the other Dex Holders.
The current screen showed a reflection of Blue, as the girl was looking into a mirror. She seemed to be quite worried. The video was recorded from a small lens embedded onto her earring, apparently, as Blue's finger blocked the screen as it passed by the earring.
"Is it running? … Okay, it is," Blue said in the recording. She cast a worried glance at her door. "… Someone's in here… A window just broke, and I can hear movement. I was about to leave to meet up with Red, Platinum, and Y. But right now… If anything happens…"
Something loud smashed outside and Blue gasped. She quickly moved towards the corner of her room, hiding from plain sight. There was another loud smashing noise as the door burst open. Blue was hidden behind the door, so she wouldn't be seen. Yet.
The room suddenly became visible as the intruder closed the door. And now Red could see that there were two. One of them, he recognized as the guy that he had chased. The other guy was new to him.
"Ah, there you are," said one of the men. "We've been looking for you."
Blue didn't say anything. When one of them approached, she quickly sidestepped and shoved him into the wall. She ducked underneath a punch swung by the other guy and shoved him into his friend, trying to buy herself time to escape.
But even as she turned around to face the doorway, she yelped and she was dragged backwards. She turned around again, and even through the flurry of hair, Red could see that one of the intruders had grabbed Blue by her hair and was forcefully yanking her backwards.
Blue gasped and doubled over as she received a punch to her stomach. Her hair once again obstructed the view of the tiny camera lens so Red couldn't see what exactly happened, but he surmised that the intruders had slammed the girl's head into the wall to knock her down to the floor. One of the intruders suddenly appeared on the screen and began to strangle Blue. The girl began to gasp and choke and her hands briefly appeared on the screen as she tried to loosen the grip around her throat.
The man suddenly moved closer towards the camera as he applied more pressure. Blue took advantage and with her fingernails, quickly swiped at the man's eyes. The man howled in pain and released Blue, allowing her to gasp for air and back away. The man's partner tried to subdue her again, but she fought back once more. She kicked him repeatedly in the leg to force him to back off and scrambled up to her feet.
The moment she had gotten up, a fist flashed across the screen as Blue took a punch to the face. She yelped in pain again as she was pushed into the wall once more. The man who had been swiped suddenly appeared on the screen, with blood coming from one of his eyes, which he clenched shut.
"You're going to pay for that, you little bitch," he growled out, looking at the blood on his hand.
One-Eye punched Blue in the face once again and shoved her towards the desk. The girl screamed in pain as she crashed into the corner of the desk. The camera "zoomed in" on the desk's surface as Blue doubled over in front of it for a short while before she slid off to the side and hit the floor hard.
Blue slowly looked down at her body. Her hands were pressed firmly against her stomach. She pulled her hand up and there was a lot of blood on her palm. Red couldn't see the details of the injury, as the wound was obstructed from the camera by the girl's breasts, but given the amount of blood visible, he could tell that it was quite bad. The camera now faced the desk, and Red could see that the top corner had a lot of blood on it.
One-Eye saw the wound and began to stomp on it angrily. He grabbed her by the throat and roughly threw her towards the wall between the desk and the bed. Again, Blue hit the wall hard and collapsed onto the floor.
The girl's hand suddenly appeared on the screen. And in between her fingers was her earring. She held it with a bloodied trembling hand. Though her hand had a lot of blood, the tip of her fingers did not, so the earring did not get any blood on it. Blue looked at it for a second before she tossed it under her bed.
The screen shook violently and Blue gasped in pain as One-Eye (presumably) continued to attack. Blue's pained gasps continued for a short while before she lost consciousness in the unforgiving kicks.
"Hey, hey! We need her alive," a man's voice said from the back, presumably belonging to One-Eye's friend.
"I know that! I'm just softening her up so that she'll talk later."
"Well, it sure looks like you're trying to kill her."
"Look, I don't need you to tell me what to do, alright? You just take a look at her computer to see if you can get anything. I'll take this bitch back to the place so we can begin."
One-Eye grabbed Blue by her neck and began to drag her out of the room. The screen began to blur as the two earrings were getting too far away from each other. And before the screen turned completely black, Red could see that One-Eye had thrown Blue down the stairs.
A series of messages appeared on the screen. Red quickly paused the video to read each message.
"Recorder out of range. Sending shutdown signal. Sending stand-by signal. Standing by."
The video ended and Red stared at the laptop screen for a while. So Blue was attacked by a couple of men in her own home, was brutally beaten up and hurt, and got kidnapped… Red felt his anger coursing through his veins at the thought of one of his closest friends being brutally attacked like that. … He had to save her.
Fortunately, Blue had contingency plans, and was prepared for the unexpected. Her two earrings had small devices programmed into them that transmitted data between them. So one earring could be used to trace the location of the other.
"Hold on, Blue," he muttered quietly. "Help is coming…"
I was saving this series for after I retire, and post them on Tumblr, but… screw it.
Next up: part 2, obviously. I expect that this series would be 3 chapters long. But I don't know for sure. Could be a 5 part series.