Chapter 5: The Escape

August 11, Route 36, Johto, 2:10 pm…

Red groaned and slowly opened his eyes. … What the hell happened? At one moment, he was talking to Blue, and next moment, he was slammed forward into the table and back into his seat with enough force to briefly knock him unconscious. And now, he found himself lying on the ceiling of the upside-down train car.

He slowly pushed himself up a little, just enough to see around himself. The interior of the train car was hellacious, as there were people and luggage strewn about everywhere.

"Ungh…" came a soft voice from below.

Red looked down and saw Blue lying on the train car roof below him, looking to be in pain. Red quickly crawled off and sat next to her. He gently pulled Blue closer to him and shook her by her shoulders. She didn't seem to be particularly injured, but she had a few ugly bruises visible on her face and arms, undoubtedly caused by being tossed around in the train car when it was derailed.

"Blue? Are you okay?"

Blue began to cough and put a hand over her chest as she regained consciousness. She slowly opened her eyes and pulled back in surprise when she saw Red's face right up close to hers.

"R – Red!" she stammered out.

"Are you okay?" Red asked again as he watched her expression.

Blue feigned a cough to conceal her embarrassment and nodded. She pulled away from him and sat up, briefly wondering if this was what Red had felt a few years ago when the situation was reversed. She lightly shook her head. No, this wasn't the time.

She forced herself to look away from Red, and scanned the chaos around her, trying to find Black and White. She soon found familiar luggage bags, and spotted Black and White lying unconscious underneath.

Red pulled Black out of the pile of bags while Blue tended to White. Fortunately, neither of them was injured, so they were able to wake up pretty quickly.

"Ow, ow… What happened?" White asked as she put a hand on the side of her head.

"Train flipped, but I don't know why," Blue answered.

Black glanced around at the wreckage. "So… what do we do now?"

"First things first," Red began. "We have to find Platinum and Y. They were headed to the washroom, so they weren't seated when the train flipped. We have to find them and see if they're okay. After that, we'll have to get out of here."

White looked really alarmed. "L – Lady Platinum? Y?" She frantically looked around, but only saw piles of luggage and other people. "Oh no… oh no…"

"Stay calm, White. We'll find them," Red said. "Black, see if you can cut through the train wall."

Black reached into his pocket and took out a Pokéball. There wasn't a lot of space in the train car, so a big Pokémon couldn't be used, which was why Red hadn't tried to use his Poliwrath to punch through the wall. But Black's newest Pokémon wasn't that big, so…

Since there wasn't a lot of room, Black just pressed the button to send out his Bisharp. "Sharp, try to cut through the wall here so we can all escape!"

The Bisharp had to crouch to avoid bumping its head on the tables above, but nodded in acknowledgement. It crawled over towards the wall and rammed its arm-blades repeatedly until the steel wall gave way and the blades pierced through.

While the Bisharp hacked away at the wall, White crawled towards the washroom of the train car, trying to see if she could even get a glimpse of Platinum and Y. She couldn't make much progress thanks to the blockade formed by heavy luggage and the bodies of the other passengers.

"Lady Platinum?! Y?!" she called out, but her voice was soon buried by the cacophony of the other passengers' moans and cries. "Damn it…"

"We're through!" Black said, as his Bisharp had successfully cut a block of the wall, big enough for people to crawl through.

"Okay, let's get out of here," Red said, rising to his knees. "Then we'll start by making more of these holes to get everyone else out. Then we can look for Platinum and Y, since it won't be so cluttered around here."

…

For over an hour, the four Dex Holders assisted the emergency response teams in cutting off sections of the trains to rescue all the trapped people. They looked at every passenger crawling out of the train, but none of them were Platinum or Y.

White even took Platinum and Y's bags and sent out their Altaria and Fletchinder so that the two Pokémon could look for their trainers from the skies, but still nothing.

"This is strange," Blue said as she nursed a particularly painful bruise on her side. "Platinum and Y wouldn't have gone far to reach the washrooms. Not to mention, the train flipped shortly after they left. But the fact that we still haven't seen them…"

"Where could they have gone?" White asked quietly, her hands pressed against her heart in worry.

"The emergency guys haven't seen them either," Red said as he came back. "No one has seen Platinum or Y anywhere."

White glanced at Black, who had his Musharna nibbling on his head, and sincerely hoped that he could find some clues.

"We could use Y's Zweilous," Blue suggested. "Deino and Zweilous can't see, so their other senses would've developed stronger. So if the Zweilous can catch the scent of Y's perfume… or even the coffee that spilled on her and Platinum…"

"But is it going to listen to us?" White asked. "That Zweilous was pretty hostile to everyone other than Y."

"… Yeah. That's the problem, isn't it?" Blue said with a sigh.

White suddenly jumped a bit in surprise when she heard chimes coming from inside one of the bags she was carrying. She searched through the bags and soon found Platinum's Pokégear chiming as it received a call.

Red checked the Pokégear and saw that it was Diamond calling. He took the device from White's hand and answered.

"Hey, Dia, it's Red," he began. "Did you-"

"We're in Ecruteak City, and we just saw the news. Are you okay? Where's the Lady?" Diamond asked frantically.

Red let out a sigh. "The train derailed, we don't know why. We're all okay, but… we can't find Platinum and Y."

For a long while, Diamond didn't respond, and Red could only imagine that it was due to shock, and/or relaying the information to Pearl.

"… What… what do you mean, you can't find her?" Diamond asked, his voice shaking.

"They were heading to the washroom when the train flipped," Red answered. "And we don't know where they went. We looked everywhere, but we can't find them. No one has seen them either. Listen, we're trying our best to find them, but we have no idea what happened. Can you and Pearl come down here and help us? More people the better, right?"

"Yes, of course. We're on our way. Please just keep us updated."

"Will do."

Black reached up and removed the Musharna from his head. "Okay… let's see…" He went up to the train car, and looked at the seats where the two missing girls had taken. "They were sitting here, and then some guy spilled coffee on them, so they headed towards the washroom that way." He walked down the length of the train car, as if he was tracing their movement. "But the washroom was occupied, so they would've had to gone to the next one, which means they would've had to cross over to the next train car…" He stopped in front of a large gaping hole in the joint between the two train cars. "… But they didn't have the time to reach the washroom on the other side of the train car. Which means they had to have been on this train car, or maybe even before reaching it, when the whole train flipped."

Red and Blue gasped as they ran over towards the joint area.

"Could they be trapped under the train?" Blue asked in horror.

Red cursed and sent out his Poliwrath. Blue clenched her teeth and sent out her Blastoise, and White sent out Platinum's Empoleon. Black tilted his head, as he briefly wondered how the two girls would've gotten underneath the train given the circumstances, but sent out his Emboar to assist nonetheless. The four Pokémon worked together and managed to lift the joint section of the train and the adjacent cars enough for Blue to peek under with her modified Silph Scope.

"Are they… there?" White asked, afraid of the answer. Both possible answers were bad.

Blue shook her head. "No. There's nothing there." She took off her Silph Scope and sighed. "That's good… and bad. Good because they're not crushed under the train, but bad since we still don't know where they are."

Black crossed his arms as he thought. "… This was the direction those two headed, and this rip in the joint area was the only way they could've left the train in any way. But the fact that they're not here…"

"They wouldn't have gone anywhere while the rest of us were still trapped in the train," Red said. "They would've tried to reach us and pull us out. If anything, they should still be around here. … But they're not."

"Could they have been taken?" Blue suggested. "They should still be in the train if they didn't fall out. But they're not in the train. If they fell out, they should be around here. They're not. If they fell out and were okay, they'd still be around here, trying to save us. … They're not. That means they fell out of the train but were not okay. The only thing that makes sense is that they fell out and were taken away by someone."

"It's a long shot, but that's the only thing that makes any amount of sense here," Red said. "… But if they were taken… we have no way of finding them."

…

Meanwhile, classified location, Johto…

…

"The funding won't be a problem anymore. It'll take some time to confirm that all of the transfer has been completed, but the money is coming in now."

"Excellent. Once the transfer is completed, terminate the two girls. Until then, keep scanning her neural patterns. This girl showed a lot of potential for the K3 project, so any data is bound to be helpful. And prepare to purge everything. Once the transfer has been noticed by the Berlitz family, they will most certainly try to track us. So we'll have to lay low for a while, and we'll use that time to develop the basis of K3."

"Understood."

…

Y clenched her teeth as she watched the kidnapper force Platinum back into her torture chair. The heiress looked broken. She offered no resistance whatsoever and her eyes were only half open. Even as the kidnapper tied her arms to the chair again, she simply sat slumped over.

The kidnapper soon left the room, probably to go discuss something with his buddies, leaving Platinum and Y by themselves. The kidnapper probably figured that nothing could possibly happen, since both girls were tied up pretty tight, and with Platinum broken and Y hanging upside down, they weren't in any position to do anything.

Platinum remained slumped over in her chair, motionless. The weird machine on her head had a small green light blinking. Y didn't know what that meant, but knew that it couldn't be good. She had to get out and fast.

She squirmed as she tried to reposition her hands and wrists. The rope binding her wrists together was very tight, so she couldn't make much progress in trying to slip her hands out of the bind.

Y gritted her teeth as the effects of being hung upside down were beginning to get worse. She had to get out of this predicament and free Platinum before the kidnapper came back. … He had already gotten what he wanted out of Platinum. The next time he came back, he would be completely free to do whatever he wanted. And Y knew that she couldn't stick around for that.

She looked at her feet and the ropes binding her ankles together. Her boots were removed beforehand, and her ankles were tied pretty tight. The knot was placed on the hook, and by the looks of it, the hook wasn't that big. And fortunately, the hook was affixed pretty tight on the wall, so it would not be moving as Y tried to squirm off.

Y took a deep breath and forced her upper body to bend, as if she was doing a sit-up. It took a tremendous amount of effort since she was hanging upside down, but she was able to get her head at least up to her knee level.

Now the next part was going to be tricky. She adjusted the position of her hands so that both of her palms would touch the wall once she "let go". After counting to three to get ready, she stopped fighting gravity with her upper body, letting herself uncurl quickly. The moment her palms hit the wall, she immediately pushed the wall towards the floor, effectively pushing herself up in the opposite direction, which immediately removed all resistance of the hook holding the knot for a split second. And in that split second, Y used the momentum of her fall to pull her feet down, as if she was in the middle of doing a back-flip, freeing her feet from the hook.

She fell quickly, and she tucked her knees closer to her chest so that her feet would swing down faster. And because of that, she was able to land on her feet and not on her head. She bent her knees to lessen the impact and it caused her to roll backwards until she was lying on her back.

Y let out a sigh of relief and took a moment to regular her breathing. Now that she was free and her blood was flowing evenly throughout her body, she could move on to untying the ropes binding her limbs together.

She pulled her feet up and uncoiled her body, using the momentum to spring up to her feet. She was still in a very annoying predicament, though, since her ankles and knees were bound together, and her wrists were as well behind her. So all she could do right now was hop around.

She hopped around to get to a better position and dove forward into a forward roll, while crunching up her body and swinging her arms in the opposite direction. Once the forward roll finished and she had rolled up to her feet again, her hands were now tied in front of her, and not behind her. And now that she could, she immediately began working on loosening the bind on her wrist using her teeth.

Within a few minutes, Y was able to untie all the ropes that were binding her limbs together, and took a moment to massage her sore limbs.

She quickly scrambled up to her feet once her limbs felt good enough, and crouched in front of Platinum.

… The heiress was still sitting there motionless, her eyes half-open. Y felt around her senior's throat for her pulse, and was relieved to feel it on her fingertips. … But what had happened to her? She seemed to be in shock… What did that bastard do?

Y looked at the machine on Platinum's head and reached over to take it off, but stopped mid-reach. The kidnapper was using this machine to monitor something. And based on what she had seen and heard, Y surmised that the kidnapper was using it to scan Platinum's thought patterns or brainwaves. Which meant that if she was to remove this device from her senior's head, the kidnapper would notice immediately and come over to investigate. And right now, Y didn't have an escape plan, so she would just be trapped in this room when the kidnapper and his buddies barged in.

"I'm sorry, Miss Platinum, but… please hang in there for a bit longer," Y whispered as she put her hands on her senior's cheeks. Platinum was still in her strange comatose-like trance and didn't move an inch.

Y forced herself to move away from her senior and glanced around the room. There was a door and a keypad next to it, and it was where the kidnapper had exited. There was no way for Y to even guess at what the code was going to be, so that wasn't a viable exit. Not to mention, a keypad door would likely set off an alarm upon three incorrect codes, and probably make a lot of noise when it opened.

She spotted her boots lying on the corner of the room and went over to retrieve them. Sooner or later, she'd probably have to run, and running on just stockings wouldn't last long.

Y went over to investigate the hook where she had been hung upside down. There was a long indent of sorts on the wall, and that was where the hook was. And the fact that the hook was raised while being attached to the wall indicated that there was some sort of machinery on the other side. … So this "room" had some large machines right outside the walls? … But why? Is this room a part of some much larger complex? If that's the case, then there's probably another exit somewhere…

She did a quick scan around the whole room, but failed to find any secret hatches or any other exits. There wasn't enough time to do a thorough scan or to meticulously examine every square inch of the walls, and Y didn't have the peace of mind to do that either. She was in a hurry; she had to find a way out before the kidnappers came back.

'There's no way out…' she thought, feeling a bit of panic in the back of her mind. 'There's only one exit, and that'll run straight into the kidnappers… But do I have a choice? There's nothing else I can do…' She looked over at Platinum, still sitting slumped over. 'Fighting through the kidnappers alone is hard enough, especially if there are a lot more of their friends around. But doing so while carrying Miss Platinum is going to be impossible. … But I can't leave her here… I have no choice!' Y ran over towards Platinum and pulled the strange machine off of her head and ripped the wires out. She then quickly untied the rope binding her limbs and then crouched in front of her. "Miss Platinum! Can you hear me?"

"… Y…" the heiress mumbled out, her eyes still rather empty and unfocused.

Y clenched her teeth and glanced at the keypad locked door. "… Please hang on tight. We're going to escape!"

She lifted her senior onto her back and ran towards the door. She slightly lowered herself, getting ready for the moment the door opened. This would be her only opportunity to escape, and if this failed, she would die here along with Platinum.

As expected, the door soon opened as the kidnapper came to investigate why the machine had been disconnected. The moment the door opened, Y charged forward and rammed her boot into his chest, slamming him against the wall at the same time, getting revenge for what the kidnappers did to her in the train wreck.

The man was caught off guard, as he certainly didn't expect Y to be free and ready to strike. The kick hit him hard, and the collision into the wall was enough to knock the wind out of him for a few seconds, giving Y plenty of time to hop over his body and run like hell.

Y had expected to be in the middle of some large facility, but instead found herself in a small hallway with one small room on the opposite side of the large "torture" room, and the exit to the staircase on the other end of the hallway. The door to the small room began to open and Y just sprinted towards the stairs.

She ran up the stairs as many steps at a time as possible and soon reached the top. The exit door on top didn't require a keypad, and instead, was an old rusted door. The other side of the door was a big abandoned warehouse of sorts.

"… What the hell…" Y muttered between breaths, quickly looking left and right to find a way out of the warehouse. There were a lot of large boxes covered in dust that blocked her field of view. She wanted to climb on top of the boxes to hide from the pursuers and to see around her a lot better, but it wasn't possible while carrying Platinum on her back.

Y ran straight to the right. She figured that the pursuers were going to know where the exits were, so if she spent time to evade them by zigzagging around the boxes, she would get surrounded. So she had to reach the exits before the pursuers did, and she figured that a warehouse like this would have more than one door, so left or right should both lead her to an exit.

Her assumptions were correct. As she heard the angry voices of pursuers behind her, she saw the exit door a little to the left. She reached the door and managed to unlock and open it before the pursuers reached her. She narrowly slipped through the open door just before the pursuers grabbed her.

Y momentarily paused. She was on top of a cliff that faced the ocean, so sprinting in that direction wasn't going to work. She glanced backwards and saw a forest. Perfect! She spun around and sprinted towards the warehouse, but had to stop after just a few steps as several guys came out of the warehouse. Y had no idea how many people were in this weird underground secret base, but clearly there were more than just the four kidnappers. There was almost a dozen guys out here right now, surrounding her in a semicircle. Getting through them would not happen.

"Sh*t…" Y cursed as she slowly stepped backwards, until her heel was at the very edge of the cliff. She weighed her options. Fighting through a dozen guys would not work out. Outrunning them would not work when she was already surrounded. Y glanced backwards at the ocean about 50m below her. … She couldn't swim at all. Jumping into the water would only spell doom for her, even though there weren't any rocks down there. … Was there just no way out?

"Y…" Platinum began, her voice still weak. "… Jump."

"Are you sure?" Y asked in surprise.

"… Yes… It is the only choice we have…" she said, just as the surrounding pursuers began to charge forward.

Y gasped and momentarily froze in terror, but quickly hardened her resolve. "The hell with it!" She spun around on her heel to face the ocean and leapt forward as far as she could just before the leading pursuer's hand could reach her.

And in a blink of an eye, the two Dex Holders plummeted straight towards the ocean.

…

"They escaped."

"How?"

"We don't know. We tied them up and even hung one upside down, and yet they escaped. They reached outside and jumped off the cliff into the water."

"… While it's probable that they died, we have to consider the possibility that they survived the fall. We need to evacuate this base. Empty it out, so when people come to investigate, they see nothing whatsoever. Even if the two girls survived, it doesn't change the fact that we got what we wanted. Now we can pursue the target in Alola. Send a small group while the rest of us prepare for what's to come next."