I was met with darkness, unsettling and conscious darkness. I could feel something over my head, obscuring my vision. The bag was removed and the darkness was replaced with a comforting light.

"I'm so glad you could make it Mr. Jarlo."

"Oh God, what's going on?"

"Answer this, were you in any way responsible for the recent lockdown at AmeriCorp?"

"Uhm... yes?"

"Good, then we have some questions for you in terms of your involvement."

"And what about my cuts?"

"They've already been tended to Mr. Jarlo."

It all ended with falling. The trio of pokémon friends awaiting our ensured doom. And even with the villain having been defeated, their leader was still sad. They were sad because they knew. They knew that there would always be evil in the world, a new villain would always arise from the shadows. Worse than before, because they learned from their previous mentor's mistakes.

But there wouldn't always be more heroes. Not everyone likes putting their neck on the line for others. It's easier just to stand by and let the evildoers control what they will. In this story, there where no heroes that took down the bad guy.

They were the heroes of this adventure, but no one knew that. To everyone in this world, they were criminals. People and pokémon alike would remember them as those responsible for the destruction of the bell tower. But they would be forgotten for doing that as well.

They wouldn't be remembered as heroes.

They wouldn't be remembered at all.

"We wouldn't be remembered at all."

These words were the last ones to be spoken before everything faded to black.

"Well, that was a waste of my money," I said as the credits rolled by. "That had to have been the worst Pokémon Mystery Dungeon game I have ever played."

While waited for the credits to end, I grabbed my phone, went into contacts, and selected 'Lino'.

'Holy crap that was bad' I texted.

'What?' Lino sent back.

'Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon. I do NOT recommend it.'

'Oh, okay'

I put my phone down and saw the words on the 3DS still scrolling by. I decided to turn off the device, and take out the game cartridge, and place it in my pocket.

"So this was before the incident, correct?"

"What do you think?"

"Sorry. Please, continue."

I placed his face in my hands in boredom, not having any plans past beating that game.

"Ugh, what do I do now?" I asked himself, glancing over to my computer.

Although I didn't really feel like playing any video games, I powered up the device. Maybe I could talk with one of my friends. But for some reason, the stupid thing refused to turn on. And after thirty frustrating minutes, I gave up and went for a late-night walk.

"You went for a walk, while it was dark, in the downtown area?"

"Shut up! I was bored and too tired to notice it was a terrible-ass idea!"

"Why didn't you just go to sleep?"

"I don't know. Why do you keep asking questions that have no significance at all?"

"Point received. Go on."

Anyways, I was just strolling across Baylean Avenue when I heard some noise coming out of an alleyway just across from me. So, I decided to investigate. Yeah, it could have been at cat, but I was still curious.

I came up to the entrance to the alley and peered down the dark, brick-layered hall. I was going to ignore it and continue on my way, until I heard the sounds of another person. The sounds of punching and the voice of a man pleading for his life. But the punching and battering continued, and I couldn't stop myself from intervening. I was part of the football team, and a pretty strong kid. I thought that I might be able to help out whoever it was being beaten alive, or at least lessen his pain by taking a few hits.

Boy was I wrong.

I began striding down the alley with confidence, clenching my fists in preparation to throw down against these brutes. But as I came closer, my pace slowed down to a silent creep and my confidence left me as I saw the assailants more clearly. There were three of them, and they were all ridiculously tall. I hid behind a dumpster and listened closely to what was being said.

"Doctor Remiaro, we gave you a decision," one of them said, as the others stopped beating him. "We said that you would give us one of two things by next week, the

TM-1311 prototype or your life."

"As you can now tell, you've chosen poorly," another thug added in. "However, today is your Groundhog Day, cause we're giving you another chance to choose correctly."

"You have the same two choices. Decision number one; you give us the prototype, our boss is happy, everybody wins. Decision number two; we beat you to death and ransack your lab. You're a smart man, Doctor Remiaro, so we know you'll do what's best."

There was a silence among the thugs, and I peeked through a gap between the dumpster and the wall to see a slightly-aged man, grasping onto his life by a thread.

"Fine, I'll give you the damn thing," Remiaro answered wearily. "Just take me to the lab and the prototype is yours."

"You made the right choice Doctor," replied one of the thugs.

They grabbed the Doctor and dragged him back to the entrance of the alley, in my direction. I quickly did something... I both regret and rejoice over, and grabbed a full trash bag. I dumped all the crap inside of it on top of me and remained absolutely motionless. I waited until the car drove off before leaving the pile of garbage.

"And after that? You decided to chase after Remiaro, correct?"

"Yeah, I tried my best to keep with the car."

"And after that didn't work out?"

"I did a Google search on Remiaro and found out where he worked, AmeriCorp."

"Hmmm, noted."

I came up to the entrance of AmeriCorp, spotting a suspicious looking car parked nearby. I rushed to the glass doors, and pushed them open, finding them unlocked. I dashed across the empty lobby, pausing for a minute to catch my breath.

I vaulted the front desk, and turned the computer on to find out where Doctor Remiaro would be, and what the hell this TM-1311 prototype was. It required a login password. I tried a couple random numbers until it notified me that failure to login would cause an alarm.

"Oops," I said to myself, "don't want to do that."

I looked around the lobby until a sign marked "Research and Development" crossed my sight. I ran into the dark hallway, and slowed down to a stop just before the one opened door with light protruding out of it.

I slowly peered into the doorway, and saw the doctor running around his laboratory frantically while the three thugs stood impatiently.

"Come on Doctor Remiaro, we haven't got all day."

"I know, it has to be here somewhere!"

I creeped into the room, and crouched behind a bottle-lined desk. Two of the thugs had their backs to me, the third one looking for the prototype along with the professor.

As I examined the room, something silvery caught my eye. It had a couple of buttons on it with a dimmed red light inside of it. It looked alike to some sort of laser gun.

"Alright Remiaro, that's it," one of them said, "I believe you've done quite enough. We thank you for your help, so here's your reward."

He suddenly pulled out a gun, and aimed it at the heart of the doctor.

"What do you even know what your boss plans to do with such a device?" The doctor asked.

"Nothing big. Just to change every human that stands in his way into inferior animals," he replied.

"No, you can't."

"Oh Doctor Remiaro, I'm afraid to say that we're nearly there."

The thug pulled the trigger, plunging a bullet into the life force of Remiaro. The innocent doctor's corpse fell to the ground, motionless and cold.I stared at his body, a part of me hoping for a miracle. Hoping he was still alive, that I hadn't just seen this man be killed.

"Alright guys, scavenge the lab for this prototype. You know what it looks like, and I don't care what you have to do to find it. Tear down the goddamn walls if you need to.

Without even thinking, I grabbed the silver device atop the counter. I guess I was thinking it was the TM-1311, and I'd be damned if I let some mobster boss change me into a mouse or cat or some crap.

And I almost escaped the room as well. However, I timed my escape in perfect sync with one of the goons throwing a bottle across the room, smashing into the wall directly behind me.

"Shit," I said just before dashing into the hallway and towards the front entrance.

I jumped over the front desk again, and quickly typed in some random letters. And as I hit enter, an ear-splitting siren went off. Using this little distraction, dashed into the doors, which were now locked due to the security system being activated. I tried shattering the glass doors, but to no avail.

The thugs were closing in quickly. I dashed upstairs and locked myself in some sort of meeting room. The large glass window must have been made out of the same materials as the doors, and I was running out of options. I held up the prototype and, aiming it at the window, pressed one of the buttons. Nothing happened.

I examined the prototype, and saw some words scrolling across that read 'Insufficient data, please insert data card.'

I had no time to think, and grabbed whatever I had in my pocket. I jammed the video game into the device, praying that it would work, and fired the laser. It hit the window, bouncing off of the glass and back towards me. I ducked just in time, but the beam continued ricocheting around the conference room.

It finally hit me with such a powerful force that launched me through the window. Straight through the second-story window and back outside of the AmeriCorp facility.

I felt safe, and took a lot of time to get up off of the sidewalk I land on. I felt like gravy, unable to move a single muscle to the point where I questioned if I had any. Slowly but surely, I peeled myself off of the ground.

I looked around for the TM-1311 prototype once I could actually see my hands, and found what it was. No longer the dangerous prototype, just a hunk of scrap metal with a few bulbs and a processor.

"Better to be sure than sorry," I muttered to myself as I stomped on the processor until it was an indescribable shape.

I limped home slowly, painfully. Nothing was broken to my knowledge, but I was bleeding a lot from the numerous deep cuts I received from smashing straight through the window of plexiglass. Surprisingly, the beam didn't seem to have an affect on me, even though I could remember them talking about how their boss would use it to transform his opponents into lesser animals. Maybe it was because I used a video game cartridge instead of a proper data card.

I didn't know, I didn't care. I was still alive and that's all that mattered.

"I opened the front door to my house, but was drugged by you guys before I could even step inside. And now I'm here."

"Okay... thank you for you time Mr. Jarlo. Now if you would, you're now allowed to return home."

"But... but how do I do that? I don't even know where I am!"

"Oh, we've got that part covered."

These words were the last ones spoken before I was, once again, met with darkness.

Whoo people! It has been a while since I wrote a fan fic, so I thought I might as well start back up the train again just in time with school!

CHOO CHOO!

Anyways, I had quite some fun writing this chapter, so you can expect more of this story in the future. It may take a while for the next chapter, but not two-months-long a while. I promise that much. Kinda'.

But anyways, it's good to be back. The one butler guy, Mr. WhatHisFace (I can't remember his FREAKING NAME!) is kinda happy that I'm back.

Give me a few weeks, I'll figure out what the hell his name was.

Mr. Barley! DAMNIT! It's Mr. Barley, that's his name!