Haha, next chapter! Sorry about the wait, guys, I've been crazy busy with stuff. :( But, never fear, I have not given up hope! I will finish this story if it's the last thing I do!

Anyway, besides that, I would like to get your opinion on what you want to see more of by the end. I mean, we still got a lot more coming, but I'm extensively planning it now and I want to know what you guys want! More of certain shippings, characters, situations, whatever you guys think. Just include it in your review! I love hearing feedback, so go crazy! And don't worry CSF, there's some Joel/Lucy right in this chapter right here. :) Enjoy!

Sven

Lucy and I were outside the Wintown Ranger base when Spenser and Joel arrived.

"What the heck happened to you guys?" Lucy immediately asked, catching sight of Joel's split lip and Spenser's black eye.

"We fell," Joel explained shortly, turning to me, "What are we doing first?" This was the first time I had seen the poor kid make eye contact with me pretty much ever. Good for him. Although I still didn't trust him anywhere near Lucy. But, as Lucy and I had talked about, she was a big girl and made her own decisions. She made it clear that she could take care of herself and I understood. However, she did say that I could still occasionally intimidate him. Just for fun.

"You fell?" Lucy asked incredulously, not letting this go for the world, "So the ground gave Spenser a black eye."

Joel rolled his eyes. "Yes, Lucy, if that's what I said happened, that's probably what happened. Spense tripped down the stairs at the Ranger Union and knocked into me and we both fell all the way down the stairs. Any more questions?"

"Why do I have to be the clumsy one?" Spenser grumbled, meaning for it to only be heard by Joel.

"What did you say, Spenser?" Lucy asked, a mischievous look on the petite ranger's face.

"Nothing," Joel snapped.

"Well, jeez, Joel, you don't have to be so touchy," Lucy replied, smirking, "Besides, I'm pretty sure Spense can speak for himself."

"Don't give me that smirk," Joel retorted, a bit grouchily, "It's not like I'm hiding anything."

"Well, you don't do a very good job of not acting suspicious."

"I'm not acting suspicious!"

"A little bit."

"Lucy, for Arceus's sake, I am not acting suspicious!"

I cleared my throat. I was trying so hard to follow what Lucy said. She said she could stick up for herself and I no doubt believed her, but I couldn't help but want to jump in. Unfortunately though, the two of them continued to ignore me and would've kept on fighting had Spenser not spoken up.

"Okay, guys, let's break it up," Spenser cut in smoothly, stepping between the two, who look as if they may come to blows any second, "Joel, you don't need your pretty-boy face any more messed up or else your fan-girls back in Fall City may start taking an interest in me and Jackie instead. Besides, can we maybe remember what we came here to do? Believe it or not, but it is not so that you guys to have a brawl in front of the Wintown Ranger base."

Both Joel and Lucy looked away guiltily. Something about the tone of the end of Spenser's little speech confirmed what I had guessed at for a while. Spenser definitely had feelings for Solana and they weren't going to just go away. This mission meant more to him than any other mission had previously before. He would do anything, be anyone, and go anywhere to get her back. I didn't know him as well as Joel, but we were friends and I could tell he was hurting inside.

"I was thinking we should head over to the site where Solana and Alyssa disappeared," I voiced the plan Lucy and I had made before aloud, "If we can find anything there, we can use it to track these goons down."

"Okay," Spenser nodded, "So, where's that?"

"A meadow in the mountains that Alyssa likes to go to," I explained, "Freddie told me about it while Silent Chris, kind of, helped, I guess. Moral support maybe, seeing as he was just , well, silent. More than usual. I think got in the habit of watching out for Alyssa and he feels even worse about what happened. Everybody seems to be blaming themselves." I shot a discreet look at Spenser, worried for him. He'd better not be even thinking about blaming himself, especially when he was all the way across the region from Solana when it happened. But he would find a way. He was very protective of his Rangers.

"All that matters is that we know how to get there," Lucy put in, recovering pretty quickly from her spat with Joel.

"Then let's go," Spenser said, looking a bit antsy. I didn't blame him. I was worried about Solana too. Although me and her had never really been very close, I had always admired her skill as a Ranger and her spunk, especially when it came to putting Spenser in his place. We had to find her and Alyssa.

Besides, I had promised Kate. She had voice-mailed me not too long after Keith had managed to calm her down and made me swear to do everything I could to find Alyssa. Like, pinky promise, no crossies, hope-to-die, stick-a-needle-in-my-eye, the whole shebang. In girl terms. Believe me, I would never say any part of that out loud.

"You ready, Sven?" Lucy asked, turning her gaze toward me. It seemed I had been elected the unofficial leader of this little party we had going on. Seniority by three years- more than that over Lucy- could come in handy every once in a while. I pulled down my hat, sending a look over at Luxray, who flicked his ear lazily back at me.

"Let's do this."

Joel

I could get over this Sven thing. I mean, I had to. For Solana and Alyssa and Spenser. Well, for Spenser's sanity, at least. He was still on the edge here, I could feel it. However, he would hate me babying him at all. I had to give him his space and let him deal with this on his own now.

Lucy was another story. It was so hard to avoid arguing with her. So hard. But Sven's presence helped some. Arceus, that guy scared me sometimes.

We had made our way to this meadow Sven had talked about. It seemed like a pretty peaceful place, not much going on, not even close to what seemed like a kidnapping spot. "Alright, let's spread out in pairs," Sven ordered, then hesitated. What was he hesitating about? He shot a look at Lucy, then at me. And back and forth one more time. He swallowed.

"Okay, Spenser and I will look toward this half and on," he finally got out, although he didn't sound as if this thrilled him. "Lucy and Joel, you guys get the other half." I swear that his eye twitched. Yeah, he wasn't loving this at all. I couldn't understand why he would put us together if he hated me near Lucy. Then I saw him flick a worried look at Spenser and I realized he wanted to make sure good ole Spense was okay. Spenser missed pretty much all of this, which was probably good, considering he hates being singled out and worried over.

Before we all split up and as Sven was further explaining things, my gaze strayed to his Luxray, who was watching me steadily. No doubt, I was slightly unnerved. A fly buzzed close to the electric-type and with a single flick of its tail, the fly was gone. The Luxray narrowed its eyes at me, as if saying I was next if I tried anything with Lucy. It took a while for me to regain my power of speech after that.

"Quit gaping," Lucy frowned as she pulled me away toward our side of the meadow.

"I swear to Arceus that Luxray just threatened me," I said shakily.

"Probably," Lucy shrugged nonchalantly, "It's not like he hasn't done it before- threatened people, I mean."

I decided that when this was all over I going to try to get Lucy reassigned as far away from me as possible- preferably Shiver Camp. Maybe then I could sleep at night.

"So seriously, Joel, what's the deal with you and Spense?" She asked, the frown still prominent on her face.

"Nothing is the deal," I replied sharply, starting to search for any clues that would tell us what had happened here- footprints, bent grass, basically anything that would say that someone had been here recently. All Pokemon Rangers who had gone to Ranger School had learned basic tracking skills- in order to find a hurt Pokemon- but never had I employed them to find a missing person. Just goes to show how screwed up things were right now.

"Yeah, okay," she snorted, "Like I'm really gonna believe that. I don't think people get black eyes from the ground." I couldn't tell her about our fight. I would never hear the end of it if I did.

"I told you, we fell down the-"

"Yes, I know, the stairs," she rolled her eyes, but starting to sweep the area as well, looking for the same clues I was, "but I have my own theory."

"Okay, let's hear it," I grinned to myself. This would be entertaining. What was she going to say now?

"I think that you took it upon yourself to be the one to tell Spenser that Solana was kidnapped. Spenser didn't react so well, you tried to calm him down, and you guys started beating the crap out of each other, hence the black eye. So, how'd I do?"

I think by my silence she took her guess to be right. "Yeah, guys are so easy to read," she grinned triumphantly, "Their answer to everything is to beat the crap out of something."

I still didn't say anything. I think she took the hint because her voice suddenly got a lot more serious. "How bad was it?" She asked quietly.

I flicked my eyes up to meet hers for a second, but then focused back on the ground. "Bad enough that we started a full-fledged brawl in the middle of the Situation Room," I admitted. Arceus damn it! I told her. Holy Suicune, sometimes I just can't keep my mouth shut.

But somehow even she could sense that this was taboo. "It was between you and Spenser," she said after a few moments, "And I'm not going to get into it. Even I can recognize personal moments when I see them. But I have to say that I'm glad you can be there for him. He needs somebody besides Solana, you know."

I didn't know what to say besides, "who are you and what have you done with Lucy"? But that would definitely not be appropriate in this situation. It was just that this was a side of her I didn't get to see very much. I liked it. I liked getting to know her better and, even though I knew it wasn't the best choice for my future state of well-being, I wished I had the guts to ask her out. Just a date to start things out. But if I chose the wrong moment or words, I was scared that she would use it against me during our (frequent) arguments. She would tease me about it and this wasn't something I was comfortable with being teased about. It would change things.

"Yeah, well, he needs Solana more than he admits," I finally replied, feeling a faint blush coming on. Arceus, what was going on with my circulatory system right now? My heart was beating so fast I don't know how it got in all the heartbeats. Why did I feel like this conversation was about more than just Spenser and Solana?

"Yeah, it's scary sometimes how much two people can care about each other," Lucy commented and for a moment, our eyes met. Her chocolate brown and my gray. Arceus, what was I doing? Lucy and I argued. That's what we knew. We didn't have sappy, awkward moments like these. But then if all we felt was a rivalry of sorts, why couldn't I look away?

That was when Sheldion, who had been searching for clues with Dodrio a few meters away, attracted our attention with a cry. Lucy looked away from me, a light dusting of red spreading across her cheeks. "What did you find, Sheldion?" She called out, striding over to her partner Pokemon.

She turned around to look at me a second later, a look of triumph written all over her petite features. "Look what Sheldion found," she yelled, waving a feather, which looked as if it had come from a Chatot.

"Alyssa's partner Pokemon is a Chatot," I murmured thoughtfully, looking around for more feathers. If this Chatot also had a shedding problem, that would be perfect for us in so many ways. I looked up and saw a path leading away from the meadow into the mountains. The feather had been found not too far from that path. Maybe Alyssa had been drawn farther into the mountains before she was taken.

Lucy followed my gaze. "Yeah, we should definitely check out down there," she nodded toward the path. We set off for it, Dodrio and Sheldion close behind. We didn't speak as we followed the path until we both spotted another feather at the same time.

"There!" We both pointed, running toward it. A small fight ensued as to who was going to actually get the evidence and I may have collected a few more bruises than I previously had, but all fighting stopped when we saw the cave entrance a few feet away.

"You think that's where they took Alyssa?" Lucy asked, taking a tentative step toward it.

"It's a good bet," I replied, striding toward the entrance resolutely.

"Joel, stop it, you moron! You have to be careful," Lucy pulled me back, looking me seriously in the face, "We don't want to mess up any footprints they may have left behind."

I was very conscious on her hand wrapped around my arm and the fact that her face actually wasn't very far from mine. Arceus, why do I do this to myself? "Yeah, okay," I nodded, at least respecting what she was saying. If I could even think straight at this moment in time. Which I could- barely.

We watched where we stepped as we walked inside the cave. Sure enough, there was a plethora of footprints inside outlined by the dust on the cave floor. It looked like a whole bunch of people had been here lately. "Are you worried I might mess up this many footprints?" I shot a look at her smugly. She rolled her eyes, for one of the first times choosing not to pursue the argument. Maybe we were maturing a bit. Or maybe it was just the fact that there were two Rangers' lives on the line if we didn't find them.

"Over there," I said quietly, pointing to the back of the cave. In the corner, I saw a tiny slivery something. Lucy, who was closest to that corner, retrieved it carefully.

"It's a tiny Plusle," Lucy showed the tiny piece to me and I recognized it immediately.

"It's Solana's," I started to look around on the cave walls, searching for the clue that might be there, "It's a charm from the charm bracelet Spenser gave her for her birthday last year." Then I found what I was looking for on the walls.

Carved haphazardly on a small portion of the cave wall, hidden in the deepest shadows, were the letters "Kro". I pointed them out to Lucy. "It looks like whoever carved them didn't have time to write out the whole thing," she commented in a hushed voice, "What's your guess?"

"Krokka Tunnel," I replied, running a finger over the messy letters, "Let's get Spenser and Sven over here."