When Candela woke from her much-needed nap, she found Spark still asleep catty-corner from her, but no sign of Blanche or the hypno. It was hard to know how long she'd slept without her communicator. They used Dillinger's sparingly to save its dwindling battery, but it couldn't settle on what time it was anyway. The clock function displayed random hours every time Candela looked, and was even more hopeless when it came to the date. Blanche had immediately tried using the device to call the lab, but that function was disabled as well, either because of the depth of the cave or the same glitch that affected the clock. Maybe the energy of the portal had frazzled its delicate electronics.

Candela stretched the stiffness out of her muscles and cracked her neck. She usually didn't mind roughing it, but the unforgiving stone floor hadn't been kind to her sore body. She looked forward to a long, hot soak in her tub when they finally got out of all this.

If they ever got out of all this.

No, she couldn't think like that. They'd made it this far more or less intact. They'd find a way out, but not before exacting some revenge on the Rockets. Candela envisioned that beautiful moment, the terror she'd strike into Dillinger's heart. She didn't dare imagine an alternative future. She had to stay positive and energetic so she could lend her strength to her friends.

And they sure seemed to need it. Candela sat with her arms around her legs and watched as Spark twitched in his sleep. He kept a protective arm around Rutabaga – who had refused to return to her ball – but the poor raichu couldn't possibly be getting any sleep as her trainer twisted and turned and curled and straightened every 30 seconds. Spark's face held a near constant grimace, and every so often, he drew a sharp breath, as though something had startled him in his sleep.

This was not the happy, sunshiny goofball Candela had grown up with.

"Damn it, Spark, you're supposed to be the cheerleader in the group," Candela muttered with a sad smirk. "I'm trying my best, but you know I'm too salty for the job. I need your help."

Candela draped one of the scavenged Team Rocket lab coats over Spark and let her hand rest on his shoulder as she considered waking him. To her relief, he gradually stilled and his breathing steadied as the nightmare passed. Rutabaga yawned and peered up at Candela past a fold of the lab coat.

"You're a good friend, Rootie," Candela said, adopting Spark's shorthand for her. "I'm gonna check on Blanche. Can you wake him up if he starts tossing and turning again?"

Rutabaga squeaked, and Candela took it as an affirmative. The raichu was obstinate and lazy and had a tendency to raid the fridge in the lab's kitchen, but Candela had a soft spot for her. Not that she'd ever admit that to Spark. Nor would she admit that she slipped Rutabaga the occasional poké puff, which was probably why she was rutabaga-shaped in the first place.

Candela followed the sound of creaking metal through the piles of rubble to find Blanche. They stood next to Resolute, who moved chunks of machinery from one stack of debris to another with his strong vines. Blanche held up their hand for him to pause, reached into a freshly exposed section of wreckage, and pulled out something shiny and cylindrical. They inspected it for a moment before twisting it, revealing it to be a functional flashlight. Satisfied, Blanche added it to a duffel at their feet full of what must have been other useful objects.

"Morning, Blanche," Candela greeted, coming up alongside them. "Any good loot?"

"A few essentials. Some rope, canned food, bottled water. We even came across this bag prepacked for cave exploration. It's a bit worn, but it should hold up for our purposes," Blanche answered, not bothering to look away from the rubble.

"How long have you been up?" Candela asked, stifling a yawn.

"About an hour. It's difficult to say for certain."

Candela leaned back to see around Resolute, searching for their newest party member. "Where's Hypno?"

"Gone," Blanche said.

Candela tensed. "What do you mean, 'gone'?"

"I had my venomoth keep watch over us while we rested. He woke me in time to see the hypno retreating into the hallway we saw the grunts go down before," Blanche said.

Candela grabbed Blanche's wrist to turn them, forcing their attention away from the junk pile so she could look into their eyes. "How can you be so chill about this? What if he went back to Dillinger? Why didn't you stop him?"

"I didn't stop him because if he meant us harm, he could have made his move while we slept. He likely is returning to Dr. Dillinger. She is his trainer, after all," Blanche said. They motioned for Resolute to stop moving debris.

"I'm not worried about Hypno hurting us, Blanche," Candela said, trying not to let her frustration boil into anger. Blanche tended to clam up in the face of too much emotion. "I'm worried about what Dillinger will do to him. She's not his trainer. She's his torturer. If you had seen the other experiments she's performed…"

"What would you have had me do? Attack him? Steal him? Like Team Rocket would?" Blanche's expression remained as cool and sharp as a sheet of ice.

Candela let go of Blanche's wrist and stared at them in disgust. "No, I'd have you save him from being killed by his psychopathic master. What's going on with you? You're acting even more robotic than usual."

"I understand your concern, Candela. But we're in the middle of the most dangerous mission of our lives, and I can't afford to take chances on a previously hostile pokémon. I took mercy on him by not attacking," Blanche stated.

"You sent him to his death!" Candela snapped.

"What his trainer chooses to do with him is none of my concern," said Blanche.

Candela raked her fingers through her hair, momentarily at a loss for words. She had to calm down. Blanche wouldn't take her seriously if she made a scene. "OK, seriously, what the hell is the matter with you? I know you aren't a 'warm-fuzzies' kind of person, but you are not you right now. Spark isn't Spark either, for that matter. What Dr. Dillinger did to us was fucked up, but you can't shut down on me."

Blanche didn't say anything, so Candela kept going. "I thought you were dead, Blanche. I was devastated. I felt like Dillinger had hollowed me out. Now it's like you've come back from the dead, but you're not the friend I knew before. What happened?"

Blanche's stony expression finally cracked, if only slightly. Their lip quivered, and they turned their head away, as if to hide it. "I'm still your friend, Candela. I apologize if I sound cold, but I need to remain rational if we intend to survive this."

"Congratulations on your Spock-like approach to damage control, but I'd rather have the Blanche who experienced the occasional emotion back. I miss them," Candela said. "And I'm not big on the lovey-dovey shit either, so that's saying something."

The corner of Blanche's mouth turned up in a tiny smirk. "I've seen you kiss Spark's new hatchlings goodnight at the lab. Also, I know about Rutabaga's extra poké puffs."

Thank the stars, Blanche was still in there. Candela laughed to hide her massive sigh of relief. "Pokémon are different, OK? You assholes are basically my siblings. Half the time, I want to throttle you. Just be grateful this isn't one of those times."

"You also take Resolute on walks, don't you?"

That surprised Candela. She'd been extra discreet about walking Resolute since Blanche wasn't as lax with their pokémon as Spark was. "He likes the woods. Please don't be mad?"

Blanche shook their head. "I'm not mad. Resolute looks forward to your hikes. He isn't subtle."

Behind them, Resolute shuffled his giant, stubby legs bashfully. Like his trainer, the venusaur was reserved and difficult to read. Candela loved seeing him relax as they walked together on sunny days. He always looked so blissful with the sun glinting off his glossy petals.

"Good! I thought you might-"

Blanche clapped a hand across Candela's mouth to hush her, an action Candela look immediate offense to. She raised her hand to push Blanche away, but then heard something clattering nearby. Blanche slowly withdrew their hand and the two leaders stood in tense silence, waiting for another sound.

"Maybe it's Spark," Candela whispered, but she closed her hand around her machoke's pokéball.

"It didn't come from where we camped," Blanche whispered back.

A tan blur darted between two heaps of broken equipment. Candela called out Brutus by tapping the button of the pokéball, not daring to speak his name and draw attention. The machoke landed awkwardly, apparently caught off guard by her silent summon, but quickly settled into a defensive stance with his bulky arms raised for a punch.

Candela spun to face the sound of scuttling feet, but was too slow and only caught the tip of what might have been a tail vanishing behind a crooked filing cabinet. More sounds of metal being knocked and small, fast feet scampering over rock rose from all sides. Candela positioned herself against Blanche's back and tried to keep up with the skittering beings that flashed in and out of hiding.

The boom of electrical discharge coming from their makeshift camp drew Candela's attention away from the shadow-quick creatures. "Shit, Spark!"

"Go, quickly!" Blanche said.

Candela bolted forward, flanked by Brutus. The creatures fled from them, leaping into the darkness to conceal themselves. A slower one slipped into a shadow close enough that Candela caught a flash of scaly armor. Sandshrews? Ridiculously fast ones?

Whatever they were, they weren't attacking, and Candela and Brutus ran unhindered toward camp, with Blanche and Resolute close behind. Resolute's thundering steps rattled the skeletons of broken machinery. Ahead, lightning flashed.

Candela skidded to a stop as she found Spark and Rutabaga alone in the little clearing they'd slept in, very much awake and alert as they stood side by side in battle position.

"Candela! Blanche! Where were you? Are you OK? What's going on?" Spark asked, the questions pouring from his lips almost faster than Candela could process them.

"We're fine. Were you attacked?" Blanche asked as they and Candela joined Spark in a defensive triangular formation, all eyes outward toward the enemy.

"No, not yet," said Spark. "Rutabaga's been putting on a show to keep them back, but none of them have made a move. I'm not sure what kind of pokémon they are."

"Maybe sandshrews?" Candela suggested.

Spark immediately called Rutabaga back into her ball. He withdrew a different pokéball and prepared to throw it. "Marzipan, it's your turn to party."

Spark's jigglypuff sprang from her pokéball and landed delicately on one foot, pointing the other behind her spherical, pink body as if she were a ballerina. Under different circumstances, Candela might have giggled.

"Hope you've kept up on your arpeggios, Marzi, because I might need you to use Sing," Spark said, his eyes chasing after the fleeting traces of the creatures.

Marzipan twirled and winked at him, unperturbed by the menacing atmosphere. She cleared her throat and made a series of small twittering noises as a warm-up. Out among the rubble, the scurrying died down, and glinting yellow eyes shone from within the shadows as the creatures sized up the newcomer.

Swift as a bullet, one of the creatures charged out of hiding, but it wasn't targeting any of the leaders' pokémon. It came for Candela, its shining eyes full of hatred. A chill raced up her spine.

"Sing, Marzi!" Spark shouted.

Marzipan puffed up and started into a high, lilting melody, but before the attack could affect the attacking creature, another one burst forward and slashed Marzipan with long, white claws. Marzipan squealed as she was knocked back.

"Seismic Toss!" Candela commanded, coming back to herself.

As the creature launched itself at her, Brutus snatched it out of the air, then smashed it against the ground with such force that Candela nearly lost her footing in the shockwave. The creature wailed and writhed out of the machoke's grasp. In the few seconds it took to get its bearings, Candela finally got a decent look at it.

The goldenrod coloration and plated scales confirmed Candela's sandshrew suspicion, but this pokémon wasn't like the roly-poly ones she was familiar with. It was long-limbed and gaunt and about twice the size of an ordinary sandshrew. Its back and head were armored, but its underside was fleshy and exposed. Its eyes, as they locked with hers, were not the warm, dark eyes of a pokémon. They were wide and bright and, despite their luminescent quality…

They looked human.

Candela's heart felt like it had turned to ice.

"Resolute, Vine Whip!"

Resolute's vine caught the creature across the chest and flung it into a pile of broken office chairs. Candela released a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

"You OK, Candela?" Spark called. He knelt next to Marzipan, applying potion as quickly as he could.

"I'm fine," she said, and gave an appreciative nod to Brutus, who smiled back before returning to his fighting stance.

The not-quite-sandshrews crowded in a bobbing, leering circle around the leaders, only a few yards off, no longer resigned to the darkness. Something had changed in them. Candela couldn't shake the image of those piercing, humanlike eyes.

"There are too many," Blanche said, returning Resolute to his pokéball. The only indication of their alarm was the trail of sweat cutting a path through the dirt on their face. "We need to retreat."

"And how do we manage that?" Candela asked. It physically pained her to run from a fight, but these creatures… she didn't know what to think of them. She just wanted to get far, far away from them.

"Call out your ponyta and pidgeot. I'll clear a path to the hallway," Blanche said. They raised a pokéball above their head. "Now, please step back."

Blanche's gyarados filled the space between the leaders and the creatures. Gyarados reared up and took in the scene with her fierce, hungry eyes as she waited for a command. She trembled with anticipation. Candela knew no other pokémon with such an intense drive to fight.

She couldn't waste time on awe. "Flicker, Kite, get ready," she said as her pokémon appeared at her side.

Spark called Marzipan back and stood close to Flicker, bracing himself.

"Use Surf!" Blanche shouted, and almost before their words were out, Gyarados gushed a torrent of water onto the horde of creatures blocking the path to the hall.

The water washed the creatures back and left them dizzy and drenched on the wet stone. As soon as the attack finished, Blanche called Gyarados back. Candela snapped her fingers and pointed at Blanche, signaling Kite to dive for the Mystic leader. The pidgeot bore Blanche into the air as Candela and Spark climbed onto Flicker's back, Candela taking the forward position. She spurred Flicker into a sprint across the cave floor, steam rising in his wake as his fiery hooves splashed through puddles.

Kite angled for the hallway with Flicker close on her tail. Over Candela's shoulder, several of the creatures regained their footing and made a dash for the retreating leaders. Sensing Candela's unease, Flicker picked up speed and raced into the dark hallway instants after Kite did. The pounding of his hoof beats was deafening inside the echo-chamber of the passage. Candela was considering covering her ears when she felt Spark's heat disappear from her back.

"Flicker, whoa!" she cried, and the ponyta slowed and danced a little, clearly not interested in coming to a full stop.

Behind them, Spark stood in the center of the hallway. Marzipan popped out of her ball next to him, still smiling obliviously as a wave of about a dozen of the creatures charged toward them.

"Spark, get back on the ponyta," Blanche demanded, still suspended in the air by Candela's pidgeot.

"Keep your pokémon out of hearing range," Spark said, as if he hadn't heard them. "Ready, Marzipan?"

The jigglypuff flexed an imaginary bicep. The creatures were closing the gap far too quickly, but neither Spark nor Marzipan seemed to care.

"Belt it out!" Spark cheered.

Candela cupped her hands over Flicker's ears, and in a flurry of feathers, Blanche and Kite withdrew deeper into the tunnel. Marzipan's song ricocheted off the walls until she was harmonizing with herself, knitting a complex melody that seemed to come from a choir rather than one small pokémon. The chilling music lifted the hair on Candela's arms, and she was glad that the move only influenced other pokémon. This was a one-of-a-kind performance.

The creatures succumbed one by one, falling to the side, tripping over each other, passing out between steps. But they didn't stay down. After a few seconds of stillness, each one hauled itself back up, shook the sleep from its eyes, and resumed the chase. At last, Marzipan looked appropriately surprised and concerned. Spark pulled her back into her ball and looked at Candela with a wavering, fearful smile.

"Shit," he said. "I guess we should run after all."

§

AN: PoGo theory time. I noticed while watching my Valor fiancée use the appraisal function that Candela is surprisingly (per internet-wide headcanon) sweet when she talks about your pokémon. And my experience with Spark? He seems kind of distant and vague when he appraises my pokémon, which seems contrary to the cinnamon-bun-with-anxiety-issues image I have of him. My theory is that Candela truly, truly loves pokémon, and views power as a critical yet multi-faceted thing. She loves all pokémon and sees the value in all of them, and is excited to talk about them with her trainers, even the not "statistically" powerful pokémon. So why is Mr. Sunshine & Optimism himself so wishy-washy? I think Spark really doesn't like to appraise pokémon. He doesn't think they should be assigned value based on their IVs and stats. He sees why those things are important, but he feels uncomfortable when he's pressed to appraise a pokémon based on those factors. He hates doing appraisals and knows he has to limit himself to battle-significant traits, so he keeps it light and brief and maybe even a little cold. Candela just loves talking about pokémon in general, and while she puts a lot of pressure on herself to show no weakness, she's a lot more accepting when it comes to pokémon. It took her a while to get there, though. Ahem, so this was a bit of a ramble, but the internet was made for rambling theories about video games, right? Do you guys have any theories about the appraisal scripts in the game? Also, what teams are you? I'm asking for science. Maybe this isn't the forum for posing these questions. I've had a lot of caffeine today.

Also, I absolutely believe that Star Trek exists in the poké-verse. There had better be some Star Trek / Pokémon crossovers out there.

Also also, Flicker is one big ass ponyta. I went with anime sizing rather than actual pokédex sizing because, regardless of gumption, a three-foot fire-horse would probably have collapsed under Spark and Candela's weight. And that would have been an anticlimactic end to this story, at least for Spark and Candela.