It had been 12 hours since Riolu first ran away. He had no doubt his parents realized he was missing by now, which meant that there was no going back.
Of course, even if he wanted to, he couldn't. There were a few mystery dungeons around the outskirts of Ingen, but going to the closest one would be a stupid idea— exploration teams were guaranteed to check that one first, and he'd be brought right back home. Plus, he had several hours of night where he could travel with the advantage of no one even knowing he was missing.
The flip side was that moving through the storm was absolutely miserable. Pretty much the entire lower half of his body was caked in mud, everything was wet, and he had to rely on lightning strikes briefly illuminating the sky to see if he was still on the road.
But even in the darkness, he knew the surrounding area well enough to make it to Flashscrape Cave in one piece. The mystery dungeon was south of the capital, mid-way between the city and the ocean. More importantly, it was only the third closest dungeon to Ingen, and the furthest one he could run to in a single night.
The location's convenience didn't mean it had no issues, though. Chief among them, the lack of food. Some dungeons were polite enough to offer up apples or berries to the explorers who dared wander their halls, but this one was more focused on seeds and pebbles.
The seeds were theoretically edible, but Riolu had no idea how to tell the difference between a stun and reviver. Without a guild badge, there was no shot he could ID anything.
As a result, he was wandering through the halls of a cave mystery dungeon on a stomach that was more or less empty.
This wasn't helped by the abundance of ferals. While Lucario had insisted he practice some of his moves to help with aura channeling, that practice included precisely nothing about combat. As a result, he was caught completely off-guard by the sudden appearance of a Nacli around the corner.
"Wha… oh."
The two Pokémon stared each other down for a brief moment. This was Riolu's first time seeing a proper mystery dungeon feral this close, and it was just like all the rumors: their lack of reaction, a steady approach, and an emptiness behind the eyes that held a bottomless hatred for all things sapient.
The hatred quickly boiled over once the rock type realized that this Riolu was, in fact, not another feral like it. It hopped over to the opposite wall of the corner, before rushing forward in a Tackle.
Riolu was wholly unprepared for the attack, knocking him back onto the floor of the hallway. The hostile Nacli pounced on top of its prey, surveying Riolu and deciding where its next attack should strike to mortally wound the fighting type as much as possible.
This opportunity never came, however. Nacli, in its feral bloodlust, forgot that Riolu was twice its size. He easily shoved the rock away from him, but it hardly did any damage.
"What do I do- what do I do…"
Channeling a Feint seemed so much easier when it was just him, his aura mentor of the week, and a straw dummy. Here, the dull aching and paralyzing gaze of Nacli were making that process seem impossible.
The Nacli hopped forward twice before leaping at Riolu once again. Last time it tried and failed to set up a kill-shot, now it wouldn't make any such mistake. It charged straight for its opponent's head.
Riolu was slightly more prepared for the incoming Nacli this time around, pressing himself against the hallway's wall and letting Nacli soar past. He still couldn't quite put together how to summon any of his attacks, but as long as he could get past the feral– it wouldn't be an issue.
With the Nacli still trying to turn around, it gave Riolu a brief opening to run away from the homicidal rock type. This lasted all of five steps, until another homicidal rock type rammed right into his chest.
A second Nacli stood in his way, just as eager to utterly maim Riolu as his comrade.
Riolu rubbed his head, trying to make the ringing in his ears go away so he could focus on the task at hand. He was trapped in a narrow hallway, with both his front and back blocked by rather pathetic-looking rock types. Unfortunately, Riolu was only moderately less pathetic.
He crouched down, knowing now that he'd have to fight. He kept his back to the wall, trying his best to track the two foes and figure out which would go first. He bet on the left one as it took a few ominous bounces forward.
This wouldn't be it for him. Riolu was gonna make his stand right here, right now: five in the morning on floor 1 of Flashscrape Cave.
His intuition was correct, as the left Nacli lunged first. Another Tackle, meant to give the fighting type a nasty concussion. However, the foresight gave Riolu an advantage— leaping off the wall of the hallway, he landed on top of left Nacli, and began ramming his fist into it.
"Force Palm!"
All he got was the to-be-expected pain of punching solid rock.
"...Force Palm!" As if yelling louder might be what it took to draw out the move, he slammed his open palm into Nacli yet again.
All the while, the right Nacli drew closer. While it felt no camaraderie with its fellow feral, they did share a goal in the utter annihilation of Riolu's life force. Therefore, freeing the left Nacli would be a priority.
This time it shook things up with a Rock Throw, summoning a rock the size of its body and launching it at Riolu.
"FORCE PA- GAH!"
Blindsided by the attack, Riolu was knocked off his adversary, though something else began to click. He glared at his two opponents, a blue shine reflecting over his body.
He dashed in, again bouncing off the hallway's walls to punch the source of the Rock Throw with exactly twice the force he was just struck with.
"FORCE PALM!"
It was not a Force Palm. It was, however, enough. The Counter connected, and the super effective attack successfully took down one of the Nacli.
The other was still kicking though. If it was enraged by Riolu knocking out its brethren, its empty eyes didn't show it. But now that Riolu knew how to use a singular move, it stood no chance.
"Hah... FORCE PALM!" With a mighty shout, Riolu smashed his fist into Nacli, generating an uncomfortable crunching noise in his knuckles.
While Riolu was shaking out his arm, Nacli went for the groundbreaking strategy of trying to Tackle him for the fourth time in 5 minutes. This amounted to about as much as Nacli could imagine, which was to say absolutely nothing.
Riolu was able to jump out of the way, but not soon enough to avoid getting his foot grazed by the attack. It was enough for Counter to kick in again, and one very annoyed punch later, both Naclis were down.
Standing among the unconscious bodies, Riolu panted as he tried to regain his breath. He... fought off real ferals! He made it to the dungeon, and was able to win a 2v1! He really could make it through this!
He made sure to step on top of the Naclis as he continued down the corridor, just to satisfy some of that pent-up frustration. With the two ferals down, there was nothing stopping him from rounding the bend and finally seeing the staircase down to floor 2 up ahead.
He was on all fours as he practically leaped down the steps, still riding the high of his combat victory. This came to a stop alongside the rest of his body when he crashed into a Venusaur.
"Ol' on, got a feral behind- Oh, you ain't' a feral."
The Venusaur turned his lumbering body to face Riolu, causing him to take a few steps back up the staircase. He could clearly see an Explorer's Federation badge dangling off of the giant's necklace.
Behind the Venusaur was a Charizard, who landed on the ground with a thud. Like her partner, she also had a Federation badge, this one pinned to a bag wrapped around one of the dragon's shoulders.
"Huh, looks like the target to me." She lifted up her badge, tapping the crystal in the center with her claw and causing a display of icons and footprint runes to project out. "Yeah, lookin' for a low level Riolu, this guy fits the bill."
Riolu, meanwhile, was glued to the spot. These guys had to be seasoned vets; fully evolved Pokemon who looked tough. No amount of Force Palms could let him get away from this. They would knock him out and drag him back to mom and dad and things would get so much worse and-
His panicked trembling was rudely interrupted by Charizard stepping in closer, leaning down so her head was only a couple feet off the ground from Riolu's.
"You alright kid? This place isn't exactly a beginner dungeon."
Riolu took another step back up the stairs, causing Charizard to raise an eyebrow.
"We're here to get you out, not-"
"Chari, shut up," Venusaur interrupted, using a vine to gently nudge Charizard away from Riolu's personal space. "Kid's bloody well terrified."
Somehow, the giant plant dinosaur stepping in wasn't much more comfortable than the fire breathing dragon to Riolu.
Despite this, Venusaur continued anyways.
"…You ain't lost, are ya? Came here for a reason?"
Riolu slowly nodded- maybe he could convince them to not take him back?
Venusaur gave him a solemn nod in return. "Chari, keep an eye out for ferals. Need to talk to this kid."
"The hell are you-"
"I said watch out for ferals."
Charizard gave her partner a glare. The two maintained eye contact for a solid 30 seconds, briefly interrupted by Venusaur having to fire a Razor Leaf at an approaching Geodude. Charizard did relent though, flying deeper into the room and giving the two a small amount of privacy.
Once Charizard was a satisfactory distance away, Venusaur turned back to Riolu with a lower voice. "Right kid, this mission to find you got a reward ten times what it should and is coming from the head of the Federation's crisis response unit. You ain't a normal Riolu, so spill."
Riolu was able to find enough of his voice to mutter out a response. "Spill what?"
"You're story, why you're here, whatever the hell you want us to know, cause something's weird here."
Under the intense gaze of Venusaur, Riolu struggled to find the words at first.
"I… Ran away. Mom… runs the crisis unit. But, she and dad are… just… I can't go back to them. I needed to get out."
Immediately Venusaur's expression hardened as he started to realize what was going on.
"Gonna ask you one question. Depending on what you say, I might drag you back to Ingen, might not. Understand?"
Riolu gave a nervous nod. If Venusaur was telling the truth, everything would come down to this one point.
"Right. Where do you want to go?"
Riolu blinked, not quite following how this could determine his fate.
Sensing his confusion, Venusaur clarified slightly. "You can travel anywhere in the world right now, where'd it be?"
Riolu's first instinct was to just tell Venusaur "away," but something gave him the feeling that was the wrong answer. What he wanted was a different question than anything he's really had to answer in the past.
After thinking it over a few seconds, he decided that his first instinct wasn't too far off after all.
"I… want to get away. Out of the Federation, somewhere I can just… be me. Be away from her."
Venusaur continued looking at Riolu, the two frozen in place for a few seconds. After what felt like an eternity to the fighting type, the seasoned explorer stirred.
With another vine, he reached into his bag and let a small sheet of paper fall to the ground.
"Listen up— doesn't look like you're the mission target after all. And in the confusion of figuring out who you are, I oh-so-carelessly dropped a ferry ticket somewhere 'round here. If someone picked that up and headed south to Port Vetas, they'd be able to use that ticket to head right for Varin."
Riolu blinked a few times. He knew of Varin- it was the newest continent the Federation had expanded to, and mom was complaining every other day about how it completely screwed over the way she ran her department.
"Guilds out there are desperate," Venusaur continued, willfully choosing to ignore Riolu's shock. "You show up, look like you know what you're doing, you get in. Even a bunch of washed up bastards like us can be something."
Venusaur looked back to Charizard, who was staring at the two of them with an annoyed glare. "Let's keep going, this ain't our target."
"Then who the hell…" Charizard trailed off as she saw the ticket on the ground and a much more serious look coming from her partner. She swallowed the rest of her sentence and nodded. "Keep going, got it."
Riolu walked over to the ticket, not daring to pick it up if it should prove to just be some cruel dream. It really was a way out. The continent with as small a Federation presence as he could possibly get.
He quickly turned back to Venusaur. "Thank you! Thank you guys so much!"
The giant took one last look back and gave a slow nod. "Take care now."
While that would have been a really cool message to end on, Riolu's ears managed to pick up the much quieter conversation between Venusaur and Charizard as they walked away.
"Thought you were looking forward to Varin."
"I just wanted to see if it was like home."
"Nothing's gonna be like your home, you know that."
"Dunno, pictures looked a lot like Perth."
Their muffled voices trailed off until Riolu couldn't hear anything else.
He lingered on the stairwell for another few moments, gently holding the ticket. This would be his new start.
While Riolu would have loved to see more of Port Vetus, he couldn't afford to linger. He had a goal now, and an unlucky sighting of a missing Pokemon poster could be all it took to burn that goal to ashes.
He kept his head down as he stepped onto the boat. His heart skipped a few beats as he handed the Swampert his ticket, but all they gave in return was a double take, a shrug, and a command to hurry up so the rest of the line could board.
Riolu still refused to believe this was happening until the ship began to move though. He quickly ran to the back, just to verify his senses weren't spontaneously failing him.
They were drifting away from the dock. Faster and faster until he could see the entire port from where he stood.
He was just about to let out a yell of joy, before he locked eyes with someone standing along the docks.
It was a Lucario. Next to her was an Infernape, shouting at any random passerby he could- he didn't seem to notice that Riolu was on the ship.
Lucario didn't say anything. The two looked at each other across the ever-growing waves, before she finally turned around.
Riolu… didn't quite know what that meant. But she wasn't demanding some other sailor chase after them, or signaling the ferry's captain to turn around.
After looking at the coast of Ingen for another 10 minutes, Riolu decided to do the same. He walked back to the ship's front, waiting for the shoreline of Varin to come into sight.
Whatever the continent had in store for him, he was willing to deal with it.
Ch 3 - Paradise City - 11/11/23