It was raining as it had been raining ever since Minna had made her escape. It was not clear if the sky's tears were being shed out of sympathy or reproach, and the runaway pokémon did not let herself wonder. Instead, the absol ran until the stitch in her side was all that she could think about, and then she pushed herself to go even further. One benefit of her training had been learning how to push down the pain, if only for a short while, in order to complete the task at hand. That lesson had been beaten into her, and now Minna was using it to flee her teacher.
Minna's willpower was only able to triumph over her physical capabilities for so long, however, and her pace eventually slowed from a run to a trot to merely putting one paw in front of the other. The brook that she had swam across was a fair distance behind her now, and the runaway pokémon scanned her surroundings through the curtain of falling rain. The landscape around her was a vibrant green, containing nearly every hue of that color. A detour through a line of thin trees provided Minna with some reprieve from the heavy drops of rain, but not enough and she moved onto a grove of bushes. Pushing her way through the brambles, Minna gritted her teeth as branches caught on her fur and threatened to reopen the old wounds which lay beneath. Still, the ground was not nearly as soaked under the cover of the bush as it was outside, and Minna only partially sank into the soft earth as she collapsed. Her white fur, already soaked with rain, now became marred by mud and wayward leave and twigs. Minna was hardly aware of this as she drifted off into an uneasy sleep.
She woke up feeling cold, thirsty, and wet. Only a few hours had passed between Minna's closing her eyes and she was still exhausted from the events of the previous day. Her body was slow to come to life, with limbs reluctant to relinquish the stiffness which had settled into them during her rest. But Minna exerted her will again and forced herself to her feet and through the barrier of vegetation. The sky was still overcast, but at least it was not pouring rain, and Minna was able to take another look at where her desperate flight had brought her.
The landscape was a striking green. Even after all of the traveling that she had done, Minna was still impressed by its vibrancy. Without the rain, Minna could hear a river flowing nearby. She took a hesitant sniff of the air, and did not smell any of the familiar scents of her old life. Of course, with the rain from the night before it was impossible to be certain, but Minna knew that she had to take some risks in order to keep moving forward. That was something that she had learned at the knee of her old trainer as well.
The ground beneath her was soft and the grass underfoot tickled the pads of her feet. Minna made her way to the river's edge. She tried to remain vigilant, but she was tired and it was tempting to think that she had made a clean break with her past. But whenever the weary absol began to let her guard down, she would hear a real or imagined noise and the tension and the fear would return again and again.
But Minna had to set the fear aside in order to drink, and to do that she limped down to the river. A family of brown and white zigzagoon were shepherded away by their parent. The linoone shielding her kits with her long, sinewy body from the potential predator, but Minna did not show them any interest. Her stomach was empty, but her appetite had not yet returned, just the overpowering thirst. As she lowered her face to the water, Minna caught her reflection and was met by a gaunt creature whose once-white fur was dirtied and whose eyes were haunted.
It was a disturbing sight and Minna quickly dipped her head down to the river, first letting the flowing water wash over her mouth to clean away the taste of sleep and exhaustion and then letting herself drink. The water was cool and pure, different from what she was used to, but in an oddly familiar way. Minna let herself relax, just a little, as she partook in the river's bounty.
Once she was satisfied, Minna raised her head and took another look at the area. Again, she was struck by its beauty. Across the river, a lush array of greenery of all shapes and sizes filled Minna's vision. It could be a paradise for any pokémon willing to endure the frequent rains which fed the robust trees and the grass which was taller than Minna was. Again, the absol was aware of a strange sense of familiarity, but was unable to grasp it before it dissolved into so much mental vapor.
Minna decided that it didn't matter. There would be time for riddles later, after her basic needs had been met. Since her thirst had been slaked and her appetite had yet to return, that left for Minna the matter of finding a more suitable shelter than the shoddy covering of brambles which she had settled for the night before.
Her long time spent in the company of humans and other trained pokémon had partially overlaid her instincts, but at least Minna had not been a spoiled house pet. Her trainer – she still struggled with thinking of him as her former trainer – had taken her far and wide during his travels including over mountains and through wastelands. Minna had learned not from any direct instruction but by observation and repetition what to look for in a shelter. The first thing that they had looked for was higher ground. That would be especially important for making sure that any runoff from another rainstorm would flow away and not pool. Additionally, a higher vantage point should give Minna warning when her trainer came looking for her.
Minna took one last drink of water and then left the river on the mission which she had assigned herself. There were a few sets of wary eyes which tracked the stranger's departure and behind her Minna could hear some life return to the scene after she was away from the water's edge. Soon she found herself navigating through the dense field of tall grass. The towering plants cast their overlapping shadows across the ground below in an eerie pattern which shifted with the ebb and flow of the breeze and in response to the sun emerging from out behind of the dispersing clouds.
Minna's overnight journey had taken her far enough from civilization that there were not any artificial lights or sounds that were of human origin. She had been too tired to notice before her uneasy sleep, but now as she hiked uphill Minna noted the change. Not that it was quiet, either, rather far from it. All around her were sounds of nature: rustling grass and rushing water, mixed with the growls and chatter of wild pokémon. With her visibility severely limited by the thicket surrounding her, Minna had to rely on her other senses more.
Using smell and sound more than sight to keep her bearings and to avoid other pokémon was a challenge going from her time as a tamed pokémon, but Minna did not shy away from it. A part of her seemed to know, by some combination of instinct and forgotten muscle memory, just how to do so, like sheathing and unveiling her claws. Without signs of humans save for the odd discarded piece of rubbish, it was easy to imagine that she had been transported back in time, to an age without humans whatsoever.
That would have made things a lot easier, Minna thought to herself. If she had never met her trainer, if she had been left alone, how would things had turned out differently? Minna would not be running herself ragged, and she would not be constantly glancing over her shoulder without even thinking about it, as she was doing now. Anger rose in her chest, and Minna tried to wrangle it, in hopes that it would banish the pain, both physical and psychic. But she was simply too tired and the anger drained out from between the absol's clenched teeth to leave her hollow.
As she traveled north, Minna did her best to stay parallel to the river, but the ground grew more and more uneven and her path took her farther and closer from the artery of water as she sought the best path forward. As much as her innate abilities were of service, Minna still found herself having to double-back. That backtracking grew more and more frequent and drained Minna's energy until she finally felt the ground under her paws give way while she was trying to climb a stretch of hill littered with small stones.
The absol tumbled back down to the foot of the incline, landing on her side and her bruised ribs. A small shower of earth followed Minna down and pelted her with rocks and dust. For a few minutes, Minna let herself lay prone on the ground. As she caught her breath with rapid panting breaths, she thought bitterly about how weak she was. She had battled in tournaments and triumphed in more battles than she could count, only to be defeated by a measly hill.
What would her trainer think of her?
The thought flashed to the forefront of Minna's mind before she could stop it, and she was disgusted with herself for how strongly that single question impacted her. She felt weak, and this time when the hate rose up it fell into her grasping paws without her needing to reach for it. The difference was that this time, the hatred a directed not at her trainer but at herself.
Minna did not know how long that she would have laid there in the cold clutch of self-loathing had she not seen something unusual which had caught her eye. The rain had washed away some of the mud from a section of ground to reveal a hint of rich brown wood under the coverage of a bush like the one which had sheltered Minna from the previous night's rain. The curious sight banished though of her trainer from Minna's mind, and she rolled onto her belly and got to her feet to take some hesitant steps towards it.
She sniffed at the section of wood first and then brushed at it with the heel of one of her paws. More of the surface of the wood was revealed as the mud was cleared away, and Minna discovered that there was a human smell to the hidden object. She didn't understand why until her examination uncovered a brass knob jutting out from the wooden surface. Prudence would likely have been Minna's wont if she hadn't been so tired as to become a victim to curiosity.
Minna stood hunched over on the wooden surface and examined the protrusion closely. She grabbed it between her paws and twisted it. Without warning, the ground shifted under her feet and Minna was dumped headfirst into the darkness which had opened up under her. She let out a scream which turned into a grunt of pain as her body hit a metal chute which reawakened her body's injuries and carried Minna down into the earth. Her panicked ride came to an end almost before Minna's mind had caught up with her body as she landed on a lumpy old mattress which lay at the foot of the hidden slide.
Minna had once again found herself lying on her side after a tumble, and this time she decided that she had learned her lesson. It was easier to stay still and lick at her wounds, especially since the underground cavern where she had been deposited was shrouded in complete darkness. Her eyes slowly adjusted to the lack of light and Minna marveled at the size of the space around her. The human smell was there too, but it was faded and mingled with that of pokémon which were unfamiliar to her.
In any case, there did not seem to be anything else, human or pokémon, sharing the space with her. Its entrance was hidden enough that Minna thought it might go undiscovered by her trainer, at least initially. There was still the question of the unknown trainer who had created this hideaway, but the faded smells and thin layer of dust gathered on the mattress beneath her suggested that the stranger had not been by in a while, and may not ever return. That was enough to give Minna the sense of security to rest her eyes and drift into sleep.
Her dreams were troubled and her rest was fitful. Visions of splintering earth and crashing waves mingled with phantoms past, present, and future. Minna's body twisted on the lumpy surface of the mattress until she woke suddenly because a small shape had collided with her side with an "oof!"
Minna woke up startled and she responded to the surprise by leaping to her feet and snarling fiercely at the intruder. Her claws and teeth flashed and she snapped at the smaller pokémon until she felt a burst of air in her face and an overwhelmingly sweet scent flooded her sensitive nose and sent her head spinning. Minna's fierce display was cut short as she reeled back, coughing to clear her burning throat.
Once her coughing had somewhat subsided, Minna could hear a soft voice saying over and over again, "Whoa, there! Whoa!"
It was annoying, but annoyance was a better feeling that fear, and Minna calmed down and stopped trying to force a growl through her protesting throat. Instead, she gasped, "I'm all right. I'm all right. Who are you?"
It was an odd question to ask a strange pokémon in an unfamiliar place, but the other pokémon sounded chipper as he answered, "I'm Mendel, Mend to my friends. What's your name?"
"I'm Minna," the absol said warily.
A silence stretched between the two of them until Mendel said, "Oh, sorry, let me get the lights!" The mattress shifted very slightly under his weight as the diminutive pokémon crossed its uneven surface. He bounced once and then twice and then there was a click before the underground cavern was flooded with light.
Minna had to rapidly blink her eyes before she could get used to the artificial illumination. The first word which came to her mind was "green" as that was the color which predominated her vision. Green furniture lay on green rugs, all surrounded by posters of the same green pokémon repeated again and again.
The other pokémon in the cave was green as well, at least his petite body and head were. His arms ended in two flowers, one red and one blue, both of which were clasped around a chain connected to an overhead light. The dangling pokémon grinned at Minna and said, "Hey, how's it going?" Then he dropped down onto the mattress, landing on his back before bounding up onto his feet and taking a bow.
Minna examined Mendel and he examined her. "You're a Roselia."
"And you're an absol, but not a wild one."
"How do you know that?" asked Minna.
Mendel smiled as wide as he could. "Well, for starters, you're talking to me instead of treating me like a chew toy. Or trying to, at least," he added the last part with a brazen wink.
"Do you get a lot of wild pokémon in here, then?"
"No, you're the first visitor to drop by uninvited." The Roselia paused to chuckle at his own joke, and looked disappointed that Minna did not join him. "Anyways, it kind of defeats the purpose of having a secret base if everybody knows about it."
Minna stopped her unconscious pacing to ask, "A secret base? What's that?"
"I'm not really sure," admitted Mendel. "That's what my trainer calls it though. Apparently, there are places like this all over the country and people like to find them and turn them into clubhouses."
"My trainer never said anything about them," said Minna, and immediately regretted it as Mendel visibly perked up.
"Hey, speaking of which, where is your trainer? Does he know you're down here?"
Minna shifted on her feet and managed to say, "He's around. How about you?"
"He's at the pokémon gym in Fortree. Said that I probably wouldn't be much help there." Mendel let an exaggerated sigh slip out and spread his flowered hands wide. "But what can you do, am I right? Instead, my trainer asked me to prepare the secret base for the victory party, so here I am!"
"A party?" asked Minna. "Just for winning a battle against a gym leader?"
Mendel scoffed, "Oh, I guess that just happens to you every other day? Wait, don't tell me, you and your trainer don't even remember how many badges that you've won."
Minna bit back the response that first came to her mind and instead asked, "You said you were going to have a party, does that mean that you have food down here?"
"Yeah, we've got tons of stuff and hardly any of it is good for you!" The smaller pokémon gave Minna a sideways glance. "Are you hungry or something? I could give you something for the road. I mean, your trainer has got to be worry about where you've gotten off to, right?"
"I fell down here a while ago," Minna said, and that poor attempt at an explanation seemed to satisfy Mendel for the moment. He hopped off the mattress the two of them were standing on and crossed the cavern to the other side. There, beneath the watchful gaze of countless green pokémon on green posters were the only pieces of furniture in the secret base which were not that same color.
Mendel was humming as he opened first the white fridge and then the brown cabinet next to it, both roughly three times as tall as the Roselia was. "Well," he said without looking back at Minna, "we've got some Double Diglett Bites cereal but no milk to go with it. I think that the soda's gone flat, too. Oh, how about chips? Everyone likes chips!"
"Chips will be fine," said Minna from over Mendel's shoulder, causing him to jump.
"What do you think you're doing sneaking up on me like that?"
Minna protested, "I wasn't sneaking."
"You were too! Stalking me like you were going to eat me!" Mendel thrust an already-open bag of chips at the other pokémon. "Don't eat me! Eat these instead."
"I wasn't going to eat you," insisted Minna, and Mendel shook his head, but both of them were smiling. When Minna moved to the take the bag of chips, Mendel cringed away from her and then laughed so that Minna laughed as well. She carried the food in her teeth to a lumpy green beanbag chair and clambered on top of it. With one of her claws, she widened the opening in the bag and started to eat the salty food with abandon.
Mendel sat on one of the smaller lime green cushions which littered the floor of the secret base and remarked, "Are you sure you're not a wild pokémon? Your table manners are awful."
"What do you mean?" asked Minna, but flecks of potato chips dotted her muzzle and caused Mendel and her to laugh again. There were only so many of the stale chips left in the bag and soon they gone, even though Minna's appetite had only been further awakened. She didn't want any more human food either.
She licked the back of her paws and started grooming away the remnants of food on her face and fur before saying, "I think I'm going to go out and hunt. Do you want anything?"
Mendel made a face. "Like a zigzagoon burger? Yuck, no thanks!"
"That's fine with me," Minna said coolly and she rolled awkwardly off of the beanbag chair and padded over to the slide at the side of the cavern.
"Do you really hunt?" asked Mendel. "I mean, does your trainer really let you do that?"
Minna said, "He used to," absentmindedly. She crossed back and forth on the floor in front of the bottom of the slide a few times before asking, "How do I get out of here, Mendel?"
The Roselia took his time walking over to stand next to Minna and then directed her attention upward with the blue rose topping his left hand so that she could see the line of rope hanging next to the slide.
"Are you serious?"
That got Mendel laughing again. "Oh, you should've seen the look on your face, Minna! No, there's another way out, just follow me."
Mendel led Minna around the perimeter of the secret base to a point roughly one-third of the way around the cavern's circumference. There, Mendel pointed out a small door, one which swung upwards to open and which a full-grown human would have to crawl on hands and knees in order to enter.
"No idea why they put this in here," remarked Mendel as he lifted the door.
"It's always good to have an escape plan," Minna offered and then she disappeared into the darkness.
The passage was a tight enough fit that the white-furred pokémon had to hunch over to make any progress. She was just beginning to feel a mounting sense of claustrophobia when her nose bumped up against another door. Minna was able to nudge it open and winced as the egress led her into bright sunlight. She emerged from the hidden tunnel slowly and sniffed the air experimentally. As she did so, the door closed behind her and for a moment Minna was unable to identify it, as it was so well camouflaged against the rockface which surrounded it.
Once she was certain that she could find her way back to the hidden entrance to the secret base, Minna turned her attention to the hunt. There was a wealth of information flooding her brain by way of her nostrils, but Minna was able to pick out the smell of a zigzagoon all by its lonesome. It might have been one of the kits that she had seen by the river, or it might not. At the river's edge, Minna had been preoccupied and she had ignored the potential prey, but not she was an eager hunter.
She followed the trail of her quarry slowly at first, but as she drew nearer, Minna grew more confident in her rusty talents and her thoughts took a backseat to her instincts. Soon, she had the pokémon that she was hunting in her sights. She thought that she had been perfectly silent, but the small brown and white pokémon looked skittish and it zigged and zagged through the tall grass with frequent glances backwards and several dramatic changes of direction.
It was painstaking work, but Minna inched closer and closer to her prey until she finally struck. She fell upon the terrified zigzagoon like a bolt of lightning and cut its startled squeal short. Minna felt powerful and fulfilled after she had completed her kill. It was not too dissimilar feeling to those she had experienced in pokémon battles, but rawer and more fleeting as well. It also was not a feeling that could be easily shared. The thought of bragging about her hunt to Mendel seemed like it would earn her disgust rather than praise. But she still felt proud of herself, and she let that be enough.
Minna went back to the river to wash herself off. This time there were no other pokémon around, either due to the time of day or from hiding from the absol's bloodied visage. Minna did not know or care. The resulting solitude gave her the peace and quiet that she wanted to look at herself in the water's reflection again. She had to block the sun overhead with her body to keep it from shining on the clear water's surface, but she was then able to see what she was looking for.
There was Minna's reflection again, mostly unchanged from that of this morning, but she thought that she saw some greater strength in the red-irised eyes of the mirrored absol, some confidence that had not been there before. Minna almost let herself believe that things would turn out all right, but then she saw a glint of sunlight catching on a metallic object in the otherwise clear sky. Minna whipped her neck around to look up at it and felt a rolling wave of panic threaten to overwhelm her.
Her worst fears were confirmed when Minna identified the pokémon flying overhead as a skarmory. Her trainer had one of the fierce pokémon, named Valkyrie, as one of his go-to battlers and the skarmory over her head was flying a clear search pattern. Minna suddenly felt horribly exposed standing in the water with her white fur offering her no camouflage.
She hesitated for a moment, torn between the desire to seek shelter and the fear of being discovered by moving too suddenly, but then Minna let herself think rationally, leaning on her training where before she had relied more on instincts. There was no way that she could stay frozen in one place, motionless save for the fur on her legs floating gently on the river's current, but there was also no excuse for her to flee in a panic. That would be the surest way to give her identity away to Valkyrie. There was no reason for the skarmory to think that Minna was anything other than a wild absol, if she was smart.
And so, Minna forced herself to lower her head back down to the water and feigned taking another drink, since her tightened throat would only have caused her to choke on it. Minna then affected a trot back to the tall grass which she hoped appeared unharried. Only when she was sheltered by the thick blades of grass did Minna start to run at a breakneck pace back to the secret base and safety.
Her mind was so focused on her goal that she did not stop to think before bursting out of the grass and into the clearing which lay between the grass and the rockface. Momentum carried her a quarter of the way to her destination and fear finished the equation, compounded as it was by her sudden exposure. Minna did not dare to look up and see whether her trainer's skarmory had found her, as she was certain that she would see Valkyrie screaming down at her if she did so. Instead, Minna scanned the rocky surface for sign of the hidden entrance.
After a few fake starts, each one causing a fresh spike to Minna's heartrate, she found the passage to the secret base. By hooking her claws underneath the door, she was able to lift it and crawled into the narrow tunnel before her tail could get caught by the closing door. The darkness in the enclosed space seemed even more oppressive in her frazzled state, and Minna was elated when she was able to nose open the door and fall into the main cavern of the secret base. She was not sure that she had ever been happier to see the color green.
"Hey, Minna, welcome back!" Mendel said cheerfully. He was sitting in the beanbag chair which Minna had previously been using and holding an uninflated green balloon in his lap. The whole secret based looked to have been haphazardly decorated with streamers, all about as high on the cave's walls that a tiny Roselia could reach, and all in various shades of green. "How did it go? Wait, scratch that. I don't want to lose my appetite before the party gets started."
Minna was fighting to catch her breath and unsure of what she should say, or could say, to the other pokémon. The decision passed from her when she and Mendel both heard the trap door above the slide opening.
"Ah, there's my trainer now!" said Mendel eagerly.
But the voice which carried down to them did not belong to a human. It was a deep rumble behind which lay either a growl or a laugh depending on its owner's mood. "Little pokémon, little pokémon, let me in," the voice said, and Minna knew that her worst fear had been realized.
She had been found.