Minna crawled down the tunnel into the secret base without thinking about anything except for the injuries that Faust and Valkyrie had given her. The wounded absol was grateful that Mendel was so valuable in guiding her back into the cool cave hidden in the land. Although concern was written all over the roselia's face, he didn't say anything until Minna was crudely cleaned up and was lying down on the mattress at the foot of the slide.

"No one should land on you if you lay over here," Mendel said and laughed weakly at his joke. When Minna did not even acknowledge his words, his face grew somber again. "What are you going to do, Minna? You can't run from your trainer in your condition. You need help if you want to get away from him." Mendel's petite green body shivered and he added, "And if those two pokémon outside are anything to go by, you definitely made the right call in trying to get away."

For all his words, Minna did not answer him, and the roselia could only sigh and sit down on the mattress next to her. He listened to the absol's shallow breathing and looked around the secret base at the green balloons and streamers he had put up to make the already green secret base more festive. "Some party," grumbled Mendel before he grew quiet and sat stroking Minna's fur gingerly as the larger pokémon fell into an uneasy sleep.

In Minna's dream, she was alone in the darkness, with no sign of Mendel or any other living thing. She was walking, or attempting to walk, but the ground under her feet was a sludgy morass which pulled at her paws and clung to her fur with each step she attempted. Trying to move made her body ache, but Minna did not stop, even though she could not explain the reason for her persistence. Surprisingly, given her struggle and the darkness, Minna did not feel any fear in her dream, at least, not initially. Then, something began to light up the darkness and the fear came readily.

The orange glow was soft and promised warmth at first, but what was giving it off seemed to be a titanic beast rising from the mucky ground in front of Minna. She stood, frozen yet sinking slowly into the ground as the massive figure ascended steadily until it loomed over Minna, looking down at her with empty eyes and a discordant smile. As her eyes adjusted to the dull orange light, Minna recognized the features of her trainer – her former trainer, she reminded herself – on the monumental thing standing before her. Fear gripped her and she tried to turn and run, but the grasping, squelching mud had somehow grown even more restrictive and Minna exhausted herself just trying to turn herself around. Trying to move forward at all, let alone with any speed, seemed an impossible task.

But although Minna couldn't move, she could still be moved, it seemed. Something solid met her paws under the murky, muddy ground and Minna started to be lifted up and out of the grime by a platform as hard and solid as concrete. She didn't want to, but the absol felt compelled to turn around even though she knew it meant facing the frightening, eyeless visage of her old trainer.

He was still smiling at her and his voice echoed around her though the giant trainer's mouth didn't move in the slightest. The booming voice was his, but the word was Faust's, and Minna winced when she heard it repeated over and over again, "Runaway. Runaway. Runaway!" Before her eyes the vacant face of her trainer looking down on her began to change, with large rivulets of what could have been stone or flesh running down its cheeks like wax off of a melting candle. The face started to elongate into an animalistic muzzle, the smile grew predatory, and the eyes were suddenly alive with cruelty as Minna found herself looking up at an ugly amalgamation of her trainer's features and Faust's. All the while, the mightyena's accusation came faster and louder until it blended into a cacophony that made Minna cry out in terror.

She awoke with a start, shaking Mendel out of his own doze. "Hey, Minna!" the roselia said soothingly, only to shrink back when Minna snarled at him without thinking. "Take it easy! I'm on your side, remember?"

"My side?" repeated Minna warily, and then she shook her head heavily. "I just… It was just a dream, then."

"Yeah, but not a nice one from what I can tell," said Mendel cautiously. "You feel like you're burning up, Minna! And that scream! You didn't scream like that when that skarmory attacked you!" Mendel's voice softened and he asked, "Are you okay, Minna? Do you need me to get you anything?"

Minna thought before answering, and then slowly nodded her head. "Yes, do you have any water?"

Mendel hopped off of the lumpy mattress the two pokémon had been using and crossed the illuminated cave as rapidly as his little legs could carry him. He opened the small refrigerator and found a bottle of water as big as he was and started to lug it back to Minna. "Hope you can open this thing," he grunted as he set the water bottle on the floor next to where the absol was lying. "I can never get the caps off without help."

"I've got it," said Minna and she took the plastic bottle in her paws and bit into it hard enough to puncture the container with her sharp teeth. The secret base was filled with the sound of Minna noisily drawing the water from the bottle through the holes she had made. When the bottle was empty, the absol let it drop from her forepaws onto the ground between her and Mendel. "There is one more thing I need," she said.

"What is it? Just name it!"

Minna frowned as she rose unsteadily to her feet. "I need help. Do you think your trainer can help me get to the nearest pokémon center?"

"Yeah, definitely!" Mendel answered immediately, only to grow more circumspect. "What if your trainer tries to get you back from the pokémon center though?"

"I-I don't know," admitted Minna, her voice heavy with exhaustion, "but if I don't get better, I won't be in any shape to get away from him."

Mendel nodded and helped Minna lie back down on the mattress. "If you don't mind me asking, Minna, what changed your mind? Was it your dream?"

"Yes. No. Maybe. I don't know," Minna said wearily. "Maybe it was what Valkyrie said when we fought her. My trainer won't give up, so I need to be ready for him."

"Makes sense to me," said Mendel. "Now just wait here and catch your breath. It's been a while, so I'm sure my trainer will be along any-" Mendel's thought was cut short by the sound of the trap door at the top of the slide above them opening. "Well, there you have it!" the Roselia said brightly.

"Hey, Mend!" called a voice from overhead. "We're here!" To Minna's ears, Mendel's trainer sounded young and excited. A fresh-faced trainer enjoying his first pokémon journey. The absol wondered whether her trainer had ever sounded like that. "We got the badge, and you won't guess what else! Look out below, here we come!"

"'We'?" Mendel wondered, but the answer to his question provided itself soon enough when not one but two people came sliding down from the secret base's entrance. The first one was a short boy with a shock of brown hair which looked like it would have been standing up in all directions even without the electric charge he had generated going down the metallic slide. His face was wide with a smile and he quickly scrambled out of the way to make room for the other person coming down after him. It was the second individual who made Minna's heart stop.

It was her trainer standing up before her eyes, and not in a daydream or a nightmare but in the flesh. He was more than a head taller than Mendel's trainer and everything about him seemed more tightly controlled than the younger boy, from his short-cropped black hair to his thin smile. He kept that smile when he noticed Minna, but his eyes hardened immediately and Minna could feel the danger communicated in his look. It was a look she had seen before, given to not only her but all of the members of her trainer's team at one time or another. The look didn't threaten so much as it promised, and it was all the more frightening for it.

Conditioning made Minna want to hide her face behind her paws from her trainer's judgment, but the absol managed to keep her response limited to a nervous twitch of her paws. Instead, she forced herself meet her trainer's eyes. The things about him that scared her, Minna told herself, were the same reasons why she had fled from him.

"Whoa, good job, Mend!" said the roselia's trainer without any trace of awareness of the tension between Minna and her trainer. "I met Albrecht here at the pokémon center after we beat the gym leader and he said that he needed help finding his missing absol! I was bringing him here to take a little break, and look! You already found his missing pokémon! Way to go, Mend!"

The boy said everything without taking a single breath, but when he finally stopped to inhale, Minna's trainer smoothly filled the silence, saying, "That's right, Minna. I'm so happy I found you. Now we can go get you fixed up." All of his words were correct, but instead of care there was an edge to Albrecht's clipped words. He raised a blue and white great ball and started to raise it towards Minna.

Before either Albrecht could attempt to return Minna to her poké ball or the absol could try to avoid being recaptured, Mendel's trainer started talking rapidly again, "Wow, what happened to you, Minna? It looks like those pokénappers really tried to hurt you!"

Minna's eyes darted to Mendel's in confusion, and the roselia frowned and started towards his trainer. Albrecht lowered Minna's poké ball slightly and said in the patient tone of a teacher trying to handle a rambunctious student, "Yes, the pokénappers were really serious about taking away my absol. You saw what they did to my skarmory and my mightyena, too. So, if it's all right with you, Sigmund, I'm going to take Minna and the rest of my team back to the pokémon center right away."

"Of course it's all right with me," said Sigmund brightly. "I just thought you might want to stay for the- What is it, Mend?" He looked down at the roselia tugging on the hem of his shorts and then watched carefully as Mendel waved his flowered hands around and gave a rapid explanation of everything that had happened, including who had really given Minna her injuries.

"Save your breath," growled Minna under her breath, "it's not like he's going to understand you." From the bemused look on Albrecht's face, it looked as though the older trainer agreed with his runaway pokémon.

Still, somehow, Sigmund was nodding as Mendel continued his wild pantomime and his bright smile soon turned into a frown and then a scowl of anger. He turned on Albrecht and jabbed an accusing finger at Minna's former trainer as he yelled, "You lied to me! You said that there were pokénappers, and that's who took your absol and hurt your other pokémon, but Mendel said that she was running away from you! And that your pokémon hurt her!"

"How did you understand anything your roselia tried to tell you?" Albrecht asked.

"How did you get your trainer to understand anything you told him?" Minna asked in an equally awestruck tone.

"Our bond runs pretty deep," said Mendel with a grin and a tap of one of his flower-covered hands against his head.

Albrecht put his poké ball back on his belt and turned his attention to Sigmund and Mendel. "It doesn't matter," he said harshly, "you led me to my missing pokémon, and that's what's important. I don't care what you think of me, and you certainly don't have the pokémon to stop me. All of your pokémon are still injured from winning your gym battle. What is this, your sixth badge?" asked Albrecht mockingly.

Sigmund's words held a surprising amount of force in them as he retorted, "Not all of my pokémon are injured! Come on, Mend!" His roselia jumped in front of him and held out his flowers like firearms at Albrecht. "Send out your best pokémon and we'll beat you! Right here and now!"

"So, it's a pokémon battle you want?" asked Albrecht with a sneer. "What do you think, Minna? Do you want to watch me teach them a lesson while you watch?" The teenager laughed in a way that bore an uncomfortable resemblance to Faust's barking. "My pokémon knows that you're no match for me, Sigmund. Look at the worry in her eyes. But don't worry, I'm just going to beat your roselia badly enough that you aren't going to ever try and play the hero ever again." Albrecht's hand dropped down to his belt to grab another poké ball, a red and white one that was marked by more dings and scratches than any of its siblings. "Get ready to see my strongest pokémon, you annoying little brat!"

But before her former trainer could call out his champion, Minna had leapt into action. She found the strength to call up a burst of the same icy wind that she had used in her and Mendel's clash with Valkyrie. The air in the secret base, already cool to begin with, became downright chilly as Minna's attack buffeted Albrecht. The trainer grimaced from the cold and from the surprise, but his eyes were burning with rage. Stiffly, he turned to Minna and snarled, "You'll pay for that, Minna! Just you wait! After I'm done with them, it'll be your turn!"

Albrecht tried to depress the button on his poké ball to release his pokémon, but to his surprise nothing happened. His thumb couldn't move because his hand and the poké ball alike were both encased in a thin layer of ice, frozen for the moment by Minna's attack. With a roar of fury, Albrecht's other hand grabbed for another pokémon to use against his runaway only for Sigmund to suddenly shout, "Stun spore, Mend!"

A puff of yellow sparking pollen erupted from Mendel's outstretched flowers and sent Albrecht to the floor sputtering as his muscles failed him. Even the angry boy's mouth was affected, and the string of curses and threats he was about to unload never left his lips.

"I can't believe we did that, Mend!" Sigmund said, suddenly a frightened child again now that the time for boldness had passed. "We could get in a lot of trouble for attacking another trainer like that!"

Mendel didn't react to his trainer's hysteria. Instead, the Roselia calmly strolled up to Albrecht's fallen form and, after some tugging, pulled the great ball he was going to use to recapture Minna off of his belt and brought it over to Sigmund. The younger boy bit his lip and hesitated, but just for a moment. Then, he took the poké ball from Mendel and dropped it on the floor before stomping his foot on it to break it with a satisfying "crack!" which echoed in the still air of the subterranean secret base.

"Your free now," Mendel said to Minna. "If your trainer wants to try and capture you again, he'll have to find you, and beat you in a battle. After you get back on your feet, I think you'll be okay, and, besides," Mendel shot a look of disgust at Albrecht and spat out, "we're going to report him to the pokémon league, too. They've got their hands full with a lot of other stuff, but they should suspend him from being a trainer for a while, maybe even take away his pokémon. Who knows?" Mendel's shrug was affected. The concern in his eyes was too obvious to take his show of nonchalance at face value.

"Mendel, thank you, and thank your trainer for me, as well," Minna said softly.

"You're welcome, Minna!" Sigmund piped up and smiled winningly at the stunned absol.

"How does he do that?"

"What can I say? He's a good kid," answered Mendel with a grin which matched his trainer's. "So, what are you going to do now, Minna?"

Minna chanced a glance down at Albrecht, but quickly looked away from the expression of hatred twisting the young man's otherwise handsome features. "The first thing is getting to a pokémon center, right? Your trainer should be able to explain everything to the nurses, right? That way he won't," Minna had to swallow the lump in her throat before she continued, "he won't be able to take me back, right?"

"We won't let him do that," said Mendel firmly and Minna chose to believe in the roselia's confidence instead of her own fears. "The only question is, well, how do you want to travel?"

"What do you mean?"

Mendel smiled without looking Minna in the eye. "Well, we could help you walk to the pokémon center. It'd hurt with your injuries, and might take a while, but we could do it. Or we could put you in, well, in a poké ball and take you to the pokémon center that way."

Minna's mouth hung open for a moment before she shook her head violently. "No, I'm sorry, but I'm not ready to have another trainer again. I don't know if I'll ever be ready for that."

"Hey, it was just an idea!" Mendel said quickly. "And it was all my idea, not my trainer's, so if you want to blame anyone for anything, put it all on my shoulders, all right?"

"But you're a roselia. You don't have very big shoulders."

Mendel stared at Minna before he doubled over laughing. "Hey, that was a joke! I didn't know absol could make jokes! I thought you were all gloomy predictors of doom!"

Minna smiled back at Mendel and was about to say something when her reply was overshadowed by a violent twitch that Albrecht gave on the floor. "We need to go," Sigmund said nervously. "What's the word, Mend? Can we take her to the pokémon center?" Mendel nodded and Sigmund said, "Great! Let's get out of here then!" The boy led the two pokémon to the back of the secret base and the tunnel which led outside. Opening the door for the pokémon, Sigmund chanced a look back at the green furniture, posters, balloons, and streamers and said ruefully, "I'm really going to miss this place." Then he ducked inside of the tunnel and followed Minna and Mendel out of the secret base.

Outside, the skies had opened up again and the heavy raindrops pelted the pokémon and the trainer relentlessly. Minna seemed to get the worst of it, with her fur becoming matted with water and her wounds irritated by each drop which impacted against her cuts and bruises. Still, despite her injuries, the absol's body felt less weighed down by fear and shame than it had since her escape from Albrecht. In fact, she suspected that she hadn't felt this light in years.

Minna's thoughts were interrupted by a shadow cast over her head and the absol looked up with a start to see that Sigmund was holding his backpack above her to try and shield the hurt pokémon from some of the rain. "We'll be there in no time," the boy said cheerfully. "Just you wait and see, Minna."

Even though she knew that Valkyrie was the only flying pokémon that Albrecht had with him, Minna still scanned the dark gray clouds overhead for any sign that they were being spied upon by the fierce skarmory. She darkly reminded herself that Valkyrie's keen eyes would hardly be necessary to find her and the others, since they were leaving easily followed footprints in the muddy of the path they were treading. At least the ground wasn't as oppressive as it had been in her dream, but Minna still felt a pang of fearful nausea every time one of her paws sunk into the waterlogged ground.

They made it to the pokémon center in Fortree after the sun had set, and Minna was struggling to keep her eyes open as Sigmund tried to explain her situation to the center's staff, with Mendel providing commentary and waving his flowered limbs wildly as he did so. Part of Minna wanted to follow along with what the young trainer was saying, but the greater part of her wanted to rest and, besides, she trusted Sigmund and Mendel to do what was right.

Minna's first night at the pokémon center and much of the following day were spent resting, but when she awoke, Mendel and his trainer were eagerly waiting to see her. They told Minna that the pokémon center's staff were going to do everything they could to keep her safe and make her better. As for Albrecht, Sigmund said that he had reported the other trainer to the pokémon league and that they would be conducting an investigation, but no one in Fortree had reported seeing him, despite the watchful eye of the city's police.

After her last session of physical therapy before her final discharge, Mendel found Minna and asked her, "So, ready to get out there and start your new life?"

"I suppose I am," admitted Minna after sating her thirst from a dish of water. "Although I don't know what I'm going to do with myself. I haven't been a wild pokémon since, well, since I was a kitten. My trainer caught me when I was very young." Minna looked down at her paws. For a moment, she thought that she could see the injuries from her fight to escape from Albrecht's clutches, but then she blinked and the illusion was broken.

"Well, you don't have to be a wild pokémon if you don't want to," Mendel said slowly. When Minna looked at him, she found the tiny roselia smiling apologetically at her. "I know you already said that you weren't interested, but if you'd like to travel with my trainer and me and the rest of our friends, well, the offer still stands, Minna." Before the absol could answer, Mendel hastened to add, "You've met some of them already, and everyone really likes you, Minna! Plus, it sounds like that icy wind attack of yours could have really helped against the gym leader here! So, what do you say?"

Mendel's enthusiasm was enough to make Minna reconsider his offer, but she still arrived at the same answer as before. "No, but thank you, Mend," she said. "Maybe someday I'll be ready to be someone's pokémon again, but for now I just want to be my own pokémon."

"Yeah, I guess that makes sense," grumbled Mendel, but then his little black eyes lit up and he started bouncing up and down in excitement. "Wait! You said 'maybe someday'! That means that there's still a chance, right?"

Minna laughed along with Mendel and gently pushed him away with the back of her paw. "It means what I said. It might take a few years, but if I ever change my mind, I'll see what I can do to let you and your trainer know."

Mendel tried to contain his energy, but it was a losing battle, so despite the apology in his words, the roselia did not sound as somber as he might have liked as he said, "We're going to leave for the next town today. We've only got so much time to get our badges to compete in the league. It's been worth every minute we spent waiting for you to get better, Minna, but now it's time for us to get going."

"I understand, Mend," Minna said warmly. "Please, thank your trainer for me, with that weird connection you two have."

Mendel jumped on Minna and tried, and failed, to wrap his tiny arms around her neck. "Take care of yourself, okay, Minna? We'll meet again someday, I know it, so don't look so gloomy, huh?"

Minna pressed her face against the side of Mendel's head and was treated to the sweet smell of roses. "You take care, too, Mend."

Then, a nurse came to release Minna. For her safety the pokémon center's staff had chosen a stretch of wilds on the other side of Fortree from Sigmund's secret base where Albrecht had found her. Still, there were other absol in the wild with which Minna could meet, and blend in, too, should her old trainer make another attempt looking for her. The nurse was a middle-aged woman who chattered about her children while she walked Minna to the blurred edge of civilization and wilderness. The absol let the woman's words wash over her without needing to comprehend them, since their soothing tone alone was enough to make the absol smile.

Then, all at once, the nurse was bending down and running her hand gently along Minna's back. "Take care of yourself, honey," she said tenderly, and Minna was amazed that this woman, almost a complete stranger, was able to muster not only the words but some of the feeling that Mendel had put into his goodbye. After that, the nurse left Minna on her own.

The world stretched out before her, even though the slice around her was only a fraction of the whole. But then it didn't feel so small when she really took it in. Minna heard the running water and felt the sun on her white fur. She smelled a thousand different curiosities and saw the greens and the blues without compare. She had spent so much time thinking about running away from her trainer but the absol had hardly given thought to what she was escaping to.

The world stretched before Minna like a canvas waiting for the artist's next stroke of inspiration, and she leapt into it. Wild and free again, she ran.