"Going somewhere?"

"Wha– ah, fuck… H-hey, Teach. Nice night we are having?"

"Quite the opposite for me, actually. And for you as well, if you must resort to stealing that, rather than simply returning home."

"This isn't stealing, it's, um… what's that word you use when you have to take something without permission, but it's for a good cause? Like saving someone's life, or some other nonsense?"

"Stealing."

"Right… Well, since you are technically the Old Man's Pokemon, and this Doctor's Bag belongs to him, it wouldn't be stealing anymore if I asked you for it, right?"

"Depends. How bad is it?"

"... Haa… Medicine's not for him. The moron's fine, physically at least. Mentally, he's insane, but you already know there's no curing that."

"Then why do you need the bag?"

"Moral obligations. Or so the idiot claims."

"The pair of you have involved others?"

"He did, not me. I'm innocent in this."

"As if you don't enable him… Hmm. Take the medicine, then. I'll inform my Master when he returns."

"Great! I'll just… be going now then…"

"And Eve?"

"Y-yeah?"

"I'm doubling both you and that idiot's psychic exercises when you two fools get back."


Chapter 7: Prelude to Disaster

"I will have you know that it wasn't easy stealing this."

I raised an eyebrow at her as I rummaged through the heavy doctor's bag — one that she had taken from the Professor's own lab. The mutant feline sat down next to the two sleeping Ursas, using her telekinesis skills to hold up a flashlight next to my head to aid my search. Around us were a few other portable light sources that I had set up, positioned around the small clearing to provide vision. There was also a mess of repair tools and spare electronics arranged on a nearby insulated mat next to the transponder, as well as a few other miscellaneous items scattered around the clearing, including a standard-issue trainer backpack filled with supplies that I had stored away in our pocket dimension for an emergency.

Several packets of torn-open ration bars lay beside me, the contents of which I had forced down moments ago. The portable heater nearby emitted a wondrous warmth, its red glow chasing the freezing night air away. With my companion's help, an unnatural dark barrier was set up surrounding the clearing, preventing any artificial light from shining out into the forest. Despite her assurances that she had made the area safe, I wasn't going to take unnecessary risks, especially with the two injured rangers next to me as I provided medical care.

"I doubt you actually succeeded in stealing it. The Professor probably saw you and just let you take it," I replied, pulling out a belt of heavy steel syringes from the bag. "It would be a cold day in hell before you pull one over the Boogeyman of Kanto in his own backyard."

"I scouted the entire town from the outskirts before moving in. Apparently, our dear Professor was not in town. Neither was Delilah, by the way."

"Most likely they went out looking for us, then," I said, carefully picking out one of the syringes and injecting it into one of the wounded rangers. "I suppose that couldn't be avoided once we missed dinner."

After our little heart-to-heart, I spent some time tinkering with the ranger's transponder, only to find out that it truly was broken. While the flare I fired earlier would surely draw in some help from the settlement in the morning, without a working transponder, the odds of them finding the wounded rangers in these woods were a lot slimmer. There was now no option of us leaving them alone unless we were willing to risk letting them die.

After that, it didn't take much to convince my companion to warp back alone to Pallet Town and grab us a few essentials for the night. Some camping equipment, a few bottles of drinking water, some energy bars to tide me through as I worked, a few spare pieces of electronics and tools so that I could fix up the ranger's transponder, portable light sources so that I could see, and perhaps most importantly, the Professor's doctor bag in his lab.

It was a convenient little thing, filled with certain prescriptions and medicine that would be hard to obtain legally anywhere in the League. I injected another shot of boosting drugs into the badly wounded ranger I rescued from the cave. The swelling on his face had already begun to subside after the first shot, and the high fever from before had gone down a little. Despite being rescued and out of harm's way, their original conditions weren't exactly stable. And while the treatment I had given them certainly increased their chance of survival, it didn't guarantee it. Given that they were now in some way my responsibility, I should at least make sure they don't die from their wounds come the morning.

"What about Blue? Did you see him?" I asked.

"Still studying at the research lab. Daisy wasn't with him, so she's probably out looking for us as well."

Not surprising. Blue probably also told them not to bother searching for us. As for Daisy, knowing her, she probably slapped him before leaving. I gave a non-committal hum as I took out a small, heavy metal box from the bag. Opening it revealed four vials filled with a cocktail of powerful restorative reagents. I knew from experience that the mixture was a potent healing concoction, made from the same ingredients as the expensive Full Restores or Max Potions used by elite trainers on their Pokemon.

The stimulant here wasn't the same, of course. These specific medicines had been purposefully diluted and modified several times over to make them non-lethal for humans. The process was far more expensive and difficult than it sounds. Given how recently it was created, the vials were extremely rare, and as far as I know, only a few influential people and hospitals across the world had access to them. I took a vial and injected it to the man with the broken leg, before pocketing one myself.

"You know, I still haven't heard you specifically say that you weren't caught," I said knowingly as I checked the rangers once more. The medicine was working far better than I expected. Already, the swelling in the leg had gone down, and the fever nearly subsided.

"I assumed that was already implied."

"It wasn't Blue, was it?" I asked, amused at the thought. "He would never let you live it down."

"No, Blue didn't see me. Too engrossed in those books of his, as usual. The boy pays little attention to his surroundings when he is stuck in that disturbing meditative trance of his."

That was true, I supposed. Blue had a habit of putting an excessive amount of focus into whatever he was doing at the moment. The sheer intensity ensured performative excellence in whatever he sought to do. For as long as I have known him, he has never failed any objective he deemed worthy of dedicating his time to. This did have the unfortunate side effect of giving him severe tunnel vision beyond his current tasks, so long as whatever was beyond it did not threaten his immediate safety.

"Alright, so perhaps Blue didn't see you. Yet I can't help but sense you're not telling me something," I replied.

There was silence for a moment before I heard her sigh and admit. "It was Teach."

Tch. Well, that's no good. I supposed the old man had the foresight to leave the Psychic behind, just in case we had come back early. I hadn't thought he would do that, considering how vital that giant humanoid rat was in ensuring his safety at all times, but I guess it goes to show how much he cared for us.

"He caught me grabbing the doctor's bag in the lab. Told me that I could take it as long as I made sure the both of us come back in one piece." A moment of silence. "He also said he's doubling our mental drills when we came back."

I let out a sigh. "Don't suppose we could just hang out in this continent until they forgot? I mean, Johto's not so bad. Probably. And it's not like they would know where we had warped to."

"A good thing they don't, either. Or else Teach would have tripled our drills instead, on top of increasing the strain."

Now that was a horrifying thought. "I think I would rather take on another Ursaring than to do that."

"You and me both."

The man with the swelling face and broken ribs looked much better now. The second shot stabilized him significantly. His breathing was steadier, and colour had returned to his skin. The other ranger was originally at greater risk, given the blood loss and broken leg, which was why I gave him the restorative cocktail. With how potent the mixture is, a full recovery can be expected. His chest lacerations should heal rapidly, and even the leg can be easily salvaged, provided that no more accidents take place before it fully heals.

Now with both rangers significantly more stable than before, I turned my attention towards fixing the transponder. Most of its internal circuitry was damaged, and while the transponder itself was no longer repairable, I could still salvage it for parts to create a makeshift one with the spare components that my companion had brought.

"And how exactly are you going to explain that to the rangers when they wake up? As far as they know, their transponder was working fine before we got here."

That would be problematic to justify. After all, if the transponder wasn't working, how could we have possibly found them in the first place?

"We will just leave once I fix up the thing. Fewer complications that way," I shrugged as I began dismantling the broken piece of equipment. Since all transponders were linked to the individual's League identification, I couldn't simply ask my companion to grab a random set from back home and use that instead. The best option would be to repair the device instead, or at least jury-rig it with scraps so that it works.

"Just leave? Are we wiping their memories too?"

"Eh, too dangerously illegal for my taste," I replied. It wasn't like they could find us even if we did such a thing; we weren't amateurs. But it was the principle of the matter. Never mind the fact that everything we were doing was already entirely illegal, and that our very existence itself was a crime against what the entire League stood for.

"You don't think they would find it a little suspicious when they just wake up alone, all healed up with their wounds patched with a jury-rigged transponder, and find themselves somehow rescued from a man-eating giant beast that took one of them hostage? Oh, and the corpse too, assuming we are leaving that behind."

"It's not like they can track us," I replied, psychically reaching out for a screwdriver just a little out of my reach as I continued fiddling with the broken transponder. Even this small effort made me wince slightly. My psyche was still recovering from the severe strain earlier and likely would be impaired for the next few hours at least. The screwdriver wobbled in the air as it made its way to my hand. "It would be like one of those old folktales, where a heroic saviour just shows up and mysteriously disappears once the job is done."

"Heroic, he calls himself. Suicidal would be a more apt description. Or stupidly reckless, or brain-dead, or thrill-addicted, or–"

"I get the point," I said, more amused than insulted. "You can stop now."

"Really? I do have several more. But your many atrocious qualities aside, these men have seen your face."

"Only one, and he was already almost unconscious when we found him. I doubt he would remember how I looked," I grunted as I finally opened the secondary panel within the transponder with the screwdriver. The internal wiring was a mess, and the tri-acid battery was damaged. It could still serve as a power source, but re-routing it to work with my makeshift setup was a pain. "The other one could barely see past the swelling on his face when I found him. I think we are in the clear, assuming we leave before they wake. As for the deceased, we can just leave the corpse here before we warp out."

Probably best we wrapped the remains up as best we could first. These rangers have already been through enough, no need for them to see how badly mangled their friend was. Although I suppose we couldn't exactly stop them from checking once we left, so perhaps the point was mute.

"And your two money bags?"

I paused in my work and looked towards my companion, where the two baby Ursas slept soundly beside her. "I may have forgotten about that. Do you think we can ship them back home somehow? There's a town nearby, surely we can find a way."

We couldn't warp them back through the Distortion world. Such a distance would ensure that they would be lost to the warp. Technically, we could instead travel over a distance of a few miles at a time till we reached our destination, but considering that Pallet town was hundreds of miles away and that there was an entire mountain range between Kanto and Johto, that wasn't a pleasant option.

"We have no documentation to identify ourselves as Kanto citizens, and even if we did, there's no possible way to explain how you — who are legally only an untrained civilian — somehow got his hands on two Ursas. Never mind the fact that without a trainer's licence, we have no way of getting the necessary pull to own or sell these two on the trade market anyway. It's more likely we would just get arrested for wandering the woods without a trainer's license. Or worse, get suspected as a renegade for not having a transponder or PokeNav of any kind while wandering the wild."

I grimaced at the thought. The act of wandering about in the wild without any form of device that could serve as a transponder was extremely illegal. Even a child knows that no one was ever allowed outside a human settlement without a transponder on hand. The device was that important, being both the lifeline of anyone who steps foot outside a green zone and the method by which the League contacts the trainer in the event of an emergency.

The device also kept official records of the League-sanctioned activities of the trainer, including registered battles between trainers and the captures of new Pokemon. It was why the best thing to do in this situation would be to leave before the rangers realised that the person who saved them didn't even have a PokeNav on hand. Anyone found without one outside a green zone while still in possession of Pokemon would naturally be assumed as a renegade, the worst kind of criminal.

"Well, that would be the absolute worst-case scenario, but even if we are caught, I doubt it would come to that," I mused. "My legal records list me as fifteen, well below the legal age of obtaining a trainer's licence. I also have no Pokeballs on hand, so it's not like their first thought would be to assume I'm a renegade."

"Disregarding the fact that you don't look anywhere close to fifteen, three years below the legal age is not that far off, Red. You and I know that there are records of renegades that started out far younger than us. It's not like the possibility of you being one despite your age is unprecedented. And the fact that you didn't have Pokeballs on hand when you returned from the wilds unscathed makes you more suspicious, not less."

"If it really comes down to that, the old man will bail us out," I replied, unworried. "And as I've said, even if we are somehow caught in a situation with the local officials, I doubt we will get labelled as a renegade immediately. Johto isn't some backwater village or a dystopian hellhole like Sinnoh that treats every suspicious person like they are a criminal or a threat."

"We are literally a continent away from Kanto. The Boogeyman's reach may be long, but this far away his jurisdiction is a lot weaker. And you are wrong about the worst-case scenario because in case you forget, the traditional punishment for renegades is execution."

I rolled my eyes upon hearing that. "They are not savages. Like I've said, unless we have somehow teleported ourselves back a hundred years before the League's creation, or if we have both really mistaken our current location for Sinnoh instead, I highly doubt we will get executed. Seriously, when was the last time you heard of anyone in the League getting the axe?"

"When was the last time you've heard of any news regarding renegades? They don't exactly mention them in the news."

"Why are we even discussing this? We are just bringing in two Ursas for trade, it's not like we murdered someone," I asked distractedly, frowning as I continued fiddling with the damaged transponder.

"We literally have a mutilated ranger currently stored away in our pocket dimension right now, who, might I add, was an official League personnel."

"We didn't kill him," I answered drily.

"I'm sure that will hold in court. In any case, disregarding the possibility of you being labelled as a renegade, you still can't sell the Ursas on the open trade market without an official trainer designation to your name."

"There's always the black market," I shrugged. "We could even try getting another trainer to sell them under their name and split the profits."

"More illegal activity. Great."

We continued our discussion regarding the fate of the two Ursas as I worked on the transponder. In between our bickering and the repairs, the night passed far quicker than I thought. Before I realised it, my companion had informed me that the sun was already rising.

The makeshift transponder was almost complete. I yawned and stretched my tired limbs as I walked around the clearing, switching off the portable lights. My companion only let down the shadow border once all the artificial lights were turned off. It was still a little dark, but the morning rays were bright enough for me to look around without issue.

"So, what now? I vote for killing the cubs."

"That's your answer for everything," I said, rubbing my tired eyes as I sat back down beside the makeshift transponder setup. It wasn't elegant or portable like the original transponder, but it should work. Pulling an all-nighter was hardly the first for me, but having spent the previous day hiking about the region and fighting off an Ursaring, I was beginning to feel a little fatigued. "We could just leave the Ursas here. The rangers can sell them off, maybe compensate the family of their deceased friend."

"I doubt the Ursaring-induced trauma would leave them in a state capable of rationally considering their financial well-being. It's more likely they would just kill the young cubs when they wake up."

I let out a groan of frustration. My companion was right, of course. Truth be told, I didn't really care about the money. Looking at those two cubs, I felt that I held some responsibility for making sure they at least didn't die from my decisions. I didn't regret killing their mother, as the beast was dangerous and had already attacked and killed people, but I would be lying if I said I didn't feel the least bit guilty about leaving these two as orphans and then letting them die so shortly afterwards.

"If you are so concerned about these two, we could warp out of this area first with them. We will look for the closest trainer and just drop them in their path. That way, at least they would be taken alive."

That was probably the best idea. A trainer would probably recognise the opportunity these two provided and take them in, rather than kill them on sight. I won't get any money, but as my companion had rightly pointed out before, I didn't really care much about it. I was about to agree to the idea when I finished connecting the power source to the makeshift transponder, and it turned on. A small, blinking green light indicated that it had immediately sent out a distress signal from our location.

"You were supposed to turn it on after we are ready to leave. We haven't even cleared our stuff yet."

I gave another yawn as I stood up. "It's not like we are in a rush. Look, just give me a couple of minutes to pack up the crap around the camp, and then we can–"

"Red, I sense someone. I think they are heading our way."

That made me freeze up. "Already?"

"They are coming from the mountain where we fought last night. Only one person, a woman I think, and she has a Pokemon near her, likely part of her team."

It was possible that the nearby ranger outpost had sent a call for all trainers in the vicinity to look out for their patrol after they didn't return last night. Someone might have seen the ranger flare I fired and went to investigate the mountain once dawn arrived, which led them closer to us than we expected.

"How fast are they moving?" I asked, unworried. "Considering the terrain, even if they were only a mile away, it would still give us plenty of time to pack–"

"They are moving quickly! Whoever they are, they have a Pokemon that can carry them through the forest! Red, if they see the camp–!"

I didn't wait for her to finish and quickly began grabbing as much as I could off the ground, swearing loudly as I rushed about. Right now, there was far, far too much expensive and heavy equipment here for one person to have possibly carried around in the woods. If whoever arrived saw this, they might jump to certain unfortunate conclusions. Conclusions that would be difficult to prove otherwise and would undoubtedly see me involved with the local officials.

My companion rapidly opened a portal, and I tossed the surrounding camp equipment in as fast as I could, leaving behind only the trainer backpack that would help relieve some suspicion. My companion opened another one, sliding out the deceased ranger's body quickly and gently onto the ground. It was already tightly wrapped up in several thermal blankets and tent cloths.

"We're ready! Prepare another warp to get us out!" I called out, throwing the last of the portable lighting and heater in the portal before it closed. I went to grab the two Ursas, who were still sleeping soundly despite the noise I was making.

"No time! She's already here! Just sit down and pretend to be a trainer! Don't let her find out about us!"

"Already?! What in the world is she riding?!" I rushed back to my original spot and leaned against the great tree root. Before I had the chance to do anything else, the sound of stamping hooves reached my ears. A second later, a four-legged beast furiously burst from the foliage into our little clearing.


Renegades

Renegade is a broad, catch-all term referring to any criminal trainer who is wanted by the League but has since escaped the authorities by living beyond the Green or Yellow Zones. As former trusted members of society who have turned against the established order, they are dangerous outlaws who deserve nothing less than to be hunted down and executed, for the threat they pose cannot be understated.

There are many reasons why one may turn into a Renegade, though few are good or just. Wanted murderers, war criminals, disillusioned trainers, insane cultists, black market smugglers, and mercenary poachers all make up their ranks, though the most dangerous of them have formed gangs or tribal fiefdoms that they lead within the untamed Wilds.

Renegades typically inhabit the fringes of civilisation — ruined villages, dense forests, or remote mountain hideouts. They thrive in areas where the influence of the League is weak, allowing them to operate with relative impunity. This comes at a trade-off of lacking the League's protection, of course. But if one possesses the means and skills, or otherwise has goals that must be doggedly pursued without the overseeing eyes of the League, then the freedom provided by such a lifestyle may be worth the trade in safety.

Individual Renegades are a thorn to Route travellers, as these low-lives often turn to banditry, kidnapping, or simply roam about as opportunistic killers to secure funds and resources from lone or vulnerable trainers. Both stolen Pokemons and kidnapped trainers are widely sold and circulated within the underground black market and slave trade rings, with the problem being critically prevalent in the more rural region of Sinnoh. The wilderness makes it difficult to track the activities of these criminals, and the wilds claim enough lives every year that it is hard to know if a lone trainer's disappearance is due to a wild Pokemon attack or the acts of Renegades.

The worst of Renegades do not manage their activities alone, however. Rather, they do so under structured leadership and crime organisations. Operating in Dark zones far beyond the reach of the League — and often funded by wealthy interest groups who coordinate their activities from within the green zones —, these terrorist groups pose a serious threat to the stability of the League as their reach and influence grows every year. The 'Black Sites' they coordinate from are a hotbed of illegal activities — human and Pokemon trafficking, drug production, assassinations, and even unsanctioned research; the list is endless. The worst offenders are thLegendary cultist groups, who seek to provoke or re-awaken the calamitous creatures for some misguided or deranged objective.


AN

Thanks for reading. Next chapter will be up next Friday.