Sneaking out of the cavern was just as easy as sneaking in had been, the grunts and geobat still completely oblivious to their surroundings. At the entrance to the tunnel, I gave one last regretful glance back to where the remaining sableyes huddled in their cage. And then I stepped around the bend, losing sight of them.

It was regretful, but I couldn’t think of anything else I could do for them aside from alerting the authorities once we got back to town. And despite my melancholy, I couldn’t help my sigh of relief as I stepped out of the lights of the cavern, finally hidden from view from the oblivious grunts.

Only to freeze when I realized the tunnel wasn’t as dark as it should have been.

Standing only a few feet away were the two other grunts. With their flashlights pointed directly at my face, I could see nothing but their silhouettes. None of us moved as we simply stared at each other — they were frozen in what I presumed was surprise, while I hesitated in indecision.

Should I fight? Run? Try and bluff my way out? I had no doubts that these were ‘bad guys’; their treatment of the sableyes made that obvious. And I had little doubts that they’d hesitate to do the same to me, if they knew I was ‘stealing’ their sableye.

Their surprise was an opportunity, a chance for me to gain the advantage in a situation where I was hopelessly outnumbered, yet still I hesitated. I was a pokemon trainer with plenty of combat experience, but those were in sanctioned pokemon battles where fights only started after both trainers were ready. Starting a battle before the opposing trainer’s pokemon were prepared was grounds for automatic forfeiture, and targeting a trainer before they even had released a pokemon could lose you your license or even land you in prison. So when the moment came, I hesitated, feeling guilty for even considering attacking before they were prepared, while Hobbes waited for my command as he’d been trained to do.

Luckily, Sableye had no such training or compunctions.

Before the grunts could so much as reach for their pokeballs, his eyes glowed with a soft white energy, and I flinched back from the sudden danger that emanated from the white crystals. I wasn’t the target of his leer, though, and the two grunts stumbled backward, falling to the stone in their fear.

But it didn’t last long. Only a second later, sableye drooped as the white energy faded, and the grunts recovered from their artificial fear. But it bought me the time I needed to regain my wits and firm my resolve.

“Hobbes! Don’t let them release their pokemon!”

“Di!”

The grunts were reaching for the pokeballs on their belts, but Hobbes’ shadow sneak was faster. He slashed at the straps securing them, pulling the belts — pokeballs and all — free before the grunts could grab hold. Two seconds later, I found myself in possession of two belts, each with two pokeballs and a gun attached.

I gingerly held the belts, unsure of what to do next as Hobbes and the grunts glared at each other. I wanted to steal the sableye they were obviously abusing, not the pokemon that may or may not be just as complicit in their crimes. But I just shook my head as I quickly unzipped my backpack and stuffed the two belts inside.

“You better watch yerslf, kiddo, before you do something…” the grunt on the right — the one who’d been punishing the sableye with his granbull — began to snarl. But I ignored his words.

“Let’s get out of here!” I yelled, and ran around the grunts before they could respond. “If they try to follow, attack,” I said to Hobbes, loud enough the grunts could hear.

The grunts snarled in anger, but the threat, when they didn’t have any pokemon to defend them, was enough to keep them from chasing as I fled down the tunnel. Within seconds, I rounded the bend and was gone from their sight, but I could hear them yelling at the two other grunts to grab their pokemon and give chase.

I stumbled over a rock, barely catching myself before face planting, and then remembered to flick on my flashlight. I wasn’t sure how much time Hobbes had bought us, but I was sure pursuit was incoming. Should we hide? Keep running? Or fight?

The two grunts each had two pokeballs on their belts. Assuming the other grunts had the same number, we had to worry about a maximum of four other pokemon. As much as I could tell from my quick spy session and some major assumptions, none of the grunts were particularly skilled trainers. Hobbes was strong, but those were still worse odds than I was willing to take, even if the sableye was willing to fight with us.

Speaking of…I looked around, searching for the sableye, only to find him fifteen feet back and struggling to keep up. He was tiny, barely a foot tall when hunched over, and he moved in a loping sort of run on all four of his tiny limbs. That wasn’t the issue, though — the issue was that he was already panting hard and limping every time his left rear leg touched the ground.

I winced. I’d already forgotten that the sableye had suffered a harsh beating less than an hour earlier, and pulled off my backpack and started to dig through the pouches while I waited for him to catch up.

Potions were amazing. As I understood them, they were miracle cures that my former world could have only dreamed of. But they weren’t the perfect fixes to ‘hp loss’ that the pokemon games presented them as.

“Where does it hurt the most?” I asked sableye as he closed the distance, brandishing the purple spray bottle. The sableye shied back without saying anything, and I struggled to control my frustration. “I won’t hurt you; I want to help you. But I need you to tell me where it hurts to be able to help.”

A painfully long couple of seconds passed before the sableye held forward his left leg and gestured to a section along his thigh.

I couldn’t see anything obviously injured about the leg, but I thought that maybe there was a small section of skin slightly darker than the rest. Regardless, I sprayed the expensive potion liberally up and down the sableye’s leg, who hissed as the liquid touched his leg but didn’t move away.

The potion was almost half-empty by the time I stopped, storing it back in my backpack and standing tall. “Hop on,” I said to sableye, who was running its purple claws over its leg in surprise. He looked at me in surprise. “It’ll take some time for the potion to really do its work, time we don’t have — for now, it’s faster if I carry you.”

Sableye looked reluctant, but after Hobbes let out a few frustrated calls of ‘di!’, he latched on to the back of my backpack and we resumed our escape, this time sticking closer together.

As we jogged, I searched for nooks or side tunnels that could serve as a good hiding place or escape route, but nothing presented itself. Which might have been for the best; I was pretty sure that I had the grunt’s granbull in my backpack, but if they had any other similar pokemon that could learn odor sleuth, then any effort to hide would be useless.

Which only left escaping. Though with how the grunts were talking about the ‘checkpoint’, and with how lit up the main chamber where the crevasse was, I couldn’t imagine escaping being much easier. But I shook my head, refocusing on my steps; finding an escape route wouldn’t matter if I twisted my ankle before even getting there.

It wasn’t long before we passed the crates of stored diamonds, faint voices of the pursuing Rockets echoing from behind. For a single moment I felt temptation as I looked at the slightly-askew lid, my single pocketful of diamonds feeling insufficient in light of the danger I was currently facing. But I brushed the temptation away and continued to run.

Stolen story; please report.

All too soon, we rounded the last corner of the tunnel into the main, well-lit chamber and slid to a stop as five heads turned to us — three of Rockets and two of pokemon. Angry looks at being interrupted morphed into expressions of confusion and surprise.

This time, though, I didn’t freeze.

“Hobbes! Go for their belts!” I yelled, and Hobbes surged forward with a shadow sneak. He was fast enough to slash through and snag the first Rocket’s belt, but before he could approach either of the others he was met by the ekshrew and koffdude that were already out of their balls.

The Rocket’s pokemon had no compunctions about attacking Hobbes two versus one, and he only barely dodged the ekshrew’s bite. But his dodge left him exposed, and he took the koffdude’s rock throw directly to the ‘face’, his costume ripping along the top and almost tearing his fake head clean off.

He let out a mournful cry, but I wasn’t worried. His ‘disguise’ ability meant he wasn’t truly hurt, just annoyed at the repairs he would need to make to his costume later. But disguise only worked once, and dimikyus weren’t very bulky without it; any more direct hits like that, and he would start to struggle.

What we needed was time: time to think of a new plan, time to sneak away, time for the sableye to recover. But that was the one thing we were sorely lacking — the Rocket who’s belt Hobbes hadn’t stolen was reaching for his pokeballs, and I was sure more reinforcements were coming from being us.

I made my call.

“Hobbes! Get rid of that belt and transform into the koffdude!”

Hobbes didn’t hesitate despite the unusual order. With a quick flick of his purple shadows, the belt went flying onto a ledge in the corner of the cavern, out of easy reach of any Rockets, and he began to transform.

With his unfamiliarity with the move, it wasn’t instantaneous. It wasn’t even quick, taking close to ten seconds for his transformation to complete, a short eternity in most pokemon battles. But Hobbes had bought himself a bit of space with how easily he’d weathered the first rock throw, and the Rockets were still reeling in surprise; without any commands otherwise, and since Hobbes was no longer attacking, the two fused pokemon gave him the space to complete his transformation.

“And just who do you think…” the Rocket trainer of the koffdude and ekshrew, who I pegged as the leader of the operation, began, but I cut him off with a yell.

“Defense curl!”

Hobbes glowed with white energy as his new form — a puppet-like mimicry of the koffdude — curled its arms around its body. Geodudes were a common sight in lavender town due to the proximity of Rock Tunnel, so Hobbes had some practice with the move through mimic. At the same time, I shuffled sideways around the cavern, moving my back away from the tunnel even as the voices of the pursuing Rockets chased me from behind.

“Stop that kid! He stole a sableye!” I heard, and the glares directed against me sharpened.

“Hey, kid,” the lead Rocket called again as the grunt whose belt Hobbes hadn’t been able to steal released his pokemon, a fusion of paras and zubat. “You don’t want your pokemon to get hurt, and I’m sure that you don’t wanna get hurt. Why don’t you recall him, give us back our sableye, and we can all talk this out like civilized people?”

I ignored him, my head swiveling back and forth as I searched for a way out. Sableye hopped off my back to stand next to me on shaky legs as Hobbes continued to follow my last order, his defense increasing with each passing second.

The Rocket’s smarmy smile morphed into a frown. “Fine, you wanna play this the hard way? Have it your way. Ekshrew, wrap! Koffdude, acid! Everyone else: take that kid down!”

If I had any remaining doubts about Team Rocket’s evil-ness, they were gone after the flurry of moves that flew indiscriminately across the cave.

Hobbes took as many as he could, unwilling to even attempt a dodge when I was so close behind him, and I dove to the side, the sableye only a second behind me. I just hoped Hobbes could withstand the attacks.

He should be able to; both koffing and geodude had better-than-average defenses, boosted even further by his defense curl, and his new rock-poison typing would be resistant to most of the moves his opponents could throw out. I just hoped none of them had any usable ground-type moves, as that would be four times supereffective against Hobbes’ temporary new type. Luckily, there weren’t that many easy-to-learn ground-type moves, at least not ones that didn’t require some environmental preparation that this cavern didn’t supply, like mud-slap or sand tomb. And hopefully none of the opposing Rockets were stupid enough to try using something like earthquake or — heavens forbid — magnitude while we were in a cave.

BANG!

I clamped my hands over my ears and huddled further behind the crate I crouched behind as the bullet pinged off of several rocks, ricocheting around the cave. Perhaps I needed to reevaluate my estimate of the grunts’ stupidity.

“YOU IDIOT!” I heard the Rocket leader yell. “Are you trying to kill us all? Just use your pokemon and TAKE! HIM! DOWN!”

My search for an escape became more frantic. The crevasse we’d entered through was only a half-dozen yards away, but there was no way we’d be able to slip into it and escape. Not without a distraction — but there was nothing. Just the stack of crates I hid behind, too short to topple over onto my opponents. Several tents scattered around the cavern. The three tunnels, heading off in three different directions. The cage of voltorbs, powering the floodlights illuminating the cavern…

I moved before giving myself time to second-guess the decision.

“Hobbes! Smokescreen!” I called. I wasn’t sure if he could hear me over the battling, and it wasn’t a move he had any experience in, but he was transformed into a koffing fusion — smokescreen should be second nature for that evolutionary line. As I crawled across the rocky ground to lay beside the cage of sparking voltorbs, the smoke poured forth, dark, heavy, and cloying.

It wasn’t enough to completely fill the cave, but it would hopefully buy me the time I needed. The latch to the voltorbs cage wasn’t locked. A heavy plastic bar held the latch in place, likely to keep the voltorbs from being able to manipulate it with their electricity. In seconds, I pulled the bar free and flung open the gates.

The still-sparking voltorbs just looked at me, content in their captivity, and I snarled in frustration. I looked down at my hands, prayed that the insulation of my thin gloves would be enough, and prepared to reach into the cage — when sableye popped up outside the bars on the far side of the cage, his mouth open in a wide, terrifying smile: astonish. The voltorbs flinched back, rolling under my arms, and out of the cage.

The cave plunged into darkness.

“Hobbes! The crevasse!” I yelled, my voice blending in with the grunts’ own yells of surprise. I had to trust my friend would meet me there, because we didn’t have time to waste. Already I could see the lights of a couple of flashlights swinging wildly around the cave, their beams seeming physical as they shone through the thick smoke.

I grabbed sableye’s arm in one hand as I held my dimmed flashlight low to the ground with the other, sneaking through the dark of the cavern to the crevasse. “Climb up and out!” I whispered to the sableye before pushing him inside. Hobbes appeared a second later, still in his koffdude form but with his disguise practically torn to shreds. He was panting for breath and purple shadows dripped from his disguise, and my heart ached for my friend, but we had no time. I held up my backpack and gestured to the crevasse.

“Go on up, I’ll be right behind you.”

“…kyu!” he responded, and I winced at the pain in his voice.

“There’s no time! We need to get to town and call for help. Just take my backpack and go — I promise I’ll follow.”

Hobbes gave a reluctant nod and followed my orders, and I squeezed in as Hobbes floated up the narrow crevasse. It was a tighter fit than I remembered, and I struggled to rotate my body into the same orientation that it had been on the way down. My arms were over my head, and I dug my fingers into the rocks on either side to pull myself up. My elbows couldn’t flare out as much as they needed to, though, so I was forced to find new handholds every six inches, caterpillaring my way up the crevasse a handhold at a time. I could feel a bit of blood dripping from my nails where they caught against the rocks, but I couldn’t afford to slow down. If any of the Rockets noticed my feet dangling within the shadows of the crevasse before I got all the way up…

Then, the worst happened: the crevasse narrowed. Not by much, apparently not enough to slow me on the way down when I had gravity working with me. But enough that I couldn’t find the leverage to pull myself further up. My feet dangled below, unable to find a foothold, and my back pocket — the pocket filled with stolen diamonds — was wedged against the rocks around my waist, holding me in place.

If I was caught because of a stupid handful of diamonds…

I mentally swore off any future greed as I battled against the claustrophobia, but after a few seconds with no forward progress, I closed my eyes and made my decision. It was why I had asked Hobbes to go out first — I didn’t think Team Rocket would kill a kid, not if there was no financial benefit for them. And as long as Hobbes made it out to warn the authorities, there was no reason for them to add homicide to their crimes today.

But as I opened my mouth to yell, to tell my best friend to leave me behind and get help, my pocket sparked with a flash of yellow light. Not my back pocket holding the stolen diamonds — my front pocket, containing my phone.

And suddenly, I could move again as gravity lost its hold.

Now weightless, I yanked against the rocks overhead with renewed energy. A few of the diamonds fell from my back pocket as I pulled, but I didn’t allow myself to hesitate, pulling with all my strength. Until finally, I squeezed free, and practically flew up the rest of the crevasse without gravity holding me back. A minute later I emerged into the mineshaft overhead.

I didn’t bother to listen for pursuers or question the sudden disappearance and subsequent return of gravity. I just recalled Hobbes into his pokeball, pulled the sableye on top of my backpack, and sprinted up and out of the mine shaft.