image [https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/0fd97e43-196a-4657-8d16-c18592169506/dhrawzf-1c619ec9-a300-4ebd-bf15-a07a41e815ba.png/v1/fill/w_894,h_894,q_70,strp/pokemon_slate_gray_s3e01_art_1__season_3_reveal_by_tezofalltrades_dhrawzf-pre.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTA4MCIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzBmZDk3ZTQzLTE5NmEtNDY1Ny04ZDE2LWMxODU5MjE2OTUwNlwvZGhyYXd6Zi0xYzYxOWVjOS1hMzAwLTRlYmQtYmYxNS1hMDdhNDFlODE1YmEucG5nIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEwODAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.ggVvdnvNWMbU_0MOL41ifywlcVSYStNX5BJF_zBqVSg]
Slate woke with a start. He lurched up from his vertical position, panic rising inside him as he rapidly took in his unfamiliar surroundings. He was in a medium-sized room, with what looked like metal sheeting covering its large windows, and he wasn’t alone. April lay sleeping on the floor next to him, and five strangers were spread out across the open space, sitting on sleeping bags.
The exposed ceiling was crisscrossed with wires and ventilation tubing. A large desk had been pushed against the wall, presumably to make more room for the occupants. There were two doors; one that stood ajar, and a sturdy-looking metallic one with no apparent handle. A keypad was affixed to the wall next to it.
His head spinning, Slate reached for the Poké Belt around his waist. It was empty, and his bag was nowhere in sight. Team Shade had taken his Pokémon; Eevee, Cryote, Crimsant, Larvoid, Beakon, and even his egg. They had taken him. He rebuked himself for allowing it, for not fighting the Hypnosis hard enough, for not predicting the mayor’s betrayal.
As Slate’s breathing became ragged, one of the strangers approached him. “Easy, son,” spoke a bearded, black-haired man in his late forties, patting him gently on the shoulder. “Take a deep breath. You’re safe. Relatively speaking.”
“Where am I?” Slate asked, spotting a clock on the wall, and considering what the time might indicate. It was almost nine o’clock now. His match began at seven, so they couldn’t have gone too far. Then again, they were probably transported by helicopter.
“We’re not sure. We think this was an office. It has a private bathroom over there, so it must have belonged to some big wig,” said the man in a calm manner. “Like you, we were all kidnapped by Team Shade and brought here asleep or blindfolded. Some of us have been here a day or two. Me and Bob have been here almost three weeks now.”
“What? Three weeks? And no one’s found you?” Slate despaired.
“Well, I’m sure the police are looking for us,” the man said with a note of skepticism. “They will certainly be motivated to find youngsters such as yourselves. Speaking of which, we should wake your friend up.”
Much to Slate’s dismay, April reacted worse than he had, breaking into tears as the truth of the situation became apparent. He was a little taken aback by the girl’s open display of emotion. She usually put on a tough front, but evidently, a front was exactly what it was. He tried to console her while assaulted with pangs of guilt. He should have known. He should have done…something.
After April calmed down, the man introduced the other prisoners, “This is Alice, Bob, Graham, and Jenny. And I’m Joe.”
Slate introduced himself and April.
“Joe?” April mumbled.
“What’s that?” the man responded.
“That’s not short for Joseph, is it? You’re not Joseph Quinn, are you?” she added.
“That’s right! How did you know?”
April guffawed, shaking her head defeatedly as she addressed Slate, whose jaw was slack with surprise. They had finally found the journalist they had been tasked with meeting, only to join him among the ranks of the missing. “He’s been here all this time… No one is going to find us. What are we going to do?”
“We’re getting out of here!” said Slate rashly, climbing to his feet and moving toward the metal door.
“Wait, how did you know who I was?” Joe urged.
“My mom sent us,” Slate explained idly as he fumbled uselessly with the door. “Team Shade did something to her. Probably the same thing they’re going to do to us.”
“His mom’s Heather Davy,” April added.
“They got Heather?” Joe lamented, before advising, “It’s no use, son, it won’t budge. We’ve tried everything. It requires a code to open. And the window coverings have been welded on. There’s no way out of this room.”
“You think we haven’t tried everything already?” snapped the woman named Alice, a deep furrow in her brow. “You’ll just upset the guards! They’re already considering leaving us in here to rot!”
Slate ignored them. He wasn’t ready to give up. He couldn’t. He tried throwing his weight against the door.
“Oi!” spoke a muffled voice beyond the door following a thump against it. “Knock it off in there or you’re not getting any food tomorrow!”
Slate desisted but pressed his ear to the door. He listened while watching Alice pull her knees to her chest and shake her head in frustration. He could just about make out the voices beyond.
“I’m tired of babysitting this lot! Why’s it taking HQ so long to deal with them?” a woman complained.
“Don’t ask me. They told me I would be part of the Macadam City operation. I only joined for the free Pokémon,” a man replied.
It seemed Alice’s fears of the guards abandoning their posts were warranted. Team Shade’s grunts were not happy. And what was that about Macadam City?
April got to her feet, patting herself down. “My Rotom Phone is gone. Do you have yours, Slate?” she asked dejectedly.
“No,” he responded, his attention focused on the door’s keypad now.
“Aren’t communications still down outside?” Joe enquired.
“They are, but my mom set up a private network. We could have reached her if we still had our phones,” April explained, watching Slate’s futile efforts with the electrical panel. “If only Rodenki were here. She might be able to…”
April suddenly gasped.
“What? What’s wrong?” said Slate with concern.
“Rodenki!”
“I know. They took all my Pokémon too,” he sympathized.
“No, you don’t understand,” April whispered excitedly, raising her arms over her head in a strange fashion.
Slate screwed up his face in confusion, trying to understand what the girl was getting at, when she lifted a white object from behind her head. From the hood of her jacket, where it so often climbed in for a nap, April had removed her tiny snoozing partner Pokémon!
“A Rodenki?” said Joe amidst murmurs of interest from the other detainees.
“No way!” Slate exclaimed in disbelief. “Rodenki has been in there since the visit to the park? And they didn’t notice?”
“I guess,” said April, rousing her furry friend. “Wake up, sleepy head!”
Rodenki yawned, then blinked its eyes slowly.
“We need you to short-circuit these wires,” April instructed the electric rodent.
“Wait, wait a minute,” Joe cautioned. “You can’t be sure that will open the door. It might even seal us in here permanently. This is a big opportunity. We can’t waste it. Let’s think carefully about the best way forward.”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
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The group of seven huddled together, discussing options for the next hour or so. They concluded that Rodenki wouldn’t be able to do anything about the sealed windows, and having it mess with the keypad should be reserved as a last resort. The course of action they settled on was suggested by Joe.
Despite having been imprisoned the longest, he advised patience. The plan was to have Rodenki explore and bring back anything useful it could find. The tiny Pokémon would be able to fit in the ventilation tubing above them. However, it wouldn’t be able to carry much, so would likely need time to make several trips. Even then, there was no guarantee it would find anything useful.
Alice was not on board with the idea. She doubted April’s partner Pokémon, but Rodenki seemed excited by the prospect of its mission. So, when April stood on the desk and held Rodenki up to the ceiling, it got right to work on the silvery ventilation tubing, gnawing a hole big enough for it to squeeze into.
“Be careful, Rodenki,” April fretted. “Bring back anything you can find that could be used as a weapon or a tool, but don’t be seen.”
Rodenki nodded and squeaked reassuringly before scurrying out of sight, making April beam with optimism.
Slate traced the tubing that led into the rooms beyond, imagining Rodenki inside, crossing into the rest of the building that held them. As hopeful as he had been when April discovered her sleeping partner in her hood, he questioned Rodenki’s reliability. What if it couldn’t find its way back to their room? What if it got caught? Or, he couldn’t help wondering, what if it gave up and decided to take a nap?
He didn’t air these concerns. It would be a real mood killer to express them. The others were surely dubious of the little Pokémon, especially Alice, and the atmosphere was already tense. Instead, he sat down quietly like the others, trying to show that he had faith, for April’s sake more than anyone else’s.
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The sleeping bags that Team Shade had provided didn’t have much padding in them, so it had been a rough night’s sleep for Slate, and he couldn’t stand lying down any longer. He unzipped his quietly, got up, and approached the wall clock to make out the time. It was seven in the morning, and Rodenki still hadn’t returned.
Slate chuckled silently in the dark. Sleeping on the floor of an office with six other people, and without a pillow, was a stark contrast from the cozy ensuite room he had become accustomed to at the Pistachion Pokémon Center. He vaguely wondered whether the concierge staff had noticed his absence.
After using the shared bathroom, Slate perched on the desk with his arms folded, taking in his situation while the others slept. He had been kidnapped by some sort of evil gang and was now confined in a room with a group of strangers, quite possibly awaiting brainwashing. It would be funny if it weren’t so absurd. Assuming he remembered the experience, he would have quite the story to tell his brother the next time they met.
Jet would never have been caught, of course. He would have fought harder and… Slate reflexively slapped his hands to his cheeks. He had to stop thinking this way. There would be time to wallow if Rodenki failed, but he wasn’t ready to abandon hope just yet.
“Slate, is that you?” April whispered, apparently startled by the noise made by his silly habit.
“Yeah,” he answered. “Sorry, I couldn’t sleep.”
“Rodenki?”
“Not yet, but probably anytime now,” he said confidently.
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Two hours later, the metal door opened abruptly, the lights were turned on, and two black-suited Team Shade goons entered with their arms full of packaged sandwiches and bottled water. Each of them had a poisonous Slugish perched on their shoulder, which scanned the room with yellow antennae-like eyes.
“Breakfast,” one announced, and they dumped the items on the floor, leaving without another word, and sealing the door behind them.
Slate frowned, thinking back to the rooftop, where so many of the other goons that appeared had possessed Slugish of their own. “I think that Bonnie woman must have used Bella’s Colosslug to round up the island’s Slugish again, then caught a whole load of them to supply the rest of Team Shade with Pokémon,” he hypothesized.
April shook her head. “I hope not,” she said. “I hate the idea of a Gym Leader’s Pokémon being used like that. It would have a terrible effect on the ecosystem.”
Joe divvied up the food, but Slate couldn’t bring himself to eat. He didn’t want to accept anything given to him by his enemies. “How often do they come?” he asked.
“They give us three meals a day, as long as we behave,” said Bob, the oldest of the group. “It’s pretty much always sandwiches, but that’s better than nothing.”
“Have you ever tried rushing them when they come?”
“Once,” mumbled Jenny, a sad-looking blonde woman in her early thirties.
“The Slugish spit Acid,” Graham added, pointing to a burn mark on the floor. “And Alice got hit with Poison Gas.”
“That’s right,” she interjected, “and I was sick for two days, so don’t go getting any stupid ideas! If we do what they say, they’ll let us go eventually.”
Slate was about to object to this, but his train of thought was interrupted by a squeaking noise over his head. Rodenki had returned.
All the prisoners got to their feet except for Alice, who tucked into her sandwich, and April climbed up onto the desk to retrieve her Pokémon. They could see that Rodenki was dangling three objects from its bucked teeth. Sadly, their spirits collectively dropped when they got a closer look at them: a pen, a name badge, and a set of keys.
April accepted the items gratefully and showered Rodenki with genuine praise, but the others returned to their sleeping bags, their hopes dashed.
“Well, we knew it was a long shot,” said Joe with a sigh.
“What are you talking about? Rodenki did great!” said April defiantly.
Alice guffawed. “How are those things going to help us exactly?” she sneered.
Slate didn’t like the way the woman spoke, but she had a point. April, however, put her hands on her hips, and replied, “If you had cared to take a look at what Rodenki brought us, you might have seen it.”
“Seen what?” Alice snapped.
Holding out the name badge triumphantly, April recited, “John Barrington, Waste Treatment Supervisor!”
Her pronouncement was met with bewilderment.
“Don’t you get it?” she added. “I know where we are! This building is part of Nutera Power!”
“The powerplant?” Slate questioned, remembering what time they had arrived the previous evening. “That fits! It’s not that far from Pistachion. We must be in the office block of the complex.”
“Of course! It’s starting to make sense,” said Joe enigmatically. “Slate, April, you told us last night that the mayor was connected to Team Shade, right?”
The pair nodded, watching as the man closed his eyes and put a hand to his chin thoughtfully.
“This is how they’re doing it!” he announced. “This is how they caused the communications blackout. They’ve taken control of Nutera Power. The mayor has said the plant’s communication hub has been fully investigated, but he must be falsifying reports and covering for Team Shade!”
Alice let out an exasperated sigh. “That still doesn’t help—” she started, but a sudden rumbling noise struck her dumb. It grew ominously louder and closer with every passing second.
Just then, Rodenki squeaked excitedly, and it began raining Pokémon! A whole horde of Rodenki were dropping from the ceiling one by one, each of them carrying an item or two. Slate, April, and the others moved to catch them, while Alice watched in stunned silence.
Slate beamed as he started building a pile of the items the fifty or so little creatures had collected on their behalf. How could he have doubted Rodenki? No wonder the Pokémon was gone all night. It must have rounded up every wild member of its kind, which surely resided in the complex due to the electricity it generated.
“I’m so proud of you!” April praised, holding her Rodenki aloft as she spun on the spot.
“Oh my,” cried Jenny, holding something green. “I don’t believe it. It’s a Rotom Phone. One of them found a Rotom Phone!”
April gasped as she caught sight of her device. Stepping carefully between the Rodenki playing around their feet, she crossed to Jenny, saying with her hand outstretched, “That’s mine! Quick, give it here, I’ll get help!”
“Are you sure it will work,” asked Graham with apprehension in his voice.
“Will our proximity to the powerplant affect the signal?” asked Bob.
“It might, especially with a homemade network,” said Joe.
“We’ll soon find out. There are only two numbers I can try,” April explained.
Slate surreptitiously crossed his fingers as April entered her passcode, turned on the speaker, and dialed. Alice, who had got to her feet, her arms wrapped lovingly around three cute Rodenki and her expression noticeably softer than usual, gave a dry sob as the call failed tone sounded.
“Let me try the other one,” April said rather frantically. They waited on tenterhooks as she pressed the call button a second time.
“It’s ringing!” squealed Jenny, her fingers interlaced in prayer.
“Oh, finally!” said a male voice indignantly. “Where’ve you been, Ape? You and Mom have been on my case about getting to Pistachion, and when I finally arrive, you Ghost-type me!”
“August—” April started, but her brother spoke over her.
“Time is money, little sis. I’ve got places to be and Pokémon to train. A Gym Leader in training can’t be dealing with your drama, that’s women’s busine—”
“August!” April hissed, a vein popping in her temple. “As much as it pains me to say it, I need your help! Now, shut up and listen!”
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