I trudged down the seemingly endless hallways, resisting the urge to smash my head against the wall. I’d been looking for Bugsy for the past ten minutes, and I was really starting to support the use of child leashes. Where could he have possibly gone in such a short time?

            I grunted in pain, starting to limp. To tell you to truth, I didn’t even know which part of me was hurting. My ankle was still sore from being almost broken, and now my head and back hurt. Never again will I complain about a stubbed toe. But I could rest at the Pokémon Center once I’d gotten Luna and Bugsy out of this place. So I just gritted my teeth and continued on, cursing Bugsy under my breath. Children make everything difficult.

            This place is gigantic, I thought. And it really needs a remodel. It’s too gloomy and depressing. It was true. This base was basically composed of dim hallways and side rooms. How original. I stopped in front of one of the doors, and tried looked through the glass window- but it had been covered with a sheet from the inside. I tried the handle, and to my surprise, the door was flung open. A hand shot out and dragged me inside.

            “Let me out!” I shrieked as the person closed the door. It was dark inside the room, and my eyes took a moment to adjust

            “Shut up or you’ll get us caught,” A voice growled. I turned to see Luna with her hand over Bugsy’s mouth. I felt weak with relief at seeing them both safe, but as soon as Bugsy caught sight of me, his eyes widened and he started thrashing to get out of her grip. Luna rolled her eyes. “Would you quit already?” she snapped, holding him tightly. “Jared isn’t going to hurt you.” Luna fixed me with a hard glare. “But I might hurt him.”

            Well, crap. I made a move towards the door, but she let go of Bugsy and blocked my escape. “Oh no. Neither of you are going anywhere until someone explains to me why’s he’s in a Team Rocket base-” She pointed towards Bugsy. “And why you tricked me into thinking you were someone from Unova!”

            “Luna, let me out!” Bugsy begged. “He’s crazy; I don’t want to be stuck here with him!”

            “You’ll be fine. Besides, it’s more dangerous out there. At least, for you it is. But if I were Jared, I’d be pretty terrified right now.”

               I gulped. “Luna, before you jump to conclusions-” She slapped me across the face before I could continue.

            “Oh, you will explain, Jared. And it better be a damn good explanation. But not before Bugsy does. I don’t want to be angry at him because you piss me off with whatever story you conjure up.” She hissed.

            I sighed. “Alright, whatever.” We both turned to Bugsy, who shrunk back like he was being cornered.

            “Well, uh, I don’t really know. I was just dragged here.” He mumbled nervously. “Kidnappers don’t usually don’t usually say, ‘Hey, just so you know, we brought you here to harvest your organs,’ or whatever they plan to do.”

             “Of all things, you use that example?” I exclaimed. Bugsy shrugged.

           “Both of you quit it,” Luna growled. She grabbed me by the ear and hauled me away from the door.

           “Ow, ow, ow, stop it Gigi!” I said out of reflex, and my Igglybuff glared down at me from my head. Then my face flushed and Luna snorted.

          “I have a feeling you’re used to saying that. Not too surprising, with that crazy Igglybuff of yours.” She taunted, yanking me to floor in the middle of the room. “Alright, now that you can’t escape without going through me, start talking.” We both sat with our legs crossed on the floor, facing each other. Luna glared back at me.

             “But I can’t- you’ll never believe me!”

        Luna rolled her eyes. “Please. I’ve seen some weird things in my day. I’m pretty sure your twisted fake obituary tales won’t surprise me. So you have two choices- either tell me, or I will walk out of here and never return.”

           One look at her serious face told me that she wasn’t joking around. So I relented, and began repeating what Falkner told me.

            “I don’t believe you. That’s complete nonsense. No one’s brother does that to them.” Luna snorted.

            “Okay, did you not hear the part about being in Team Rocket? He’s freaking evil!” I scowled, trying to keep the anger out of my voice. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”

            “You expect me to believe that your brother is ransoming you? And he made you fake your death as part of some master plan?”

            I groaned. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but if you knew Falkner you would understand. He’s always been crazy.”

            “Whatever. I’m not going to listen to your lies any longer. Let’s just focus on getting out of here.” Luna sighed.

            I nodded, eager to get off the subject. “I think I’m lost, because I got turned around when I went chasing after Bugsy, but I could try to trace my steps back to where we were.”

            “Back towards the place they locked us up? But what if there are a lot of people there, waiting for us to come back?” Luna asked fretfully.

            “It could happen…but we have to take our chances. Just trust me on this.”

            “Trust you? How can we trust you, after you lied to us about something as important as who you are?” Bugsy demanded.

            “Oh, come on!” I protested. “It’s not that bad…” I looked around our little group, and decided that trust really would be a key factor. We were exhausted, terrified, and the only one without prominent injuries was too young to watch horror movies. I was becoming increasingly stressed out, and quite frankly a bit fed up. “Look, I know I’ve done some stupid stuff, but if I’d told you guys who I was, it would have gotten back to Falkner. The man is like a secret agent. And beforehand, I thought he was just a jerk who would ruin my life if I told you. Once I figured out what was really going on, I would’ve eventually come clean if you hadn’t opened your big mouth!” I pointed at Bugsy angrily.

            Big mistake. He started crying, which reminded me of what happened the first time Gigi was hungry in my presence. It was horrible, especially because this time it was my fault. “Okay, I’m sorry.” I said nervously. “I didn’t mean that. Please stop.” He just wailed louder, and Luna shot me a dirty look. I swallowed and tried again. “Bugsy, it’s okay. You didn’t do anything wrong- I’m just being an idiot.” Nothing.

            I sighed. Really, I doubt he would’ve done this in a normal situation. From what I’ve learned about him so far, my guess is he’d just laugh at me and say I was blaming him for my problems. But I guess the tension had made us all worried, and it probably wouldn’t take much to put Luna and I into tears, either. “Bugsy, come on!” I pleaded. “You’re making too much noise! If Team Rocket finds us, I don’t think we’ll be able to escape this time. We’ll be locked in a room until they decide to do something with us. Is that what you want to happen?”

            Bugsy looked at me, sniffling. “You…you think that’s going to happen if they catch us?” He whispered.

            I nodded vigorously, feeling relieved. Finally I was getting through to him! “Yes, I do. And they might hurt us, or worse, so please be qui-”

            “No! I don’t want to die!” He started bawling again, and held onto Luna. “I want to go home!”

             I sighed and looked over at Luna. “Any time now, Luna. Just jump in.” She rolled her eyes.

            “You better hope you never have kids,” She grumbled. Then she turned to Bugsy, who was pressed up against her, gripping her arm. She smiled at him. “It’s alright. Don’t listen to Jared; he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Luna gave a glare that dared me to argue with her. “We’ll be fine. But please don’t cry, there’s no need to feel sad.”

            “O-okay,” Bugsy sniffed. “I won’t cry anymore.” Now that he was done crying, a huge yawn escaped his jaws, and he basically fell over onto the floor. Within moments, he was sound asleep. Gigi hopped off of my head and curled up next to him, clearly agreeing with him that it was naptime.

            “Dude. How did he do that? I would love to fall asleep that easily,” Luna grunted.

            “How did he do that? How did you do that is the question! You made it look so easy to calm him down- what witchcraft did you use?” I asked in awe.

            Luna laughed. “All I did was comfort him. It’s not that hard- I just said optimistic things, instead of telling him that he’s going to make Rocket grunts flock to us and put a bullet through his skull.”

            “So you do agree with me. You were lying for his benefit.”

            She shook her head. “Not necessarily. I mean, there’s a fifty percent chance of us not making it out of this place on our own…if not more, but if you’re telling the truth about Falkner, they probably won’t kill us. Or at least, not you. And I imagine that’s why bug boy is here too.”

            I shrugged, glancing at Bugsy’s sleeping form. “I guess. So what’s the plan?”

            “I thought you were in charge; you said something about tracing your steps.” Luna replied.

            “Oh. Okay. Well…in that case, what are we going to do about Bugsy? For one, he’s exhausted. So either we have to wake him up or carry him. And if we’re spotted and have to run, how will he keep up?”

                   “I hadn’t thought of that,” Luna admitted with a frown. “But we can’t just leave him here!”

           “Well, I’m not implying it!” I scoffed. “It’s just that we might have to protect him. Did you get your Pokémon back?”

            Luna pulled three Pokéballs from her pocket and handed me one. “That’s Romeo. I got Darky and Vulpix back, and Bugsy found his Scyther, but I didn’t see our bags anywhere. Luckily I didn’t have any Pokémon in mine. Was there anything important in yours?”

           Well, most of my money was in there, but nothing irreplaceable. “Nope. Let’s just focus on getting out of here. I am not risking my life over a backpack.”

             “Wise choice,” She snorted. Then she nudged Bugsy’s shoulder. “Come on, wake up. We have to go.”

            “I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all.” I said, worry tingeing my voice. We’d made it all the way to the beginning of the well with no problems whatsoever. There hadn’t even been anyone guarding the high-tech room we’d seen when we first got here. It was way too easy. Now we were staring up the ladder. Far above us, you could see the fading moon shining down into the well. The first hints of dawn were lighting the sky.

            “Me either, but we may as well go while we can.” Luna sighed. Bugsy kind of just nodded, his head drooping with tiredness.

            I glanced behind us at the tunnel, double checking for any potential enemies. Not a single person appeared, and I turned back to my companions. “You guys can go.” I offered. Okay, that’s not me being a hero or anything. I just wanted to be on the bottom so I could kick Falkner in the face if he tried to climb up after us.

            Bugsy started up first, followed by Luna. Once they were part of the way up, I began climbing. I vaguely heard a strange creaking sound the whole time I was on the ladder- which was not an extended period of time.

            Just as Bugsy was hauling himself out of the well, the ladder broke. It freaking broke, and Luna and I crashed downwards. I screamed, Gigi clutching my head. My stomach dropped as we fell further down into the dark well. It was like the tree all over again. Any moment now, I would land on that stone floor…

           Suddenly, a bright light beamed out from Luna’s pocket, and her Umbreon glided through the air, grabbing us both by our shirts and landing gracefully.

         “Oh. My. Arceus.” I gasped, breathing hard as the Umbreon held me about an inch away from the ground. “That was way too close. Your Umbreon is like a magician!”

      “Uh…yeah.” Luna said, trembling. “Darky is really graceful…we’ll just leave it at that.” Darky dropped us, and we both collapsed tiredly to floor. Gigi was holding onto my head like a lifeline.

          “Luna! Jared!” A frightened voice called from above. “Are you okay?” I could faintly see Bugsy leaning over the well, calling down to us.

             “Y-yeah. We’re fine.” I managed to reply.

           “I’m going to go get help- stay right there!” He shouted, disappearing for you.

          “Where would we go?” Luna wondered, seemingly faintly amused.

           I frowned, picking up a section of the ladder that had fallen. “I don’t know, but look.” I showed Luna the ladder, and it was obvious that the rungs had been loosened. “Sabotage. No wonder they didn’t bother to chase us down! I guess they didn’t ruin the ladder bad enough for all of us to fall, though.”

           Luna gazed worriedly at me. “Doesn’t that mean they were waiting for us to fall?”

         “I don’t know. But we may as well make the best of this.”

         “How?” She laughed, some of her edginess dissipating. “Playing I Spy?”

           “Like this.” I leaned forward, and before I knew it I was kissing Luna Sprague.