Lost Evolution

[vareki]

Okay, That took way longer than it should have. But I think having two people you know die is a pretty solid excuse for not reading fanfiction. Anyway, lets forget about that, and I'll get to praising your Story.

Since I read all the chapters in one long burst, all the major events and plot-twists that everyone acclimatised too hit me one after another. I'm slightly disoriented, and any well thought out review like comments for the earlier chapters are lost, but heres what I have:


The last few chapters have been very interesting to read, especially with the inner conflict going on with both Carrie, and her grovyles, and myself. While I am opposed to MemorCorp in general, since you've been portraying them as evil torturers from the get-go, the motives they've so far revealed seem pure, if irrational. So I'm not sure how to think. Carrie has hated them for forcing inhumane treatments on pokemon, most prevalently the forced evolution, but is now not so sure about them, given their promise to resurrect more Archopy's.

This makes it all the more intriguing that she is the one who is pushing for Archopy to be used as breeding stock for a new race of pokemon. Her own dislike for the Sceptile race is letting her brush over the suffering of Archopy 0_o

Maybe its because I'm the sort of person to put the individual above the greater good, no matter the consequences, but that in itself has irked me about her.

Leading on from Carrie, Her flock of Grovyle are something I'm both enjoying and bemoaning. From the very start, up to now, I've considered four to be too many. With just three, like rght now, its so much easier to indentify and bond with the characters. To be honest, I saw Ivyx as completely unnesecary, other than to be Raptola's mother. Foli had a friendship with Kabutops, which was very interesting, and you get to be in his head a few times. Raptola moved the plot a few times, and provided some comic relief on the side. Velotus. Hell, he rules the story.

But Ivyx didn't seem to do anything. By herself that is. Their interactions as a group, are almost as interesting as their actions as individuals (More so with Ivyx) and that kept them more realistic. Foli, Rappy and Ivyx formed a single unit, Velotus stayed mostly on his own (Which is why we all love him =} ) and that worked really well.

Crescent is unbelievable, in the few times we've had a bit of insight into his mind. His talk with the Shiny!Skarmory was brilliantly scripted, and his remembered self-doubt was very powerful. The whole mechanic of Perish Song was better than any other I've seen before, especially with it interspaced with Crescent's Thougths.

I would say something about empathy, but there isn't really much to say.

But anyway, back on topic. Finally resolving the "Find Archopy" Portion of their adventure couldn't have been done at a better time. The story was just on the brink of the suspense being too much for it to really matter. I've seen several Fics implode from not resolving the story arcs, before people starting to get bored and no longer checking to see if its being updated. As it stands, you timed it sublimely.

Theo's madness and narcisstic mindset in the most recent chapter was a very unexpected character overhaul for me, but in no means unwelcome. It gets the story moving in a new direction, which is good, and adds more depth to a character who was relatively simple beforehand. Leaving his pokemon to cover his escape was the biggest face-heel turn of the whole thing, though. It firmly cements his change to a Neutral Agent/Antagonist, and thats a very interesting way of developing a main character.

I'm simply bursting with excitement to see how Kabuto will react (Hooray for having little to no character to base guesses on what the other three will do!), especially since its acting in direct opposition to his new freindship with foli.

Andrew seems slightly unmemorable to me. Besides threatening to elolve Carrie's pokemon (A strategy that only works on her and no one else. Because of course you have a contingency plan for every single trainer your likely to meet =P) and pretending his Arcanine can smell master balls, his input as a named character is ver limited.

Taking that train of thought further, I love the name Bad Light for the Gang, expecially the subtext of it (Evolution = Light, Carrie doesn't want them to evolve, dislikes evoluton = Bad Light), espcially since it suits them.

Thats about all I can think of to say right now, I'm very tired. I might (Dont get your hopes up, though) add a bit more to it later tommorrow

[elyvorg]

Okay, so it's time for one of my this-is-why-I-haven't-been-writing-I-swear-I'm-not-dead posts. Various distractions such as awesome TV programmes, playing a bunch of games and real life of all things have meant that over the past *coughcough* months, progress on the next chapter has been slow to nonexistent. But I'm getting there. I have marginally fewer real life distractions at the moment, meaning I've been working on this a bit more recently. The next chapter is still only about half done, but I will make sure that Chapter 31 is up at some point before the end of October. That's not just an arbitrary deadline, either; I actually have an LE-related reason why I want it done by then - see the bottom of this post for more details.

So! It's about time I replied to all you wonderful people who left such long juicy reviews that I've been cruelly neglecting. :3

All responses to people who have read Chapter 30 are under a spoiler tag. If you haven't read Chapter 30 yet, don't click the spoiler. Just don't.


adhdguitar - Thanks for reading. Yes, I'm aware that the Sceptile-hatred in the beginning of this fic is out of order, and I'm sorry. Sense was slapped into me by a reviewer at around the Chapter 10 point, which, while not changing the fact that it was still out of order before then, did mean that things got better afterwards and became portrayed more realistically and fairly. Thanks for putting up with it and continuing to read despite that, though.


Blitzy - I won't comment on anything you said individually, largely because I wrote those chapters such a long time ago that I'd do a lot of the things you commented on completely differently now if I were to write these chapters again. But as for your general perceptions of the characters - yes, you're absolutely right that Carrie isn't the most social person in the world. xP And yes, Velotus does have a bit of an ego, in a sense. That arrogance of his may well prove to be a problem somewhere along the line. Who knows? (Well, okay, I do, as does everyone else who's read the whole fic so far, but shh.)

Hope you enjoy reading more!



    Spoiler:- Chapter 30-related replies:

Show Spoiler

 
Dragonfree - :3

Velotus appointing himself as translator was very much an intentional thing on my part in terms of showing his character. =P After the previous chapter, he's incredibly ashamed about how he acted towards Archopy, so he'd rather take as little part in the conversation as possible, and being the translator is the perfect way for him to do that without it being too conspicuous. :3

It's not the first Foliano POV, no; there were definitely a couple in Chapter 12 with him getting to know Kabutops as well as one in Chapter 16 involving the stuff with the Everstone, and there may have been a few more, but I can't think of them off the top of my head. But yeah, this is the first one in a while, I believe, so I can see how it'd feel like a sudden change. You're right that I mostly chose it for the sake of tuning out the translating - writing that conversation from Carrie's point of view, hearing everything Archopy says indirectly through Velotus and then having to repeat it again herself would have been a nightmare - but the other reason I wanted Foliano's POV here was specifically so that you didn't know for sure what was going on in Carrie's head the whole time. Which was another one of my measures I put in to try and make people initially think, when the Master Ball pinged shut, that Carrie had been the one to throw it - 'cause without her POV beforehand, there's no proof that she wasn't thinking about it.

*nod* Kabutops is rather adorable, yes. I like him a lot.

Um. >.< About Archopy's friend's father... the general idea I have in my head is that his mother was raped by one of Them, and she told her son as little about his father as possible because she was afraid (quite possibly irrationally) that he would turn out like one of Them if she did - but obviously she couldn't actually tell him he wasn't going to evolve into a Sceptile because that lie would be uncovered too easily. I didn't actually directly mention that here partly because I'm sort of iffy about directly mentioning rape in this fic and partly because past-Archopy probably never quite figured it out herself, so present-Archopy wouldn't know, either.

...Your comments also enlightened me to one other fact about Archopy's backstory which I had previously been completely oblivious to, and that's that all these details aren't actually relevant to anything that's happening or going to happen in the fic. >.< I'd always intended to put it in this chapter mostly, I think, because I assumed the readers would be wanting some kind of clarification/fleshing out of the vague events of Archopy's memories which have been briefly mentioned before. I probably got a little too carried away with fleshing out said details while writing it in this chapter - while I had a vague idea of the storyline for Archopy's friend, most of the other details she mentioned here I literally made up on the spot while I was writing this. And you're probably right that Archopy probably wouldn't logically have wanted to go into that much detail. I don't think I'll change that when I rewrite part of the Archopy POV scene (as I'll go into later), though, because the fact is that however she tells it, the main point of that part is what she tells, and I would still want all that info in there even if it's irrelevant, because I've fallen way too much in love with Archopy's backstory and couldn't just completely erase that stuff from the fic's continuity.

I guess this is why I'm going to just up and write the full backstory for NaNoWriMo so I can get it all out of my system. =P

I also utterly failed to realise in writing this how completely not-logical Archopy's decision is in its current state. The bad logic of it is enough that I feel I should rewrite it in order to fix it, and after having thought some more about later chapters I realised that I want to do her character development a little differently than it's done here, so. Three or four paragraphs of her scene will be being officially rewritten. The basic idea is pretty much that she won't be more distanced from the memories at all, which you said would make things more logical, so hopefully that'll work. (I'm not even quite sure why I wanted to make her distanced from them now, specifically; I think the main reason might have been so that I had an excuse to start calling her something other than "she" in her narration, which seems a bit of a petty reason to decide on the placement of a significant piece of character development, in hindsight. D: )

I liked writing her being sucked into the ball. I had fun describing it being all impenetrable and stuff so that you just know it has to be the Master Ball. =P

So yes! Theo is adorable and I broke your brain. Whoo. =D You already know pretty much everything I have to say on this topic from that ramble I did on MSN at you a while back. :3

I'm fairly sure it does make sense in character for Theo to have waited this long. Partly, he just wanted to hear Archopy's story from her, and here, with Carrie as a translator, is the only chance he'll get. But aside from that, he's just really conflicted about whether or not he really wants to go through with this and can't quite bring himself to do it - that is, until he realises Archopy's making a decision and this could quite possibly be his last chance. Then he just sort of snaps and goes for it.

I'm so, so glad you enjoyed this twist. I may have mentioned it on MSN, but it needs reiterating that I was only hoping you'd find him at most mildly adorable; the fact that you're squeeing so much is just aaa~. :3

Sinnohdragon - You saying that you never saw this coming brought one word into my mind: success. 8D That was exactly the reaction I wanted from my readers; throughout all thirty chapters of this fic I'd just been desperately hoping that, if nothing else, they wouldn't see this coming. Because yes, this twist has honestly been planned for that long. :>

I also like that you still managed to empathise with him, because that's something else I hoped readers would do. Theo does have sympathetic reasons to have done this and he's really quite conflicted about it, and I tried to get that across to people instead of just having them go, "Oh. He's a villain now." So yay.

Glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for commenting.

SlowCrow - I won't bother replying to your reply to my reply, because most of it would be me either saying something inconsequential, or admitting, "Yeah, you're probably right about that, but I'm using creative licence/lazy/[insert some other excuse here]."

The only exception to this is your long dissertation about Pokémon languages, which assumed something along the lines of Pokémon having one common pidgin language that they all understand, and then separate native languages specific to each species, and that it didn't make sense for Carrie to understand her Grovyle all the time if they sometimes spoke in this universal "Pokénese" which she doesn't know. My explanation for this is simply that this fic interprets Pokémon language-speaking differently. In my interpretation of the Pokémon universe, Pokémon, as part of their supernatural abilities such as their endurance and fast healing, also have the supernatural ability to understand every language they hear. (This is the simplest explanation for how they understand a trainer's commands even when freshly caught; the idea of a Pokémon having to learn its attack names like dogs learn tricks never sat right with me.) However, due to their limited vocal chords, Pokémon can only speak one language specific to their species. So Carrie only understands what we might call Grovylian; all other languages spoken by any other species of Pokémon are gibberish to her.

Now, the chapter. =D Yay for spoilers within spoilers containing actual spoilers!

    Spoiler:- Roses are red and violets are blue~:

Show Spoiler

 

I'm just wondering how Kabutops even managed to get close enough to Foliano to do damage since Foliano could use Grass Knot to keep him at bay and both 4x super-effective Leaf Blade AND super-effective Thunderpunch if Kabutops managed to get past that. And here I thought the ancient water type would be the rusty one. o_o

I guess Kabutops is pretty good at parrying Leaf Blades or something - he must be more practiced at using his blades than Foliano since they're what he has instead of hands, whereas Foliano's are only optional weapons. And, well, it not being a naturally learned move nor one of his type, I believe Foliano's a little rusty with his Thunderpunch, as you might see later.

I think Foliano's POV would work better for this small segment if it was put on hold when Velotus stopped the group and started back up again when he entered since forcing Foliano's perspective into a paragraph where Carrie's doing all the action makes this a bit awkward.

Hm, I guess you might have a point about use of perspective there which I can think about applying in future. Doing so might make it sound like a sudden jump into Carrie's perspective (using this paragraph here as a hypothetical example), though, perhaps? I dunno.

Strange, the emphasis seems to be sort of misplaced here. First off, the room's description, while amusing in the way of lampshading game mechanics, seems to be the center of attention instead of Archopy. Then there's the fact that everybody else that had to have been in front of Foliano (or rather, in his way and line of sight) suddenly being ignored by the description. All that plus Foliano not exactly sounding too amazed or excited about actually seeing Archopy (his mind doesn't even "flinch" and ask itself if that's really Archopy). This sort of makes it a bit anticlimactic after all that excitement outside the entrance. :\

You do have a point there. :/ Lack of potential climactic effect noted and hopefully learnt from?

Part of Foliano observed that Archopy’s voice sounded both strangely birdlike and like the only kind of voice she could possibly have had;. . .

Eh? I didn't know that Pokes could actually detect accents. That and what you meant there.

The meaning was meant to be essentially: her voice sounded strangely birdlike, and it also sounded like the only voice she could possibly have had. The actual line was the result of me attempting to word it in a less clunky way. Not entirely sure how I could reword it to make it both not clunky and not potentially confusing. :/

Accents? Eh, I guess. Either that or it's partially referring to the way Archopy's language sounds (see above) but Foliano doesn't really think of it as a language since he naturally understands everything anyway.

If you haven't guessed, Theo, you've been bumped all the way down to footnote and have no relevance here whatsoever.

:O But of course Theo's an irrelevant footnote! It's not like he's going to do anything significant in this chapter, right?

(oh, and since you wrote these comments as you read through the chapter and as such you probably pretty much genuinely thought that at the time, insert giggling here.)

No~! You fool!

At this point, I'm guessing that the bag will get swiped during the conversation and for a certain somebody to get Masterball'd. It's imminent. I'm betting money on this as a fact. @_@

Ahaha, so you instantly jumped from the bag getting left to the assumption that someone would use the Master Ball. I tried to make the mention of the bag as small and insignificant as I could because I was utterly paranoid that someone would think this and the big twist of the chapter would be ruined for them.

...of course, since your assumption, while technically correct, neglected to include a certain fossil enthusiast, it seems I needn't have worried. =D

Ah yes, the mandatory "Welcome to the World of Pokémon" speech. Who knew that Prof. Birch would get quoted in this scene out of all places? XP

xD. You mean "Welcome to the World of Humans", surely?


...so, basically, all your criticisms of Archopy's story are completely true, and to save me repeating myself, I might as well just direct you to my responses to Dragonfree on this matter (which pretty much boil down to "Yeah, you're right, I screwed that up. Sorry." That and that I'm going to actually rewrite Archopy's moment of decision as it's the most insanely illogical part.) >.< Yeah. Thanks for the criticisms, though, because if I ever do rewrite this whole fic, you've given me a lot of fodder to work on when I get to this chapter.

I think the reason this isn't affecting me as much is because at least I'm glad that the next part of the chapter worked well, and that's the most important thing. xP;

Yay for actual spoilers!

At this point, I thought that Carrie had a sudden change of heart and shifted full-gear into insensitive b**** mode right here.

Whoo, success! Because I deliberately set the whole thing up to make you think once the Master Ball pings shut that Carrie had thrown it. Just so that you'd hopefully be caught even more by surprise a moment later.

I was, for some weird reason, relieved that Carrie didn't throw that ball at this point (mostly due that Carrie would have crossed her Moral Event Horizon here and we'd have to put up with her for the rest of the fic). I was expecting Andrew, or Venessa, or Aiden to have thrown that ball. Instead...

...buuuut, it somehow never actually occurred to me that people would assume that other characters such as those that you mentioned might be the culprit. Which, in hindsight, is indeed a fairly logical assumption. Which just means that the end result managed to be even more of a surprise, yes? =D

You blew my mind in a way I haven't experienced for a long time.

Oh yes. This sentence makes me so happy. This kind of a reaction was exactly what I'd been hoping for since thinking this up, oh, about thirty chapters and a prologue ago, and I'm so glad I managed to achieve it. 8D

And I think you did a great job at emulating the reader's probable reaction through Carrie here. I just hope that future readers won't come across this and get spoiled and then miss out on all the fun. D:

I really hope not too! I don't want this to become LE's It Was His Sled - that would ruin it! D:

And yay for Carrie being reader insert. It never really occurred to me that that was what she'd be here, but I guess she pretty much is, so whoo.

This is so, so wonderfully awkward and he is so, so wonderfully in denial right now. Now my opinion that he's now an antagonist has now been validated by this one quote, whee! \o/

Antagonist? D: Pfft! Theo is so not an antagonist!

</possible author bias because she's been writing a lot of Theo recently>

Which part of that did you think he was in denial about, out of curiosity?

During that battle pose bit, I was just waiting for this eventuality. XD

Whoo for Armaldo's deadness! =D

Well, they were all really blank slates that you could have done anything with, so I don't see your point.

Yes, but Theo sees his point, and that's what matters!

Theo [...] ended up feeling like an antagonist who really needed a reality-punch to the face.

D: ! Theo is not an antagonist and does not need a reality-punch!

</more author bias.> I'm not entirely sure how it never occurred to me that people would probably see Theo as an antagonist now, and I don't actually mind from an objective standpoint of how readers are interpreting my story, but my mind's been writing and empathising with Theo so much recently that it just can't help but be all DDDD: about it. Given how a lot of people's view on Theo here is quite different from mine, I'll be interested to see what they think of the next couple of chapters.

But yay. I'm glad I managed to blow your mind so much. =P
 

Darkfall - I have already mentioned on MSN how utterly evil you are for sort of vaguely guessing this would happen. Especially from the thing with Carrie's bag, which I mentioned to SlowCrow had given me slight paranoia that someone would guess what was going to come from it, and yooouuu with your Theo-tinted goggles managed to do so and raaawr. D:

But given that you have Theo-tinted goggles, I did hope that you'd rather love this, so it's good to see that you did. :3

Theo's motivational timeline speech basically meant to say something along the lines of: he wanted to catch Archopy to start with, then for a while after meeting Carrie he stopped wanting to (hence the "not the whole time") but then after Northern Canyon he both started wanting to again and realised that he'd still subconsciously wanted to even when he'd been consciously thinking he didn't. Any potential contradictory-sounding-ness of the speech itself can be explained by Theo being in a somewhat desperate state of mind not exactly suited to making well-thought-out, non-contradictory speeches.

And yes, Theo's Pokémon do indeed get a huge role now. At least, a much bigger one than they had before. =D

Pssh, what are you talking about? Of course "OMG THEO DID SOMETHING" constitutes a review. You're silly, you.


Sireath - Psh, you're also fantastic. I love insightful reviews like yours. :3

It's nice to hear you just let yourself sit back and enjoy the story, and I'm glad you enjoyed it. Particularly Velotus's arc - as you can probably tell I had a ridiculous amount of fun with it, and not everyone was overly fond of it so it's good to see someone else who was. :3

And of course I am glad to see that you loved the most recent plot twist. =D You know, back in your last review when you told me something along the lines of how you wanted to see some more depth in Theo, part of me desperately wanted to say "You will! Just be patient!", but there was no way I would ever let myself say that in case anyone guessed this plot twist. So I just fobbed you off with some vagueries about how I hadn't had much chance to focus on him or something instead. Which was sort of a white lie, because I always knew this was going to happen. :>

Thanks for the general pointers, too. As it happens, with the direction I know the story is going from here, I think it's going to end up abiding by both the things you advised by itself anyway, but I will take them on board and try to poke the story a little to make sure that it definitely does.

Thanks for the review - it's really warmfuzzy-inducing to hear that my story is apparently this enjoyable and inspiring. :3


vareki - Hi there. Always nice to see a new reader and someone who's willing to read all the chapters in one long go. I'm glad you've been enjoying it so far. :3

Interesting to see that you're conflicted as to whether you support Carrie or MemorCorp here. MemorCorp was always meant to be a bit morally grey rather than black, especially since their arguably noble goal was revealed, and equally Carrie is by no means the most perfect unselfish person in the world, so go ahead and back whoever you like. It's good to see that I've managed to make a conflict which doesn't come across as completely black and white.

As for Carrie herself and her Grovyle... The thing is, Carrie as a basic character existed a while before I even thought of this story, and at the time her Pokémon team was based off Pokémon I had in my Emerald version (including details such as Velotus actually knowing Hidden Power Fire and Raptola actually being the offspring of Foliano and Ivyx). And then when I started writing this story, Carrie was simply the best character to put in it. I'm aware now that perhaps I should have thought a little more about what works best for a story and perhaps tweaked her team a bit before writing it. But I was a lot younger and less experienced back then, so I didn't, and this is just the way the fic is now. I couldn't possibly rewrite it with differences such as, say, no Ivyx, because without every single one of Carrie's Pokémon there, it just wouldn't be this fic to me.

But yeah. It's nice to see that you particularly like Velotus (=D) as well as Crescent's moments in the limelight.

Whoo for the timing of ending the find-Archopy plot. It did seem the right way to do it in my plans - I'm glad it worked out.

As for Theo - he's mad and narcissistic, and leaving his Pokémon like that is a face heel turn? Looks like you agree with Carrie's view on this whole thing, then - 'cause as far as Theo's concerned, he's convinced himself that he's in the right and is doing this for Archopy's good. It'll be interesting to see what you think of the coming few chapters.

I am definitely going to be having fun with Kabutops and the rest of Theo's Pokémon in said upcoming chapters, as it happens. Hope you like what you see.

Andrew isn't precisely meant to be an overly significant character. He's there because his personality popped into my head as something that would spice up the Bad Light scenes, and since I enjoyed him so much I let him stick around and take part as the main Bad Light presence in another chapter after his first appearance. But he's never really been meant to be overly deep as a character. In fact, he really isn't - he's just a sociopath who does everything he does, even being a member Bad Light in the first place, simply because it entertains him. In-universe as well as out, there's simply no more reasoning to his actions than that.

I'm actually not overly fond of the name Bad Light. xP I find it a bit too cheesy and coincidentally-thematic, but it was the only thing I could come up with when I came up with it, so it had to stay. But I guess it's cool that at least someone does like the thematicness of it.

So! Thanks a lot for reading, and for giving fairly indepth comments on various aspects of the story. I love this kind of review. :3
 

Stuff that will be happening soon:

- I intend to rewrite a few paragraphs of the Archopy scene in Chapter 30 to fix the nonsensicalness of her thought process. Her actual choice won't change, but, so that it makes more sense, some of her character development will be retconned into something different. As such, I'd recommend people take a quick look at the rewritten part once I get around to doing it (I'll mention it in here when it's done).

- A while ago, I wrote an extra scene relating to Chapter 30 which Dragonfree thinks I should post in here for people to read. So the next time I post in here (not right now because this post is long enough as it is), I'll post that. It's not required reading - think of it more like bonus material - but you may find it enjoyable.

- I will get Chapter 31 up at some point before October 31st. This is because...

- ...I'm planning to take part in NaNoWriMo this November to write a fully fleshed-out version of the Archopy of the past's story. As you can probably tell, I fell rather too much in love with it while expanding on it in Chapter 30, to the point that there's so many more details and scenes from it floating around in my head and I just need to write it. NaNoWriMo seems like the easiest way to just get it all out of my system in one big go. I'm not saying this because I'm going to force you to read it once I finish it and post it or anything; I just thought you might be interested to know. But it does mean I won't be able to write any actual Lost Evolution in November.

So, uh... stay tuned?

[Lilly2]

This is beautiful! I only had time to read the first chapter, but I loved it so much that I read the second one anyway! Variations between the looks of Pokemon of the same species? Split evolutions? You do it so well! I also, unknowingly, became a fanfic writer when I was eleven...I mean I suck, but I'm still pushing for it cause I love my idea can I get you to critique my work when I have something worthy of critiquing?

[Griff4815]

Well... I know I talked to you throughout my read of chapter 28 and 29 but I felt I should give a crappy review. You did review (quite nicely) my last chapter, soo...

Yes, it's I... the only reader who is as empathetic towards Velotus as Velotus is himself. xP They were both good chapters in their own right... but I didn't like some of the things that happened to Velotus. xP Apparently I'm in the moral wrong since I agreed with him completely throughout [s]not to mention felt most of what he did[/i]. I still don't really see what the problem was, but...

Anyways, the description of the battle, setting, characters and all that was really good. Velotus is awesome. And completely fine. It's interesting that they finally met Archopy. Yeah... I need to lie down. Emotional, empathetic rollercoaster those chapters were and-- well, you read the msn convo. xP

I need to lie down. I'll read next chapter probably when the chapter after is released. Heh... err.

[elyvorg]

Lilly2 - Welcome to the fic, and thanks for taking the time to read the first couple of chapters. :3 I hope you continue reading and enjoying.

Griff4815 - Oh, you Velotus-person. You really shouldn't be complaining about any of the things that "happened" to Velotus; for these two chapters, at least, everything that he went through emotionally he brought upon himself. =P But yeah, glad you enjoyed it and everything. Do remember to read Chapter 30 sometime soon before you fall ridiculously far behind again, won't you?


So, uh... I was going to wait until I'd rewritten that Archopy scene in Chapter 30 like I said I would before I posted in here again. Except... it sort of hasn't happened yet. I haven't been in much of a present-Archopy kind of mood recently (I have, admittedly, been in a past-Archopy mood quite a lot thanks to the fact that NaNoWriMo is fast approaching, but that doesn't help much towards getting into present-Archopy's head), so I'm probably not going to get it done by the end of the month. I will do it at some point, of course, but more important to you guys I'm sure is that I get Chapter 31 up sooner rather than later. Which I still intend to do sometime in the coming week, as I've finished writing Chapter 32 at last.

But, well, you can still have the other thing I said I'd do the next time I posted. Here's a short extra scene relating to the most recent chapter. Be aware that it contains major spoilers for Chapter 30; for the sake of your own enjoyment, if you haven't read that chapter yet, you should not read this.

    Spoiler:- Extra scene - Chapter 30 spoilers!:

Show Spoiler

 
You also need a little bit of background to properly understand what's going on. Despite that I couldn't post this until now, this scene actually happened chronologically during Chapter 28, soon after Theo and Carrie split up because Velotus had run off and Carrie had gone to look for him. Additionally, having only understood one side of the conversation about Velotus' disappearance, Theo thought that the reason for him running off might have been because he'd found Archopy.

The beginning may still be a little confusing because this was written back when that scene in Chapter 28 was pretty fresh in my mind, but that should be enough to get the gist of it.

Anyway.

--

Theo took one last furtive glance over his shoulder as he walked to make sure Carrie was out of sight. The forest around him was clear. She and her Pokémon were nowhere to be seen.

He breathed a heavy sigh, feeling all the tension flow out of him. He was alone at last. No-one around to make him nervous, to force him to stay on his guard and act cautiously the whole time.

He wondered briefly if splitting up from Carrie back there had been the right decision. Was it the non-suspicious thing to do? It must have been. Theo hadn’t joined her the last time one of Carrie’s Pokémon had gone missing, after all. And if Velotus might have found Archopy, following her for that reason alone would have looked incredibly suspect. It wasn’t supposed to matter if only one of them “talked” to her.

No, he decided, going his own way had definitely been the right move. Even if it hadn’t, it meant he had some time to himself to relax without the constant paranoia that Carrie was about to figure out his intentions any second.

But what if Velotus really had found Archopy and Carrie was heading towards her right now? He had to hope she’d come and tell him, like he’d hastily suggested – which he’d done for his sake, not hers, despite how she’d treated the suggestion. Then again, this was Carrie. Theo wasn’t honestly sure that she’d care about him enough to bother.

He realised he’d come to a standstill and started moving again, forcing briskness into his pace. He had to keep looking in the meantime. He could not let Carrie reach Archopy on her own.

For several minutes Theo walked in silence, letting himself think thoughts he’d never felt safe to think around Carrie. Still he felt uneasy – he was hiding such a heavy secret, and there was no-one he could tell it to. The worst part was that he wasn’t even entirely sure if what he hoped to do was right.

But was there really no-one he could talk to?

He reached into his pocket for a Poké Ball and dropped it on the ground in front of him. White light emerged and formed itself into the shape of Armaldo, staring straight ahead as blankly and emotionlessly as ever.

No matter how many times Theo saw his Pokémon like this, it always broke his heart.

“Armaldo,” he said, trying to push aside those feelings as he looked down at the creature, “I need you to walk alongside me as I walk. There’s something I want to talk to you about, but we need to keep moving.”

Without even acknowledging the words, Armaldo obediently began to walk beside Theo as he set off again.

Theo tried to ignore how horribly robotic the Pokémon was as he marched in step with his trainer, instead gazing around at the forest and waiting for the words bottled up inside him to find a way out.

“I want to catch Archopy,” he said at last.

Armaldo made no sound other than the crunch of his heavy feet on the forest floor.

“I just needed to get that out,” Theo said to fill the gap. “I thought you’d be the best person to tell, since I can trust you to keep quiet.”

What was he saying? Trust? Why on earth would Armaldo staying silent have anything to do with trust?

“But yes,” he said, “I want to catch Archopy. Not for MemorCorp, for myself. I want her to be my Pokémon.”

He paused for a moment as he thought how best to explain himself to Armaldo – as if Armaldo would ever benefit from an explanation.

“I’m not doing this out of greed, you understand,” he said firmly, looking at Armaldo and trying to convince himself that the Pokémon might have been thinking that. “I’m doing this because Archopy was my fossil. My Pokémon. I was the one who dug her up; I was the one who got her revived. She’s mine. That does make her mine, doesn’t it?”

Theo stared imploringly at Armaldo, hoping to see some sign that his Pokémon agreed with him. Armaldo seemed yet to be convinced, still staring blankly ahead and saying nothing.

“It’s not any different from any of my other Pokémon,” Theo insisted. “I dug all of you up; I had all of you revived. Archopy is the same. It’s just that MemorCorp wouldn’t let me have her. Don’t you see? Now’s my chance to get her back. She’s always been mine.”

…But it still sounded pretty greedy.

At least, that was what Armaldo might have said had he been able to speak. Theo didn’t actually believe it himself.

“I’m not doing this for myself,” he said forcefully, feeling frustration seep into his voice. “I’m doing this for her. You heard me when I told you what MemorCorp does to its subjects, didn’t you? I can’t bear the thought of Archopy’s mind being messed up with memories that aren’t even hers. She must be so confused. I want to make her better. I can do that; I know I can.”

He looked towards Armaldo, waiting for an answer; surely he’d agree that Theo could make Archopy better?

The Pokémon’s silence said everything.

“I know I wasn’t any good at making you better!” Theo cried in bitter exasperation. “I know that! That’s exactly why I need to help Archopy, don’t you see? I need to do for her what I couldn’t do for you!”

He heaved a sigh, his shoulders drooping, and looked back at Armaldo’s emotionless face.

“That’s why I wanted to talk to you, of everyone, about this,” he said. “I’m doing it for your sake.” Theo looked away from his Pokémon and gazed unseeingly ahead as he walked. “I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’ve got to try. I just need to make Archopy trust me like the others do.”

Theo thought of his other four Pokémon. They had all known him from practically the moment they were born. They looked up to him like children to a father. Would Archopy really be the same?

Well, at the very least, he could hardly do worse with her than he had with Armaldo.

Theo sighed again and looked bitterly down at the ground. “I know making Archopy better won’t fix you,” he said. “I know it won’t change the fact that I’ve failed you. But… I guess it’ll stop me from feeling quite so bad about it.”

He couldn’t bring himself to look Armaldo in the eye as he dejectedly pulled out the Pokémon’s ball.

“That’s not the right reason to do it either, is it?” he asked the shape that was dissolving into red light. “I know. But I have to try.”

Theo swallowed as he stuffed the Poké Ball back into his pocket and quickly strode ahead. He’d got it out of his system now; he didn’t need to dwell on it any longer. He had to focus on finding Archopy.
 

Chapter 31 will be up sometime before the end of the month! Honest!

[Griff4815]

Griff4815 - Oh, you Velotus-person. You really shouldn't be complaining about any of the things that "happened" to Velotus; for these two chapters, at least, everything that he went through emotionally he brought upon himself. =P But yeah, glad you enjoyed it and everything. Do remember to read Chapter 30 sometime soon before you fall ridiculously far behind again, won't you?

I know I really shouldn't bother responding since my reply is so short, but I feel it's my duty. xP. Anyways, I wholeheartedly and respectfully disagree with that first statement!

And yeah, I'll try to get around to reading 30 sometime. I'm still recovering. xD

[elyvorg]

(If you haven't already seen my last post, you may be interested in the extra scene relating to Chapter 30 that I wrote.)

Whoo, it's Chapter 31 at last! Apologies for the long wait, but distractions are distracting.

Chapter 31: Escape

A loud, excited squeaking filled the wooden cabin. Vanessa grumbled something untoward, turning over on the mattress and burying her head in the borrowed pillow, hoping to fall straight back to sleep.

Joy was having none of it. The Togetic zipped across the bed and began poking her trainer energetically, punctuating each poke with a sharp “Tic!”. Vanessa opened her eyes and waved the fairy Pokémon crossly out of her face. “What is it, Joy?” she mumbled, glancing at the window, the sky outside visibly dark through the branches. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“Tokii!” Joy told her proudly, pointing with a flourish towards the laptop that lay on the floor in the middle of the room, the light of its screen illuminating the wall in front of it.

Vanessa snapped from groggy to alert in an instant. She’d left the program that tracked her Master Ball running overnight, even though she hadn’t expected anything to happen – the orange dot indicating the two trainers’ location hadn’t moved since the early evening, and she’d assumed it wouldn’t do so again until morning. But apparently, she had been mistaken.

She scrambled out of the bed and reached for the laptop, turning it towards her while Joy flitted about excitedly in the edges of her vision. A smile made its way onto her face. There it was: the Master Ball’s dot, flashing white, showing that it was now occupied.

Archopy had been caught.

Vanessa peered closer at the screen as she zoomed into the program’s map of Hoenn, eager to know exactly where her Archopy had been found. Still on Steel Hill, apparently, less than a mile away from where the trainers had stopped that evening. But it didn’t look to be staying that way for long. The dot was moving.

* * *

Theo emerged from the Secret Base, his mind racing. Part of him could scarcely believe that he’d managed to go through with what he’d just done, what he’d always meant to do but never known if he’d have the guts to. But now the ball containing Archopy – his Archopy – was safe inside his pocket; he could feel it lying just above the rapid pounding of his heart.

And yet, it had all gone wrong. Carrie hadn’t understood. Of course she hadn’t; Theo had always known she wouldn’t. Yet something had possessed him to try and explain it to her, even though he knew she’d never listen to him. He should have just left straight away, then his Pokémon wouldn’t still be inside the base, fighting to stop her just so that he could get away. But if he wanted any chance of enough time with Archopy, Theo had to leave them. His own Pokémon. He was leaving his own Pokémon to fight alone. This had turned into a nightmare.

He looked frantically, hopelessly, around the near-pitch black forest he found himself in. What with the time he’d spent inside the Secret Base listening to Archopy, he’d practically forgotten that outside was a menacing, unfamiliar woodland in the middle of the night. The place creeped Theo out enough without him having to make some kind of desperate escape through one to find a hiding place. He didn’t even have any idea where to go about hiding in a forest. That was Carrie’s area, not his.

This had all been such a stupid idea. Carrie was going to burst out of the base and catch him any second. He shouldn’t have left his Pokémon in there on their own. What sort of trainer would do that? Archopy would never trust him.

Theo took deep breaths and forced himself not to panic. However much part of him desperately wished he could rewind time and never have caught Archopy in the first place, there was no going back now. He’d done this so that he could care for her and make her better – he had to make her better. Even if Carrie was right that Archopy would never trust him, he simply had to try. It wasn’t even as if he had any other option any more.

Feeling his pocket for Archopy’s Master Ball to reassure himself it was still there, Theo steeled himself, picked a random direction and ran off through the dark.

* * *

“Damn it,” Carrie was muttering to herself above Foliano’s head. “Damn it, damn it, damn it.” She paced across the width of the Secret Base, glaring at the line of Theo’s Pokémon blocking the way out. “Why did he have to go and do that? That idiot.”

Foliano could see where she was coming from. Even though he supposed Archopy was basically a wild Pokémon and so Theo was basically within his rights to capture her, it just seemed wrong somehow. Archopy hadn’t had a choice in the matter. Didn’t wild Pokémon usually decide whether they wanted to approach a trainer and risk capture? Didn’t Archopy, of all Pokémon, deserve that choice?

But then again, he’d listened to Kabutops talk about the kind of trainer Theo was. Foliano could think of far worse humans that Archopy could have ended up with.

“Master is not,” he heard Cradily hiss under her breath, quietly but fervently, returning Carrie’s glare. “Master is not an idiot.” The sea lily’s tentacles writhed slowly, sinisterly.

Still pacing, Carrie ignored her gaze, or at least pretended to. “And now we have to battle our way out of here,” she muttered more to herself than anyone else. “Just bloody great. This is going to be such a mess.”

“Damn right it is,” Aerodactyl rasped, grinning a rather too tooth-filled grin. Foliano noticed Kabutops eye the pterosaur warily, almost as if he were about to speak up, but he said nothing.

Heaving a frustrated breath, Carrie briefly inspected the walls of the base, lined with firmly woven vegetation. “And Secret Base walls can only be broken down from the outside, apparently.” She smacked the wall in question. “Damn it! There has to be an easier way out of this!”

She spun around and looked down at each of her Pokémon in turn. Her gaze came to a halt on Crescent. A grin spread across her face.

“Crescent,” she said, her eyes glinting. “You used Perish Song before, didn’t you? I need you to use it again. I know it’ll hurt, but it’s the quickest way out of here.”

The Absol was shaking his head before she’d even finished, shrinking back as he looked up at her. “I… I can’t,” he mumbled, letting out a soft whine. “I don’t remember how to…”

“We cannot let him use that move,” Foliano heard Kabutops warn the other fossil Pokémon behind him. “They’ll get away.”

“Please, Crescent!” Carrie urged. “I can recall you once you’ve sung it; it won’t hurt for long. Just…” She made a frustrated gesture at the Pokémon blocking the way. “I need to get past them!”

Crescent stared at the ground, clawing at it anxiously. “I… I suppose I’ll try…”

“No, you won’t!” came a high-pitched voice; a second later a spinning beige thing cannoned through the air towards the Absol and clonked him in the face. It took Foliano a moment to register that it had been Omanyte, of all Pokémon – she’d always been so shy before. Crescent snarled in indignation and slashed at her shell as it spun around for a return strike, but judging from the squeal of glee from Omanyte as she smashed into her target again, it had barely hurt at all.

Velotus took the sudden action as his cue and leapt at Aerodactyl, grinning wildly, his blades blazing with green-white light.

“Oh, fine!” Carrie yelled as Aerodactyl countered a strike from the Grovyle’s leaves with a swipe of his wing. “Attack them! Go, go, go! There’s more of us, anyway!”

The room promptly became a whole lot noisier. Most of it was down to Cradily, who dropped the threatening glare in an instant in favour of screeching wordlessly at the top of her voice as she flailed wildly in preparation for an attack. Empathy duly jumped forward and wrapped a psychic glow around the sea lily, halting her in her tracks. From the other side of the base, Foliano heard Aerodactyl snarl furiously at Velotus; Omanyte was still squeaking in delight as she ran rings around Crescent.

That left Kabutops. He hesitated before moving towards Foliano, raising his scythes unsurely, clearly torn. Foliano knew that neither he nor his friend could pretend this was going to be just another of their friendly battles. He grimaced as he lit his blades.

“I’ll take this one,” Ivyx said, stepping in front of him, her own leaves glowing. She spared a meaningful glance back at him; she knew how much this would have hurt Foliano to do. He gave her a smile of wordless thanks.

With a grin, she flew at Kabutops, but her scythe was swiftly parried by his. Foliano couldn’t help but worry as he watched them trade blows. Kabutops had clearly become better at fighting a Grovyle over the course of their friendly matches.

“Foli, don’t just stand there – we outnumber them, make use of that!” Carrie called as she watched the melee anxiously, her teeth clenched. “Crescent, Detect that Rollout already! Velotus, what happened to Thunderpunch?”

Foliano jumped at Cradily, who was still held in place by Psychic, scything at her lower body with a Leaf Blade. The strike was punctuated by a yellow flash from the other side of the room as he heard the crackling of electricity mix in with a primeval screech of pain. Beside him, Ivyx was still going for it against Kabutops; Foliano winced as she was hit with a nasty-looking slash. A burning liquid splashed over him as he was distracted, and he leapt back in surprise away from Cradily, who’d managed to pull off the attack even while immobilised.

“Empathy, quit trying to lift her or whatever you’re doing and just use Psybeam,” came Carrie’s frustrated command. “Ivyx! Stop duelling – he’s better at it than you. Energy Ball!”

Foliano felt kind of bad as Empathy began dealing blasts of rainbow light to Cradily while he filled in the gaps with Leaf Blade strikes, not giving the sea lily a moment to stop reeling and fight back. Battles weren’t supposed to be one-sided like this. “You don’t have to fight us, you know,” he said to her, almost apologetically. “We just want to leave.”

“No!” Cradily’s voice was vehement despite her pain from the attacks. “Master needs us to do this. Master trusts us.” Another Psybeam shook her, but one yellow eye remained piercing into him from the black cavity on her face. “Master will come back for us, but until then, you will not leave!” At these words, she lurched forwards, spraying more acid right into Foliano’s face.

He yelped and shook himself wildly, trying to stop the burning, part of him wanting to deliver a counter-strike out of principle – she’d only been able to do that because he’d stopped attacking. But something made him leap away from the sea lily entirely, heading towards another part of the battle. Carrie hadn’t been specific on where she wanted him to make use of their superior numbers, after all.

He skirted past Ivyx and Kabutops, narrowly leaping over a sparkling green Energy Ball that Kabutops had smoothly ducked underneath moments earlier. Carrie yelled something about Shadow Ball from behind him, and he saw Crescent, his usually silky white fur grey and sodden with water, charge a sphere of dark matter in his mouth and fire it at Omanyte, who swiftly disappeared inside her shell. Black tendrils of energy skittered around the shell as the ball disintegrated on impact, eliciting a squeal of discomfort from the Pokémon inside.

She promptly reappeared, waving her tiny tentacles vigorously as she sprayed a jet of water at the Absol’s face. “Won’t let you!” she squeaked as Crescent snarled in annoyance, raking his claws at her but missing due to the water in his eyes. “Won’t let you hurt Father!”

Did she mean Theo? Foliano’s first thought was that the human really hadn’t been exaggerating when he said he was like a father to his Pokémon; his second thought was that she kind of reminded him of Raptola. Omanyte seemed to be about as young as Foliano’s son, after all. And he felt sure that his son would fight with all he had if he knew his dad was in danger.

He watched as Omanyte vanished inside her shell again and launched herself, spinning, at her foe. He didn’t have the heart to start attacking her, even if Crescent looked like he might have needed the help, only dodging by the narrowest of margins as the spiral shell whizzed past his nose. Omanyte’s typing was doubly weak to Grass, anyway. It didn’t seem right, battling her two-on-one with such a large type advantage to boot.

His head snapped around as he heard a screech of pain from Velotus; Aerodactyl had clamped the Grovyle’s body in his long jaws, crystals of ice glittering around his teeth and sending a wave of cold air washing over Foliano. The pterodactyl flung his foe harshly into the wall of the Secret Base, Velotus unable to cushion the impact as his arms were trapped under a layer of ice.

Aerodactyl advanced on the wildly struggling Grovyle, more ice forming around his fangs. Carrie yelled at Foliano to get in there and help him, but he hardly needed the order. Ducking momentarily as a wayward Shadow Ball zoomed past, he leapt towards the pterosaur and slammed a Leaf Blade upwards into his chin. Aerodactyl’s jaws snapped shut on thin air with a clack, spraying tiny ice fragments everywhere.

“Velotus, where’s your fire?” Carrie called. Out of the corner of his eye, Foliano saw the other Grovyle shake his head as he strained to break free of the ice encasing him. A leathery grey wing smashed into Foliano, catching him off guard and sending him sprawling onto his back. “And Foli, didn’t you know Thunderpunch too?” his trainer added as the pterosaur loomed over him, wings spread wide, eyes glaring down at him from above and grinning that wicked, fanged grin.

Thunderpunch? Foliano vaguely recalled having learnt it from Velotus, but it’d been a while and he couldn’t quite remember how it was done. He peered at his arm, trying to concentrate; a tiny crackle of electricity flickered across it and was gone just as quickly. The next moment, his head was slammed against the ground, stars speckling his vision as Aerodactyl’s wings swiped viciously at him, the ancient Pokémon screeching in triumph. Foliano instinctively lashed out in retaliation, but his bare claws did little against the Rock-type’s thick hide.

“Tie him down!” Velotus hissed from beside him as Foliano tried in vain to channel some energy into his leaves so he could give Aerodactyl a proper strike. “I just need some time!” The ice around the other Grovyle’s body seemed to be cracking – he’d be free in a few moments.

Foliano forced his head to stop spinning and scrambled out from underneath Aerodactyl, narrowly missing being caught by another Wing Attack as he backed away to give himself space to concentrate. Inside the vegetation-rich Secret Base, it wasn’t hard to coax a twisting, snaking vine to erupt beneath the pterosaur’s feet, tripping him as he lunged towards his target and sending him crashing to the ground.

Aerodactyl roared in frustration, flailing around on the floor, his efforts hampered by another two grassy ropes that Foliano had managed to call up and entwine around his wings as best he could. He caught Velotus’ eye; the other Grovyle grinned back at him, his ice entrapment now covered in a web of cracks.

“Look at you two,” Aerodactyl hissed, giving up his struggles against the vines in favour of glaring murderously – or was it enviously? – at the two Grovyle. “You have no idea what it’s like. Being the only one. Our leader is the only thing that makes it bearable for us. For me.” He paused to growl softly, and Foliano could see real loneliness behind his savage stare. “Now he wants to do the same for Archopy, and you seek to stop him?”

“Damn right we do,” Velotus growled. The ice around him shattered, and he leapt straight at Aerodactyl, his eyes blazing with fire and his arm crackling with sparks. The fist connected and the Flying-type screeched in agony, writhing around in his grassy bonds as electricity coursed through him. The moment it was over, he hissed defiantly back at Velotus, snapping wildly with his jaws even as his body shook from the strain, but the Grovyle just dodged backwards out of reach with a sly grin.

Foliano backed away from the fight, leaving his Grass Knot loose and easy to tear through. Aerodactyl was weakened enough now that Velotus could doubtless end things on his own – and Foliano couldn’t help but feel sorry for the pterosaur. He didn’t know what it was like to be the only one of his species, after all. Not like Theo’s Pokémon. Not like Archopy.

But wouldn’t bringing back her species as a whole help Archopy more than one human trainer could?

Foliano was snapped out of his confusing thoughts by his own trainer. “Foli, please!” Carrie said, sounding almost like she was begging. “We’re still nowhere near through – please, you have to help out somehow.” The anger from earlier had left her voice, leaving only desperation. Foliano couldn’t bring himself to ignore her wishes, despite his sympathy with the fossil Pokémon – she was his trainer, after all, and he cared about her just as much as Theo’s Pokémon cared about him.

There was an explosion of green sparkles to his left as Kabutops deftly slashed at one of Ivyx’s Energy Balls, disintegrating it. Drawing in a breath, Foliano readied his blades and made himself approach his friend. He managed to put on a spurt of speed and slammed a Leaf Blade into Kabutops’ chest, catching him off guard while he was still focused on Ivyx. The shellfish caught his eye, looking almost amused as he raised his scythe to parry Foliano’s next blow.

“Two on one?” he chuckled, a playful edge to his voice. “Surely this isn’t fair?”

No, it isn’t, Foliano silently agreed as Ivyx fired off another Energy Ball from the sidelines which grazed the top of Kabutops’ head as he only just managed to duck it. “You could always just surrender, you know,” he said out loud, keeping up the pretence of friendly banter. “I’m sure our trainer would love you for that.”

Kabutops’ eyes lost their twinkle and became pained as he blocked the next few blows with more force than normal, driving Foliano back. “You know I can’t,” he said quietly. “Just as much as you can’t. Our trainers mean too much to us.”

The two of them stood there, each of their scythes blocked by the other’s, locked in a stalemate. Foliano almost wished his trainer wanted something else of him, just so that he wouldn’t have to fight his friend like this.

Another Energy Ball flew in from the corner of his vision and struck Kabutops square in the chest. The shellfish gasped in pain and staggered backwards as the green sparkles fizzed over his whole body, their Grass type power seeping into his rocky hide. Foliano shot a glance at Ivyx, not sure if he was angry at her or complimenting her for the nice hit; she returned it with a look of wordless apology.

Kabutops was still standing. He seemed to have determinedly shaken off the attack even though it must taken a lot out of him. Raising his scythes again, he began to stalk forwards, albeit with more difficulty than before.

“Grass Knot, Foli!” Carrie called frantically from somewhere behind Foliano. “You know it works on him!”

Gritting his teeth and feeling horrible for doing so, Foliano called up a pair of twisted vines around his friend’s clawed feet. Kabutops caught his eye in the moment before the knots tightened, his gaze unreadable – and then he suddenly shot vertically upwards faster than Foliano had ever thought he could move. He snapped his gaze up to the ceiling, but Kabutops had already leapt off it, too fast to follow. The next thing he knew, a scything strike slammed into his back, sending him sprawling forwards, almost crashing into Cradily’s bottom half.

Foliano lay there, dazed, not really taking in the sea lily’s wild threats towards Empathy above him. That attack had hurt a lot more than a normal hit from one of Kabutops’ scythes should have. The pain was reminiscent of Aerodactyl swiping him with his wings; the move must have been Flying type.

He still couldn’t quite heave himself up off the ground – the attack just now coupled with the lingering aches from Aerodactyl’s Wing Attacks and Cradily’s acidic assaults had taken a lot out of him – but he managed to look over his shoulder back at Kabutops. “You know Aerial Ace?”

The shellfish nodded, not catching his eye. “My trainer taught it to me a long time ago,” he said.

Foliano frowned, thinking of their friendly battles. “Then why did you never…”

“I didn’t want to hurt you that badly,” Kabutops mumbled, his voice plagued with guilt. Turning away from Foliano, he dodged to the side of another Energy Ball that Ivyx sent his way – she seemed to be really straining herself to pull them off now – and then leapt straight upwards. Foliano could only watch helplessly as the same move was used on her: rebounding off the ceiling and then the base’s left and right walls in quick succession, Kabutops caught her from behind with an impossibly fast strike that she could never have avoided. Ivyx screamed as she tumbled forwards, sprawling onto the grassy floor much like Foliano had. Unlike him, she didn’t move again.

The horror in his trainer’s eyes as she pulled out a Poké Ball matched his own. Carrie gave Foliano an intense look as she recalled Ivyx, and he knew exactly what she wanted him to do. He wanted to do it, too. Kabutops had just taken out his mate. His mate. Some primal urge within Foliano wanted nothing more than to fly at his friend in a rage, to hurt him just as badly – no, twice as badly – as he’d just hurt Ivyx. Suddenly able to ignore the pain of his injuries, he pushed himself up off the ground and rounded on Kabutops.

And it wouldn’t even be unfair any more. Carrie’s Pokémon no longer outnumbered Theo’s, after all.

Kabutops backed away from his glare, raising his scythes in what would have been a placating gesture had they not been the same scythes that had just struck Ivyx down. “I’m sorry,” he said desperately.

Foliano tried to force himself to calm down as he stared into Kabutops’ eyes. Ivyx was only unconscious, after all; she’d be fine. And Kabutops was his friend. The same Pokémon he’d shared playful banter with in the midst of friendly battles. He’d only done this because his loyalty to his trainer was more important to him, and Foliano could understand that.

But Foliano’s loyalty to his own trainer was just as important. And although it had been subdued somewhat, the instinctive fury within him hadn’t gone away.

“I’m sorry!” Kabutops said again, clearly seeing that he wasn’t about to back down. Foliano took a deep breath to keep a hold of himself as he prepared to take down his friend.

“So am I.”

* * *

Theo’s feet pounded heavily against the ground as he ran through the darkened forest with only his rapid breathing and Archopy’s Master Ball for company. He tried to focus on the thought of Archopy, to tell himself that everything would be all right once he had time to talk to her and make her trust him, but why on earth would she want to trust someone who’d just grabbed her and run away with her like this?

Theo was beginning to wish on top of everything else that he hadn’t started running. He could hardly see where he was going in the dark – the tall silhouettes of trees kept looming into his vision so fast that he was barely avoiding smacking headlong into them. And even if he had the first clue what made a good hiding place in a forest, he still wouldn’t be able to see any in this all-consuming blackness. This was getting him nowhere. All he was doing was leaving his Pokémon – the ones that actually trusted him – further and further behind.

The thought of never being able to find his way back and losing his Pokémon forever crossed Theo’s mind, almost making him stop and turn back then and there.

But he had to keep running. He’d captured Archopy. He couldn’t go back, not while Carrie was still there. She might even have defeated his Pokémon and be coming after him by now – she could track his footprints, couldn’t she? Theo ran faster; he had to find a safe place where he could send out Archopy, somewhere that Carrie would never find him.

He was running so fast that he’d barely registered the dark shape in front of him before he crashed into it. The shape in question was knocked backwards, letting out a cry of alarm – and Theo’s heart dropped into his stomach as he realised that he’d just literally run into a member of Bad Light.

He wheeled around frantically, taking off in the direction he’d been coming from, hoping desperately that the thug hadn’t noticed who he was in the darkness. His hopes were dashed as a flash of light from behind him lit up the forest and the sound of the trainer ordering a Thunder Wave reached his ears. Theo would have sped up even more if he hadn’t already been running at full pelt. He didn’t have any Pokémon to defend himself with any more; he could hardly send out Archopy, and the rest of his Pokémon were…

No, not all of them, Theo realised, digging into his pocket as he saw a Magneton float up beside him in the corner of his eye, blue sparks crackling around its magnets and reflecting off its steel bodies. He flung out his last occupied Poké Ball at the same moment the Magneton sent a wave of paralysing electricity surging through him. For the second time in two days, Theo felt his limbs seize up painfully, and he slammed into the ground, hard. His head spinning as he stared straight ahead, he saw his Poké Ball bounce and pop open with a flash of light, releasing his last hope of getting out of this situation.

But Theo knew how ridiculous it was to think he could count on Armaldo. In the intermittent light from the Magneton’s sparks, the fossil Pokémon’s blank gaze passed straight over him. Armaldo wasn’t even looking at the Pokémon that had taken his trainer down.

Theo could hear footsteps that must have belonged to the Magneton’s trainer approaching through the dark. His mind threw up scenarios of Armaldo helplessly getting fried by electricity, unable to do anything to fight back. Theo’s arms refused to listen to him as he struggled to push himself up; talking was also difficult, but with effort he managed to form recognisable sounds. “Armaldo,” he gasped, “Ancientpow – ow – agh…” He coughed and wheezed desperately as his throat seized up mid-word and he found himself barely able to breathe, let alone speak.

Without being given the exact name of the attack, Armaldo might as well have heard nothing at all. Still gasping for breath, Theo felt his insides fill with dread for his Pokémon as the crackling of sparks continued, but the Magneton’s trainer didn’t order anything. Instead, the man walked right past the fossil Pokémon into Theo’s field of vision – and bent down to pick up Armaldo’s Poké Ball, which had rolled away in the moment Theo had been struck by the Thunder Wave.

Theo could only watch helplessly as the thug recalled Armaldo and pocketed the ball as if the Pokémon belonged to him. It hardly bore thinking about what might be done to him now that he was in the Bad Light member’s hands.

“You two have the Director’s permission to capture Archopy, so long as you give it to one of us straight away,” the man said, a note of annoyance in his voice as he advanced on Theo. “That’s what I remember having to tell every single member of our team on the hill.” With a rough shove from the man’s boot, Theo was rolled over and found himself lying on his back, staring up at a face that seemed vaguely familiar. “So why were you running away with it, hm?”

Panic hit Theo in a sudden surge as he realised that there was nothing he could do to stop this man taking Archopy. His body still wasn’t listening to his mind’s frantic attempts to get it to move. “No,” he managed to gasp, finding his voice again. “You – can’t –” With a huge effort, he jerked an arm up to try and cover the pocket with Archopy’s Master Ball in a desperate attempt to hold onto her, realising too late that all he’d done was show the thug exactly which pocket he’d find her in.

Archopy. Theo had dug her up. He had to help her. He couldn’t let them take her back to MemorCorp and make her life hell.

But his body refused to move. There was nothing he could do but let out an anguished cry of despair as the man working for the Director reached into his pocket and tore his Pokémon away from him.

* * *

Carrie ground her teeth in frustration as she stared at the entrance of the Secret Base, still hopelessly out of reach on the other side of the battlers. Theo’s Pokémon were simply refusing to back down.

It wasn’t for lack of her Pokémon trying, either. The fight just seemed to have set itself up to be as annoying for them as possible. Cradily must have been using Amnesia, because she’d taken countless Psybeams from Empathy and still had enough in her to retaliate with an Energy Ball or a spray of acid. With physical attacks barely able to scratch her shell, Omanyte was proving ridiculously hard for Crescent to hit with a Shadow Ball once she got rolling quickly. Aerodactyl, despite having taken at least two Thunderpunches, was somehow managing to repeatedly flit out of the way of what would likely have been a final one and still find the opportunity to zoom in with a Wing Attack every now and then, leaving Velotus almost as hurt as he was. And since when had Kabutops known Aerial Ace? At least he seemed too tired to use it any more, locked in a scythe-duel with Foliano, who’d given up on Grass Knot after the fossil Pokémon kept avoiding it. Both of them looked exhausted as they traded blows.

But despite clearly being on their last legs, Theo’s Pokémon were not giving up.

Carrie almost wanted to tear her hair out. She was sure there had to be some strategic way to go about this, some way to arrange the battle so that her Pokémon had the maximum advantage and could work together to be out in seconds. The Pokémon were all too caught up in their individual battles to be able to stop and think; this was the part she, as a trainer, was meant to be doing. But Carrie had never been too great at overly tactical battling. There was just too much going on at once for her to be able to focus on it, and the ever-present knowledge that Theo was getting further and further away by the second was rendering her unable to think straight.

Carrie had opened her mouth to call out some kind of order anyway but stopped as the faint smell of a campfire reached her. She frowned, glancing at Velotus, but he showed no signs of having used his Hidden Power; in fact, after their conversation last night and the way he’d shaken his head earlier when she’d ordered it, she wasn’t sure he even could use his fire any more.

Which meant…

She looked frantically around the Secret Base, seeing wisps of smoke curling their way in through the weave of vegetation that made up the walls. And now that she thought about it, the room seemed a whole lot warmer than it had a few minutes ago.

“Stop!” she yelled desperately over the sounds of the battle in front of her. “Seriously, I mean it, stop! This place is on fire!”

The Pokémon seemed to have been vaguely aware something was wrong, but at this, they all broke off their fighting and began to properly take in their surroundings: the smoke that was already rising to form a layer of grey haze around the ceiling, the sound of crackling flames from outside, the steadily increasing heat. Carrie’s Pokémon backed towards their trainer; Theo’s simply stared around helplessly, at a loss for what to do.

“Yeah,” Carrie said, trying to keep her mounting panic out of her voice. “We need to get out of here. Um.” She fumbled in her pockets, pulling out Poké Balls rather clumsily thanks to her shaking fingers and recalling her Pokémon to the safety of their balls. Then she looked down at Theo’s Pokémon, all of them showing signs of exhaustion, all of them still guarding their positions in front of the entrance. “Um,” she said again. “You guys. You need to let me out.”

“Craaay, leee,” warbled Cradily, her bulbous head performing a twisting kind of dance that might have been a headshake. The other three Pokémon glanced at her. All three held their ground.

Carrie’s back was beginning to feel considerably hotter; she edged forward away from the back wall, in which flickers of orange were beginning to show through the vegetation. “Oh, right,” she said to the fossil Pokémon. “Yeah. You’re all Rock-types; you’ll probably be fine if this place burns down around us, won’t you?” Her usual sarcastic tone seemed to be coming out a lot higher-pitched than normal. “Has it occurred to you that I won’t be?” She pointed wildly at herself. “Human being here. Flesh and blood. Burns easily. You’ve got to let me out.”

Cradily remained as steadfast as ever, vehemently repeating whatever it was she’d said before. The other three looked less sure; Kabutops in particular seemed to be struggling with himself as he propped his battered body up with one scythe. Around them, the flames grew closer. Parts of the inside walls were beginning to visibly blacken and become engulfed in a flickering orange as the fire made its way in. Carrie felt hotter still.

“Please!” she said desperately, dropping to her knees as the layer of smoke coating the ceiling descended to be uncomfortably close to her head. “You know Theo wouldn’t have included ‘let her burn to death’ in his orders! He’s not that kind of person – you can’t leave me in here!”

At this, Kabutops hesitated for a brief moment and then spoke quietly to Omanyte, who was the other Pokémon most directly in front of the entrance alongside him. Carrie’s heart leapt – and then promptly stumbled mid-leap as all Omanyte did was start spewing jets of water at the walls in an attempt to quell the rising flames.

“Oh, great,” she said, watching the water hiss and turn to steam that rose to join the smoke above her head. “Keep me alive but keep me here, too. Yeah, thanks.” Kabutops ignored her as he joined in the efforts, firing off undulating pulses of water clearly meant to drench the flames, but its effect was somewhat lacklustre given how tired the shellfish was. “You know I’m just going to send out my Pokémon again and carry on beating you once you’ve put it out,” Carrie added huffily.

Her anxiety began to creep back into her as she crouched low in the very middle of the Secret Base, watching the two Water-types’ efforts to fight the fire. They didn’t seem to be winning. For every flame they doused, two more would spring up elsewhere along the walls, and the sprays of water aimed at them were getting weaker and weaker each time as Kabutops and Omanyte’s energy dwindled further. Carrie had to give them credit; they weren’t giving up, despite their exhaustion and the fact that they were fighting for someone they’d been fighting against only a few minutes ago. But it was looking pretty futile – she was just glad she’d been splashed with cold water several times by now, because the heat was getting intense.

Never mind the fire-fighting effort – she needed to get the hell out of there, way more urgently than she’d ever needed to earlier. Thinking furiously about her options, she was almost ready to start begging Theo’s Pokémon to just let her out again even though she could barely see them through the steam, but then something she’d said while thinking through this problem earlier came back to her. The walls of a Secret Base could only be broken down from the outside – and that was exactly what was happening.

Squinting through the haze at the walls around her, Carrie spotted a part off to her left where she could make out a decent-sized hole in the charred vegetation, the flames around which looked to be mostly out. Omanyte and Kabutops were furiously working on the opposite wall and didn’t seem to have noticed through the steam and the smoke and the confusion that they’d left their captive an escape route.

Trying desperately not to breathe too much in case she started choking, Carrie crawled hurriedly forward, heading for freedom.

Something snagged on her foot as she was almost through, something that grabbed tight and tugged furiously in an attempt to keep her there. Carrie could hear Cradily screeching indignantly somewhere behind her and lashed out blindly, feeling her foot connect with something round and heavy at the same time as the sea lily let out a yeep of pain. The tentacles around Carrie’s leg loosened for a moment, allowing her to yank herself free and scramble frantically forward, stumbling to her feet and running blindly as fire surrounded her on either side; she was only glad she was soaked through; that seemed to be keeping the flames off her…

She ran through a shimmering wall of light, and suddenly the world wasn’t on fire any more. Carrie skidded to a confused halt in front of a purple and black pig-like Pokémon that was spreading its arms, the pearls on its body somehow managing to glow with a black light. She stared from the Grumpig back to the Secret Base, seeing flames still gorging on the small mound of grass and the ground around it, but stopping as soon as they reached the wall of energy that the Psychic Pokémon was producing. It finally clicked in Carrie’s head that this was a Light Screen – looking around, she saw that the Grumpig was one of several Pokémon standing around the Secret Base, powering the screen in order to keep the fire contained inside a circle of light.

But as she looked around, she also realised that there was a further circle outside this one, one that she was still trapped by, and her hopes of freedom were promptly dashed.

It was a circle of Bad Light members.

“Hey there, Grovyle-girl,” came an irritatingly familiar voice from one side of the circle that sent the dashed pieces of Carrie’s hopes through the shredder. “Took you long enough. I was beginning to feel all insulted – it almost looked like you’d rather burn to death in there than come out and see us.”

Resisting the urge to smack her forehead in despairing frustration, Carrie looked towards the man who was standing as part of the circle, directly in front of the Secret Base’s entrance. Andrew was leaning against his Arcanine, completely at ease, looking straight back at her with a way-too-amused gleam in his eyes and the biggest of grins.

“I’m sure you’ll be glad to know that we’ve apprehended your evil, Archopy-thieving friend,” he went on. “But you’d better come along with us, too. The Director would hate for you to miss the fun.”

~~~

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[Dragonfree]

I love this chapter, as you may have noticed when I was squeeing over Theo and his Pokémon on Saturday.

There are no outstanding mistakes that I could see per se, or at least not that I remember right now. I did enjoy that you started with Vanessa, as a fun way to get back to what just happened, but that scene seemed sort of pointless in the grand scheme of things, considering Vanessa doesn't turn out to do anything else in the chapter and even that scene is just her waking up and seeing Archopy has been caught, with no further hint that it's there for any other reason than just being that fun way to get back to what just happened. Again, I enjoyed it, but afterwards it just feels a little out of place.

I love how everything played out story-wise; Theo getting caught almost immediately was ever so slightly anticlimactic after the whole grand twist in the last chapter, but I can't imagine it would really have been especially entertaining if you'd dragged it out, and it is very nice to see the villains being competent enough to do this, especially when they summarily capture Carrie as well.

As for the character side of things, Theo is adorable and his Pokémon are all adorable and I still irrationally love Andrew to itty bits and aaaa Foliano and Kabutops! D: I am looking way forward to Kabutops' POV.

Sorry for the lack of quotes; it's a little harder to speak that specifically when writing the review after reading as opposed to during.

[Darkfall]

You know I always hated the phrase "said nothing." How can you say nothing? 'Say' implies yo said something, 'nothing' is, well, nothing. I'll never grasp the intrinsic arcanum of this oxymoron.

Easily the greates thing I've ever read:

"The room promptly became a whole lot noisier. Most of it was down to Cradily, who dropped the threatening glare in an instant in favour of screeching wordlessly at the top of her voice as she flailed wildly in preparation for an attack. "

This sounds weird to me:

"The strike was punctuated by a yellow flash from the other side of the room "

- It makes it sound like the attack was actually interuppted or blocked. Also at this point the word 'punctuated' felt a bit repetitive. I know it wasn't, but being such an uncommon word, it DOES stand out more.

So. It was a very battle-centric chapter, which is fine by me because I love how you write fight scenes, the decriptions are easy to imagine, and they all flow quite nicely. I'd assume it was a bit of a challenge writing so many different scuffles at once though eh?

Theo. Oh Theo. I love how indecisive and failtastic you are. Silly Theo. Still seems cruel getting Thunder Waved though...

To be honest there's not a lot to say about the characters. Carrie reacted as Carrie would, though when she was looking at the Secret Base, why didn't she see Andrew then? Just a note.

No, can't say I've much to say. Or... Something? It was good, very good. I'd say well worth the wait, but nothing particularily AMAZING happened. I mean, the fight was amazing, but that's all it was, an enjoyable prolonging of the plot. Worth the wait, but not WELL worth the wait.

[elyvorg]

Hello again, dear fic thread! It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?

By which I mean it’s been two and a half years oh god that is unforgivable. But! I have not and never had given up on this story, and recently I have been getting at least somewhat back into the swing of writing it again. Thanks to my old one-chapter-ahead-of-posting arrangement for writing, I have also always had Chapter 32 in a nearly-finished state for all this time. So, even though work on Chapter 33 is currently going kind of awkwardly because I’m incredibly rusty (and it’s one of those tricky transitory chapters), I see no reason why I can’t post the next chapter sometime soon.

Therefore!

I will try to have Chapter 32 up within a week. There. Now that I’ve said it in here, I can’t be lazy and back out of it.

This… prior warning, I suppose, also gives anyone who’s still interested in this fic a chance to go back and reread some of the recent chapters if they want to refresh their memories. In particular, I have finally got around to editing in the rewritten version of Chapter 30 that a couple of reviews way back at the time of posting it persuaded me to write. Certain parts of it are significantly changed, and upcoming chapters will refer to these changed parts as if they are what always happened, so if you’re going to reread any of the chapters then I recommend you make sure to include Chapter 30.

Dragonfree and Darkfall, thank you for your reviews way back when. I’d reply to them, except I’d feel kind of silly since that was two and a half years ago, but they were appreciated nonetheless.

So, here’s to more Lost Evolution hopefully very soon!

[elyvorg]

As promised, Chapter 32!

Unfortunately, this is a bit of an inconvenient chapter to be posting immediately after a massive hiatus; the writing kind of assumes you at least vaguely remember what's been going on recently. So, again, I recommend at least skimming Chapter 31 to get back up to speed, if you don't remember much.

Anyway, huge, huge apologies for the wait, and I hope you enjoy.

Chapter 32: Direction

Grudgingly, Carrie dropped her Poké Balls into the palm of the huge Bad Light member walking beside her through the nighttime forest. She really didn’t have much choice; with him and the man on her other side no doubt carrying full teams of six each, her five exhausted Pokémon wouldn’t have stood a chance.

“How did you even manage to find me?” she growled, directing her question at the third Bad Light member whom she could just about make out walking in front of her, his hands held nonchalantly behind his back. “You couldn’t possibly have known I was in that Secret Base.”

Andrew grinned as he looked back at her over his shoulder. “You’ve got one Vanessa Swift to thank for that,” he said. “After you mentioned her, I asked one of the guys to look into her background, which in his language apparently meant ‘hack into her laptop’. Turns out she’s running a program that shows her – and now us – exactly where that Master Ball is and whether or not it’s occupied. Convenient, eh?” His eyes twinkled slyly. “Aren’t you glad you told us about her now?”

Carrie ground her teeth in frustration. Both Vanessa and MemorCorp had been tracking her from a distance, had they? That explained why Velotus hadn’t spotted anyone tailing them last night. It also meant that Vanessa knew Archopy had been captured now and would probably be heading this way. Where was Vanessa, anyway? Carrie hadn’t seen her in what felt like ages.

“Surely it would have been simpler just to follow me directly anyway?” she asked bitterly.

Andrew shrugged and faced forward again. “More fun this way. Besides, aren’t you glad we stopped your little friend getting away? You two must have so much to catch up on.” There was an inordinate amount of glee in his voice at that last statement, something Carrie couldn’t help but feel apprehensive about.

Their trek through the forest had brought them to a somewhat flatter, more open area of the hill, where Carrie could make out through the darkness a row of small trucks built for carrying a dozen or so people in the back. Presumably this was how Bad Light had got here; clearly, it was also how she would be leaving here. Andrew led her past the nearest one, and the next nearest, seemingly arbitrarily choosing one further down the row with which to fling the doors to the back open with a dramatic flourish.

Carrie peered into the gloom; it was dark enough that all she could make out was two low benches on either side. A rough shove at her back from one of the other men prompted her to climb inside and sit on a bench, though not without scowling at the man in the process. Andrew jumped in behind her, shutting the doors with a clang and plunging them into further darkness. From the sounds and the vague shapes she could make out, it looked like Andrew had sat himself down right next to the doors and put his feet up on the opposite bench, forming a barrier between her and freedom with his legs. There didn’t seem much chance of Carrie escaping, then – not with her Pokémon in the hands of one of the other men whom she could hear getting into the front.

As the truck rumbled to life, faint streaks of light made their way in above and between the doors, presumably from the truck’s headlights, making it marginally easier to see. With a splutter, the vehicle began to move, juddering up and down across the hilly ground.

“I don’t suppose there’s any point asking where you’re taking me,” Carrie said.

Andrew perked up from the relaxed posture he’d shifted into. “Of course there is!” he said. “Thought you’d never ask. The Director wants you at MemorCorp.”

“What?” said Carrie. “Does she want to talk to me in person this time or something?”

“Nope,” Andrew replied. “I don’t think she really gives a damn about you any more now that she’s got Archopy. She just wants to keep a closer eye on you so you don’t do anything stupid like tell people her plans.” He gave a mock-frown. “Savage got all annoyed because she made it sound like she doesn’t trust us to keep you quiet out here. He wanted to try and accidentally kill you again, you know.” He grinned. “Still, I reckon it’ll be fine. I’m sure we can find some syringes containing something that isn’t water this time once we’re back at MemorCorp, don’t you think?”

Carrie gritted her teeth, repressing a frustrated groan. As long as they had her Grovyle and some of that evolution serum, she wouldn’t be able to do a thing. She hated the fact that a simple chemical gave them so much control over her.

Andrew just beamed.

Folding her arms huffily, Carrie stared at the cloth-covered roof of the truck. MemorCorp was somewhere on the outskirts of Petalburg City – halfway across Hoenn from Steel Hill. And Carrie’s only company on the journey was to be Andrew. Great.

On second thoughts, Carrie wasn’t entirely sure that they were alone in there. A sort of wheezing sound, like somebody’s laboured breathing, was coming from the opposite corner of the space. Squinting in that direction, she could make out the shape of a person huddled in the shadows now that her eyes were more accustomed to the near-darkness. With what seemed like a great effort, the person in question heaved themselves upright, shifting out of the dark as they did so, and Carrie saw Theo staring back at her through the gloom.

“You,” she hissed.

Theo gritted his teeth and didn’t respond. He couldn’t, Carrie realised; she could see him struggling to breathe, his sitting position stiff and awkward. It seemed he was paralysed – that would be the second time for him in about two days.

It occurred to Carrie that she ought to feel sorry for him, but she wasn’t about to start pitying the man who had tried to capture Archopy for his own selfish gain, who’d been planning to do so all along. Instead, she glared daggers at him across the truck’s interior. Theo jerked his head in what might have been a dismissive headshake and directed his pained gaze down at the floor.

With a way-too-wide grin, Andrew pulled something out of his pocket, reached towards Theo and sprayed the contents of a small bottle in his face. Theo coughed and spluttered and began to relax, his posture becoming gradually less stiff.

Carrie recalled the last time their captors had decided to ease Theo’s paralysis for no apparent reason and gave Andrew a quizzical look. “Okay, so I get why you did it the last time,” she said, “but why un-paralyse him this time? It’s not like we’re going to be talking to anyone important anytime soon.”

“No,” Andrew admitted, “but this would be no fun if only one of you could speak.” He said it as though he was pointing out something obvious.

Carrie stared, then shook her head dismissively and rounded on Theo. She opened her mouth to fire some kind of scathing comment at him, but he spoke first.

“I suppose you’re happy now.” Theo’s voice was laced with so much bitterness that it barely sounded like him. Accusing eyes stared out at Carrie from beneath his matted fringe.

“What?”

“I suppose you’re happy,” he repeated. “Archopy’s going back to MemorCorp to be put through hell again. But that’s okay, because it means her species comes back and you finally get to vindicate your silly little hatred for Sceptile.”

Carrie flinched. She’d never heard Theo be this venomous before, nor had he ever hit so uncomfortably close to home.

“After all, it’s not like you actually care about her wellbeing specifically, is it?” Theo went on. “She’s not your Pokémon. Why should you care?”

“She’s not yours either,” Carrie snapped back instantly. She really wished he’d stop labouring under the delusion that he somehow deserved to own Archopy.

“Excuse me?” he replied. “I dug up her fossil. I asked for her to be revived. She was caught with a ball which I threw. Whether you think I deserve her or not – which, by the way, has no bearing on anything – how in the world is she not mine?”

“If I could just chip in,” Andrew said, “a Pokémon’s trainer is always registered as the one who threw the ball, regardless of where the ball came from. So yes, Theo here does officially own Archopy now.” He grinned infuriatingly at Carrie. “Sorry, Grovyle-girl.”

Carrie scowled. It was almost plausible to believe that Andrew was lying for the sake of messing with her – except, now that he mentioned it, she remembered Sam saying the exact same thing a few days ago. Which meant that Archopy was technically Theo’s Pokémon now.

Damn it.

“That doesn’t change anything!” she snarled. “You had no right to just grab her without giving her a chance!”

“You have no right to just cart her off back to MemorCorp without giving her a chance, either,” Theo shot back, fixing her with a piercing glare. “Didn’t you say that she’d said no?”

“Well, yes, but…” Carrie broke off and frowned. “Wait, since when did Archopy being brought back to MemorCorp have anything to do with me?” She glared briefly at Andrew. “That’s down to his lot.”

“True,” Theo admitted, his voice dark and resentful, “but then why aren’t you complaining?”

“What? As if complaining would…”

Carrie stopped herself. Theo was right; she hadn’t objected once she’d found out Archopy was headed back to MemorCorp. Did that mean she was okay with it after all, despite it being against Archopy’s wishes? Could she just as easily have been the one to throw the Master Ball and hand it off to Andrew if Theo hadn’t got there first?

She shook her head savagely. “No, I’ll tell you why I’m not complaining any more. It’s because at least she hasn’t ended up with you.”

“Wha…?” It took Theo a second try to find the steel in his voice again. “What? In what way exactly would that have been worse for her than MemorCorp?”

“In the ‘you acted like a crazed, selfish madman back in the Secret Base’ way,” Carrie pointed out. “Trust me, Theo, you didn’t exactly look like the kind of guy Archopy would want to spend the rest of her life with. I mean, what sort of trainer leaves the rest of his Pokémon behind to run off with the one he’s just caught?”

“I had to do that,” said Theo a little too quickly. His eyes were hidden by the shadows for a moment. “I had no choice.” Abruptly he went back to staring accusingly at Carrie. “You gave me no choice! If you’d actually understood why I needed to do this, then I wouldn’t have had to stop you coming after me!”

A snickering sound had started up in the other corner of the truck. “Hang on, hang on,” Andrew said, looking between the two of them as if they were in on some big joke he was missing. “So Theo’s Pokémon were in that Secret Base?” He let out a cackle and turned to Carrie. “And that’s why it took you so long to get out even after Arcanine torched it?”

“Torched it?” came a hoarse whisper from Theo.

Andrew was still laughing to himself. “Oh, Carrie, why didn’t you tell me?” he giggled. “I could have got some of the guys to go in and grab them before we left. We needed more –”

“You leave them alone,” Theo hissed, his voice wavering slightly despite the force in it. He whipped around to Carrie, his fixed glare harsher than ever. “This is your fault,” he said. “If you could just get it, if you could even try to understand what goes on in other people’s heads instead of staying in your own little world…”

Carrie snorted. “Then what? I’d have just happily let you run away with Archopy? I don’t think so.”

Theo shook his head witheringly. “You really don’t get it,” he muttered.

“What exactly is there to get?” Carrie asked, staring. “You wanted Archopy, you somehow managed to convince yourself it was because you could ‘help’ her, and here we are.”

“I can help her!” he insisted, that I-am-in-the-right gleam in his eyes again for a moment, and then it fell. “I could have helped her, if that lot hadn’t…” He turned to glare darkly at Andrew.

The Bad Light member held up his hands in a placating gesture. “Hey, me and the guys are just doing our jobs here,” he said. “If you want to get all fiery at someone for opposing you on principle –” he indicated Carrie – “point yourself back at her.”

Theo’s glare didn’t let up. “You did your job by torching the Secret Base?”

Andrew shrugged. “Had to get her out of it somehow. Hey, I didn’t even know your Pokémon were in there. It was nothing personal.” He waved a hand towards Carrie. “Go on, go back to blaming her for forcing you to send them out in the first place.”

Theo stared between the two of them, seeming momentarily at a loss.

Carrie raised an eyebrow. “So apparently I ‘forced’ you to leave your Pokémon in there,” she said. “Because I couldn’t understand how you were going to help Archopy, or something. Well, let’s say I want to try and understand now: how exactly were you going to help Archopy? Honestly, I’m kind of curious here.”

“I… I was going to talk to her. To gain her trust.” Theo’s voice was a lot smaller and quieter than it had been moments ago. “Then I could help her get over those memories of hers.”

“And how was that going to work?” Carrie asked. “Even if you did somehow manage to gain her trust, which, let’s face it, is pretty impossible –” she noticed Theo flinch and not meet her eye at those words – “how exactly were you going to help her get over the memories? I mean, you don’t even have a way to understand her language. What on earth were you planning to do?”

“At least I was going to try!” Theo exclaimed, suddenly defensive again. “That’s more than I saw you offering to do, even though you do have a way to understand her.”

Carrie was thrown for a second, before she shook her head. “No, this is not about me – you just basically admitted that you had absolutely no idea what you were going to do to ‘help’ Archopy once you’d caught her. Are you still going to pretend you didn’t do this out of some kind of selfish greed?”

“I didn’t!” he insisted, a hint of pleading in his eyes. “You have to understand; I really did want to help her. I just…” He sighed, drooping. “I just don’t suppose I ever really thought I’d get that far.”

Carrie almost laughed. “Wait, what?” she said incredulously. “You didn’t even think you’d get that far, but you still went for it? If you knew this would be a gigantic failure, why…?”

“Someone had to try and help her,” Theo said, the desperate insistence in his voice beginning to sound like a broken record. “No-one else seemed to care – you were perfectly fine with her being carted back off to MemorCorp once you heard the Director’s wonderful plan –” he said those last words with a heavy dose of irony, and then jerked his head at Andrew – “and they clearly don’t give a damn about her. Who else was going to help her if not me?”

“Oh, stop acting like you’re the world’s only goody-two-shoes,” Carrie snapped irritably. Something suddenly occurred to her. “In fact, yeah, you’re really not. Whose fault is it that Archopy even has those memories? Who brought her fossil to MemorCorp in the first place?”

She smirked as the horrified realisation hit Theo.

There was a cackle from the opposite corner. “Ouch,” Andrew commented, giving Carrie a grin and a thumbs-up.

“No,” Theo murmured, staring down at the floor, shaking his head numbly. “I didn’t… I didn’t know they were going to do that to her. It’s not my fault.”

“Yeah, but it really wouldn’t have taken you that long to find out,” Andrew pointed out. “MemorCorp. Clue’s in the name.”

“I… it all went so fast.” Theo lifted his head to shift his pleading gaze between the two of them. “Milo had a new job, and I was too excited about discovering the fossil… I didn’t think to ask…”

“What you basically just said is that it was your fault,” Carrie said.

Theo grimaced and looked away, hiding his face in the shadows. “I didn’t mean to hurt her,” he mumbled, his voice small and pathetic. “You have to believe me. I would never mean to hurt her.”

Carrie smirked. “Oh, of course,” she said. “But Archopy isn’t the only Pokémon you completely didn’t mean to screw up, is she?”

Andrew’s eyes lit up at this. “She isn’t?”

“Armaldo.” Carrie gave Theo a scrutinising gaze. “You took his fossil to some place that forgot to put his brain in, am I right? And even though you’ve tried to ‘help’ him, that hasn’t exactly got very far over however long you’ve had him, has it?”

“No…” Theo lifted his head out of the shadows, a ghost of the fierce glare from before back in his eyes. “Leave Armaldo out of this. This has nothing to do with him.”

Andrew made an exaggerated coughing noise that sounded a lot like “Denial!”

Carrie glanced at him then back at Theo, a grin spreading across her face. “Wait, it does? You mean this does have something to do with Armaldo?” She laughed. “Oh, but of course! This has everything to do with Armaldo, doesn’t it?”

Theo winced, his face becoming half-hidden by darkness again.

“Yeah – you couldn’t fix Armaldo, so you thought that if you could fix Archopy instead, that would make up for it! I’m right, aren’t I?”

Theo shifted further into the shadows and said nothing.

Carrie gave a sly grin. “Sooo,” she said, “lemme just confirm this one more time. Are you still going to claim that when you threw the Master Ball at Archopy, you were doing it entirely for her sake?”

There was a long pause.

“I don’t know,” came Theo’s voice at last, all the fight utterly drained from it. “Yeah, you’re probably right. I probably am just a selfish madman.” This time, his bitterness was very much directed at himself. “So there you are. You win. Congratulations. I suppose you’re happy now.” He huddled further into his corner until she could barely see him at all through the shadows.

Carrie stared numbly at him. She’d imagined that she’d get some satisfaction out of making Theo stop pretending and admit everything was his fault, but the feeling just didn’t seem to want to come.

“So,” Andrew piped up from the other corner, his eyes twinkling with curiosity, “that Armaldo that Archie grabbed off him when he captured him doesn’t have a brain?”

“Oh, shut up,” Carrie muttered. “I don’t see why you were acting like you were on my side there.”

He frowned at her, looking genuinely puzzled. “I wasn’t.”

The ride continued on in silence. With nothing left to occupy her, Carrie’s thoughts drifted to the doubts that the argument with Theo had seeded in her mind. Would she really have ended up giving Archopy to MemorCorp against her will if Theo hadn’t thrown the ball first? Should she be trying to help Archopy get over her memories instead, considering that she did have a way to understand her?

Carrie shook her head in frustration. There was no point thinking about any of that. Things simply hadn’t happened that way, and that was the end of it.

But in the dark confines of the truck as they drew ever closer to MemorCorp, there really wasn’t that much else to think about.

After what felt like a long time but might have only been a few minutes, the shape in the shadows shifted. “My Pokémon,” Theo said, sounding so pitiful and broken that Carrie almost felt sorry for him until she reminded herself who this man was and shoved the feeling aside. “Were they okay?”

Carrie snorted. “Oh, yeah, first they had a huge battle against my Pokémon – mostly Grass-types, I should point out – and then the place got torched. I’m sure they’re fine.”

“But…” She caught a glimpse of the dull glint of Theo’s eyes as he looked at her from the shadows. “They will be okay. Won’t they?”

She shrugged. “How should I know? I got smoked out of the place by him,” she said, nodding at Andrew.

Andrew wasn’t contributing to this particular discussion. He merely grinned disconcertingly.

“And anyway,” Carrie went on, “we’re being taken back to MemorCorp. You’re not even going to be able to see them again for ages. So it’s not like it really matters right now, does it?”

“Of course it matters,” Theo mumbled sadly from the darkness. “It always matters.”

* * *

The first thing Kabutops became aware of as he regained consciousness was the smell of burnt vegetation. The next was that he still hurt – the terrible ache of the Grass energy that had seeped into him throughout the battle lingered throughout his exoskeleton, along with the stinging of burns, though that felt tiny by comparison. The pain was such that it took him a moment to clear his head. He wasn’t used to waking up injured; most of the time, his trainer would have –

His trainer. Everything that Theo had done came flooding back to Kabutops. At the forefront of it all was his order not to let Carrie escape and follow him no matter what happened. Kabutops looked frantically around the blackened interior of the Secret Base, but to no avail. The only others there were Aerodactyl, Omanyte and Cradily, all still unconscious and covered in scorch marks. Carrie and her Pokémon must have escaped in the confusion of the fire.

Kabutops hung his head. He and the others had let their trainer down.

He was worried about Theo. It wasn’t the fact that he’d caught Archopy – it went without saying that any Pokémon from a fossil Theo had dug up was his if he wanted – it was the way he’d gone about doing it. Kabutops had known his trainer his whole life, and he knew when Theo didn’t truly believe in something he was saying. If the man had complete conviction that he was right in capturing Archopy, then he wouldn’t have done it like this. He wouldn’t have gone behind Carrie’s back. He wouldn’t have run away and left his Pokémon behind to stop her following. He wouldn’t have sprung it on them all without any warning like this.

Kabutops wished that Theo had thought to talk to one of them about this beforehand, sometime when Carrie wasn’t around. If he’d just been able to get it off his chest, Kabutops felt sure that he wouldn’t have been so horribly conflicted about it all. They’d have reassured him that what he was doing was right.

Shaking his head sadly, Kabutops pushed himself to his feet. He needed to talk to the others.

Aerodactyl had seemingly already come around on his own; his eyes snapped open at the sound of Kabutops’ dragged steps. The pterodactyl pulled his feet under him and stretched his wings out stiffly. “She escaped, then,” he muttered ruefully.

Kabutops nodded mutely as he walked over to Omanyte and nudged her shell. After a few tries, her round eyes blinked from within the opening, and she squirmed her way out of hiding. “What do we do now?” she asked, glancing nervously around the empty Secret Base.

Not knowing the answer to that question, Kabutops tried to put it out of mind for now and focus on waking up Cradily – given her part-Grass typing, the fire must have hurt her the most. He tried poking one of her tentacles with the blunt part of his scythe. “Cradily,” he said. The tentacle twitched, but there was no other response. He poked it again, and then the one next to it. “Come on, Cradily, wake up. The green human escaped. We need to figure out what to do now.”

The tentacles began to undulate slowly, and finally one of her eyes opened a little, a yellow slit within the black groove on her face. “Tried to stop her,” she mumbled. “Couldn’t let her go after Master.” The eye closed again. “Failed.”

“So what do we do now?” came Aerodactyl’s voice from behind her. “Couldn’t we just go out there and find her before she gets to him?”

Kabutops shook his head. “I don’t think any of us are capable of chasing a human right now,” he said. “And we were out for a while – she might have already found him. Or…” He closed his eyes, not wanting to think of the other implications. “…someone else might have.”

“They won’t,” piped up Omanyte, sounding oddly cheery given the circumstances. “No-one will find him. Father can get away from anyone!”

Kabutops almost shot her a disbelieving look but dropped it and averted his gaze as he realised just how she could say that with such conviction. Omanyte was still young. She still utterly idolised Theo; in her eyes, he was invincible. She hadn’t yet realised that he was as fallible as any other being. The rest of them had been through that when they’d seen him struggle to come to terms with Anorith’s condition. But that had been before he’d dug Omanyte’s fossil up.

Kabutops grimaced inwardly. This was going to be tough for her.

“You say that, but what if he hasn’t got away?” Aerodactyl hissed, with a glare that made Omanyte shrink back into her shell. “We should go after the green human right now, never mind how tired we are.” He gave his wings a furious flap and promptly winced in pain.

“We stay here,” Cradily said forcefully. She heaved her head up from the ground with what looked like a huge effort. “Master promised to come back for us. Master keeps his promises. Even if…” Trailing off, she glanced away, her tentacles twitching in discomfort.

Omanyte squeaked in agreement. “He will!”

Aerodactyl growled under his breath but didn’t say anything. Kabutops found himself agreeing with the pterosaur’s sentiments. He wished he could have had Omanyte’s innocent belief that everything would automatically be all right, but he knew it would not be that simple.

“Okay,” he said, waving a scythe to try and get those thoughts out of his head and think logically. “Assuming he manages to get away from everyone who’s after him and sort things out with Archopy so he can come back for us, how will he know where to find us? We all know he’s not very good with forests.”

“Master promised,” Cradily insisted, staring down at the ground with fervent resolve. “Master would search forever until he found us.”

Kabutops had to agree with her there, but even so, he’d been there when they’d entered this Secret Base. The entrance was incredibly easy to overlook; he worried that Theo would struggle to find it again in a huge forest, even if he knew what he was looking for. It would have been bad enough when it was still intact – now that it’d been burned…

A horrifying thought struck Kabutops. He looked worriedly at the walls of the base. The vegetation had been blackened to a crisp, and there were gaping holes in some places – holes through which he couldn’t actually see the outside. Only a surreal kind of dim light made its way in through them, like starlight but without any stars.

“We definitely need to get out of here,” he said. He tried to sound urgent, but his voice just came out full of dread. “If we even can.”

“What does that mean?” hissed Aerodactyl.

“We’re in what humans call a Secret Base,” Kabutops explained. “It may sound strange, but even though the inside is this big, the outside of this place is just a small mound of grass with a hole in it. Except now, that mound of grass has been burned. I’m not sure anything can get in any more.”

“Master can’t… get in?” Cradily’s tentacles lost their usual rhythmic wiggle and became very still.

“Can we get out?” Aerodactyl asked, his eyes flicking towards the holes and the strange light coming through them.

“I really hope so,” Kabutops said, following his gaze, “because that’s the only way our trainer will ever be able to find us again.” He paused awkwardly. “That decides it, then. We have to leave here, at least. We’ll… work out what to do after that once we get out.”

He tried to ignore the glare Aerodactyl gave him out of the corner of his eye. Kabutops felt like he’d somehow become the unofficial leader of the group, but he wasn’t sure if he deserved the role. Had Theo been there, leading them all like he always did, he’d know exactly what to do. Without him, Kabutops was afraid that any decision he made would end up being the wrong one.

But at least he was sure that leaving the Secret Base was a good move, he told himself. That was a start. He warily began to approach one of the holes in the wall, Aerodactyl and Omanyte following behind him.

“Wait!”

It was Cradily. She hadn’t moved to follow – because she couldn’t.

“Can’t leave me…” she muttered feverishly. “I… I have to see Master again. Don’t leave me… please…”

Kabutops screwed his eyes shut, hating himself. For a moment he couldn’t even bring himself to turn around and face Cradily. She sounded quietly terrified of the thought of being alone in here forever. And he’d almost left her there. Theo would never have forgotten about her.

“Cradily…” He opened his eyes and turned to her. “I’m sorry. You’re right.” He walked back up to her, beckoning Omanyte and Aerodactyl to do the same. “We’ll have to push you out, then. It might take a while, but we won’t leave you here. I promise.”

Something in Cradily perked up at those last words. Her tentacles started their slow squirming again.

Kabutops pressed his broad, flat head up against the back of Cradily’s weighted bottom half, dug his scythes into the ground and began to push as hard as he could with the little energy he still had. Aerodactyl grabbed onto her head with his feet – she didn’t seem to mind – and started flapping his wings backwards in an attempt to pull her along. Beside Kabutops, Omanyte squirmed up to Cradily and pressed her shell valiantly against the sea lily’s body. Kabutops couldn’t imagine her efforts would be helping much, but he appreciated the gesture.

Bit by bit, they heaved Cradily across the ground towards one of the gaping holes in the wall of the Secret Base. It took an immense effort, but Theo would have done it, so Kabutops and the rest of them had to do it in his stead.

Finally they managed to push her all the way through the dimly lit gap, and suddenly they found themselves in the outside world. The sudden sight of trees and vegetation disoriented Kabutops – it was easy to forget that they were in a forest while they’d been inside the Secret Base. A faint light could be seen coming through the trees in one direction; dawn was approaching.

With a sigh of exhaustion, Kabutops let his legs give way beneath him. Letting go of Cradily, Aerodactyl half-landed, half-crashed on the scorched ground.

“So what now?” the pterosaur demanded, already pushing himself up and staring hungrily off into the trees. “The green human’s getting further away – we need to go after her…”

Seeing the extent of the burnt undergrowth around the Secret Base, Kabutops shook his head. “It’s not that simple,” he said, indicating the fire damage with one scythe. The area that had been blackened to a crisp formed a perfect circle – outside that, the vegetation was fresh and untouched. “This wasn’t a natural fire. Humans must have done this.” Kabutops only knew one group of humans that would have deliberately set fire to the Secret Base. “Those humans who were after Archopy… oh, no…”

His voice trailed off as he gazed unseeingly through the trees in horror. It was looking less and less likely that Theo had managed to escape.

Screeching, Aerodactyl rose into the air with a furious flap of his wings. “If they’ve hurt him again…” he growled, glaring at nothing in particular.

Omanyte looked worried. “They won’t, will they?” she asked, gazing up at Kabutops with innocent eyes. “He won’t let them catch him.”

“Oh, Omanyte,” Kabutops said quietly. “I wish that were true.”

She withdrew a little into her shell, her eyes wide. “It’s not?”

“Of course it’s not!” roared Aerodactyl, suddenly directly above Omanyte, bearing down on her with huge flaps of his wings. “Of course they’ll have caught him! He had no idea what he was doing and he’s useless in forests, so now they’ll have caught him and taken Archopy from him and they might… they might even have…” Breaking off before he finished that thought, he gave up flying and crashed to the ground, his furious voice growing more and more strained. “And there’s nothing we can do, because we have no idea where he is.” Before Kabutops could respond, he jerked his head away, not looking any of them in the eye.

Omanyte had disappeared completely into her shell, trembling. “That…” came her tiny, muffled voice from inside. “That isn’t… he couldn’t…”

Kabutops shot Aerodactyl an accusing glare before kneeling down beside Omanyte and tilting her shell up to peer into the opening. He couldn’t see anything but darkness within, but he tried regardless. “Don’t worry, Omanyte,” he said, as kindly as he could given the anxiety that was trying to creep into his voice. “Aerodactyl didn’t mean it; he’s just scared, like the rest of us.” He took a deep breath. “It’s true that our trainer’s probably been caught, but… but he’s going to be okay, because we’re going to make sure he’s okay.”

Her eyes appeared in the opening, shining with hope. “R-really?”

“I… Yes, we are,” Kabutops said, trying to silence the doubts at the back of his mind. Omanyte needed to believe that everything would work out.

“Then what are we waiting for?” growled Aerodactyl, eyeing Kabutops again.

“What?” he said. “But we… we can’t go now… I mean, we’re exhausted, for one thing, and we don’t even know where he is. We need to think things through so we don’t go blundering in… don’t we?” He looked between the others for support.

Seeing Cradily, he suddenly realised that she’d been very quiet since they’d left the Secret Base.

“We stay,” she said slowly, her voice wavering. She wasn’t quite looking anyone in the eye. “Master will find us here.”

“Cradily,” Kabutops said carefully, “you don’t really believe that he’d have managed to avoid being caught, do you?”

Her head twisted away from him, tentacles twitching uncomfortably. “Master will escape and come for us,” she insisted. “He has to.”

Aerodactyl hissed in frustration and rose from the ground again with erratic wingbeats. “Well, I’m not sitting around waiting for that to happen,” he said, making Cradily wince. “I’m going after him. Now.”

“Wait, Aerodactyl!” Kabutops protested. “You can’t just up and leave! We need to think things through, to work together…”

“You are not my leader!” Aerodactyl snapped, and with that he turned and shot off on a lopsided but determined flight away through the trees.

“But…” Kabutops was at a loss. “You don’t even know where he is!” he called out desperately, hoping that Aerodactyl would hear him and see sense.

“I don’t care!” came the screeched reply as the last sight of leathery wings disappeared into the gloomy forest.

Kabutops sighed and sat down heavily. He really, really wished Theo were here.

“Have to stay,” Cradily was muttering to herself, with tiny, jerking shakes of her head. “Can’t leave.”

It finally dawned on Kabutops why she was being so insistent. “Cradily…” he said, “are you talking about us, or yourself?”

The sea lily looked down at the ground, her usually writhing tentacles very still. There was no way Kabutops could realistically push her any further than this. However much she might have wanted to help Theo, she was anchored to the spot.

Kabutops was torn. Part of him wanted to go after Aerodactyl and stop him doing anything reckless. Part of him wanted to stay with Cradily so she wouldn’t be left alone. And then there was Omanyte, who needed someone to keep reassuring her that everything would be okay. This was impossible. How did Theo do this? What would he do, if it were him in this situation?

“Go,” Cradily said, quietly but firmly. “Master would go. If one of us was in trouble out there and he couldn’t recall me, Master would go anyway and come back for me after.” She suddenly looked directly at Kabutops, a hint of pleading in her plain yellow eye. “Come back for me after, won’t you?”

Kabutops stood, taken aback. “Are you sure?” he asked.

She nodded. “Master needs us. Needs you.”

“Okay, then,” Kabutops said. He nudged Omanyte’s shell; she’d already emerged from it and was looking up at him with worried eyes. “I’m going to find Aerodactyl, then we’re going to find our trainer and help him,” he told her. “Are you coming with me?”

“Yeah!” Omanyte squeaked, eager despite the nervousness in her voice.

Kabutops nodded encouragingly at her then turned back to Cradily. “Okay,” he said hesitantly. “You, uh… you keep an eye out here, then. We’ll come back for you once we’ve found him.”

“Or,” she said, her tentacles beginning to undulate just a little, “Master escapes and finds me, then we find you.”

Kabutops caught the glint in her eyes and half-smiled, even though they both knew how unlikely that was. “Yeah,” he said. “Or that. See you, Cradily.”

He began to walk off in the direction Aerodactyl had flown in, Omanyte rolling along beside him. As he took a last look back, he saw Cradily lowering her head sadly, curling her tentacles in around herself. Kabutops felt a pang of guilt for leaving her even though she’d said it was okay; she seemed so lonely already. But if he wanted to help Theo, he had to.

It occurred to Kabutops that Theo must have felt the same way about leaving him and the rest of his Pokémon in the Secret Base while he escaped with Archopy, only countless times worse. Kabutops sped up his walking despite the aching in his limbs. He really needed to find and help his trainer as soon as possible.

“How do we find Aerodactyl?” asked Omanyte.

“If I know him, he’ll have kept flying in a straight line,” Kabutops said. “It should be easy enough.”

Sure enough, it didn’t take long for them to notice a leathery grey shape sprawled in the undergrowth ahead of them. Kabutops hurried towards it in concern, but Aerodactyl was still conscious, at least. He was staring ruefully forwards, his wings splayed out around him.

“Are you okay?” Kabutops asked.

Aerodactyl pushed himself up from the ground as best he could. “Couldn’t… fly… any more,” he rasped, still staring ahead as if he could see Theo through the trees. “But I need to find him. I need to…”

“We all need to find him,” Kabutops said simply.

“Yeah,” Omanyte agreed. “We’re going to find Father and help him!”

Aerodactyl glanced at the two of them and then deflated, looking a little guilty. “You’re right,” he muttered. “Sorry, Omanyte, about back there. I didn’t mean to…” He broke off and went back to staring anxiously through the forest. “But how do we find him? We have no idea where he is,” he said, digging his claws into the ground in frustration.

“I don’t know,” Kabutops admitted, feeling like this task was becoming more impossible by the minute. “I suppose… I suppose we could try asking some wild Pokémon if they’ve seen anything?” He looked at the other two; neither of them objected. “Okay,” he said, nodding determinedly to try and muster up some confidence. “We’ll do that, then. We can work out what to do once we’ve found him when we get to that point. I don’t quite know how we’re going to do this, but we have to try.” He stood up and began leading Aerodactyl and Omanyte through the forest. “Come on.”

* * *

As she approached the Pokémon Centre through the trees of Fortree City, Vanessa was deep in thought. She’d been watching the flashing dot on her screen for several hours now, and one thing seemed clear – Archopy was headed back to MemorCorp. This in itself surprised her. The two trainers she’d encountered who had let slip about Archopy had given every impression that they were intending to catch it for themselves. Indeed, a quick check of her software showed that Archopy was now in the possession of the young man, one Theodore Harcliffe. So why were the two trainers taking it back to the company that had revived it? Had they been agents of the company all along? It didn’t seem likely.

Nonetheless, Vanessa reasoned as she neared the doors bearing the words ‘Welcome to the Pokémon Centre!’, already having a good idea of Archopy’s destination gave her a head start. MemorCorp was conveniently near a city, too; all she had to do now was secure a way of getting there herself. She’d recalled Joy for the time being so that this would go more smoothly; as much as Vanessa loved her Togetic, Joy did have a habit of chirping cheekily at inopportune moments.

Vanessa strode through the open doors of the Centre, heading straight for the counter, at which the only person in the building was standing. The silver-haired nurse was exactly the man she was looking for. Sylvester Martin, his name was. She’d had dealings with him before.

The man’s standard Pokémon-nurse smile of warmth faded as he saw her there. His eyes turned hard. “You,” he said. “I thought I told you last time you were here that ‘we hope to see you again’ doesn’t apply to you.”

Vanessa ignored his hostility and did her best to put on a charming smile. “Mr. Martin,” she said. “Or rather, Nurse Martin. I was wondering if you’d be interested in another little deal.”

His expression didn’t waver. “You know I’m not. Please, leave.”

“Oh, don’t worry, this wouldn’t be as big a deal as before,” she said. “Last time, I couldn’t help but notice you had an Alakazam. I was wondering if it would be so kind as to give me a lift to somewhere I need to go. That’s all.”

“That’s all?” A little of the coldness left the nurse’s eyes.

“Indeed,” Vanessa assured him. “Of course, as before, I will pay you as much as you –”

“No.” Nurse Martin shook his head, placing his hands firmly on the counter. “Not again. Look at me; I don’t need your money any more. If you want a lift from my Alakazam, there’s only one thing I want from you in return, Miss Swift. I want my Tyranitar back.”

Vanessa narrowed her eyes, mulling his offer over.

The nurse found a ‘Be Right Back’ sign from somewhere and put in on top of the counter. “Let’s talk about this outside, shall we?”

* * *

[continues...]

[elyvorg]

[...continued]

* * *

“Is this really the way to Father?” Omanyte asked anxiously. “Are we really going to find him here?”

Kabutops slashed at a tangled piece of undergrowth, partly because it was in his way and partly as an outlet for frustration. They’d been searching this area of the forest for a while now – long enough that Omanyte was beginning to lose hope and become distraught again. He took a deep breath and looked down at her.

“Of course he’s going to be around here,” he said, trying to sound as reassuring as he could. “You heard that Oddish. It seemed pretty sure that our trainer was somewhere in this part of the forest. So we just have to keep looking.”

Aerodactyl snorted from Kabutops’ other side, walking clumsily along the forest floor to save his energy for flight. “Yeah. It seemed pretty sure about what the friend of a friend of a friend had apparently seen. That’s reliable.”

Kabutops sighed. “I know. But it’s the only information we’ve got, so we have to believe it’s true. If we don’t, we’ve got nothing.”

Omanyte let out a quiet whimper. Kabutops didn’t know what to say to her.

He tried to focus his attention on hacking his way through the undergrowth and keeping a lookout for any sign of where Theo might be. It was so hard to see in the forest with trees everywhere, blocking his view – but far off in the distance, something caught his eye. Something which didn’t fit among the leafy, natural shapes all around. It had the same greenish-brown colours as everything else, but it looked… square.

“Humans,” Kabutops said, pointing towards it.

Aerodactyl jolted into life. “Humans?” As soon as he’d seen what Kabutops was pointing at, he leapt from the ground with a sharp flap of his wings and shot off towards the shape in the distance.

“Wait!” Kabutops called desperately after him. “Don’t go off again!”

“Not my fault you’re not as fast as me!” the pterosaur called back.

Kabutops looked despairingly at Omanyte, who seemed confused. “What?” she mumbled.

“We might have found him,” Kabutops said. He moved behind her and batted her round shell with the blunt side of his scythe, sending it spinning forward over the bumpy ground. “Come on, Omanyte. Roll!”

He set off running, Omanyte’s shell rolling in front of him as he hit it every now and then with his scythe to keep it moving. It was a good thing he’d had those battles against Foliano and his Grass Knot – without them, he’d never have had enough practice to avoid tripping over in the undergrowth as he raced through it as fast as he could, all the while still aiming at the shell that bobbed along in front. Omanyte got the idea soon enough and began to speed up, powered by her own Rollout attack that sent her cannoning forward far faster than Kabutops could run. The human object was much closer now; it almost looked like Omanyte was going to shoot straight at it without stopping – but then Aerodactyl dropped down into her path and swung a wing at her, sending her careering off-course into a tree.

Kabutops came running up to the two of them, panting. Omanyte had emerged from her shell, and she squirmed forwards, looking disappointed.

“Sorry,” Aerodactyl muttered, “but I had to stop her somehow. I doubt crashing into one of those human machines is the best thing to do.”

Kabutops got a proper look at the squareish human objects he’d seen from a distance. There were two of them, and they looked like the kind of contraptions that humans moved around in: wheels on the bottom and a section in the front from which a human could control it. These particular ones also had a large section at the back that he couldn’t see into.

“I had a look,” said Aerodactyl. “There’s just big empty spaces in the backs. They probably use them to carry more humans around at once.”

Kabutops tensed excitedly. The Oddish had supposedly seen a human dragging along something large and brown which might have been another human – which had to be Theo – in this direction. “So they’re going to take –”

Aerodactyl shook his head. “He’s not here.”

Kabutops slumped.

Beside him, Omanyte retreated back into her shell. “So… we came here for nothing,” she said miserably. “We’re never going to find him, are we?”

His head hung, looking at the ground, Kabutops noticed something which caught his eye. There was a long dent in the soil leading away from where he was standing, with another identical one a short distance to the right of it. He perked up a little, feeling a dash of hope return. “Look at this,” he said, beckoning the other two over and pointing at the marks in the ground. “These are tracks. They’re like… the footprints that those human machines leave behind. Our trainer must have already been taken away in one of those things. If we just…”

“Follow the tracks,” Aerodactyl put in before he could finish. He gave a fanged grin. “They’ll take us right to him.”

Kabutops hesitated. “I was thinking we could hide inside one of those,” he said, indicating the two machines that were still there, “and they’ll take us right to him.”

“What if they don’t?” challenged Aerodactyl. “What if they go a different way?”

“What if the humans find us while we’re hiding?” Omanyte added.

“Yes,” said Kabutops, “yes, but – those tracks might not lead us the whole way, either. They’ll only have been made on soft ground. I don’t… I don’t think we should go that way. If we hide in the machine, we can save our energy, then we’ll be able to help our trainer better when we find him. It’s worth the risk.”

There was a long moment with the other two’s gazes upon him as they considered, but then they both dropped. Aerodactyl nodded, seemingly not about to argue leadership again. “Okay,” he muttered. “We’ll go your way. But if it’s wrong…” He left his words hanging.

Kabutops couldn’t meet his eye as they approached the nearest contraption. If this turned out to be the wrong decision, he’d be the one to blame. But if they’d gone the other way, followed the tracks with him still leading them, how many more mistakes would he have made?

He helped Aerodactyl lift Omanyte up into the back section of the metal box, then clambered in himself as quickly and quietly as he could. The sounds of footsteps and human voices drifted in from the forest outside. Sharing a short, panicked glance, Kabutops and the others dashed towards the back corner of the space where the shadows were thickest. Aerodactyl squeezed in with Omanyte underneath the bench that ran along the side, while Kabutops climbed onto it and huddled in the corner, making himself as small as he could in the hope that the darkness would hide him from the approaching humans outside.

It was a tense, endless moment, none of them daring to move or even breathe as they waited for the humans to approach their hiding place. If they were found, they’d never be able to reach Theo.

A human walked right up towards the back of the metal box, and, barely even glancing inside it, slammed the doors shut. A moment later, the machine shifted a little from the weight of someone getting in the front, spluttered to life and began moving.

Kabutops let out a long breath, but he didn’t move from where he was. Despite that the whole box had been plunged into darkness now, this tiny corner at the back where it was darkest still felt the most safe.

“Are we going to Father now?” came Omanyte’s voice from below him.

“I hope so,” Kabutops said simply. He didn’t have the strength to pretend in order to keep her happy any more.

How did he know that this machine was going to take them towards where Theo was, really? The real reason he’d chosen it, he knew, was so that he wouldn’t have to be in charge any more. These last few hours had been so difficult, trying to reassure everyone when he could barely reassure himself, making decisions when he had no idea if they were for the best or not. Here, inside the moving contraption, it felt like someone else was leading, deciding which way to go.

But if they went the wrong way, it would still be Kabutops’ fault for choosing this option over the other. If he’d opted to follow the tracks, been ready to lead for just a little bit longer, then…

Kabutops winced and curled in tighter. He wasn’t as strong as Theo; he knew that now. He couldn’t do this, much as he’d tried for the others’ sake. At least here, in the darkness, he didn’t have to keep up the pretence of being confident and in control. In the darkness, the other two couldn’t see just how scared he was.

Wherever his trainer was right now, and whether he was headed towards him or not, Kabutops really, really hoped that Theo was all right.

* * *

“The way I see it, Miss Swift, you have no choice.”

Sylvester Martin was standing against the back wall of the Pokémon Centre, his Alakazam out and hovering lazily by his side. He was grinning a little.

“How so?”

“Cortex here doesn’t have to give you a lift,” he said. “But it sounds like you’re really desperate to get to wherever it is as fast as possible. And if you want to do that, I want my Tyranitar back in return. That’s all there is to it.”

Vanessa pursed her lips in irritation. She’d paid a fortune to purchase this man’s Tyranitar off him a few years ago, and now he wanted her back for the price of a single Teleport trip? It was ludicrous.

Then again, it wasn’t like the Tyranitar had ever obeyed her. Vanessa sought out rare Pokémon for the feeling of being unique, of owning something that no-one else did. But she’d never felt like she owned the Tyranitar. The Pokémon’s disobedience had always made it seem more like Vanessa was just borrowing her. It wasn’t the same.

On the other hand, Archopy really was a creature owned by nobody else in the world. If Vanessa could get her hands on it, it would be bigger than anything else she’d ever found. She imagined the envious looks she’d get from everyone, particularly those two trainers who wanted Archopy themselves.

But she had to move fast if she wanted a chance of getting her hands on it before it was too late. That was worth the price of one Tyranitar that had never really been hers anyway, wasn’t it?

She nodded. “Fine. You get your Tyranitar back.”

The formal air dropped from around Nurse Martin as his eyes lit up with sudden hope. “Really?”

“Of course,” Vanessa said. “When I say something, I mean it.” Reaching into one of her torn-and-patched-up pockets, she pulled out a Poké Ball, making sure to hold it in the precise way that activated pressure points on the surface of the ball and told it that you wished to release the Pokémon inside. As she threw it, the white light that formed the emerging shape had a bluish tint to it.

Tyranitar’s usual grumpy roar of arrival was cut short as soon as she saw her original trainer standing in front of her. She gave a brief, confused glance back at Vanessa and then turned to stare at her trainer like she couldn’t believe he was there.

Sylvester Martin took a wary step forward, as though he were approaching a wild animal, while simultaneously looking like he was fighting not to break out in a huge grin. “Himalaya,” he said carefully. “I didn’t want to sell you. I had no choice. My parents needed the money. You understand that, don’t you?”

The Tyranitar, Himalaya – Vanessa had forgotten that she’d had a nickname – nodded slowly with a soft growl.

“I…” The nurse relaxed, his warm smile returning. “Thanks, Himalaya.”

Vanessa tossed Himalaya’s Poké Ball across to him. “She’s all yours.”

Himalaya looked between the ball and her trainer in surprise, her face managing to convey utter delight despite her dinosaurian features.

Beaming, Nurse Martin nodded. “Yep. She’s given you back to me.”

The Tyranitar threw her head back and roared – not a roar of grumpy disobedience like Vanessa was used to hearing, but one that somehow managed to sound genuinely happy. Her trainer laughed and stroked Himalaya’s forehead as she finished roaring. Something in the gesture made it seem like it was a ritual of affection that they’d done for years.

Despite herself, part of Vanessa couldn’t help being touched. The two of them reminded her a little of herself and Joy.

Nurse Martin lowered his hand from Himalaya and turned to his Alakazam, still smiling. “Cortex, would you be so kind as to give this lady a lift?”

The Alakazam, who’d been watching the whole thing, nodded and walked over to Vanessa.

The nurse dropped his warmth for a moment to give her a hard look. “One trip,” he said. “That’s all you get. You’re not taking him from me as well.”

She smiled thinly. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Where would you like to go?

Vanessa caught herself just before she jumped in surprise. Cortex was standing beside her. The Alakazam’s mental communication was somewhat unsettling.

She composed herself and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Petalburg City, please,” she said. It would have been quicker to go straight to MemorCorp, but she’d read that, across long distances, Teleporting Pokémon could only pinpoint places that had a significant meaning to them – usually, Pokémon Centres they’d been healed at.

Cortex nodded. Very well.

Vanessa took one last look at Sylvester Martin and his Tyranitar, the latter now being absorbed into the red light of her Poké Ball, before the world went fuzzy and disappeared before her eyes.

<< Previous chapter

[Becoming]

Right, review time! Reading the revised version of chapter 30, I found a few things . . .

“I don’t want that. All that suffering, all that… that[/i] evil… I don’t want to bring that back. Even if it means my kind will stay lost.”

You should probably fix up that italics tag!

There was a bitter edge to Carrie’s voice as she translated this. “So… that’s it?” she said. “You’re… not going to come.”

Archopy shook her head forlornly.

If that bolded bit is meant to be a statement, then keep it as is, but if it's meant to be a question, then it should probably have a question mark. Considering Archopy kinda answers it, I think it's a question.

And the latest chapter!

Kabutops shook his head. “I don’t think any of us are capable of chasing a human right now,” he said. “And we were out for a while – she might have already found him. Or…” He closed his eyes, not wanting to think of the other implications. “…someone else might have.”

That last sentence should either start with a capital, or the previous sentence should end with a comma. Either works.

Nonetheless, Vanessa reasoned as she neared the doors bearing the words ‘Welcome to the Pokémon Centre!’, already having a good idea of Archopy’s destination gave her a head start. MemorCorp was conveniently near a city, too;
all she had to do now was secure a way of getting there herself. She’d recalled Joy for the time being so that this would go more smoothly; as much as Vanessa loved her Togetic, Joy did have a habit of chirping cheekily at inopportune moments.

And you started a new line in the middle of a paragraph...you maybe shouldn't have done that!

Right, I read chapter 30-32. Even though I knew it was coming this time, Theo's betrayal really pissed me off. But I really enjoyed Theo and Carrie's conversation in chapter 32. It does a good job of addressing a couple of things that have happened in the story so far. And as I kinda suspected...Theo is trying to make up for what happened to Armaldo, sorta. I'm now curious as to how Theo and Carrie are going to interact though. I imagine they're gonna team up despite what's happened to try and stop MemorCorp.

And even though he's an antagonist, I kinda love Andrew. I find him to be one of those likable antagonists. But at the same time I'm really looking forward to Carrie smacking him a good one, you know?

I liked seeing things from Theo's pokemon's perspectives. Especially the part where Omanyte idolizes Theo. And it's also good that Theo's pokemon didn't, you know, die in a fire.

I don't really have much to say on Vanessa's part in this. Except I like the nickname Himalaya for Tyranitar. I was kinda suspecting that Vanessa would somehow make off with Himalaya at the last moment, but it turns out that she didn't. Oh, and she has a little bit of a heart, thinking of herself and Joy when she sees Sylvester and Himalaya.

But overall...I feel a bit weird about this latest chapter. Considering the action-packed cliffhanger-ness of the previous chapter (and, you know, the 2.5 year hiatus) I was hoping that a bit more would be resolved. Sure, there was the long awaited conversation between Carrie and Theo, but the other parts were just transitioning between the forest and MemorCorp. I guess I was hoping for a bit more plot development. But you tied both Theo's pokemon's and Vanessa's travels in with some insights to their characters, which was a pretty neat thing to do. I dunno, I guess it just wasn't what I was expecting. That doesn't mean it was bad though!

And, of course, it's good that you've started back on this!

[Dragonfree]

:D

So, as you know, I've just reread the entirety of the fic. It was lovely; while, yes, obviously your writing has gotten much better since then and the Sceptile-hate near the beginning was silly, it started out already pretty good, and this added opportunity to take in the story as a whole made me notice more than I could the first time around how there is never a dull moment. First there's seeing Archopy, then they're infiltrating the lab, then there's Velotus trying to beat Aiden's Sceptile the first time, then Raptola gets kidnapped, then Foliano might evolve, then Vanessa has a Master Ball, then they're in Northern Canyon and realize Archopy wasn't there at all, then Bad Light has them trapped inside the cave, then Andrew is after them being competent, Velotus is pushed over the edge, they make an agreement with Grace White, Velotus goes to fight Aiden's Sceptile again, finds Archopy and she shakes him out of how obsessive he's been, then they talk to Archopy only for Theo to snatch her and leave his Pokémon, then the Secret Base is on fire... It's a constant stream of intense, memorable events (sure, there are transitional breather chapters between some of the intense, memorable events, but those come one at a time and serve an obvious and necessary purpose of resolution and setup, rather than turning into filler or being simply uninteresting), and it's just gripping throughout. I never properly had the opportunity to notice how tight it is when reading a chapter at a time with months in between, but it was really fun to see now that the standout events from the plot that I remembered vividly were almost literally everything because there isn't anything boring and unexciting happening in between.

(The least memorable part of the story, by the measure of how-well-does-Dragonfree-remember-this-on-a-reread, was when Carrie and Theo were traveling through the desert - Vanessa having a Master Ball doesn't quite live up to the other events there in terms of impact, the details of how they ended up getting the Master Ball from her had slipped my mind, and the wild Trapinch battle in there was in retrospect kind of random. But that didn't make those three chapters boring, just somewhat less intense than the more emotionally charged happenings the rest of the fic consists of.)

It was also amusing to compare my current reaction to the chapters to how I reacted to them in my reviews at the time. I don't know if I'm going soft or something, but several times past-me was complaining about something that didn't bother current-me in the least, or I was really impressed with something that I was then surprised to find my review didn't mention at all. And sometimes past-me liked something current-me thought was kind of awkward, or current-me thought something was strange that past-me didn't bring up at all even though current-me's train of thought seems really obvious to me now. Also, I'm sorry (again) for being a mean sarcastic grump in my first review which was completely unnecessarily snarky about everything. D:

I also think I've gotten better at fangirling. "Velotuuuuuuus" really isn't a very insightful comment, is it? D: I should have rambled a lot more about why all those bits were delightful.

Well, so that was fun! I will reread Foregone Conclusion (again) next. Thank you for writing your lovely fanfics with your lovely characters.


Anyway, chapter 32, which I already read but it will be fun to reread it anyway.

I love Andrew here. He's just so much fun every time he says or does anything. The glee that Andrew inspires in me is definitely not one of those things that have changed since I originally read this.

How did Andrew find the Secret Base in particular, though? I mean, they could track the Master Ball to where Theo was, but even if they had marked precisely where the ball was on a map at the moment when Archopy was caught, how could they have known to go back to that location to look for Carrie just because Theo was alone when they caught him? I mean, normally one would presume they just found Archopy out in the open there, Theo caught her, and then for one reason or another they went their separate ways, instead of figuring there was a Secret Base and that Carrie might still be there. For that matter, how did Andrew know Theo had betrayed Carrie when he took Archopy? They could have conspired to have Theo take Archopy and then split up in the hope that Carrie would act as a distraction, for instance, but when Carrie comes out in chapter 31 Andrew is already referring to Theo as her "evil Archopy-thieving friend" as if he'd been watching the whole time and knew exactly what went on between them.

As the truck rumbled to life, faint streaks of light made their way in above and between the doors, presumably from the truck’s headlights, making it marginally easier to see.

But wouldn't the headlights be pointing forward while the doors are at the back of the truck...? Unless I'm picturing all of this way wrong somehow. I'm pretty sure headlights are designed to focus their beam pretty specifically forwards, so any light getting in above and between doors at the back of the truck would have to have been reflected twice off some trees or something first - I can't really picture that providing any discernible change in illumination at all.

I suppose the reason Bad Light keeps threatening Carrie's Grovyle with the evolution serum instead of just threatening to kill them is that 1) threatening Pokémon with evolution, or actually evolving them, isn't nearly as blatantly illegal as threatening death or actual murder, and 2) Andrew thinks Carrie's horror at Grovyle evolving is the most hilarious thing ever?

She’d never heard Theo be this venomous before; nor had he ever hit so uncomfortably close to home.

I'm pretty sure that semicolon is incorrect - "Nor had he ever hit so uncomfortably close to home" would often be written as a separate sentence for effect, but grammatically it can't actually stand on its own since with the "nor", it has to be a continuation of something.

Hee, Andrew's infuriating grins.

Carrie stopped herself. Theo was right; she hadn’t objected once she’d found out Archopy was headed back to MemorCorp. Did that mean she was okay with it after all, despite it being against Archopy’s wishes? Could she just as easily have been the one to throw the Master Ball and hand it off to Andrew if Theo hadn’t got there first?

She shook her head savagely. “No, I’ll tell you why I’m not complaining any more. It’s because at least she hasn’t ended up with you.”

I love this - Carrie has a moment of self-doubt and then deflects it into this spiteful, nonsensical venom to divert the subject from whether she would actually have taken Archopy against her will. She never quite decided what she would do in that event, did she?

“Wha…?” It took Theo a second try to find the steel in his voice again.

Love this too. His own self-doubt really shines through here with just this small, seemingly innocuous line: for a moment he does wonder if he's worse than MemorCorp.

Also love Theo being protective of his Pokémon and still guilty about leaving them behind.

Seriously, this is a really good conversation. They're all subtly showing their doubts and insecurities without anything being stated explicitly, and I also really like how it plays out like arguments actually play out - they're not actually addressing what they other is saying, accusing each other of not getting it without actually articulating 'it' well or at all, interpreting each other uncharitably... It's painfully realistic, in a heartbreaking way. Oh, Carrie and Theo. You were becoming such good friends just a few chapters ago. (Another nice thing about rereading: having a fresh memory of how the character arcs have been developing. While one can generally keep track of what the state of things is like at the moment, that big picture of the momentum of things gets a bit lost when you're reading one chapter at a time with months in between.)

The Bad Light member held up his hands in a placating gesture. “Hey, me and the guys are just doing our jobs here,” he said. “If you want to get all fiery at someone for opposing you on principle –” he indicated Carrie – “point yourself back at her.”

[...]

Andrew shrugged. “Had to get her out of it somehow. Hey, I didn’t even know your Pokémon were in there. It was nothing personal.” He waved a hand towards Carrie. “Go on, go back to blaming her for forcing you to send them out in the first place.”

I love how Andrew is playing argument matchmaker here.

(Also, that dash inside the first quote should be outside the quote. That or you put both dashes inside and make "He indicated Carrie" into a capitalized and punctuated sentence separate from the quotes. The former seems to be more common in published works, but the latter is more consistent with how dialogue punctuation generally works. You do the same thing a few more times in the chapter.)

Carrie smirked. “Oh, of course,” she said. “But Archopy isn’t the only Pokémon you completely didn’t mean to screw up, is she?”

Andrew’s eyes lit up at this. “She isn’t?”

“Armaldo.” Carrie gave Theo with a scrutinising gaze. “You took his fossil to some place that forgot to put his brain in, am I right? And even though you’ve tried to ‘help’ him, that hasn’t exactly got very far over however long you’ve had him, has it?”

“No…” Theo lifted his head out of the shadows, a ghost of the fierce glare from before back in his eyes. “Leave Armaldo out of this. This has nothing to do with him.”

Andrew made an exaggerated coughing noise that sounded a lot like “Denial!”

Ouch. Low blow, Carrie. And Andrew still finding their interpersonal drama hilarious and Theo being sensitive about Armaldo and aaa.

“I don’t know,” came Theo’s voice at last, all the fight utterly drained from it. “Yeah, you’re probably right. I probably am just a selfish madman.” This time, his bitterness was very much directed at himself. “So there you are. You win. Congratulations. I suppose you’re happy now.” He huddled further into his corner until she could barely see him at all through the shadows.

Carrie stared numbly at him. She’d imagined that she’d get some satisfaction out of making Theo stop pretending and admit everything was his fault, but the feeling just didn’t seem to want to come.

Heartbreaking, I say. Theo can't keep up the fight against his self-loathing anymore, and Carrie really did want to be friends with him.

The ride continued on in silence. With nothing left to occupy her, Carrie’s thoughts drifted to the doubts that the argument with Theo had seeded in her mind. Would she really have ended up giving Archopy to MemorCorp against her will if Theo hadn’t thrown the ball first? Should she be trying to help Archopy get over her memories instead, considering that she did have a way to understand her?

Carrie shook her head in frustration. There was no point thinking about any of that. Things simply hadn’t happened that way, and that was the end of it.

Oh, Carrie, you really don't want to think about this, do you? I wonder what would happen if somebody presented her with the trolley problem.

After what felt like a long time but might have only been a few minutes, the shape in the shadows shifted. “My Pokémon,” Theo said, sounding so pitiful and broken that Carrie almost felt sorry for him until she reminded herself who this man was and shoved the feeling aside. “Were they okay?”

This is so, so wonderfully Theo - after all the arguing and concluding he's a horrible person, he still cares about his Pokémon more than anything.

He was worried about Theo. It wasn’t the fact that he’d caught Archopy – it went without saying that any Pokémon from a fossil Theo had dug up was his if he wanted – it was the way he’d gone about doing it. Kabutops had known his trainer his whole life, and he knew when Theo didn’t truly believe in something he was saying. If the man had complete conviction that he was right in capturing Archopy, then he wouldn’t have done it like this. He wouldn’t have gone behind Carrie’s back. He wouldn’t have run away and left his Pokémon behind to stop her following. He wouldn’t have sprung it on them all without any warning like this.

Aww. I love that in all this he's worried about Theo - he recognizes the inner conflict going on within him and is sad he ended up doing something like this, where Carrie's brain can only go to "THEO WENT EVIL WTF".

Kabutops wished that Theo had thought to talk to one of them about this beforehand, sometime when Carrie wasn’t around. If he’d just been able to get it off his chest, Kabutops felt sure that he wouldn’t have been so horribly conflicted about it all. They’d have reassured him that what he was doing was right.

Oh, Kabutops, you're closer to the truth than you think. He just couldn't face someone who could actually judge him for it.

I also like that after the previous scene where Carrie came out on top in the argument, Kabutops believes without even thinking about it that Theo did have the right to catch Archopy. Yay for good guys disagreeing completely on things.

I don't think my previous reviews ever mentioned how much I enjoy that the Pokémon always call Carrie/Theo (whichever one is not their trainer) the "green human" and the "brown human". So, very late, I'm going to mention now that I do really like that (and did then, but I don't think I ever said it).

“They won’t,” piped up Omanyte, sounding oddly cheery given the circumstances. “No-one will find him. Father can get away from anyone!”

Omanyte is the adorablest.

“We stay here,” Cradily said forcefully. She heaved her head up from the ground with what looked like a huge effort. “Master promised to come back for us. Master keeps his promises. Even if…” Trailing off, she glanced away, her tentacles twitching in discomfort.

Cradily is the heartrendingly loyalest.

“Master promised,” Cradily insisted, staring down at the ground with fervent resolve. “Master would search forever until he found us.”

He would. Oh, Theo.

And Kabutops is all doubting his leadership skills without Theo and have I mentioned Theo's Pokémon are adorable enough lately?

“Wait!”

It was Cradily. She hadn’t moved to follow – because she couldn’t.

“Can’t leave me…” she muttered feverishly. “I… I have to see Master again. Don’t leave me… please…”

Kabutops screwed his eyes shut, hating himself. For a moment he couldn’t even bring himself to turn around and face Cradily. She sounded quietly terrified of the thought of being alone in here forever. And he’d almost left her there. Theo would never have forgotten about her.

“Cradily…” He opened his eyes and turned to her. “I’m sorry. You’re right.” He walked back up to her, beckoning Omanyte and Aerodactyl to do the same. “We’ll have to push you out, then. It might take a while, but we won’t leave you here. I promise.”

Something in Cradily perked up at those last words. Her tentacles started their slow squirming again.

They all need a hug and I'd forgotten quite how adorable they all were in this chapter and Cradilyyyyy. (Sorry, I'm lapsing back into not-very-insightful repeat-vowels-in-characters'-names way of fangirling again.)

It took such an immense effort, but Theo would have done it, so Kabutops and the rest of them had to do it in his stead.

The "such" seems a bit off - it seems to imply there's a comparison coming ("such an immense effort that...") but there isn't. I'd just leave it out.

“Go,” Cradily said, quietly but firmly. “Master would go. If one of us was in trouble out there and he couldn’t recall me, Master would go anyway and come back for me after.” She suddenly looked directly at Kabutops, a hint of pleading in her plain yellow eye. “Come back for me after, won’t you?”

Kabutops stood, taken aback. “Are you sure?” he asked.

She nodded. “Master needs us. Needs you.”

“Or,” she said, her tentacles beginning to undulate just a little, “Master escapes and finds me, then we find you.”

Kabutops caught the glint in her eyes and half-smiled, even though they both knew how unlikely that was. “Yeah,” he said. “Or that. See you, Cradily.”

Cradily. ;_; How do you even do this.

It occurred to Kabutops that Theo must have felt the same way about leaving him and the rest of his Pokémon in the Secret Base while he escaped with Archopy, only countless times worse. Kabutops sped up his walking despite the aching in his limbs.
He really needed to find and help his trainer as soon as possible.

I love, love that Kabutops is constantly thinking about Theo all throughout this scene. Also, that line break should presumably either not be there or be two line breaks.

“Couldn’t… fly… any more,” he rasped, still staring ahead as if he could see Theo through the trees.

Constantly.

The man’s standard Pokémon-nurse smile of warmth faded as he saw her there. His eyes turned hard. “You,” he said. “I thought I told you last time you were here that ‘we hope to see you again’ doesn’t apply to you.”

“No.” Nurse Martin shook his head, placing his hands firmly on the counter. “Not again. Look at me; I don’t need your money any more. If you want a lift from my Alakazam, there’s only one thing I want from you in return, Miss Swift. I want my Tyranitar back.”

Oh, silver-haired nurse! And here I thought you were an undercover Bad Light member. Instead you are adorable.

Kabutops slashed at a tangled piece of undergrowth, partly because it was in his way and partly as an outlet for frustration.

He and Velotus aren't quite as different as he thought. :P

Kabutops couldn’t meet his eye as they approached the nearest contraption. If this turned out to be the wrong decision, he’d be the one to blame. But if they’d gone the other way, followed the tracks with him still leading them, how many more mistakes would he have made?

Aww! He's insecure enough that he just wants to take things out of his hands for a bit even if it could be risky. Poor Kabutops. You're a bit too dependent on your trainer.

For a while in the Kabutops scenes, I forgot it was still dark out - might maybe want to work in some more reminders of that. You did a very good job of just that in Carrie's scene at the beginning.

Kabutops winced and curled in tighter. He wasn’t as strong as Theo; he knew that now. He couldn’t do this, much as he’d tried for the others’ sake. At least here, in the darkness, he didn’t have to keep up the pretence of being confident and in control. In the darkness, the other two couldn’t see just how scared he was.

Ha. He and Velotus really aren't quite as different as he thought. (I mean, they're still very different, obviously, but this in particular is really reminiscent of chapter 26.)

Wherever his trainer was right now, and whether he was headed towards him or not, Kabutops really, really hoped that Theo was all right.

D: Poor Kabutops.

Reaching into one of her torn-and-patched-up pockets, she pulled out a Poké Ball, making sure to hold it in the precise way that activated pressure points on the surface of the ball and told it that you wished to release the Pokémon inside.

That seems a bit funny - if you can release a Pokémon just by holding the ball in a particular way, it seems it would be all too easy to do it accidentally. There aren't that many ways to hold a ball, after all.

Her trainer laughed and stroked Himalaya’s forehead as she finished roaring.

The "as she finished roaring" seems a bit awkward to me; maybe reword it somehow.

Despite herself, part of Vanessa couldn’t help being touched. The two of them reminded her a little of herself and Joy.

Awww! I always liked Vanessa and Joy's relationship - it's always been clear through that that she isn't entirely heartless - and this just confirms it. :3

And yaaaay Himalaya gets to go back to her trainer and it's all heartwarming and ee. :D

So that was the most adorable chapter ever and this is a ridiculously long review. Hope it reminded you of how awesome it feels to write LE and have me squeeing over everything!