Red spun around, panicked, and signaled for Ritchie and Phoenix to turn back. They looked at him in confusion for a moment, then their eyes widened as they saw the grunt too. The two younger trainers began carefully walking back down the passage, but Phoenix stayed put, giving them a flat look.

“Pussies,” she muttered, pulling a pokéball out of her pocket. “It’s just a Pyroar.”

‘Just a Pyroar?’ Red thought incredulously, as she sent out a Graveler. The pokémon slowly floated towards the grunt, and Red began to back away, expecting things to go horribly wrong.

“If you make that thing explode, I’m gonna-”

“Shut up before he hears you.”

Before the Graveler could pull off whatever it was planning, however, the grunt turned around, and immediately spotted them. They looked at each other in silence for a moment, then the grunt put a finger up to his lips, dismounting the Pyroar.

“I know what you are thinking, yes, but I assure you-”

He cut off as he saw Graveler begin to glow. Red noticed too, and side-eyed Phoenix. “Don’t…” he whispered. She rolled her eyes, and said nothing.

“Please, do not explode the cave!” the grunt said, panicked. “That is not necessary!”

Phoenix chuckled. “Really.”

“If you would only hear me out, yes, perhaps I could explain the situation?”

“And let you beat us up?” Ritchie yelled. “As if!”

“I would not do such a thing. I am on the same side as you.”

Graveler continued to build up its energy, readying an Explosion attack, while Red frantically called for Phoenix to stop it, afraid of collapsing the cave around them. The grunt sighed, and pulled a pokéball out of his pocket, which the three trainers noticed immediately.

“Hey! Don’t try anything funny!”

The grunt glanced at Ritchie, but before anything else could be said, Graveler burst into a flash of light, prompting the three trainers to start running away. They didn’t get very far, however, before Red paused in confusion.

There wasn’t any smoke. The cave looked intact. He didn’t see any signs of an explosion- he turned around, and only saw Graveler, completely unscathed, floating awkwardly in the center of the passage. The grunt stood behind it, a new pokémon standing by his side; a Golduck.

“I thought I told you… It would not be necessary to explode the cave.”

“How did you do that?!” Ritchie shouted. Red simply stood in place, confused.

“I do not think that is so important. Instead, how about I introduce myself?” The grunt took a step forward, and took an ID card out of his pocket. “My code name, it is Looker. That is what I go by. I am working with Interpol to infiltrate Team Rocket.”

“And you’re telling us this… Why, exactly?” Ritchie asked him. A look of uneasiness passed over Looker’s face, as if he had just realized what he had done.

“Not a very good secret agent, then,” Phoenix muttered with a smirk.

“Well, you did seem like good children, and I would have rather not gotten into a confrontation…”

“For the love of-” Red whispered, shaking his head. “Please don’t tell me we have to help you now.”

“What? Not at all! That would be inappropriate. Children should not be involved in such matters.”

Red looked over to his two companions. “See? He gets it.”

“I’m seventeen,” Phoenix said, staring back at him blankly. Red blinked in surprise, and Ritchie did a double take- since the age of majority in Kanto was seventeen, that made her a legal adult, which they found rather hard to believe.

“Really,” Red responded.

“Why would I lie about that?”

He shrugged, and Looker coughed a couple of times, drawing their attention back to him. “If it does not matter to much to you, I shall be taking my leave now. If any of you shall need me, you can call me, yes?”

“But you didn’t even tell us your-”

It was too late. He had already rounded the corner, returning his pokémon to their balls as he did so. Red peeked around the turn, but he couldn’t see him anywhere, despite there being no branching paths or places for him to hide. Perhaps he really was a spy of some sort- or a ghost. He hoped it was the former.

“Do you think he was telling the truth?” Ritchie asked. The other two trainers shrugged- no one was quite sure what to make of the encounter.

‘At least we didn’t have to fight him,’ Red thought, as Phoenix started walking forward again.

“Let’s keep moving,” she said. “Pineco’s still missing, remember.”

“Then why were you complaining when I was in a rush?” Red muttered. Annoyingly, this comment was ignored completely; he decided not to press the matter further, however.

The three of them continued traveling through the cave, searching for Pineco- unfortunately, there was no trace of it. For the next few hours, things were rather uneventful. Occasionally they would see something that looked like a Pineco, and chase after it, only to find out it was a false alarm- but this was few and far between. Surprisingly, they didn’t even find many trainers.

Their one saving grace in the search was that there weren’t too many places to look, as the tunnel was mostly linear. Most of the branching paths that did exist rejoined the main passageway pretty quickly, though after a while they started to worry that they had already passed the pokémon without noticing.

Eventually, they decided to stop for the night, setting up some tents they had stored in their backpacks in a decently large room filled with moss. Ritchie wanted to set up a campfire, too, and Red had to explain why that wasn’t possible- the smoke would fill up the room and potentially suffocate them.

While they ate dinner, they decided to send out their pokémon for a bit of exercise. The group seemed to get along well, though Mankey occasionally tried to play tricks on the others, to Red’s annoyance. However, while it seemed to be little bit temperamental, it was far more agreeable than he had expected, given how it had acted when he first met it.

He also got to see Phoenix’s team for the first time- he had already seen her Graveler, but she also traveled with a Weezing and a Boldore. The latter, she explained, was another gift from Bill, though it had been with her for much longer.

As Red took the last bite out of his spaghetti, he turned to Ritchie- he had been curious about something for a while now, and figured that this was as good a time to ask than any.

“Hey, Ritchie,” he said, “have you ran into Team Rocket before? It looked like you recognized them.”

Ritchie nodded, and swallowed his food. “Mhm. The day after I beat Lieutenant Surge, I started to hear some rumors about a smuggling ring operating in Vermilion City. So, I snuck aboard one of the boats, and guess who was there!”

“Do I really need to?”

“That was a rhetorical question…”

“And I was being sarcastic,” Red muttered.

“Never mind.”

“I’ve ran into Team Rocket, too,” Phoenix added. “Haven’t bothered them enough for any sort of direct confrontation, though.”

Red grunted at this. “Then how have I kept having to fight them despite never even provoking them?”

“Probably just bad luck. Sucks for you, I guess.”

“Thanks, I really appreciate your supportive comments.”

“That didn’t sound very supportive,” Ritchie interjected. Phoenix chuckled, and Red glared at both of them.

They sat in an awkward silence for a couple of minutes, each left to their own thoughts- then Ritchie’s face lit up, and he looked over to Phoenix. “Hey,” he asked. “Did you ever do the gym challenge?”

Phoenix, who was still eating, glanced up at him. “Tried it once. Stopped at six badges. I’m not really interested in any of the official tournaments, anyway. All you get out of it is a few minutes of fame and a bit of money, which I don’t even need.”

“What about champion status? That sounds pretty neat.”

She snorted. “You only get that if you can beat the elite four, and the current champion. Sure, winning the league tournament lets you bypass the first part, but that doesn’t mean much. Only two champions in Kanto got their position from a league win, and they both lost the title less than a year later.”

“But you still get to go in the hall of fame!” Ritchie responded, desperately looking for a point in his favor. Red watched in silence, vaguely interested in the conversation- out of the corner of his eye, he could see their pokémon dancing on the far side of the cave. They were even doing a conga line.

“Like I said before, fame is fleeting. Who’s going to remember you out of the three hundred plus people in the hall of fame?”

“I thought Red was supposed to be the cynical one...”

“I’m not cynical! I’m just not as stupid as you!” Red protested.

“I’m not being cynical either, it’s called having different interests,” Phoenix added.

“All right, all right, I get it. You seemed pretty knowledgeable about the champions, though, Phoenix. Did you…” Ritchie trailed off, his eyes fixed on the conga line. “Is that a Clefairy?”

Red’s eyes widened, and he quickly stood up- then realized his mistake, and began to move slower, so as not to scare it away. “I think it is,” he muttered, pulling out his pokédex. He swiftly navigated to the tracking app, and tried to scan the pokémon- this proved difficult, however, as it was moving in circles around the room, and with all of his own pokémon nearby, he needed to be precise for the ‘dex to stay locked on.

He tensed up as the scanning neared completion, trying not to screw up now that he had gotten so far. His arm began to ache from holding the device up for so long, and he breathed a sigh of relief as heard a ‘ding’ sound, and the Clefairy’s signal was recorded in the pokédex.

“Did you get it?” Ritchie asked eagerly. Red nodded, and showed him the screen. The interface looked like a compass, with the needle pointing in the direction of the pokémon.

“From what I can tell, it seems to have a range of a couple thousand feet,” he commented. “Any further than that, and it stops, working, I think? There’s barely any instructions for this thing.”

“What should we do with the Clefairy now, then?” Ritchie asked.

“Let’s just leave it be. We can’t follow it anywhere right now, with the camp set up, and it’s having fun- why bother it?”

“Excuse me,” Phoenix cut in. “What’s this about?”

Realizing that he had neglected to tell Phoenix about one of their objectives here, Red briefly explained the situation to her. She nodded along, but didn’t really seem to care- which he found a bit annoying, since she was the one who had asked in the first place.

With nothing else to do afterwards, they decided to sit by the tents and watch their pokémon for a while. It was the first quiet, cheerful moment that Red had experienced that whole day, and he definitely needed it after all of the stress and problems that had been loaded on him.

Once evening gave way to night, they returned their pokémon, and bid the Clefairy farewell; they were surprisingly social creatures, it seemed, which explained why it had practically fell into his lap. Red wasn’t complaining- even if they were bound to run into one at some point, this was much easier. On the other hand, if luck was in his favor here, it surely wouldn’t keep up for long. Perhaps this was only the calm before the storm.

As he laid in his sleeping bag, he quietly mulled over the day’s events, and what the plan going forward was. An idea was brewing in his head, but it hadn’t formed into anything coherent yet. Exhausted, Red tried to fall asleep, but found it maddeningly difficult- his mind was still chugging along, and he had completely forgotten to bring his melatonin.

As he struggled to clear his mind, he suddenly paused- something felt off.

‘Are those… footsteps?’

Red’s blood ran cold, and he very carefully slipped out of his sleeping bag. He made his way over to the front of his tent, and unzipped the flaps just enough so that he could peek out. His eyes widened as his suspicions were confirmed- a shadowy figure was sneaking towards their backpacks, which they had stupidly left outside of their tents.

“Oh no, you don’t…” he muttered, grabbing his pokéballs. That person wasn’t getting anywhere near his stuff- not if he could help it.