Chapter 013

The brown-haired trainer shook his head before grinning, providing the opening salvo. "Alright then! I'll start! Pachirisu, get in close and use Bite!"

Clan raised an eyebrow and reacted as quickly as he could. "Don't let it close to you! Use Ember!"

The Pachirisu began running directly towards Solaris at an impressively fast speed, it's four fangs gleamed in dark energy as it opened his mouth in preparation to follow his trainer's commands. Solaris, however, had other ideas. With a chirp, Solaris began gathering fire in his mouth and reared his head back, he then released a small series of bullet sized fires directly towards Pachirisu.

The squirrel-like pokemon couldn't evade the attack due to its momentum, it had already lunged at Solaris. It took the small balls of fire head on in mid air, when the cloud of smokes and explosions fade away, the Pachirisu could be visibly seen hissing in discomfort and pain as its previously pristine fur was marred with light several scorched marks.

Pachirisu glared at the smug looking Solaris with hateful eyes, his fur was something he took a great deal amount of time grooming, the fur on his back stood up in attention as he stood in all fours before it growled dangerously.

Xander also wasn't about to let his Pachirisu give in to some flames. "Headbutt. Follow up with Spark."

As Pachirisu lunged at his target cheeks sparking with blue electricity, Clan frowned. He really didn't want Solaris in the receiving end of Spark. While he doubted that Spark would knock out Solaris, it would still deal more damage than he was entirely comfortable with.

He decided to try something. "Use Growl! Then Intercept Pachirisu with Slash!"

Solaris's glare and thrill at the back of its throat turned dangerously heavy. At the receiving end of the attack, the electric-type froze, flinching backwards a step. When he saw it worked, he charged quickly at it, Solaris's claws flashed a wicked light as he slashed his claws vertically across the small frame of the pokemon, making it give a cry of pain before it fell to the ground. It tried its best to stand back up, Pachirisu was injured by the series of attacks - there was no better opportunity to finish him off.

"Use Ember again! Keep at it until it goes down!"

Solaris reared back his head and began unleashing more of the bullet-like embers. He was hopping around to get a solid hit at Pachirisu's body, Clan nodded in approval. With the Pachirisu having difficulty getting back his weight, Solaris's burst of flames all made a direct hit. When he stopped to see the effects, Pachirisu was unconscious.

Clan's grin widened tenfold. "Great job, Solaris."

Solaris spat a few flames into the air and let out a delight chirp. He seemed to bask in the light of their first victory together.

Xander blankly stared in defeat at his loss before letting out a sigh and returning his Pachirisu at his pokeball. He whispered his thanks before turning towards Clan with a sheepish expression on his face. "I guess I can see why you managed to be on the top three this season." He conceded and Clan nodded at him as Solaris walked back to stand at his side. With another sigh, he pulled out his smartphone and confirmed his loss, grimacing a bit as he became two hundred dollars poorer. He turned towards Clan and saluted him in respect. "That was a good battle. I'll see you around, I guess." he said, before turning around and running away.

Clan blinked again before shrugging his shoulders. His pokedex beeped again and he looked down to see that he needed to confirm his win and accept his earnings. When he did so he watched as his 'trainer card' updated, showing that he had one win and zero losses along with the display of the amount of pokecredits he possessed showing the he two hundred he had won from the match.

Clan spent a few minutes exploring the other features of the League App before a bored Solaris nudged him with his beak. Clan blinked before he looked down at Solaris, who had a mildly annoyed expression on his face, and smiled apologetically. "Sorry about that. Got lost in thought a bit. I'll return you now and will release you for another battle. We'll be doing that until we reach Jubilife City, okay?"

Solaris thrilled and nodded. Clan gave him another smile before he continued walking north towards his destination.

...

Somewhere in the forest of Route 202.

A weak dinosaur-like pokemon could be seen in a wide field inside the contains of a cage in a wide tent waking up. It had sunken cheeks and some parts of its body had naturally loses muscle mass, it's spinal was visibly erecting on his skin outside his back, clearly this pokemon was suffering from malnutrition. Additionally, it was horribly bruised and beaten up.

The pokemon was sitting down on the floor, his deep scarlet red eyes staring past the shackles of his cage. He had tried escaping a couple of times, the cages wasn't that difficult to break through, the main problem though, was the human who was responsible for his current captivity. She had pokemons which he was reliably certain couldn't even beat in a one-on-one fight, but they are as cruel as their human and would gang up on him when he would try to flee. They are quite vicious in their attacks, not stopping when he was already down, the savages only stopped when they were satisfied. They are also responsible for his hunger and weak body, they had cruelly decided to not feed him because of his attempts on escaping a couple of times.

The pokemon thought a bit about his current situation. He smelt something pungent nearby, which was probably the poisons of the pokemon, Drapion, but past that, he couldn't smell the scent of the woman who had captured him.

Did that mean that this was his chance of escape? Could it be possible?

He needed to be sure. His limbs were aching when he did even a slight movement, he grimaced at it. While the cage might be laughably easy to get out of with his sturdy tusk, there was still the added difficulty of doing so without triggering noise which was above everything else. He wrinkled his nose again.

That Drapion is purely evil, if it noticed his attempt of escape, he wouldn't dare imagine what would happen.

The silence continued. For one hour. And then the next.

No movement at all. Not even the Dark/Poison type pokemon seemed to move. The woman was still not here, he couldn't smell her scent and there was no more other pokemon around other than the smelly pokemon. It was time.

A pair of scarlet red eyes lit up even with the brightness of the morning sun.

It was time for him to take action.

With exaggerated slowness, he lifted his head, slowly bending a pipe from the cage with his hardy flat plain green tusk from one side of his mouth. He would stop when he would see the Drapion will just do so as a twitch.

He may be overly cautious by this, but he wouldn't let go of this chance, he couldn't make a single mistake.

Within a few seconds of this, the pipe was bended in an acute angle, enough for his body to fit and escape from the cage.

Freedom was near.

The pokemon didn't stick around. He was finally free. Silently, he leaped out of the cage and ran out of the flappy exit of the tent, leaving a snoring Drapion alone.

When he smelled the freshly natural tree sap of the surrounding trees and feeling the dirt under his feet, the pokemon smiled in euphoria of his escape, he almost cried. He didn't stay for long though, he needed to get as far away from here as possible, lest those loathsome humans would come back and track him.

He ran through the forest. He ran and ran and continued doing so after who knows how many minutes, he was already heavily panting and his breathing was becoming hot. But, he continued on his sprint for the fear that they would capture him if he ever so just rest.

This continued on for a few minutes until he couldn't take it anymore. He came out of a grassy bush beside a tree and skidded as he tripped on a branch, he fell and collapsed. He became unconscious, but not before his eyes shifted into despair when he spotted a human, with gray hair and black eyes staring at him in shock, beside him was a orange-yellow chic pokemon also was wide eyed when they saw him. He thought they might be related to the woman who catches him, the woman who called herself 'J'.

"A..xew..."

(Shout out to Layous and lapis for the much support and, and may I, my express of appreciation.)