The next day we packed up our things from the Pokémon Centre while deciding where to go next. Apparently we were at a fork: the route West led to Olivine City, while the way East went to Mahogany Town. They seemed to be equal distance both ways from Ecruteak.

Finally we stepped out of the Centre and made our way out of the town until we were back in more natural surroundings. Small fields were scattered around the thin forests, and it was a beautiful fresh spring morning. There were two roads leading away from Ecruteak. Standing at the crossroads I could see that the one to the west went through fields of flowers and long grass, the one to the east came across a river and went close to a large mountain.

Gary looked up from his map and saw me gazing at the mountain. ‘I think that’s Mount Mortar. Which road should we take?’

I looked between the two, confused. ‘I really don’t know where we should go.’

‘Let me make that decision for you,’ said a voice from nowhere. Next to me Meowth bristled up ferociously. I looked around frantically but couldn’t find who had been speaking. Whoever it was, they were slightly familiar… and quite annoying.

‘Can’t decide where to go?’ The voice again came out of thin air. ‘I think you should go… to sleep!’

From the corner of my eye I saw something black hit the ground. I suddenly felt incredibly afraid, and my heart skipped a beat. Something was going to go very wrong. Then smoke filled the air, completely blinding me. I held my breath because the gas was almost definitely harmful. I reached out for Gary or Meowth, especially Meowth, but I could find no one. I couldn’t hold on any longer and breathed again, and while I breathed I yelled as loud as I could for about 2 seconds, then I collapsed.

* * *

When I awoke I had no idea of how long it had been. The very first thing that crossed my mind was that I had never imagined a pokémon journey would involve so much fainting. Then I remembered the voice, the smoke: the danger, and got up as quickly as possible. My head throbbed unpleasantly and I couldn’t think very clearly, and my eyes cast about for anyone or anything.

Gary lay just a few feet away, so I stumbled over. He was still unconscious, but I shook him up and he recovered much faster than I had.

‘Ugh… Gary, wh-what happened?’

He seemed to be in a slightly better condition, and helped to keep me standing.

‘Hey… your belt’s gone.’

The words sank in, and I flung my hands down to my waist to check. My pokéball-belt was gone. All my pokémon were missing. I jumped to a conclusion.

‘MEOWTH!’

He was nowhere to be seen.

‘Here. Tracks,’ said Gary shortly, kneeling on the ground. ‘Come on.’ And we ran.

I followed Gary, he traced the tracks and I ran behind as fast as I dared to go for fear of hitting a tree. The forest around was quite dense, but the thieves had taken the easiest way out which gave us more room. If I had had any recollection of our position and the map I would have known that we were heading east.

Soon we ran out of the forest to find a dead end. I stopped and doubled over when fatigue caught up with me. There was only one way in, the forest path we had used, and we were in a clearing. I suddenly felt cold, and looked up. A huge mountain loomed over us, blotting the sun out. No light fell on this spot, maybe that was why I was cold, or because the mountain looked so ominous. There was a lake nearby, calm and undisturbed, which stopped anyone from going further.

‘They must have gone in here,’ said Gary, pointing to a crack in the mountain side. I peered in and shivered. We’d had bad luck in caves before. I went first this time, and walked quickly into the darkness.

Our footsteps echoed in the narrow tunnel, accompanied by the occasional drip of water. Then I thought I heard a yell.

‘Did you hear that?’ I whispered behind me.

‘Hear what?’ came Gary’s reply. Then there was a big crash from beyond the tunnel. ‘Well, I heard that.’ We carried on anxiously. After a short while the small tunnel opened out to what looked like the entire inside of the mountain. The walls of the huge cave were too dark to see properly, so I couldn’t tell where they ended. We could just as well have been taken to infinity.

Another, louder crash brought our attention further into the huge cave. Two people seemed to be having a conversation with a rock. We ran on in to confront them, and found that the rock was my very own Onix, Metafang, and the people were Rockets. They stood in front of a newly fallen wall of stones.

‘Well that was a fine idea, coming into this cave!’ Cassidy yelled at her team-mate.

‘How was I supposed to know that thing could come out of its ball and cause a cave-in?!’ Butch shouted back. Meowth was unconscious, hung by his tail from Cassidy’s hand. Onix was glaring at them.

‘All I know is, thanks to you, we’re stuck in here!’ Before the bickering could continue, I stepped in.

‘Hey, you! Give my pokémon back to me!’

‘No way, you little brat!’ Butch sneered. ‘We might sell you back the Onix though, he’s more trouble than he’s worth.’

‘Argh! You people are horrible! Why can’t you do something else? Why can’t you be good?!’ A powerful stream of water shot at them. For a crazy moment I thought it had come from me, but I turned to find Gary and his Blastoise behind me.

‘Let ‘em go,’ he said solemnly. ‘Let them all go!’ Blastoise fired another strong water gun and left the two soaked, but enraged.

‘Fine. You want a battle? You get one!’ Cassidy threw a ball and released an Ivysaur. I looked it in the eye and recognised the same thing that had happened with the Raticate before. The eyes were…. empty. It was a hollow shell.

‘Blastoise! Hydro pump!’ Gary yelled, looking viciously at his opponents. Blastoise’s cannons repositioned and fired a huge swirling water stream at them all. The Ivysaur was weakened, but had lost none of its will to battle. It started charging a solarbeam.

‘Oh no! Blastoise, look out!’ I called. My pokémon heard the cries of battle and my voice, and suddenly the arena was filled with bright flashes of red. My pokémon had managed to escape from their pokéballs at last. Seeing this Cassidy and Butch released many more pokémon too. While Blastoise fired again, Marina used ice beams, Spike released flamethrowers and Trapinch used sandstorm, lifting up dirt and debris from the floor and whisking it into everyone’s eyes. For a while I couldn’t see, and heard another crash of rock on stone.

When the storm around us had subsided enough I saw that we were in danger again. Metafang had been trying to help out and was using rock slide, crashing his huge rock tail into the side of the mountain. Boulders tumbled down from above, all over the battlefield.

‘Metafang! Stop!’ I shouted over the noise of battling, but he stopped too late. A rock was rolling straight towards where my pokéballs had been left in a pile. I ran over, there was a crash, the rock rolled away and stopped, and when the dust cleared I checked out the damage. I picked up the pokéballs one by one, and none so far had taken even a scratch. But lying there in bits and pieces, crackling momentarily with electricity, was a crushed pokéball. Metafang’s pokéball.

I left it and quickly looked over the battlefield where my other pokémon were still fighting unaided. My Onix was staring around as if he’d gone blind, clearly afraid and disorientated. I ran forward, but all the pokémon clashing and biting in front of me barred the path. I tried to yell over the noise.

‘Metafang! Are you all right?’

He looked at me briefly, his nerves shot and his eyes wild, as if completely paralysed. Then a water gun attack accidentally hit him on the torso, and with a roar, he went mad with fright. Thrashing around and traumatised, all the other pokémon stopped and watched as he dived down straight into the ground. Tremors hit me and everyone staggered, some losing their balance. The rumbles Metafang had caused eventually ceased, and a gaping hole in the floor of the cavern marked his exit. He had completely gone.

All of my pokémon and Gary’s continued fighting, but their attacks seemed much less potent than before. They seemed to be confused, and in some cases upset and unsettled by Metafang’s ordeal and dramatic exit. They could see that his pokéball had been completely destroyed. What had happened to him? Did all pokémon experience some internal battle when their pokéball ceased to function? Could it happen to them, they wondered. The Rocket pokémon, however, had taken virtually no notice. They all battled on the same as before, with heartless eyes and pitiless expressions. They were beating back our side with ease, and their words now floated up to my ears: ‘Kill! Hurt! Destroy!’ I tried to shut them out and made my way over.

‘Gary?’ I said, reaching him.

‘Yes?’

‘We’re losing.’

‘I know.’

Feeling desperate and hopeless, something caught my eye. Something was coming this way, and I could only hope that it would be on our side. Then barking echoed down the tunnel.

‘Grow! Growlithe, grow!’

Nothing could have cheered me up more at that moment. Growlithe exploded into the scene, trailing dust, and came to a dead halt on our side. He looked up at me with big, beetle-black eyes, and barked again. He still wore some bandages, but most must have fallen off, since a few were still trailing behind him. His fur still seemed ugly and dull in the little light we had, sickly-yellow coloured. I gulped. He must still be sick.

Growlithe looked about, took a deep breath in and fired flamethrowers all around. The powerful blasts were so hot I felt burned from where I was standing, and Ivysaur and the other pokémon were soon lying still on the ground, knocked out. The Rockets recalled them angrily.

I ran over, as did Gary and the other pokémon. Growlithe sat down, wagging his feather-like poofy tail, and I hugged him as hard as I dared. He was very warm and soft.

‘Hey, where’d they go?’ Gary inquired, and I looked up to find that there was no sign of Rockets anywhere.

‘Who cares? Good riddance,’ I declared, wandering over.

‘Well, if they’d stayed, we could have taken them to Officer Jenny.’

I was looking into the hole Metafang had made. It was the same width as his body, but too far down for me to see. It looked like it went to the centre of the earth.

‘Metafang?’ I called hesitantly. ‘Onix?’ I tried, but my calls just echoed into the hole to be lost in the darkness.

‘He’s gone too…’ I mumbled, kneeling by the hole. Gary put his hand on my shoulder and coaxed me up. I noticed Growlithe barking and watched him, he was pointing a paw at the exit and asking us to leave. I ran over and grabbed Meowth, lying still unconscious, then thanked my pokémon and returned them and followed Growlithe out.

Growlithe led us down the small tunnels we had come through back to the outside. I watched him ahead of us; he seemed healthy and spunky, if a little tired, but perfectly healed. His fur looked terribly off-colour and greenish in the dank light. Finally we reached the end and found sunlight again. I stepped out, but after so long in the cave the harsh light blinded me. I impulsively put my arms up in front of my face and closed my eyes, but Growlithe’s cute barking obliged me to lower them again. I opened my eyes, and gasped.

I couldn’t believe that I’d been wrong all this time. Growlithe stood there, wagging his feather-like tail and looking up with bright, sparkling eyes. The sunlight that made all the surrounding plants glow with colour seemed to refract off his brilliant fur and form thousands of sparks around his body. He wasn’t ill, or sick. His lustrous fur coat seemed to be made out of gold, because while I’d believed him to be infected he was actually coloured golden yellow. Suddenly he leapt at me and settled in my arms, licking my face.

<I didn’t get a chance to talk to you before>, he yapped brightly. <Thank you for saving me.>

The made our way back to the pokémon centre to see Nurse Joy. Meowth came around on the way, so we filled him in on what had happened. He then chatted with Growlithe for the rest of the way. I eavesdropped and Gary got angry that he was the only one who couldn’t listen.

When we finally got back and stepped through the sliding doors Nurse Joy greeted us, apparently she’d been worried because Growlithe had escaped.

‘I was just doing a check up on him,’ she said, wearing her ever-present smile. ‘And suddenly his ears perked up and off he went. I realised he’d heard something, but I couldn’t follow him off because he was too fast, so I waited to see if he’d come back.’

‘So, what happened about his…’

‘His fur? I understood that soon after you left. He healed up very quickly, you see, and I checked him over and found that all his major injuries were gone. So I took his bandages off and lo and behold, he was sparkling and golden! So, I had Chansey talk to him and she told me some information, then I checked my books, and I think since he was so weak and hurt when you found him his fur just got a bit lighter. It was quite yellow when you found him. I also think that maybe you only thought he was sick because you only ever saw him in very dull light, which would discolour it. In fact he wasn’t ill, just very weak.’

‘So his natural colour is gold?’

‘Exactly. You found a shiny pokémon.’ Growlithe barked in agreement.

I was nothing short of stunned. ‘I found a shiny?! Wow! I’ve never even seen a shiny before, the closest I got was when Gary told me about Ash’s Noctowl.’ Gary was getting Growlithe to lick his hand, grinning and apparently as shocked as I was.

‘Aw, this is so cool!’ Gary exclaimed. ‘Please let me catch it, please?’

Nurse Joy shook her head. ‘I think he’s already decided who he wants to be his trainer.’

Once again, I was speechless. Growlithe rubbed his head on my arm. ‘Me?! Be your trainer? Me… really… person… you… trainer... what?!’

Growlithe barked again, and I laughed. I hadn’t felt so happy since I started losing my other pokémon, one by one. Maybe with a new pokémon I could finally get rid of Team Rocket.

‘Okay Growlithe, you can come along, but you need a new name.’ He barked. ‘Let’s call you Charlie, ‘kay?’

He yapped twice more, and jumped up to lick me. I hugged him back, laughing because it tickled, and proclaimed, ‘I really caught a shiny Growlithe!’

We all laughed and went to the canteen for supper.