Galvin glared at the security guard, daring him to say, “I’m so thirsty; I can’t let you kids through.”

“Ugh, geez, I’m so thirsty, but I can’t let you kids through,” something in Galvin snapped and he was about to jump the guard when Steel pulled him back, telling him over and over it wasn’t worth it. True it wouldn’t be, but by Arceus it would be satisfying to throttle one of these — security guards!

Steel dragged him to a seat by the entrance and opened her thermos, letting the minty aroma float in the air. She poured him a cup. Grumbling, he accepted it. The guard took in a waft the air and sighed contently.

“Hey, is that Mama Rosemary’s Mint tea?” the man asked with excitement. Steel blinked.

“Uh, yeah, it is…”

“Can I have a cup of it? She makes the best tea!” Steel looked to the thermos with a pout. She loved this tea, but maybe it could be the only way into Saffron City, while the man was distracted. She took the half empty cup from Galvin and handed it to the man. The man happily slurped down the warm liquid.

“You kids can go ahead now…” he managed to get out between slurps. “Oh man this tea is good. Hey, little miss, can you leave the thermos? I’ll make sure to share it with the others…” With a heavy sigh, Steel slammed the thermos on the counter and walked past the man.

“Why didn’t we think of that before?” Steel shrugged as she snatched Brass’s thermos of Erika’s herbal tea for a drink. Brass didn’t seem to care all that much. Tea wasn’t his thing and he was better now anyway.

Saffron City was the biggest one in all of Kanto. It was home of the well known Karate Dojo, the headquarters of the Silph Company, and was the home of the Gym Leader Sabrina, not to mention it attracted many tourists with the Magnet Train connecting it to Johto. That left the question of why it was so empty. They didn’t see a single person when they made their way to the Pokémon Center, and the center itself was empty. Not even Nurse Joy was there. Now things were getting creepy, an empty town and an empty Pokémon Center?

Something wasn’t right.

It was at that second the doors swished open, and a dozen Rune grunts piled in, towing people and Nurse Joy with them. The leading grunt instructed his Arcanine to unleash Smokescreen. Steel managed to grab the Pokeball of her Butterfree, Kate, just before all vantage was lost by the thick black smoke.

“Kate! Clear the smoke!” the butterfly Pokémon flapped its wings and the heavy smoke was lifted to reveal the grunts had vanished, and left behind the nurse and trainers. The trio made faces of pure confusion. What was Rune up to? They were about to leave when they bumped right into Rune members that were guarding the building from the outside.

Steel clenched her fists.

“Enough is enough! I am tired of all these goddamn Runes making Rune look bad!” no one would really get that, knowing how small the original Rune was. Steel suddenly let out a loud battle cry and pushed over the Runes. Finding them on the ground, she proceeded to jump on them for some time until her friends pulled her off of the (poor) injured men. It was then the other trainers began to cheer for them.

“That was so cool!”

“Amazing!”

“She’s so s-strong…”

“And a bit scary…”

“Where’s damn Gym leader of this city?” Galvin demanded

“The Runes got her! They carried her off to the Silph company! I think they took her to some redhead woman!” one trainer yelled. Galvin cringed. Were they going to use her as one of their experiments because of her psychic skills?

“No, that lady left. She was like, flying and stuff!”

“Everyone can fly with a bird Pokémon, geez.”

“No! She was flying by herself, no Pokémon or anything! It was crazy!”

“No way. That’s not possible!”

Steel frowned. Mewtwo had been here.

“Let’s go, Galvin.”

“No.” Steel nearly tripped at his startling response.

“Why not?” She frowned.

“Because, we have to heal our Pokémon first, that’s the whole reason why we came here in the first place.”

“Oh.” It was hard to argue with logic like that. Nurse Joy going around and making sure all the captured trainers were now okay. After everyone gave a response in the positive, she set herself up behind the counter again. Everyone allowed Steel, Brass, and Galvin to get their Pokemon healed first, for stopping the Rune grunts. After the nurse returned their Pokemon to them, they left the center, talking about what to do next.

“I think what we need to do is take them head on,” Galvin suggested. “Take them down at Silph. If we’re smart and quick about it, we can do it somewhat easily.” The general consensus on this was that it was a pretty good idea. Steel was especially adamant about doing it this way, if it meant dealing a big blow to Rune. They stopped outside the tall building, and Steel slowly looked up its length. They would most likely have to fight their way up through it, assuming Rune was smart about not letting elevators be unguarded.

“So,” Brass blinked. “How’re we doing this?”

“Like this.” Steel ran up to the guards outside the building, and punched one straight in the jaw, sending him to the ground with a thud. Before the other one could react, her Wartortle tackled him in the stomach, causing him to crumple to the ground, groaning. Galvin and Brass ran up to her.

“Well, uh, okay,” Brass looked at the downed guards. “That. That was a little more, uh, direct than I was expecting. But it worked.”

“So, should we bust inside before anyone comes out?” Galvin asked, and Steel ran inside, her pokemon beside her. The boys were quick to follow, and once inside, there were plenty of guards to deal with. “Oh, this’ll be bunches of fun.” Galvin gripped a pokeball tight. Steel let out the rest of her Pokemon, as the Rune grunts started letting out their own.

Galvin unleashed his Scyther and Vulpex. Brass blinked at the fox pokemon.

“When did you get that?”

“Oh, a little while before I challenged Erika.”

“It must be inconvenient to have a pokemon that could easily plow your gym close by.”

“Yeah, probably is.” Galvin mused redirecting the line of fire to the next target. Vulpix let loose a stream of fire at the surrounding grunts, who all jumped back. Most of their pokemon, however, were not to lucky as too avoid the attack, and a lot of them fell, causing their trainers to run away. Scyther leapt around from pokemon to pokemon, dealing quick but powerful hits. The Rune grunts were quickly whittled down to but a few. One of the stronger ones there let out a Graveler, which had picked Oddish as its target. Wartortle tackled it, sending it tumbling into a wall. Oddish scurried away, letting out a few pitiful sounds.

Graveler stomped its foot and rolled at Wartortle. The water-type pokemon shot a strong stream of water at it, and held it back. Scyther bolted up and crashed into it, sending the pokemon a good distance away. Wartortle tucked its head in and propelled itself into Graveler, knocking the rock-type out. The grunt ran away, leaving his Graveler behind. The other grunts followed suit, too scared to attack anymore. The trio stood for a moment, letting their pokemon get a rest.

“Well, that was easy!” Brass smiled. “If it’s gonna be like this the entire time, this’ll be a push over!”

The elevators dinged, as if to punctuate this statement, and Electrode rolled out in plentiful numbers. Galvin slapped Brass’ arm.

“Look at what you did!” Brass frowned and gave a few strangled sounds of protest. Horsea and Wartortle spun in circles, and drenched the Electrode in water. Their consistent smiles turned to frowns, and they sparked, and rolled around in circles, seemingly knocked out. Steel crossed her arms and looked at her friends. Galvin looked to Brass. “Now why didn’t you think of that?”

The three returned most of their pokemon and continued up the stairs, wary of anything that could pop out at them. At the top of the staircase, they saw three Rune grunts standing shoulder to shoulder, looking very much alike. “Hahaha! Stop there, intruders! This is where your assault stops!” one laughed loudly, and looked to the man in the middle, who started laughing.

“How do you expect to get past us?” he pointed towards them, and laughed again. Steel crossed her arms. “Have you heard of our god like strength? Our limitless potential?” He then looked towards the last brother who, again, laughed and spread his arms wide.

“We are the Rune Brothers, kids,” he grabbed a pokeball from his belt at the same time as the others. “And we’re gonna stop you with our fearsome strength.” His voice was monochrome, but still somehow presented the tone of excitement. Scyther leapt forward and spread its arms, chittering. The brothers stopped and stared, frowning. They all looked at each other.

“Err! Uh! Excuse us, for a moment, kids!” the three brothers took a few steps back and got into a huddle. “What do we do about these kids! They’ve got a Scyther!”

“How can I think with something like that over there?” the middle brother hung his head.

“Anybody else have ideas?”

“Um. We could,” the last brother shrugged. “Let ’em by.” The others nodded, and walked back to their position at the top of the stairs.

“Alright! We will let you by!”

“But what will you say if someone asks how you got by?”

“That you three are super lucky you didn’t run into the Rune Brothers.” The last brother threw down a smoke bomb, and then the three brothers ran down the stairs past the trio, who stared in disbelief.

“What?” Brass watched after them. Steel shook her head, and tugged on his sleeve.

“Just,” she sighed. “Just come on. We don’t have time for this.”

They continued to make their way through the floors. The grunts became weaker and sparser. Finally, they came to a locked door at the top. Scyther cut through it with ease. Steel kicked the door open with all her remaining pent up rage and strutted inside, and found an all too familiar face sitting at the desk. The woman in charge of the string of murders Pokémon center outside of Rock Tunnel sitting at a desk. Her ghost pokemon ceased their haunting giggles to look up at them.

“How’d you get up here?”

“The Rune Brothers let us pass,” Galvin raised his hand. The woman at the desk shook her head in disgust at the name. She pushed her chair back and pulled herself up to her feet. The trio could feel malice oozing from this woman. It was understandable one would suppose, seeing as the trio previously ruined her operation not even a week ago.

The woman was about to send her Pokémon to attack when Steel immediately countered with a gust of sleep powder from Kate. Galvin and Brass performed a double team attack of flames to effectively knock out the sleeping Pokémon.

The woman at the desk narrowed her eyes. This was terrible. Honestly! Why was she assigned this job? Her training was for stealth and silence not leading full on assaults during the day for all to see. She did not flinch as the crazed girl slammed her hands down on the desk.

“First off where is Sabrina? Why did you take her?”

“Ugh, storage.” The woman muttered glancing to the television screens installed into the table. It seems the other trainers of the city had contacted the police and the uniform men and women were bursting through the doors. “Mewtwo deemed her an ideal test subject due to the powerful connection with her Alakazam.”

“Speaking of Mewtwo, where is she?”

“Gone. She left hours ago, more important things waited for her back at base.” Steel glared harder.

“Where is this base?” the woman raised a brow curiously.

“You don’t know? Curious…”

“How would I know?!” Steel demanded

“Mewtwo did leave your friend there” she motioned to Galvin, clearly bored. “An obvious clue to where she was or something like that.” Steel’s nostrils flared as she faced Galvin. In return he glanced away. How Hilda was a clue to anything was beyond him.

“Galvin! Why didn’t you say anything?” She demanded

“It didn’t seem important!”

“How could it not be?!”

“Uhh… guys…” Brass called to his friends, unfortunately almost immediately he was told to shut up by Steel, who was far too angry with Galvin to realize the higher up Rune was taking this chance to escape through a window. “Oh c’mon guys! Seriously! She’s escaping!” Brass threw his arms in the direction of the window. Hearing this news Galvin tried to end this fight but hard-headed Steel refused to give in and clam up.

Brass jumped for the woman but she was already gone with a Crobat carrying her off. Brass landed facedown and in pain as the authorities burst through the door with Growlithes ready to attack. Steel faced the door with a sharp finger pointed at Galvin’s face it was then it hit her why they came to the building in the first place and how that very same mission was now a failure at most.