Droplets of blood began to fall upon the drenched stone floor of the Dragon's Den. No more than a trickle, but to the child it felt like a waterfall larger than the one cascading behind him. He knelt to the ground, clutching his scratched knee, and had to fight back tears.

Thundering footsteps sounded even above the roar of the waterfall. The boy looked across the murky cave, spotting the silhouette enshrouded in the shadow of a boulder.

"Papa!" he cried, breaking into a run but falling again on his bad knee.

The man sighed, jogging over and kneeling beside the boy. "You know I've told you not to play in here, Lance! The Dragon's Den is strictly for training purposes!"

The young Lance said nothing, still clutching his knee, wiping away as much blood as he could with puddles of water laid around him.

Gruffly, the man placed a shaky hand over the knee, hovering just centimeters above it. A faint yellow glow radiated from the palm of his hand, and slowly the blood dissipated into the air, fading like the clouds of water vapor around them.

"You're lucky that I've still got some healing power left in my old age, ehh Lance?" the man said. He cracked a small smile before chuckling deeply.

Lance smiled, wiping away any last droplets of blood with his sleeve. "Are my healing powers going to come someday, grandfather?"

A fatherly pause. The man sighed, avoiding the expectant look in Lance's eyes. "W-well," he began, "you're only six, and many healers don't even begin to show signs of their power until adulthood, if they ever do."

"Oh," Lance said softly. His crestfallen eyes fell down to the cave floor. Tears began to drop again, tiny in size but as powerful as the raging waterfall.

"Listen, Lance," said the grandfather. "I know that you're upset, and maybe a little hurt, too. But when you mature into the bright young man I know you'll be, nobody will want to see you cry." He wiped away Lance's tears and stood him up, cradling him gently by the shoulders. "Even when you're bleeding."

The boy sniffled. "Why, papa?"

"A tear is almost like a wound, Lance. Crying is much, much worse than bleeding."

October 30th

Any sensation of the autumn morning that could've been felt – the sun breaking through the wispy canopy of Viridian Forest, the warm, if not distant rays of light beating and radiating on anything it could find, the thin gusts of wind that dragged the leaves across the ground, the light dusting of soot and powdered debris across the air – all registered numbly to Lance's body.

His right hand lightly cradled the pistol he'd taken from the grunt. He didn't bother inspecting it since he pulled the trigger last night – whether or not it even had any bullets left was beyond him. He had bigger issues to mull over at the moment.

The other hand lay outstretched against his leg in an attempt to suppress the nervous, unconscious twitching that surged through his muscles. Even then, every few seconds his knee jolted a few inches into the air as if a spark of electricity burst repeatedly.

Not even Dragonite's early morning wake-up yawn could break him from it. It took a drawn-out nudge from the dragon pokémon to get Lance to even blink.

"Hungry?" Lance wearily reached into the dead boy's knapsack and unwrapped one of the cereal bars, tossing it into Dragonite's outstretched arms. The bar was gone in just one bite.

Lance stretched his arms, the gun still clenched in his fist, and tried to stand. A jolt of pain in his leg made him wince, and he shrunk back down to the ground.

He reached instinctively for what felt like a blade in between his thigh and his knee, but all his fingers dug into was a small cut in his own flesh. Any fabric left from the leg of the Rocket jumpsuit clung to his leg, slightly damp with crimson.

"Shit," he muttered, breathing heavily. Had one of those grunts managed to get a hit in before they fell? He didn't even feel anything brush his leg, let alone create a cut like that. Adrenaline, maybe?

"I wonder if I could…"

Footsteps. Behind him, roughly twelve o'clock. His gun-wielding arm jerked with lightning-fast motion toward the sound before Lance could even begin to glance in that direction.

An ear-piercing shriek nearly made Lance pull the trigger. He would've if he hadn't recognized whose it was.

"Don't go!" Lance said. "It's me, just me. It's alright."

He dropped the gun and stood to meet Yellow, but the pain in his leg stopped him once more.

"You were supposed to come back after an hour or two!" she cried. The hair under her tattered straw hat stood up in a frazzled mess. "I thought you weren't ever going to come back!"

Lance gulped. "Things got bad in Viridian. I almost didn't make it out."

A small fuzz of yellow and brown perked up behind the girl's shoulder. She giggled and sat down under a tree adjacent from Lance.

"Is that a…"

"A Pikachu?" Yellow said. "Yeah. Her name's Chuchu."

Lance grunted and grabbed two more cereal bars from the sack. "These are the only ones I have left for you guys," he said. "We're gonna have to find more food somewhere else, so that has to last you for today."

Yellow shook her head. "Why don't you take one, then? Chuchu and I can split."

"That's not necessary," Lance said curtly. "The two of you need to fill up while you can."

She unwrapped the two pastries without a word and fed one to Chuchu. Lance, wiping the nervous sweat from his forehead, rolled up his pant leg and exposed the cut just above his knee. It couldn't have been very deep, and it certainly didn't cover more than a few inches of skin, but the jagged pain persisted. It had to have been a nick from a pocketknife, or something smaller.

With his whole body shaking, he hovered his right hand just smidgens over the wound and tensed his arm, staring intently at the small trickle of blood down his leg.

His breathing faltered before ceasing completely, the veins in his forehead bulging. If only he could get this to work, then…

Yellow looked up with worry. "Lance, are you okay?"

He nodded briefly, barely hearing her words. His fingers clenched at the knuckles, nearly grazing the wound. The blood trickle continued to inch down his leg, staining it tauntingly with a faint trace of red. His eyes wouldn't divert from his leg, focusing more on the cut itself than on the blood.

A whole minute of staring, clenching, flexing, willing, and nothing happened.

With a sigh, Lance let his arms go limp. "Healing," he muttered to Yellow. "Many members of my family are healers."

"And you're not?" Yellow asked, feeding Chuchu with another piece of the cereal bar.

He chuckled ruefully. "Every family has a runt, right?"

She shrugged and stood, wiping the blood away from his leg with her sleeve. "I mean, you are the Indigo League champion. Not exactly a runt in my book, if you ask me."

"Thanks," Lance grumbled. "Hey, do you still have my bag? The one that I left for you when I went off to Viridian?"

"Yeah, but there wasn't really anything in there that I could use. Though I did –"

"Listen, could you hand me my cape? I can tear some scraps off to make a bandage."

She shook her head again and ripped off a yellow scrap from the back of her own dress. "I wouldn't wanna damage that," she said. "Besides, something as silky as your cape might not absorb as much blood."

Lance chuckled, louder this time, and raised his eyebrows. "You're more resourceful than I thought," he said.

Yellow said nothing as she wrapped his wound with her makeshift bandage. He had to admit, she was right. Her dress was much coarser than anything Lance would've worn, and it stopped the bleeding in a flash.

"We're gonna have to start moving," he said, standing. Nearly all the pain from his leg vanished, and he swung his leg in the air with a bit of a smile.

"Moving?" Yellow asked, her voice tainted with unease. "What do you mean?"

A pause, then a sigh. "There's really no other way to put this. Kanto's completely under siege from Team Rocket."

Yellow and Chuchu both gasped in pipsqueak tones. "All of Kanto?" she said tremblingly.

He nodded grimly. "From what I've been told my superior, yes. We're northwest of Viridian, so we should be okay. But I don't know how long that's going to last."

Yellow's back leaned against a tree as she fought tears. "So we…we need to find shelter in Johto or something, right?"

"That's if we can make it. Team Rocket, or the Rocket Empire now, might have control of the Tohjo border. If they do, getting across becomes a lot harder. But if not, then that means some people must have already escaped Kanto."

Yellow sniffled. "That's a good thing, right?"

"Maybe. If we can get across, perfect. With Dragonite, that wouldn't take too long to get across quickly. But anyone else that's fleeing will surely tell the authorities in Johto about what's going on, if they don't know already. I don't know how the Empire can keep out resistance from any other region, but Johto is one they can quickly take over as well. They're powerful enough for that this time around." He remembered their sheer manpower and guns with a shudder.

Silence lingered between them for a moment. Leaves skipped at their feet, fighting for their attention from the danger at hand. Dragonite yawned and lay back down, staring at the shelter of trees above them.

"Do you have any family there?" Lance asked finally. "In Johto, I mean?"

She nodded. "My Uncle Wilton lives just outside of Violet Town. Normally he's fishing near Blackthorn, but I wouldn't imagine he's out this late into the year."

"Great," said Lance. "I need to get you home first before I do anything else."

"But Lance –"

"No arguments. Even if those Rockets weren't armed with lethal weapons, it'd still be dangerous to have you around with me for too long. I'm one of their prime targets at this point."

Another pause from Yellow, her eyes glistening with confusion and frustration. "Wh-what do you mean?"

"Again, I'm not sure if this is for real," Lance sighed, "But the Rocket Empire's rounding up all the League members. Gym leaders, the Elite Four, everyone. Even me, as the Champion. If anything, they'll want me the most out of anyone they haven't already captured."

Yellow's shuddery, anxious breath led to a few tears streaming down her cheeks. "You're telling me that –"

"No tears," Lance interrupted. "You hear me? Now's the time to be strong. I know that this is very frightening for you. Believe me when I say that it is for me, too. But we're gonna have to tough it out the next few days to get you home. Alright? Can you be strong for me? And for Uncle Wilton?"

She grunted and wiped her tears. "Yeah. I'll be fine," she said. Chuchu perched herself on Yellow's shoulder again, licking her cheek tenderly.

Lance grinned. "Don't worry about a thing. I'll never let them hurt you. I promise."

Yellow mirrored his smile and handed over his bag of belongings. "Are you gonna stay in that tattered Rocket suit or…?"

"I think I'll change, actually. The Rockets would see through this disguise in no time flat, so I guess it doesn't really matter what I'm wearing." He cradled his clothing in one arm and quickly changed behind a tree.

Yellow turned to Dragonite and raised one eyebrow. "Is he always this optimistic about whatever he does?"

Dragonite smirked and raised one shoulder, as if to say "It's part of his persona."

Lance returned a moment later, cape donned over his shoulders and the blue of his outfit faded a bit since the previous morning. "Gotta admit," he said, "I like this a lot better than the Rocket uniform."

He snapped his fingers at Dragonite. "I'm gonna have you provide aerial surveillance. Keep their flying pokémon from spotting us, if there are any." He paused, his fingers to his chin. "And stay a few hundred feet ahead of us. If anyone from the Empire saw us too close together, they'd get the wrong idea. Whistle if you spot something, okay?"

"Chu! Chu!" said Chuchu.

"Translation?" said Lance.

"She wants to know if she can go with Dragonite," Yellow said. "Keep him company."

Lance bit his lip and stared at the ground for a bit. "Yeah, I don't see why not. Two in the air will make for better defense, anyways."

Chuchu squealed and leapt onto the dragon pokémon's shoulder. Dragonite grunted and bound into the air, the duo disappearing in a rain of brown oak leaves.

The gun still lay under the tree that Lance woke up under, its barrel pointing away from him. He retrieved it and opened the barrel. Two gleaming bullets shone from the barrel, one next to the other.

"I'll have to save these, then," he said to himself. He shut the barrel, found and activated the safety lock, and stashed the gun in his belt. The firearm bulged conspicuously from his side, but it was easier than carrying it with him out in the open, or keeping it in the pack where he wouldn't have easy access to it.

Lance slung his pack over his shoulder. "It's about two or three days to Johto. Ready for the trip?"

Yellow sighed, staring off to the west. "Nope. Not at all. But I guess that doesn't matter."

He chuckled, and they began walking, their city behind them and the rest of the world to traverse in front of them.

November 1st

Lance counted exactly sixty-three stars in the sky that night. He sighed, his hand pushing away the canopy of the tree they lay in for the night.

It felt like millennia ago that he'd watch thousands of them dot the threshold of nighttime with regularity. Had that really been just a few days ago?

All he had now were just sixty-three stars, to cling to and to fall asleep under. To him, it couldn't ever be enough. All the smoke in the sky and the fire in the region couldn't ever be enough for just sixty-three stars.

Below him, Yellow and Chuchu slept soundly on the biggest branch on the tree, nestled in Lance's cape for a blanket. A flash of the red silky material glistened like moonlight. Even without a pillow to rest on, their faces looked clean of any worry, or fear.

"At least some of us are at peace," he thought.

The millionth gust of icy wind blew through the air, and he withdrew his arms into his stomach. He bit his lip to keep his teeth from chattering until he could taste the blood on his tongue.

Just one more day, he told himself. Then, they'd hopefully be across the Tohjo border and into Johto. That'd at least be a start.

He fought the urge to reach into his pocket for an Oran Berry. It was the only thing he'd have to sustain himself for the coming day. Unless they found another berry patch, which wasn't likely given the time of year. At least they still had plenty of water.

"What am I even gonna do, once I get her home?" he thought. "Even if the Rockets have made it into Johto by that point, figuring out where they're operating from by that point is gonna be a hassle."

Sighing, he turned off his brain and stared down at the ground. Dragonite lay at the tree's base, his eyes shut but his muscles still tensed in defense. If anything were to attack then, Dragonite would be the first awake.

The image of Clair appeared suddenly in Lance's mind. The wild head of aqua blue hair, her leering eyes of crimson – it was all there, like she physically stood just feet from him right then and there.

He clutched his head in pain, wincing. "Does she even know what's going on right now?"

"Does anyone?"

Clair vanished from his mind, replaced by anybody he knew that didn't live in Kanto.

The clan elders, in the Dragon's Den. He hadn't visited them in years – not since he became both the head of the League and an executive for the G-Men at just twenty years old.

Steven Stone, the League Champion over in Hoenn. A good friend of his, and one of the leading purveyors of military training across all of the regions.

Any of the League members in Johto, or anywhere.

Ash Ketchum.

Did any of them know what was going on? Could they know? How couldn't they? They had to know…right?

There had been no word of resistance from Kanto since the first invasion. Any plane of helicopter that flew beyond them since all bore the Rocket insignia.

There had been no contact between Lance and the G-Men since his phone call with Algernon. No word of counter-offensive, or even if any more of them had vanished in the attacks since.

There had been no human contact whatsoever, except for Yellow. He was all he had to fight for, since no one else could.

November 2nd

Nighttime again.

Lance and Yellow knelt side-by-side beneath a bush, eyeing the monster of a river that separated them from the rocky terrain on the other side.

"That's it," breathed Yellow. "That's Johto. Right?"

Lance nodded. "I just can't tell if there's anyone on the other side, Rocket or otherwise."

Dragonite growled and lurked about behind them. Lance could feel the heat from Dragonite's rage emanating behind him.

"I don't like this either, Dragonite," Lance responded. "I mean, there hasn't been word of a Johto occupation yet, but if they weren't watching the border there'd be people crossing into safety by the hundreds."

They all remained silent, watching the horizon of shadows of trees and branches on the other side, willing for something, anything, to appear.

Nothing did.

"Are we just gonna wait here all night?" Yellow whispered.

Lance stared off again before shaking his head. "No. You're right, it's now or never."

He mounted Dragonite and extended his hand toward Yellow's reach. Chuchu climbed up with her and wriggled under her dress, shivering from the cold and anticipation.

"Both of you need to hang on as tightly as possible," said Lance. "The last thing I need is either of you falling off and breaking your neck."

Yellow nodded lightly and clung to the back of Dragonite's neck, each leg wrapped around the other.

"Gon draaaa," the dragon pokémon hissed.

"You'll be fast enough for whatever's on the other side, if anything's there." Lance steadied himself before leaning against Yellow, locking his grip onto his pokémon. "If anything goes wrong and we get split up, we should rendezvous at Professor Elm's lab if we're not being followed. Yellow, do you know where that's at?"

She whimpered something of an affirmative response.

"Right. Dragonite, can you get over the river in one bound?"

Without a response, Dragonite took several steps back and launched into a running start for the river. Yellow's grip onto the pokémon tightened even more; Lance almost had to relieve her clenched claws once he was airborne.

"Keep going!" shouted Lance. "Once you land, make the break for New Bark Town!"

Dragonite growled in response as the moon-lit waters below them glistened in their eyes.

Time seemed to slow as they crossed the river. Lance knew better; a river that wide wouldn't have taken more than two seconds to fly over, especially with how fast Dragonite could go. The stars in the sky, growing fewer in number by the night, all hung in time, suspended by invisible strings, motionless.

And then Dragonite made landfall into Johto, and time stopped altogether.

The blinding flash of light came and went like a bolt of lightning, and still Lance saw nothing but white. He blinked, smudged his eyes, and nothing.

His words slurred; he thought he called out to Yellow, asking if she was okay, but before he knew a soft boom launched him off of Dragonite's back.

Yellow slipped from his embrace, and they both fell tumbling to the hard, frozen ground.

He felt twigs and rocks and debris dig into his spine as he tumbled across the ground, slowing to a halt with each thud his body made onto the earth.

The whiteness in his vision ebbed slowly, and he could make out the rough shapes of the trees and boulders. They were nothing more than shadows, but it was better than stumbling around blind.

"Yellow!" Lance groaned. He forced himself to his feet, steadying himself against a half-torn tree.

"Right here!" shouted a faint voice. "I'm alright!"

Lance refocused his vision, and she could make out Yellow's miniscule silhouette limping towards him. He quickly whipped his head all around – nobody else around.

"So then what the hell attacked us?" he thought.

"Something hit my leg," she whimpered. Lance could barely see a stream of blood dripping from just below her knee.

Dragonite's distant roar broke through the night, watered down with an audible pain.

"Come on," Lance muttered, scooping up Yellow with one arm and breaking into a sprint. "Is your pokémon alright?"

"Yeah, I think so," she said. "What's going on? Are we being att -?"

"Not sure," Lance breathed. "Might've been a trap or something. Stay close."

Yellow's arms wrapped around Lance's chest, her breathing in tune with the fast thump-thump, thump-thump of Lance's pounding footsteps and beating heart. The brisk November chill certainly didn't make the sprint any easier.

Another pop of light. Distant, more focused this time. Lance winced briefly, shielding Yellow from the sight, but it vanished as quickly as it came.

"A Hyper Beam," Lance realized. He ran toward Dragonite and skidded to a halt, watching as his gaze fixated on the moon.

Yellow curled up tighter against Lance, one eye gazing at the moon. They both gasped, awestruck at what they saw.

The moon, dark with red and orange, crashed in a state of free-fall toward earth, igniting what few stars were left in yet more smoke. Its tail, black as the night, swung back and forth in its own –

"That's no moon," he realized.

The ball of fire disappeared into nothing, and a second later burst into sheer explosive power just dozens of feet to their left. Flames rising above the height of the trees that hid them emanated heat far too strong even for them.

"Not good," muttered Lance. He squinted and saw the smoldering R blazing to molten metal.

"We need to leave!" Lance re-mounted Dragonite, his eyes refusing to unglue themselves from the wreckage. "A helicopter? Plane?"

Dragonite wordlessly launched back into the air, flying low and fast away from the fire, away from Kanto, away from any normalcy that may have remained in any of their lives.

Long time no see, huh?

Life got in the way for a while, which is why it took so long to get this chapter out to you guys. I only recently made the push this weekend to finish Chapter Four (and by push, I mean write 3,500 of this 4,000 word chapter).

I still hope to finish this at some point, and maybe this time it won't take me five months per chapter!

Peace!

-Chinsky