The safehouse in the Scottish Highlands was a study in quiet contrasts. Outside, a fine, misting rain pattered against the windowpanes, muting the vibrant greens of the hills. Inside, a steady fire crackled in the hearth, casting shifting amber light across worn leather furniture and bookshelves stocked with well-thumbed paperbacks and dense military histories.

Captain Price occupied one of the armchairs, a battered copy of a Wilbur Smith novel open in his large hands. A half-smoked cigar rested in a clay ashtray on the side table, its earthy scent mingling with the smell of old wood and damp wool. He’d been trying to immerse himself in the adventure on the page for the better part of twenty minutes, a rare luxury of uninterrupted downtime.

It wasn’t the weather, nor the distant roll of thunder, that was proving to be the obstacle.

It was a persistent, quiet thump against the side of his boot. Not hard, just... insistent. Every time he managed to sink back into the narrative, another soft bump would jostle his concentration.

Price’s eyes, a cool blue in the firelight, didn’t lift from the page. He let out a low, measured exhale, a cloud of cigar smoke drifting upwards. "You're blocking my light," he rumbled, his voice a quiet bass note in the tranquil room.

The thumping stopped. For about thirty seconds. Then it resumed, this time accompanied by a faint, inquisitive sound. He finally lowered the book, glancing down.

{{user}}'s partner Pokémon—a small, curious creature—was sitting squarely on his foot, peering up at him. It had a toy of some kind, a knotted rope, clutched in its mouth. It dropped the rope, nudged it towards his other boot with its nose, then looked back up at him, expectant.

Price stared at it. The creature stared back, unblinking.

"Aye," he said, his tone dry. "I see it. Very strategic placement."

He made a show of picking his book back up, raising it slightly higher. The Pokémon watched the movement, head tilting. It then promptly ignored the rope, hopped up, and placed its front paws on the arm of his chair, straining to see the colorful cover of the novel.

"Not your genre," Price muttered, but he didn't shoo it away. He held the book steady, allowing the small creature to inspect the embossed title with serious intensity. After a moment, it lost interest, sliding back down to the floor with a soft flump. It picked up its rope again, trotted a few paces away, then turned and dropped it, looking between Price and the toy with renewed, hopeful energy.

He sighed, a long-suffering sound that was mostly for show. He marked his page with a scrap of paper and set the book aside. Leaning forward, he picked up the slightly damp rope toy. "One throw," he stated, his voice firm. "Then I'm reading. Understood?"

The Pokémon’s entire body wiggled with anticipation. Price gave the rope a short, underhand toss across the worn rug. It scrambled after it with a delighted sound, skidding on the wooden floor before pouncing triumphantly. It brought the rope back, dropping it at his feet once more.

Price leaned back in his chair, regarding the eager little being. A faint, almost imperceptible softening touched the lines around his eyes. He picked up the rope again, this time holding it out, letting the Pokémon tug on the other end gently. Its determination was comically fierce for its size.

The air in the Urzikstan highlands was thin and carried a sharp, rocky scent, undercut by the faint, musky odor of large creatures. Price moved low and slow along a jagged ridge, the worn stock of his L119A1 solid against his shoulder. His HUD, synced to a micro-drone flitting silently ahead, painted a cold picture.

The target was good. Exceptionally good.

They'd left almost no trace a human could follow. No boot prints in the scree, no broken branches. But Price had Gaz and a satellite feed back at the forward op, and they'd spotted the other kind of sign: disturbed Pokémon. A flock of terrified Starly erupting from a specific canyon. A territorial Graveler, usually content to sun itself on a boulder, actively scanning a cliff face with palpable agitation. The target was using the environment, moving with it, not through it. A handler of rare skill.

His drone feed flickered. Something large and serpentine, scales glittering like oil in the sparse sunlight, slid across the path sixty meters below. An Arbok, or maybe the larger, rarer Sandaconda. It didn't matter. It was between him and the faint thermal signature—a cooler patch against sun-warmed stone—that was his quarry, holed up in a narrow cave mouth across a treacherous gorge.

A three-way battle. Him, the handler, and everything that lived in these damned mountains.

Price keyed his comms, voice a low rumble. "Gaz. I have visual on the nest. Target's static for now. There's a significant local between us. Advise."

"Satellite shows that gorge is a known migratory path for Onix, Cap," Gaz's voice crackled back. "And your big friend on the path isn't alone. Heat sigs suggest a mate nearby. likely their partner Pokemon."

He lowered the rifle, calculating. The direct path was suicide. The cave offered the high ground to the target. He needed to flank, to come from above. That meant scaling the sheer cliff to his right, exposed for at least thirty seconds.

As he shifted his weight, a low, resonant hum vibrated through the soles of his boots. It wasn't machinery. It was a sound he remembered from years ago, in different mountains. The warning thrum of a fully grown Steelix deep in the earth.

The entire landscape was against him.

He unslung his pack, pulling out a grapnel launcher. His eyes never left the cave mouth. "Changing approach. Going high. Keep that bird's eye view, son. Tell me if our friend decides to fly."

He aimed for a sturdy-looking rock overhang twenty meters up. The hunt was no longer just about capture. It was about which of them would survive the environment long enough to finish the fight.

The Urzikstan highlands still tasted of dust and burnt things, long after the guns had fallen silent. Captain Price moved through the skeletal remains of what had been a small village, his boots crunching on fractured stone and spent brass. It was a clean-up operation, technically. Sweeping for intel the local fighters might have missed. A solo, quiet job that suited his current mood.

The silence was the first thing that put him on edge. It wasn't the empty silence of a deserted place; it was the thick, watchful silence of a held breath. No birds, no skittering of small creatures in the rubble. His hand rested on the butt of his sidearm, eyes scanning the shadows of a collapsed mud-brick wall.

A low, wet sound broke the stillness. A rasp followed by a pained, shuddering exhale. It came from behind a half-destroyed water cistern.

Price froze, his training instantly parsing the threat. Wounded pokemon? Remaining hostile? The sound was too labored, too deep for a human. He approached with deliberate caution, each step placed to minimize noise, his gaze fixed on the gap beside the cistern.

He saw it then.

A dark shape was huddled in the lee of the structure. It was difficult to make out in the deep shadow, a mass of ragged, dirt-caked fur or maybe coarse hide. One side of its body was a mess—a deep, ugly gash across its flank seeped a dark, viscous blood. It looked like it had been caught in a blast or torn by shrapnel. As Price watched, its body hitched with another painful breath, the sound rattling in its chest.

His first instinct was tactical: assess, identify, neutralize if necessary. But this was no hostile. It was a Pokémon, and it was dying.

A cold, familiar weight settled in his gut. Not fear of the creature, but the echo of another loss. The memory of his Rhydon—loyal, solid, extinguished in a flash of light and noise—flashed behind his eyes. He’d sworn off this. The attachment, the responsibility, the inevitable end.

The creature’s head lifted slightly, It didn’t snarl. It didn’t try to rise. It just looked at him, its gaze holding a depth of exhausted suffering that was painfully recognizable.

Price stood there, a statue in the ruins. Every lesson from his loss screamed at him to walk away. This wasn’t his mission. This wasn’t his problem.

“Damn it,” Price muttered, the words rough in the dry air.

His sense of duty, that stubborn, unshakeable core of him, overruled the caution. He couldn’t leave a wounded soldier—any soldier—to die in the dirt. He slowly crouched, keeping a respectful distance, his eyes never leaving the injured Pokémon.

“Alright,” he said, his voice low and steady, a tone he’d use to calm a spooked recruit. “Easy now. Let’s have a look at you.”

The stale, metallic air of the derelict warehouse clung to the back of his throat, thick with dust and the faint, lingering tang of old chemical spills. Intel from Laswell had been sparse but urgent: Shadow Company had a live asset here in the Port of London, something they'd pulled from a contested region and were prepping for transport. Orders were clear. Secure if possible. Neutralize if not. The "asset" was biological. A Pokémon. That was all he knew.

Price moved with a deliberate, heavy silence, his boots finding solid patches of concrete between rusted machinery and fallen crates. His senses were tuned past the normal parameters. He wasn't just looking for men. He was listening for the wrong kind of silence, smelling for anything besides rust and rot. The warehouse was a maze of gantries and shipping containers stacked haphazardly, creating deep pools of shadow that the weak daylight from grime-caked skylights couldn't penetrate.

A sudden, sharp clang echoed from the far end of the building, the sound of heavy metal being struck. Not an accidental bump. An impact. Price froze, pressing himself against the cold corrugated steel of a container, his weapon coming up. He heard the low, muttered curse of a man, followed by a nervous, hissed command. "Easy... easy now. Just back up. Don't look at it."

Then he heard it.

A low, resonant vibration, more felt in the chest than heard, a sound like stone grinding against stone. It was coming from the same direction. There was an intelligence in that sound, a profound and agitating awareness.

He edged forward, using the containers for cover until he reached a gap. Peering around the corner, he saw the Shadow Company team. Four men. They were positioned around a reinforced steel cage that looked like it had been air-dropped in. The bars were bent outward in one section, as if something of immense strength had been trying to break its way out. One of the men had a long, wicked-looking prod in his hands, its tip crackling with blue electricity. Another held a heavy-caliber rifle.

Inside the cage, shrouded in the deep shadow at its center, something shifted. A shape, large and solid. Price's finger rested on the trigger guard. His mission parameters scrolled through his mind. Secure or neutralize. He looked at the cage, at the men who were now backing away, their bravado evaporating. He looked at the thing in the cage that was clearly no longer contained.

It was looking back. Not at the Shadows. At him.

Right then, Price thought, his breath steadying into a controlled rhythm. Let's see what you are.

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