"I don’t think its safe for you to go alone." James informed the Sandshrew-morph and the Vaporeon-morph. It had been almost a week since his accident and he was seated in a wheelchair in the gardens. The two girls had sneaked in to meet with him. It had been a week of worry for the young man, since this assassin was liable to be out there somewhere, watching and waiting, not to mention that he still was unclear on what had become of Kataryna and Kameron. The pain in his chest had subsided now, so that it did not hurt when he breathed, only when he laughed. Unfortunately, around Cassandra and Brooke, one laughed often.

"Life’s not safe," Cassandra remarked. "It’s a terrible, frightening thing, but we’ve learnt to survive."

"Yeah," Brooke said with a smile, "I’ve survived good, see, I’m alive!"

"I just meant that this assassin was after you, and he will be waiting for you, if not at CAIP, then at Sereniti, or perhaps even beyond. I don’t know why he wants to see you dead, Brooke, but he wanted to see me dead too. I can just expect he works for Team Rocket."

Cassandra shuddered at the word. "I remember them," she said softly, "they were terrifying, horrifying. I hated working for them. But I also know this, when we escaped, they would be after us. The Boss does not take desertion lightly and will kill any who express their disloyalty."

James nodded, and glanced over to Brooke, who had Buttons seated on a park bench and was trying, with some success to put a daisy chain about her neck. Her innocent moved something in him. Why would someone want to kill someone so innocent, so childlike, it seemed worse then criminal, it seemed depraved. And Cassandra, well, the Sandshrew girl was shy, but she seemed to realise that Brooke was not always capable of doing all the thinking, that some concepts were beyond her grasp. Certainly, the Vaporeon-girl was not stupid, she had a hidden sharpness that revealed itself occasionally, as startling as finding a coin in your cereal. But Brooke, with all her childhood innocence and naivety, seemed uninterested in making plans. "I agree, which is why I am not going to let you walk to Sereniti – even now the beastman could be coming back in search of you."

"It’s been over a week," Cassandra pointed out, "surely he has got bored and moved on. If he was going to find us, he would have already."

"I don’t know," James said softly, "I really don’t know what has become of him, but sooner or later, Team Rocket will investigate my "accident" and discover that it did not have the consequences already imagined."

"But couldn’t we skip danger altogether by taking a different route to the Island Haven?" She asked, she wrung her hands nervously, something she had been doing all through the conversation. She was not, obviously, a talkative type normally, but had been forced into such a situation.

"We could," James replied, "but I worry for my friends’ safety and would like to know that the assassin has not punished them the way he punished me."

*

"Stay still, girl," Brooke instructed the brown chihuahua-like Pokemon. Buttons kept squirming and the daisy chain snapped, tumbling to the ground. "Now look what you’ve done," the Vaporeon-girl said sadly, tears slipping to her eyes. "You broke my pretty necklace!"

"Eevee!" Buttons stated urgently, jumping off the park bench and running a few paces.

"Oh, you want to make it up to me by playing "chase-an-catch-the-eevee-cat"," Brooke seemed unimpressed. "Well, I no want to play that game cos you no wanna play my game!"

"Eevee vee!" Buttons glared at her and Brooke suddenly realised that this was not a game.

"What’s wrong? Is someone after Mr Green Eyes?"

"Eevee vee veee!"

"We gotta help Mr Green Eyes, he not well, he not able to help himself. I think we’d better have a look!"

"Vee!" Suddenly the Eevee darted off.

Glancing back at her companions, and noting that they were still in heated discussion, Brooke took off after her.

She found Buttons sitting with her paws pressed against the glass of the hospital front, which gave a rather nice view of the receptionist and a few people waiting for appointments, and slipped in beside her, assuming Vaporeon form, because such was safer.

Brooke had not lived this long without knowing a little about safety.

Talking to the receptionist was a tall, copper-blond man wearing black. Beside him stood a delicate woman, whose hair was slightly more orange. He looked like a rugby player, she looked like a cheerleader. They appeared to be having an argument with the lady.

<<That lady is a bad lady!>> Brooke insisted, <<she not let me go see James. You think those people go to see James?>> They seemed oddly familiar to her, but she couldn’t quite remember… She grasped at her memories with long teal fingers, but they fleeted away like mist.

She wished she could remember, it seemed important that she remember these people.

<<I think I’ve seen them before,>> Buttons whispered. <<They bad people, work with other bad people.>>

Brooke pressed her ear against the glass, but she couldn’t hear anything more than a low hum of conversation, even with her strong hearing. <<This situation warrants further investigation,>> she said to Buttons, and stole along the window to the main door. Buttons trailed after her.

<<Take care,>> she said softly.

The door opened electronically as the Vaporeon approached it, and she trotted in, immediately hiding beneath a bench. Nobody had noticed her, not yet anyway. She could dimly hear what the people were discussing, although it all sounded foreign to her Pokemon senses. She did manage to gain one item of information however.

They wanted to speak to James.

Her large eyes twitched anxiously. If they wanted to speak to Mr Green Eyes, they wanted to do bad things to him, she could smell it, she could sense it! And she did not want bad things being done to her friend. She darted out through the door, knowing that she must alert James to the impending doom. The heads turned as the doors "pinged" open again.

"What’s that?" One cried.

"That’s a Vaporeon!" The woman replied. "There’s something unusual here." She turned to look at the receptionist. "Excuse me, madam." And grabbing her companion by the sleeve, she ran out after Brooke. Brooke ducked through the hedge and bounded towards her companions.

* * *

"I recommend we hire a van or similar vehicle and drive to Sereniti," James said, mulling the thoughts in his head. He was not in great condition, but he was sure he could manage to drive, provided the vehicle had automatic steering. Certainly Cassandra and Brooke would not be able to drive, although he was sure Brooke would be more than willing to try.

At the thought of Brooke, he glanced over at where she had been, wondering why things had been so quiet there. He quickly realised why. She had vanished.

"Cassandra!" He shouted, "Brooke’s gone, we have to find her!"

At that moment, the Vaporeon sprang through the bushes, running across the lawn and barrelled into his lap.

"Vap, vap poreon on!" She shrieked. In her excited state she had obviously forgotten to transform.

"It might help if you’re in human form," Cassandra said softly.

"Oh yeah, right," Brooke immediately transformed so that she was now sitting naked in James’s lap. She appeared completely unembarrassed about this fact. "Some not so nice people are coming over here to greet you warmly or perhaps very coldly, James," she said. "I don’t think there intentions are as pure as driven snow, somehow."

"Eevee," Buttons agreed. From behind the hedge came cursing as the two of them tried to make their way through, after the Vaporeon.

"Get off him!" Cassandra snapped, "we have to get him, and us, out of here now!"

Brooke rolled off James’s lap and landed neatly on her feet. "Well then, let the party begin!"

Buttons leapt onto James’s lap and Brooke began pushing the wheelchair away from the hedge. Just at that moment the two humans burst through. They were wearing black – black jackets and black pants. The man’s jacket hung slightly open with the movement so that the "R" was slightly revealed.

James recognised them immediately, the two were old enemies, despite being on the same team. Only versus these two had James and his companion Jessie, been convinced to do good deeds.

"Well, hello there James," the man announced in that voice that grated on his nerves so much. James cringed.

"What do you want with me, Butch?"

Cassidy’s hand slipped to her belt. "We come to bring you your doom!" She said with a smile. "Giovanni didn’t believe his assassin, and so sent us to check it out." Suddenly she was holding a gun, and James was staring at the barrel.

"Move!" He shouted as the two girls exploded into action. Cassandra started running, pushing the wheelchair and Brooke, brave, foolish Brooke, ran directly towards Butch and Cassidy. "Run!" He shouted, but she paid him no heed.

The chair caught on a slight slope and started rolling extremely fast. A bullet shot rang out, and then the sound of screaming and what would best be described as a geyser. Buttons, crouching low on his lap, fluffed up her fur and tried to crawl up his chest without falling off.

"Eevee…" she whispered, sounding most concerned.

"I know," James whispered to her, tears forming in the corner of his eyes at the thought of Brooke being shot. She had come back because she knew he had been hurt. She had tried to save him and he could do not the same for her.

Suddenly he saw a vehicle parked before them, a big white van. Although stealing such a vehicle was rather obvious to say the least, it was all he could think of.

Perhaps Brooke’s only salvation.

"You’ve got to get me to that vehicle!" He shouted trying to turn the wheelchair and almost wrenching it out of the Sandshrew-morphs grasp. She let out a startled yell.

"We can’t steal that!"

"We can and we will!" Besides, he was desperately worried that they might need some of its equipment later.

As the wheelchair neared the vehicle, he slammed on the brakes to stop the helter skelter motion and then barely caught himself as it tried to dump him onto the tarmac.

"Is it locked?" He asked Cassandra, who was already around the wheelchair and up by the door. She tried the handle and found that it worked.

"Nope," she peered inside, "and there’s keys too! Come on, we’ve got to hurry!"

He glanced back at the hill and saw Butch running towards them, whilst Cassidy rolled across the grass, fighting viciously with Brooke. Another gunshot rang out and James knew they didn’t have much time. He reached out and half leaning on Cassandra, managed to ease himself into the driver’s seat. Buttons jumped in after him, and into the back. The Sandshrew-morph then sprinted around the other side, jumping in just as the vehicle took off up the hill.

* * *

They could not hurt her friends! Noone could hurt her Mr Green-eyes and get away with it! She turned as the wheelchair made its daring escape and faced the woman.

"Leave Mr Green-eyes alone!" She said, sourly.

"Or what, or you’ll bitch-slap me?" Cassidy laughed, "I don’t think so, girl!" She brought the gun up to a point right between Brooke’s eyes, and pulled the trigger.

The bullet shot through nothingness and suddenly a Vaporeon, that she was sure had not been there a minute ago and could not have possibly moved so fast, barrelled into her chest, sending her sprawling. Beneath Butch a deeply buried water pipe suddenly gave into the strain of the ages and a fountain of water geysered up from beneath his feet, sending his some feet into the ground before dropping him onto the grass. Brooke clawed and snapped at her advesary, who continued to fumble with the gun, trying to shot a target that she could only see half the time! Another bullet grazed a little too close to Brooke’s side, and she felt the sting of blood.

"Va POR!" She screamed, and another waterpipe, or perhaps the same one, burst beneath Cassidy, sending her upwards atop a spiral of water. She screamed, and dropped to the ground several metres away, clutching her wrist and trying to line up the gun barrel at the same time, which was no mean feat.

Suddenly the sound of a siren wailing filled the air, and both of them turned around to see an ambulance heading directly towards them! Brooke immediately resumed humanoid form (her hearing in Vaporeon form was extremely sensitive) and covered her ears with her hands.

"Awlful loud wailing of banshees!" She shrieked above the din. "They come to carry me away from this foul place!"

The ambulance screeched to a halt, the sirens still blaring. "Jump in!" Cassandra shouted, opening the passenger’s door.

"How do you turn these damned things off!" Came James’s voice.

Brooke didn’t need any more persuasion, she leapt into the cab, almost knocking Cassandra over into James and dragged herself over the back of the seat and into the medic bay. Cassandra slammed the door shut, just as Cassidy let lose with a bullet that misfired badly but almost managed to tear the door from its hinges. Another shot rang out as the glass on the back doors shattered.

"Are we all in?" James shouted, sounding almost gleeful, "hold on tight!"

His foot slammed down against the accelerator and the ambulance lunged into life, tearing out a large chunk of sodden ground and skidding somewhat as the injured man attempted to execute a u-turn on the lawn. Butch threw himself aside, firing off another couple of shots as the ambulance almost ran him down.

The call of more sirens added to the cacophany. White and black cars pulled up in the ambulance bay and out of them stepped a woman with a megaphone. "All of you put your weapons down and your hands where I can see them!" She shouted through the loudspeaker.

James swung on the wheel, pulling the ambulance around a sharp corner, narrowly avoiding a police car and a wall. More gunshots fired, this time from the police themselves and one of the back tyres exploded, sending the van into a spin.

"Wo hooo!" Brooke shouted from the back of the van as she slid into a stretcher and a first-aid kit of bandages tumbled down to cover her.

"Eeveee!" Buttons shrieked in fear.

Somehow James managed to regain control of the car, punctured tyre and all and drove it through a plot of trees and into someone’s back fence.

Perhaps regain was the wrong word here.

"Everybody get out!" He shouted, as the sounds of a Police car pursuit reached their ears.

Cassandra opened her side door, jumping out and Brooke clambered over the back of the seat, sliding out beside her.

Much to the policeman’s surprise, a drainage pipe, dripping into a tiny creek, suddenly released an explosion of mist vapor, which clung to the windscreen and made him swerve for control.

Brooke smiled slyly to herself and ran around the ambulance to help unload James. With his arms across the back of the two they helped him away from the scene, Buttons trotted along behind, shaken but apparently amused.

* * *

"We need another car," James informed them a short stretch of time later.

"You’re telling me!" Cassandra panted, "you like weigh a ton!"

"Mr Green Eyes does not weigh a ton," she pondered this for a moment. "What’s a ton?"

"Eevee vee." Buttons rolled her eyes.

They had somehow managed to make their way to a residential street, perhaps due to dumb luck, the police had not found them yet and all seemed quiet.

"I learnt something from working for Team Rocket," James replied softly, "can you help me to that beaten up white car?" It was not the nicest, nor the flashiest car, but it would do, it was definitely the sort that he should be able to start easily, keys or no keys.

The door was not even locked.

As they eased him into the driver’s seat, the familiar pain came back, an explosion in his chest. And he saw the car was stick shift. Well, no matter. He would cope, he had to. "Girls, get in the back and stay small!" He instructed them. A Vaporeon-morph and a Sandshrew-morph were just too obvious and easily identified. Cassandra obeyed quickly, dragging Brooke into the back with her.

The car smelt awful – of fried foods, cat urine and something that didn’t bear thinking about. Bending over to hotwire the vehicle was an agony, but he clenched his teeth to try and keep his companions from realising quite how painful it was. He was also becoming only too conscious that he was wearing nothing more than boxer shorts and a hospital gown, and the day was becoming uncomfortably cold.

Suddenly the engine rumbled into life, with enough noise to wake the dead. Clenching his teeth against the pain of broken ribs (although they were tightly bound) he steered the car out onto the road and across the street. The old man walking his Growlithe did not even give him a second glance.

Well, for better or for worse, they were on their way!