The hotel that Kane and his guest were staying at was unimpressive, to say the least.

  It was a short, squat building that looked like a Motel 6, except if the motel was a couple months away from going out of business. The dirty, yellowed plaster front of the building was cracking and falling off, and there were already a couple of shingles that had been knocked off of the roof by the storm.

  Still, the warm, orange lighting peeking through the curtains was inviting, especially when we were all standing across the street in the rain.

  “So how are we going to do this?” Ted asked, and I shifted uncomfortably.

  “Well, uh-”

  “You didn’t think that far ahead, did you?”

  “Not really, no. But think about it, Kane is either trying to buy or sell Pokémon, and I doubt he keeps them in the motel with him.”

  Ted nodded. “And because he’s a poacher and can’t use Poké Balls without automatically registering the Pokémon, he has to keep them contained in some other way.”

  “Cages.” I said quietly.

  “He has to have a boat somewhere.” Said Lucas. “Especially if he wants to transport Pokémon to a place like Iron Island.”

  A memory sparked in my mind, back from when I had been captured by Kane to begin with.

  “He does have a boat.” I murmured, trying to think. “He never said its name, but he had one a couple months ago. It has to be big too, big enough to carry a truck.”

  “As well as a bunch of cages.” Ted said, nodding.

  “A converted trawler?” Lucas asked.

  “Or a small landing barge.”

  I stared at the two of them.

  “What?” Lucas asked.

  “How do you know that?”

  “They’re boats!” He said.

  “Alina, have you seen Hoenn? We live on a bunch of islands; if you want to get anything from one place to another quickly, it’s usually best to use a boat.” Ted explained, and I was thankful that it was too dark for them to see me blush.

  “Ah, right.”

  “We need to find that boat.” Lucas said firmly, and I nodded.

  “There’s probably Pokémon trapped on it. If we can get them out, we can make sure that whatever deal Kane is planning won’t actually go through.”

  “Ted, you should go with Alina and try and find it.” Lucas continued.

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “I’m going to stay here and keep an eye out, make sure they don’t go anywhere. Listen, Kane knows what you and Ted look like, but he hasn’t met me yet. As far as he’ll be concerned, I’m just going to be a tourist who got caught in the storm.”

  I wanted to argue, but he had a good point. If Kane saw either of us he would immediately be on guard, but Lucas…

  “Be careful.” I said. “And if anything happens-”

  “I know.”

  “Stay safe-” Ted said, holding out his fist.

  Lucas bumped it with a smile. “-But not too safe.”

  I looked between them. “When did you two decide on a catchphrase?”

  Despite how dark it was, I could see Lucas’ face start to flush.

  “No time for that!” He said quickly. “Go on, get to the docks! I’ll send Kyūdō to find you if something comes up.”

  We nodded, then turned and hurried off into the dark.

  /^\

  Waves crashed into the docks, sending water sluicing over the wooden planks as boats rose and fell with the tide.

  “How are we going to find anything in this?” I yelled at Ted, the noise of the surf exponentially louder here than it had been in town.

  “Just look for the big ships!” He shouted back.

  Ted had a point, I admitted to myself reluctantly. Even as dark as it was, with the rain slashing at us sideways with the force of the wind, there weren't that many boats in the harbor itself.

  A beam of light illuminated the world for a second, and I looked up to see a lighthouse in the near-distance. The light passed by, sweeping out onto the ocean before continuing its circular path.

  There were a fair number of fishing boats and a couple larger trawlers, but none that looked big enough to take on a truck.

  A few smaller sailboats were lashed to the docks, and I also dismissed those out of hand.

  This harbor was nothing like the ones I’d seen back on Earth in Massachusetts, where there could be hundreds of boats all lined up for their owners to take them out. I would have been surprised if there were fifty ships here.

  And then the lighthouse’s beam passed by again, and I saw our prize.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  It was a big, ugly ship that had probably once been a fishing boat, except the trawling lines at the back of the boat had been ripped out and replaced with a large box - perfect for carrying a truck.

  “There!” I pointed, and Ted squinted out into the darkness as the light passed.

  “That looks about right!” He shouted.

  We hurried down the dock, and I almost slipped as water rushed across my feet. I had to thank Arceus that I had bought the more expensive leather boots, or my feet would have been soaked by now.

  “Is it just me, or is the storm getting worse?” I yelled.

  “It’s not just you! This might be shaping up into a typhoon!”

  “Isn’t typhoon season over by now?”

  I could just barely see him shrug. “No, it goes into October, and Kyogre probably messed things up for a while!”

  “Should we turn back?”

  “No!” He shouted. “If we turn back now, we might never figure out what Kane’s doing here!”

  Ted had a point, but even though I wanted to see Kane behind bars more than almost anything, I also didn’t want to be swept into the sea.

  But by now we had pushed forwards onto the dock, and were just about to the ship.

  “How are we going to get on?”

  “There should be… there!”

  Ted hurried forwards and grunted as he grabbed a long plank of wood, easily twelve feet long. There were smaller blocks nailed to it to act as steps.

  “You’re kidding!”

  “I’m not!”

  He carefully navigated the plank so that one side of it was resting on the railing of the boat, the other on the dock.

  “Go!” Ted waved me forwards, and I stared at him in horror.

  “Absolutely not!”

  “Look, it’s perfectly safe!”

  It was in no way safe.

  I cursed to myself, but with Ted holding one side still, I hopped up onto the boarding plank, and carefully made my way up to the boat.

  There were a couple of close calls as the wind threatened to blow me off, but I managed to drop down on the deck of Kane’s boat.

  “Now hold it steady for me!”

  Swearing again, I tried my best to keep the plank steady as Ted made his way up. Things were made much easier halfway through the process, when I discovered that the end of the plank actually had hooks that latched into holes in the railing, keeping the boarding plank secure.

  He quickly crossed the plank and stumbled onto the deck of the boat.

  The lights were off in the cabin, and we hurried over the wet boards to the door.

  “It’s locked!” I said, jiggling the handle. “How are we going to get in?”

  “Alina, what are we?”

  I stared up at him in confusion. “Pokémon Trainers?”

  “Exactly!”

  With a flash of light, Ted released Mayfly.

  His Pokémon was looking rather different after Ted’s purchase and application of a Metal Coat. Instead of the somewhat short Scyther I was used to seeing, she was now a tall, lanky Scizor, with a gleaming red metallic carapace and bulbous punching arms.

  She wavered a bit as she emerged out of her ball, obviously still a little unused to her form after the evolution.

  “Mayfly, can you knock down that door?”

  She looked at the wooden barrier, and nodded. She raised one arm up as if to slice through the door, then hesitated, looking at herself again.

  There was no blade for a hand, and she sheepishly lowered it into a punching stance.

  Then with a crack, Mayfly’s arm blurred forward so fast it was hard to see, shattering the wood around the handle into splinters.

  “Thank you!” Ted shouted, rubbing her head. “Now, go back into your Poké Ball, I don’t want you getting hit by lightning in this storm!”

  It wasn’t a major risk with all of the ship’s masts nearby, but Mayfly now had a very large concentration of metal in and around her body, and it wasn’t unheard of for Steel-types to be struck by lightning if they were caught outside at the wrong time.

  She nodded, and with a red beam disappeared back into Ted’s Poké Ball.

  The door swung open easily now that there was nothing holding in place.

  I held out my hand, gesturing into the dark interior of the boat. “After you.”

  /^\

  As Ted and I swept our flashlights across the interior of the boat, I was somewhat surprised at how… normal it seemed.

  I didn’t know what I was expecting, maybe something that looked like it had come out of a horror movie, but the reality was that the boat was mostly empty. It was big for what it was, but not as big as a luxury yacht. The plastic walls were yellowed with age and cigarette smoke, and the countertops were made out of the same kind of vinyl coated particle board that you could find in any cheap hotel.

  There was the pilot’s cabin, a couple tiny bedrooms that I had difficulty believing that Kane could fit comfortably in, a bathroom, a couple living areas, and Ted even managed to find the engine room.

  We avoided the cargo area until it was the last part of the boat to search for two reasons. The first was that we didn’t want to go straight to the cargo bay and possibly get ambushed by somebody who had been sleeping in the living quarters, and the second was that neither of us really wanted to see what poor Pokémon Kane had imprisoned this time.

  But the rest of the boat was empty, so with a deep breath we pushed into the cargo bay.

  Like the rest of the ship it was a cramped, claustrophobic area. There were tie-downs for a truck, but that actual part was empty.

  I had a small smile as I remembered a crashed white truck outside of Eterna City.

  The smile disappeared as the dim light from our flashlights landed on the familiar cages pushed up against the wall.

  My breath escaped me in a massive sigh as I realized they were all empty.

  “Thank god.” I said. “Oh thank god, there’s no Pokémon here.”

  Ted stepped forwards, looking closer at the cages.

  “Doesn’t look like there’s been any here for a little while either.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “There’s no new scratch marks on the metal, no food scraps nearby, and most importantly-”

  He ran a finger along the top of the cage and held it up to me.

  “There’s dust.”

  I nodded slowly, thinking about everything Kane had been through in the past couple of months - what I’d help put him through.

  “First he lost his goons, and a bunch of Pokémon that he was going to sell.”

  “Then he lost his truck.” Ted added. “Which means he would have a very hard time getting any Pokémon from wherever he was capturing them to here.”

  My nodding picked up at a faster pace.

  “So he’s having a rough time of it then. Good. But what is he doing on Iron Island?”

  Ted shrugged.

  “I didn’t spot a diary or a log of any kind.”

  I frowned. “He must be here to meet that person. But who are they? Why here of all places?”

  We sat in silence for a minute, our thoughts running wild.

  “Let's go back and see how Lucas is doing.” I said. “Maybe he learned something?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  We turned and scurried out of the cargo bay and back up to the deck of the boat. The wind lashed at our clothes, but Ted and I managed to sneak back across the boarding plank and lower it back to the dock.

  Lighting flashed overhead, and thunder echoed across the bay.

  “Well, well, well.” Said a voice from hell. “What do we have here?”

  I swallowed thickly as our flashlights landed on a soaked Kane, eyes aflame with hatred. A bruised and battered Lucas was slumped loosely under his arm, and the older man dropped my friend to the ground.

  “Why is it that everything that’s gone wrong in the past couple of months can be traced back to you?” Kane said, stepping forwards.

  He cracked his knuckles.

  “That’s it, this time, I’m not letting you get away. This ends here.”