An explosion rocked the research building Team Magma was currently attempting to take under their control, surprising Courtney and sending her tumbling to the ground.

"What the hell was that!?" she shouted. She wasn't usually one to raise her voice, but the fact that the takeover job wasn't going smoothly at all had her more than a little stressed out. She stood and brushed herself off, then stepped out of the lab to find out what was going on. She opened the door and was greeted by scores of lower members of Team Magma running everywhere.

"Someone give me a status report!"

One of the grunts who were running towards the source of the explosion stopped. "It's Team Aqua, ma'am! They're here in force and are trying to drive us out!" he said, before setting off again.

Courtney cursed under her breath. She had expected Team Aqua to try and make things difficult, but they were a lot earlier than she had expected, and apparently were a lot more prepared for a siege than she expected they were capable of. Normally she would leave the fighting to the grunts while she focused on her objective, but Team Aqua seemed willing to put up a good fight. She couldn't expect the grunts to handle them on their own, so it would be best for her to head the defense herself.

A second explosion, bigger than the first.

Courtney managed to brace herself against the wall, which kept her on her feet. She swore again. She started to run to the source of the explosions to confront Team Aqua when the grunts who had ran ahead of her came running back in frantic retreat. They were all covered in cuts and other relatively minor injuries— though fortunately nothing too gruesome, as Courtney was never comfortable with the sight of blood.

Courtney hesitated. She wouldn't be able to hold off an entire force of Team Aqua on her own, of course, but if she let the research building get destroyed then she wouldn't be able to complete her objective.

Courtney joined the rest of her Team's retreat. After all, failing here would only cost Team Magma some time, while Courtney being captured would lose the Team one of its highest ranking members.

The amount of grunts fleeing with Courtney tapered off as some cut off to leave through different routes until eventually Courtney only had two members at her side. The three reached their assigned exit and barely let the doors slow them down. Now that they were outside, they were to each split off individually, which would help ensure that as few members as possible could be captured.

Or rather, that was what they would do, had their paths not been blocked by a small squad of Team Aqua members.

"I think we got the person in charge of their operation here!" one of the members shouted into a little radio.

The person on the other end laughed. "Hold them there!"

Although the voice was masked through static and noise on their end, it sounded eerily familiar to Courtney for some reason, although she couldn't place it. At any rate, now wasn't the time to be thinking about whose voice she was reminded of.

"Come on, we can't let them catch us here!" she shouted to her allies as she tossed out a Pokéball.

The two grunts shouted in agreement as they each sent out a Pokémon of their own.

Two of the Team Aqua members paired off against Courtney's allies, which left three for her to face on her own. Courtney only had two Pokémon, which meant that luck was going to have to play a big part in getting her to safety. She tossed out her two Pokéballs, unleashing her Numel and Mightyena.

The three Team Aqua members sent out their own Pokémon: a Carvanha, a Wailmer, and the third had a Mightyena of their own.

Courtney's three opponents shouted out attacks in unison.

"Use Magnitude, Numel, and you use Bite, Mightyena! Go for Wailmer!"

Courtney's Mightyena was the fastest of the five Pokémon in battle and sank its teeth into the large Pokémon before any of its opponents could act. The opposing Mightyena was the second to act, throwing itself into its double, making it release its grip on the Wailmer. Courtney's Mightyena wasn't even able to get back up to its feet when the Carvanha bit into its flank. It let out a howl in pain. Next, the Wailmer let out a pulse of water. The blast washed over every other Pokémon in the fight. Courtney's Mightyena was already weakened, and didn't have a chance of withstanding the attack. Unfortunately, her Numel didn't fare any better, thanks to its crippling weakness to water.

Courtney knew her chances of victory were low, but she didn't expect to be defeated so quickly. She turned to see if her allies were faring better, but now that she was defeated the three Team Aqua members she had fought turned their focus on the other Team Magma members. Courtney recalled her Pokémon and fell to her knees. She racked her brain for some last chance at escape, but drew a complete blank. She cursed her inability to come up with a plan.

Maybe I could just try running, Courtney thought. She knew it was almost completely hopeless— even if her foes couldn't keep up with her they would surely sic their Pokémon on her. She chose a direction and shut her eyes.

Three… She began counting down. The two grunts were still holding their own in battle, which meant that no one was paying attention to her.

Two. Courtney grit her teeth and prepared to run faster than she had ever run before.

One! Courtney lunged forward— right into a person who had arrived as she was preparing to run. The person had apparently braced themselves, so Courtney just bounced backwards and fell onto her butt. She jerked her head to look at the person who had stopped her.

Her jaw dropped.

It was Shelly.

Courtney's hood obscured her face, so it took a moment before Shelly realized who she had just stopped from escaping. Her reaction was the same as Courtney's, though she managed to conceal her shock before any of her allies could notice.

"Take those two and take them to where we have the others! I'll handle this one on my own," Shelly ordered.

"Yes ma'am!" the man who had called her over said before leading his group in taking the two Team Magma grunts away.

"Squirt," Shelly said to a girl who was standing behind her— another Team Aqua member, who had arrived with Shelly.

"Y-yeah?" she replied.

"You go with them, or go try and find some more escaping Magma goons to round up. Anything. Just leave me alone with her. I'll be all right."

"Boss, you know that's not allowed… Even if it's you, no one's supposed to go up against high ranking Team Magma members alone. It's too dangerous."

Shelly laughed. "I doubt she's going to be much of a threat. Her Pokémon are too weak to fight anymore, and she was trying to run away when we got here. I'll be fine."

The girl looked troubled, but turned to leave regardless. However, she had only taken a few steps before stopping and turning back around.

"I-I can't. I need to make sure you're safe."

Shelly raised her eyebrows at the girl, then giggled. "You're such a little sweetheart. Suit yourself then. For my sake though, anything you're about to hear stays between us, okay?"

The girl cocked her head. "Ma'am? What do you mean?"

Shelly didn't answer. Instead, she held out her hand to Courtney, and helped her to her feet.

"I've always hoped we'd get another chance to meet, you know. If I knew this is how our next meeting would be though…" Shelly's voice trailed off.

Instead of waiting for her to finish Courtney said, "I had been hoping that we'd be able to have a happier reunion than this too, yeah."

Shelly laughed. "The two of us just have the worst luck, don't we? We're gonna have to start quoting Romeo and Juliet."

Courtney giggled, but once she stopped neither girl continued the train of thought.

After a little while Shelly sighed. "You're my prisoner now. I'm supposed to take you in."

Courtney winced, then lowered her head. "There's nothing I can do to stop you."

Another silence, this one longer than the first.

"I guess… Well, there's no rush," Shelly said. "We won't really be free to chat when you're confined, so we better get everything we need to say out of the way now."

Courtney shrugged. "There's isn't much to say, though, is there? We know how we feel about each other, so there's no point treading that ground at this point. Unless you want to catch up with what we've been doing since the last time we saw each other."

Shelly smirked. "We could do that. Actually, I do have a question. How'd you end up with Team Magma?"

Courtney cocked her head. "What, really?"

"Yeah, why not? I mean, if you want me to just haul you in I guess I could."

"Well, okay…" Courtney scratched the back of her neck. "I ended up going back to school after giving up trying to be a trainer. I was studying to be a geologist. The leader of Team Magma was my professor. His ideas seemed weird at first, but he convinced some of us that he was right. That was how Team Magma started actually: he ended up having to leave the University, because his ideas were too radical for the school. Some of us left school to help him, and we became the first members of Team Magma. Nothing too exciting really. What about you then, how did you end up in Team Aqua?"

"It happened right after Lisia and I broke up. I was…" Shelly grimaced. "You know, my story isn't really interesting."

Courtney raised her eyebrow. "This was your idea."

"But I… Oh, okay." Shelly sighed then sat on the ground.

"Lisia and I broke up and, well, I didn't exactly take it well. I mean, we had been doing that whole Idol thing— it kind of makes you lose touch with reality. Lisia and I were basically a pair, and even though we had broken up we had to keep working together, so I ended up quitting. Of course, that meant that I was completely on my own. Lisia and I hadn't hit the big time yet, so it wasn't like we were rich or anything, and since we had been staying together I didn't have anywhere to live. It really seemed like I as in a hopeless situation at the time…

"I was at Lilycove's cliffs one night when I met Archie for the first time. He started talking to me about a bunch of things, and how he had plans to make the world a better place for Pokémon to live. He asked if I was willing to join him, and of course I said I would. By joining him I felt I had a reason to live again, you know?

"That's basically it. I wasn't the first member of the Team like you were though. He already had Matt and a few other people helping him at the time. Anyway, that's why we do the things we do: because we want to make the world a better place for Pokémon. I know our methods can be extreme at times, but Archie says that once we accomplish our goal everyone would be lining up to thank us."

Courtney exhaled. "That's pretty noble of you. It's sort of the same thing for me, actually. Only with Maxie, of course. All we really want is to make the world a better place."

Neither girl said anything for a while. Courtney stared at her feet. If the two had nothing else to talk about, then Shelly would be taking her away now.

Finally, Shelly's assistant broke the silence. "Ma'am, shouldn't we—"

Shelly grimaced. "I guess…"

She wrapped her arms around Courtney, smothering the shorter girl in a way she hadn't since the two were teenagers. She let go of Courtney to let her catch her breath and turned to her assistant. "I guess it's too bad I sent you away with the rest of the guys," she said, "it was silly of me to expect to be able to handle a Team Magma Admin on my own. I guess I should have listened to you."

"M-ma'am?"

Shelly patted the girl on the shoulder. "Don't worry, squirt. You were only listening to my orders, so this is all my fault."

Courtney looked up at her old friend, deeply confused. "What are you talking about?" she asked.

Shelly winked. "You outsmarted me is what happened. I thought I could handle you on my own, but you managed to get away from me."

"W-wait, you mean you're going to let me go?"

"Yeah. I mean, you're an important Team Magma member. I don't think you'd be in danger really, but I couldn't live with myself if you got hurt."

"Are you sure?"

"It'll be okay."

"I… Thanks, Shelly."

"Come on, you better hurry in case someone comes to see what's taking me so long."

Courtney threw her arms around Shelly.

"I guess this is goodbye, then?" She asked.

"Yeah, I guess." Shelly kissed Courtney's forehead.

Courtney let go of Shelly, then hesitated for a moment.

She felt ready to cry, but managed to hold it in.

Courtney ran.

She ran until her legs were sore, and then ran some more. Finally she stumbled to her knees, and the tears she had been holding in came pouring out. She tried to get to her feet so she could run some more. She knew she had to be safe, but she felt that running was the only thing she could do to keep herself from crying.

She managed to stand, but her legs were like jelly, and she fell back to the ground. She dragged herself over to a tree and propped herself against it. She buried her face in her hands and sighed, when suddenly her Pokénav beeped.

She knew it was just Tabitha trying to find out her status, so she ignored it. He could track her through the Pokénav's GPS anyway.

Courtney tried to block out what had just happened with Shelly, since she knew it was pointless to dwell on it.

She struggled futilely for about ten minutes when a pair of Team Magma grunts arrived to escort her back to the base.

As the three left, Courtney glanced back at the research facility she had just ran from and sighed.

The last time she and Shelly said goodbye to each other, they thought it would be the last time they saw each other.

Maybe they would have another chance this time too.