Jailed Body, Freed Heart

Chapter 4

Ash felt defeated. He had never lost to Team Rocket before. He had always beaten them, hands down, even with all their tricks and lies. And now they had bettered him. Those two bumbling oafs had captured him, and now he was imprisoned, and his friends were too, if not worst. ‘Misty,’ he thought immediately. Then he sighed. There was nothing he could do about it. He couldn’t save his friends. His self-esteem was slowly but surely being crushed by this overwhelming sense of failure and helplessness. ‘ The Rockets took all my Pokémon. They’ve even got Pikachu.’

He felt numb.

For a number of hours unknown to him, he sat there, almost as if he were braindead. At one time, an unfamiliar Team Rocket member shoved a Styrofoam plate of gruel under the cell door, but he didn’t notice. He had given up. He had succumbed to his fate. It didn’t matter to him anymore.

Nothing mattered to him anymore. All his dreams, his ambitions, his feelings were gone in one bitter instant. Ash had never encountered this failure before, and frankly, it wasn’t agreeing with his headstrong nature one bit.

After an eternal amount of time, he decided that there was nothing for him to do but get some sleep. Emotionlessly, he tried to arrange his chains in an accommodating position. When he had them sorted to his liking, he lay down on his side --

--and sat straight up again.

Fingering the sharp pain in his side, he tore open his jacket, searching for the cause of the discomfort. He took one look at the inside of his jacket and froze.

The Rockets hadn’t taken his badges.

His eyes slowly filled with tears as he looked at each of the six badges he had won, remembering each one. He remembered when Brock had asked to join him on his journey. He remembered when he and Pikachu proved their deep friendship by defeating Lt. Surge together. He remembered when he had saved Sabrina from her withdrawn, uncaring state.

Finally, his eyes fell on a certain badge, a teardrop shaped badge, that had poked him sharply in the side when he had laid down on it. Hand shaking with emotion, he unpinned the Cascade Badge from his jacket. Holding it to his lips, he started to cry, silently. He shut his eyes firmly, but the tears got out anyway, streaming down his cheeks and falling to the hard floor of the Team Rocket cell.

He remembered Misty.

After months of traveling together, of fighting, of laughing, Ash was suddenly aware just how much he cared about Misty. As he sat there in his cold, dark cell, he remembered her. He remembered how she had first saved him and Pikachu by lending them her bike. He remembered how they had together defeated Team Rocket for the first time. He remembered how she had saved them all from the sinking St. Anne. He remembered how they had danced under the watch of the ghost of Maiden’s Peak.

He loved her.

"I love Misty," he murmured, half to himself. Then , emboldened, he shouted for any Rocket in the area to hear, "I LOVE MISTY! And I’m gonna save her!"

Misty had done a lot for Ash in the past. But perhaps the most important thing she would ever do in her life was give Ash the strength to go on just then. All the failure he had been experiencing only moments before vanished within a second of picturing her. He had a reason to keep on going. He had to save Misty.

But how?

All the enthusiasm seemed to go out of him. Ash had no clue how to go about saving his friend. He sat for a while, thinking. And as he did, he suddenly found himself turning the Cascade Badge over and over in his fingers. Staring at the blue teardrop in his hands, he was struck with an idea. He doubted if he could pull it off, but he did. . . he would be able to save Misty.

And that was reason enough for anything.

Twisting the Badge around in his hands, maneuvering the emblem just so, he managed to insert the pin part of the badge into the lock of the manacles binding his wrists together. He twisted and turned, pushed and pulled, trying every trick he had ever seen spies do on movies. As he did, he prayed to every god he knew, including Rai, the god Pikachu had told him about once. "Please let this work," he said under his breath. "It’s my only chance."

Perhaps it was luck. Perhaps it was skill. Perhaps Rai, mighty god of all Pikachus, shone favorably on Ash, Whatever the reason, when Ash gave the badge one more, almost desperate wrench, a latch clicked and a pressure on his wrists that Ash had become used to suddenly slackened.

Sliding his swollen wrists out of the chains, Ash sat there for a moment, as if he couldn’t grasp what had just happened. Then he let out one loud whoop.

He was free.

Well, to a certain extent. His ankles were still securely bound. But Ash felt a freedom he had thought impossible since he had first woken up in this dungeon. He had hope now.

Now he could save Misty.