The horrible skirmish in the Dewford area had taken a heavy toll on Josh's Pokémon: no less than twenty of his team were in critical care after suffering heavy losses at the hands of Team Rocket. All the young man had left were some of his newest recruits, with one exception: the Absol he was riding on the outskirts of town. It was one of the few steeds the young man had that could handle the harsh, right-angle turns of urban environments well. Give him room to run, and Raikiri was his go to, all day. From the measurements he took when aboard Suicune, Raikiri could outrun the Beast, barring the use of Extreme Speed.

In Josh's bag were all kinds of stolen documents and voice recordings from the base he had helped reclaim near the rift's entrance. The influx of intelligence would be massive for the League, letting them disrupt multiple Rocket operations, both today and in the future. Or it would have been, had a young man astride an Absol of his own and approaching him at a high rate of speed. "We gotta try to lose him, Twilight!" With that, he whipped his own Absol's reins to the right, his mount taking a turn so sharp that sparks flew from her claws scraping the asphalt beneath. Before the speed became too uncontrollable, Josh radioed to his League superiors. "Dispatch, Gym Leader Devlin. I am being pursued by a young man on an Absol at a high rate of speed. We are near 9th Street and Brawly Avenue, over."

A race track was a closed course, and one designed for high speed chasedowns, at that. The streets of downtown Dewford were not the place for a chase like this, and yet this teen on another Absol was insistent on racing him here. Furthermore, there was more than just pride, or even money, at stake. The wind in his face stung, but he needed to have his visor up to get the radio's mouthpiece close enough to him to be understood.

"Gym Leader Devlin, this is Dispatch. I have you on radar. Sending backup now, over."

"Dispatch, much appreciated. Can no longer maintain communication at these speeds. Going dark. Over and out." With his SOS message delivered, Josh stowed the communications device before slamming the visor on the helmet of his SYGNA SUIT shut. Wheeling his Absol around another corner at speeds fast enough that a vehicle would likely have turned over, Josh had seconds to react to a line of pedestrians crossing an intersection. "Twilight, jump!" he commanded, flicking the reins to reinforce the command. The Absol gracefully leaped above the terrified bystanders. Josh grunting from the landing.

There was only one way he felt he was losing this persistent young man, and that was getting on the freeway. There weren't a lot of Pokémon riders that felt comfortable maintaining the minimum speeds needed to get on the freeway, but Josh was one of them. Little did he know there wasn't one to be found in all of Dewford...

Josh glanced backward after several more rough turns, only to find his pursuer and Absol were gaining on him. He had to trust that his position was being tracked by police. After circling the downtown area for a while, that help calm; there were several officers on the backs of Arcanine trying to form a perimeter. The two Absol were simply too fast to be completely enclosed. Furthermore, it seemed the island of Dewford did not have one semblance of highway for Twilight to let loose with her speed. Going any faster in the confines of downtown Dewford's streets could be deadly.

Josh needed a new plan.

The Gym Leader reined his Absol sharply to the left, taking a turn away from the downtown area and closer to more rural parts of the island. If he could get to the far south of the island, which was much less sparsely populated, he was sure he could outrun his pursuer. After all, Josh had ridden a Beast before. There was nothing on land that was faster. How high was the teen's speed tolerance?