Much risk, no reward

It was another cold day in the Icicle Forest, which had not been surprising for William, as practically each and every day in this frozen forest was a cold day.
Still it has been quite some time since he last set foot in this icy wasteland - actually he had never "set foot" here at all, as his last visit happened while he still had the form of a Gastly.
It was only a faint memory, but the Ghost type remembered the name.
Sorren.
Sorren was a Torchic, who had been one of the first Pokémon, who made William question his preconcieved notions and assumptions about Pokémonkind, so he gladly took this mission, even though it didn't promise a reward.
William had isolated himself for an extemely long time and he knew the pains it had caused him all too well. Sorren should not have to suffer the same fate.

An archen trudged through the snow next to the purple and rather roundish ghost, William, shivering. This was not the best climate. He would now last a week here, straight that is. He could handle a few days, not happily of course, but he would never be able to last a week in this weather.
The archen was named Acro, he too had taken this mission, remembering the little torchic that he had spent little time with. Acro may not know the torchic well, but living alone isn't a fun thing, nor is having no friends. The archen knew what it was like to live alone, though he wandered more than lived in one spot, as he would stare into the town and hope to bring up the courage to enter. He had no friends, he was constantly on his own and constantly running from everything in the woods. He was too young to be out there then, but guild life had restored some of his confidence at first, but his sanity and self esteem were damaged unintentionally through his long gone partners.

"So, do you have any clue, where the guy might be? The last time I've seen him or this area was a rather long time ago, so my memory is a bit fuzzy on the matter. He probably is living in a cave or something similar, but I don't remember the position of any such structures in the area. Do you?"
The Ghost type began to shiver as well, although he felt bad for Acro, who had to be feeling much worse. Not only did he have a significant weakness against Ice, he also had to walk next to a Pokémon, whose very body acted like a heat sink, further absorbing the rest of warmth in the area.
Both for Sorren's and Acro's sakes, they should get this done with as soon as possible.
"Maybe we could look for a fire."

"Last I saw him was at the Small Pond over by Grassviel, didn't talk to him much though and this was a really long time ago..." Acro could hardly remember what had occurred other than a simple chat and something about falling. He agreed with William in the search for fire as well as Sorren, but he doubted they would find one just lying around in the middle of woods this cold. If they had Sorren they could ask the torchic to use a fire attack to start one, but Acro shoved the thought out of his mind, not wanting to search for the torchic for the sake of warmth but for the sake of finding and helping the torchic.

"Darn, so you can't think of anything either. Guess we'll just have to use the brute force method to search. We'll find him if we just keep searching for long enough. So, which direction should we start looking in?"
It was somewhat dishearening for William to hear, that Acro didn't have any real clue as well, but he decided not to let it get to him. Others had given up on him too quickly, so it would be extremely unfair of him to do the same thing to one of the few Pokémon, who had actually believed in him.
Why had Sorren run away? The Gengar doubted, that there woul be too many Pokémon afraid of the small bird and he didn't seem to be the type to become an outlaw either. So what was the reason?

"I don't know either sadly..." The archen shrugged. He wondered too why the torchic had fled. If someone wanted them back and seemed genuinely concerned, why cause that pokemon grief and flee like this? Is he fleeing from something or just wandering? The archen's mind was beginning to confuse itself once more, to the thoughts ceased before a headache was caused.
Acro looked about in a full circle, as if trying to decide which looked like a better path.
"Do you think he would have left behind some kind of scratches on the tree bark in case he got lost?" The archen thought, remembering what the sneasel by the name of Crysel had done to help him out of the frozen stream area before.

"Hm, I doubt it. While he seemed to be a thoughtful Pokémon, those thoughts of his were mostly philosophical in nature, not anything appicable for a situation such as this. Although...maybe he has learned. It's worth a shot I guess."
What would cause a sane Pokémon to distance themselves from society like this?
Sure, William had done the same, but judging from the mission in the Guild, it didn't seem, as if they'd go after Sorren with pitchforks or anything.
"So, where do we start?"

"Philo...sophical?" The archen repeated, not knowing the meaning of the foreign to him word. He looked around, unsure of where to begin himself. He thought for a moment before suggesting, "Maybe we could look for places where things have battled and look for scorch marks? He's a torchic right? So he would probably use fire moves in this environment, which would leave scorch marks....right?"
His head turned towards the gengar upon saying "right" as he hopped into a tree and clung to its sides, inspecting it for any burns or scratches not made by his climbing.

"Uh, philosophy is the term used to describe the field of science, which deals with the definition of morality, the quesion, whether and why we exist and other metaphysical matters of the sort. It's quite an interesting topic actually.", William exclaimed while searching another tree for signs of battle, especially soot, ember or anything else indicating the presence of larger quantities of thermal energy.
"Well, this is going to be fun. A huge forest and we're searching each and every single tree. Isn't there a more efficient way to do this? At this rate it'll take us forever."

Acro blinked and sheepishly remained silent after the Gengar finished speaking, not knowing what most of the words even meant. The Archen climbed the tree up to the frozen glistening branches that were blanketed in snow and icicles. The icicles dropped as the archen moved in the tree, shaking them off. He looked around from high ground, seeing nothing. The gengar seemed to be clueless on how to begin as well, "Well," he called down to his friend, "We could always call out his name a thousand times and hope he hears, but there's no way of stopping other pokemon from hearing it and coming to attack..."

"Then again he ran away on his own. I doubt he would just come over to us. There's got to be something else we can do. What would get that Torchic to come out of his hiding place?"
As he was floating aimlessly through the forest, the Gengar couldn't help but silently chuckle to himself, as the Archen hanging on the tree proved to be quite an amusing sight, despite the conundrum the two of them were facing. This forest was huge, it was cold and it was full of dangerous Pokémon.
And they had set out to find one single Torchic.
Why were they doing this again?

"Does he even know we're looking for him though?" The archen asked in curiosity. He looked down to the gengar for a moment before leaping to another tree, causing a shower of crystals to rain upon the ground near William, but not close enough to be of a threat. He made his way along the tree branch and towards the trunk, making his way around the tree's trunk to the other side. He waited for a response, his mind drawing a blank as to just how they were going to find the curious little chick.

"Don't think so. He would have to have left before anyone would post a mission and thus before anyone would set out and go search for him. Thus he wouldn't be able to know that we are her-"
Even though the shards of ice landed relatively far away from the Gengar, he still instinctively jumped to the side, dreading an attack. Relieved he saw, that the cause of the phenomenon he observed was no attacker but rather the Archen he was traveling with.
"Geez, be careful with that. You almost scared me to life there."

"Scared to life-okay..." The archen blinked, confused by the idea of scaring someone back to life. Then again William WAS a ghost type, and it was rumored that Ghost types are reincarnations of deceased pokemon. If that was true, what was William in his past life? The archen's mind wandered as the search for Sorren continued, be wondered about what he would reincarnate into if he were to, and if he would remember who he was. The thoughts of dying began to depress the archen, so he spoke to the gengar, "Which brings us back to the same question we've been trying to answer all this time, how the heck do we find him."

"Hm, still no clue about that. I doubt he'd come over to investigate if we were to make some noise and without making noise he wouldn't know where he's supposed to go at all, so that rules that out."
Still not having any clue on where the Torchic could be spending his and thus wasting their time, the Gengar now rose up above the treetops to try and spot some clues from above.
"Nope, still nothing. Where could that chicken be hiding? And why couldn't it have been a place I know well? Pecha Forest maybe! That's a nice place. And a place in which we could have found him in minutes! But no, he had to choose this icy wasteland!"
The Gengar sighed loudly. This really was getting exhausting.
The proverbial needle in the haystack was nothing compared to this.