Is he paying enough attention to be able to distinguish between "a busy city street in Los Angeles" and "a literal forest"?

Does it count if he does so by running directly into a tree.

Why is there a tree in the middle of Tower Plaza??? He's pretty sure that wasn't there earlier?? Did he accidentally go up to the top floor somehow and not notice?

He blinks tears out of his eyes and tries to look around.

Trees! Trees everywhere! Not a building in sight!

?????

He is pretty sure buildings are not supposed to do that???

Is there literally anything besides trees?

There's lots of grass! It's really tall, for grass.

There's ... a big rock? A big tree stump? Near the tree stump there's what looks like part of a fence, except it's not clear what exactly it's fencing in.

There's a bit of a gap between some of the trees. It looks like it could maybe be a path.

He starts walking towards the maybe-path. It's kind of annoying to wade through the grass but it's not that hard.

Some sort of weird grey-and-pink creature holding a giant log jumps out of the grass and takes a swing at him!

??????

Can he run away again?

It's pretty slow. He can probably outspeed it.

Unfortunately, it's blocking the way to the path, so he doesn't really have many places to run.

He screams.

His voice is a little hoarse, for some reason.

No one is going to save him and he's going to die in the middle of this random forest because he ran away rather than having the guts to stand up to his pops and probably no one will ever even know or care.

A man comes running with a lasso.

Instead of using the lasso on the weird grey thing, he throws a red-and-white ball and a dog that was absolutely not small enough to fit in the ball comes out.

maybe he's in a coma or something and this is all a bad dream

He tries to figure out what the dog has to do with any of this.

It appears to be fighting the grey thing! The grey thing is hitting the dog at its weak spots but the dog is a lot faster.

If he's paying close attention, he might notice that the dog isn't wearing a blue coat, its fur is just actually partially blue.

...At least if the weird animals are fighting than neither of them are attacking him?

Eventually the grey thing appears to fall unconscious. It doesn't really look very injured but it's definitely not trying to fight anymore.

The man with the lasso holds up his ball. There's a flash of light, and the dog disappears.

"What are you doing here without your Pokémon, kid? Pinwheel Forest is dangerous. You're lucky I was on patrol."

He has no idea what a Pokémon is, but if he says that then Lasso Man will think he's stupid. Lasso Man will admittedly be right about that but that's not the impressment he's hoping to make.

"I lost it."

Why is this kid trying to lie to him about why he's in the middle of the forest with no Pokémon. Is he trying to get himself killed. You can't just lose a Pokémon.

...Although on second thought, he did see a couple of Team Plasma grunts running around. If the kid's Pokémon was stolen, that would explain how he got here, why he doesn't have his Pokémon, and why he's been crying this whole time.

"...Because of Team Plasma?"

"...Yeah."

He really does not want to try to pick a fight with Team Plasma. Rumor among rangers is that most of them kind of suck at battling, but supposedly they don't play fair. He could take one of them, but he probably can't take four at once.

"Why don't I escort you back to town and you can file a report with the gym?"

"That would be much appreciated."

He has no idea what sports have to do with anything but he would definitely rather be in a town than in the middle of this forest.

Lasso Man sprays something out of a green can that looks kind of like bug spray and starts walking.

They are not accosted by any more weird grey things on the way back to town. A couple of people do try to approach Lasso Man for unclear reasons, but they back off when he shakes his head and tells them he's on "official ranger business."

Then eventually they will arrive at a small town. The houses distinctly remember miniature warehouses, and the sound of an accordion is coming from a side street.

He really doesn't like big cities. He does his best to hide it. The kid is already freaked out enough.

............He had kind of been hoping that "back to town" would mean Los Angeles. Which was probably stupid, but go figure.