Finally a chance to get to see TR's darker side, yo. No blasting off or anything in here, I tells ya. Also we see a random "what the heck was THAT?" sort of bad gym experience. I promise that it'll make sense in like ten or so chapters (although with how I draw out plots, probably twenty or so chapters). Bonus points for the first person to catch the random reference in the gym leader's name.
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The words haunted Thompson, more than his favourite painting ever did. He’d heard her speak them so strongly, so determinedly, that even as he left he was still hearing them. Her voice, unused to speech, was haunting in its unexpected ferocity and sheer force of will.
“Get me…” Thompson said into the phone after he’d reached his office, and then paused. “Get me a full release of all the Pokémon we stole.”
Thompson listened to the response.
“I know that, but it’s a better fate for them out there than even the best that we can do. We owe them.”
Although he knew that what he was doing to the Pokémon by releasing them was needlessly cruel, he was forced to admit to himself that by going through with Orthan on those poor test subjects—especially the Pokémon trained by innocent trainers—was something that didn’t sit well with him. Giovanni could be as cold as he liked, and Thompson was willing to put that aside. Thompson wasn’t willing, however, to put aside his own personal morality when working with Team Rocket.
The ride to Stardust City was relatively short, only a few hours. Alex had decided that the best way to get over losing Marril was to continue on like normal. What he didn’t tell Tschel but he suspected Tschel already knew was that it still hurt whenever they did their normal things, which Marril wasn’t around for.
The gym in town turned out to be affiliated with the normal Pokémon League instead of the Neo League, so they weren’t competing for badges. Although, Tschel noted in hindsight, they didn’t have any prayer of winning at all. The battle was short but brutal…
--Begin Flashback--
“It’s six on one,” the gym leader, a man named Charlie Evans had stated. “Three each of your Pokémon versus one of mine.”
Tschel scoffed. “Your funeral.”
Tschel didn’t know what Pokémon Charlie was going to use, so he went for a balanced yet somewhat defensively oriented team of Umbreon, Espeon, and Flareon.
Alex decided on a similarly oriented team, consisting of Wartortle, Gyarados, and Golduck.
Charlie, it seemed, was using an Arcanine.
“Arcanine, flamethrower!” Charlie shouted suddenly the second the match started.
Most of Alex and Tschel’s Pokémon were caught off-guard, and Espeon staggered from the flames, although the rest jumped out of the way in time.
“Espeon, Morning Sun!” Tschel shouted, just as Alex shouted for all three of his Pokémon to use Hydro Pump at the same time.
The three Hydro Pumps all hit, but apparently had no effect.
“Fire Blast!” Charlie called, and Arcanine spewed gout of flames at Gyarados, knowing the serpent flat to the ground, kayoed instantly.
Tschel’s eyes widened. “What sort of monstrosity…?”
“Golduck, try and Disable it!” Alex shouted.
Golduck made a valiant effort to psychically stop the giant dog, but Arcanine was faster and took Golduck down to the ground almost instantly.
“Flareon, distract it with Swift! Umbreon, Toxic!” Tschel shouted, taking the opportunity to attack.
At Charlie’s order, Arcanine used Extremespeed on Wartortle, knowing the giant turtle out of the fight. The two attacks hit Arcanine.
“Extremespeed again,” said Charlie, “this time to Umbreon.”
Arcanine leapt instantly towards Umbreon, who took the hit and went down.
“Espeon, distract it with Psychic!” Tschel shouted frantically. We need the toxic to hold, Tschel thought to himself. Alex’s Pokémon were all out of the fight. It was insane.
Arcanine was hit with the psychic blast, but only turned and bit at Espeon, knocking out the psychic.
“What sort of Pokémon is that?!” Tschel demanded.
“An Arcanine,” Charlie responded, confused. “Firestorm, by the way.”
Arcanine closed its eyes and began meditating.
“No Arcanine can do this!” Tschel fumed.
Charlie sighed. Arcanine opened its mouth and shot an incredible amount of flames at the remaining Eeveelution. Flareon looked like it was going to weather the hit, but staggered under the enormous heat of the flames now enveloping the entire room. All three trainers were most uncomfortable.
Finally, Flareon fell.
--End Flashback--
“I’m sorry,” said Alex, back in their room. “If I’d have been more focused on the battle and less on Marril, we might’ve…”
“No,” Tschel interrupted reassuringly, hugging Alex in comfort. He wasn’t sure why, but the two of them seemed to have an unsaid love that they both shared. “It’s not your fault.”
“Thanks,” Alex said after a few moments. “Why was that thing so strong?”
“You mean taking three Hydro Pumps at once?” Tschel asked, and then shook his head. “I have no idea.”
“You think, even all of our Pokémon at once…?”
Tschel shook his head, and then slowly exhaled. “Well at least when I looked at his background, he was clean. Just a normal trainer with an abnormally strong Pokémon.”
Alex nodded. Still feeling a little depressed over Marril’s kidnapping, he was having a hard time letting go. Every attempt they’d made to find Marril so far was a dead end. It seemed like Marril had simply vanished.
He didn’t say anything more for quite a while, just feeling glad that Tschel was still with him.
He tried to say the Three Little Words™ but couldn’t muster the will to.
Her footsteps loud in the streets of Rueni, she continued running despite the stares she was receiving. Stardust, they’d be at now, or maybe even Darkwood. She’d head to Darkwood city, just to be safe. It would take a long time to get there, but she had to make it. She had to.
Giovanni’s eyebrows rose. “He what?”
Ryan looked sideways at Giovanni, still standing with his right side to the man. “He released all of our successful Orthan test subjects, all seven hundred and thirty two of them.”
Giovanni growled. This level of incompetence he’d expect from Jessie and James, not from an Executive. No, he decided, not incompetence. Impudence.
“What do you want me to do with them?”
“Nothing,” Giovanni said, his voice surprisingly light. “We have the data and should be able to recreate the results given enough time. All we’ve lost is time, nothing more, and I am a patient man.”
“What’s going to happen to Thompson?”
Giovanni smiled. “It all depends on what he does from hereon in. If he stays loyal, nothing. If this sort of insubordinate behaviour becomes a pattern, we terminate him. And not his employment if you know what I mean.”
Ryan nodded curtly. Giovanni was a ruthless man, one who would tolerate little but accepted much. These orders were what set him apart from most of the Executives and normal operatives.
“That is enough, you are dismissed,” Giovanni said, waving Ryan out.
Ryan was pensive as he exited the room. He heard little from the other Elites, owing to the fact that he was still only a newbie, to use blunt terms. However, there was indeed rumour that the Executives were about to lose a lot of their power to the Elites for the very reason that Ryan was merely musing about—namely, their softness.
Juliet, Thompson, and their like weren’t true Rockets. They were political weasels, pretenders, thought Ryan. All of their work was dedicated to projects that were irrelevant. Genetic engineering, indeed. Although Mewtwo officially never happened, Ryan knew the consequences that creating that trio of psychic cats had wrought. To repeat these mistakes was to call disaster from the very devil himself.
Stein and his like were somewhat better off, since they dealt with the external threats to Team Rocket, namely Aqua and Magma. Team Snatch and the CIPHER organization were defeated long ago, but Aqua and Magma were still at large. Stein’s work represented, to Ryan, the defence of what Team Rocket really was.
And Kenneth… Executive Kenneth was a pretender, a clown in an Executive’s uniform who had not the skills or dedication to Team Rocket for continued employment. Ryan wasn’t quite sure how, but Kenneth had especially gotten under his skin.
Giovanni picked up his phone right after Ryan left the room.
“Executive Kenneth,” he said, “you might wish to put a close tab on Elite Ryan. I am starting to, ah, regret promoting him.”
“Idealistic son of a…” Kenneth started to ask, but remembering whom he was talking to and therefore cutting his sentence short. “Idealistic to the extreme is he?”
Giovanni chuckled. “No need to censor yourself like that. In truth, I agree with you. He is far too idealistic, and could easily become a liability.”
“So keep watch on him and if he shows signs of going too far, snap down? Seems pretty clichéd, but what the heck. Sounds fun.”
Giovanni put down the receiver and couldn’t help but laugh. Kenneth had a sense of humour, and he liked that. If he didn’t know Kenneth long before he became an Executive, he too would be one of the many people who saw him only as a clown or a joker. However, he knew better than to trust someone at face value.
While running Team Rocket had its rewards, Giovanni thought, it also had its seemingly inescapable pitfalls, such as making sure its higher-level operatives stayed in line.
The right side of his chest stung. Phantom pains, the doctors had told him, and nothing to worry about. Giovanni didn’t care if it was phantom or real pain so long as it wasn’t life threatening. It was merely an irritation, was all. Like idealists were.
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Whee, Giovanni. And we have Ryan angst too! Kenneth's more overworked than Juliet, I say, though, if you actually take a look at all the jobs he has to do and the people he has to keep track of. Oh you might wonder what Firestorm is. Made it up meself I say. By the way here it is:
Firestorm
Type: Fire
Base PP: 5
Base Power: 120
Base Accuracy: 99.6%
Effect: All opposing Pokémon, nondiminishing damage (unlike, for example, Surf), skip a turn after using a la Hyper Beam style, ignores Protect/Detect/Endure as well as Flash Fire.
Next chapter goes up when it goes up. Fear the Arcanine by the way.
---------------------------------------------------------------
The words haunted Thompson, more than his favourite painting ever did. He’d heard her speak them so strongly, so determinedly, that even as he left he was still hearing them. Her voice, unused to speech, was haunting in its unexpected ferocity and sheer force of will.
“Get me…” Thompson said into the phone after he’d reached his office, and then paused. “Get me a full release of all the Pokémon we stole.”
Thompson listened to the response.
“I know that, but it’s a better fate for them out there than even the best that we can do. We owe them.”
Although he knew that what he was doing to the Pokémon by releasing them was needlessly cruel, he was forced to admit to himself that by going through with Orthan on those poor test subjects—especially the Pokémon trained by innocent trainers—was something that didn’t sit well with him. Giovanni could be as cold as he liked, and Thompson was willing to put that aside. Thompson wasn’t willing, however, to put aside his own personal morality when working with Team Rocket.
The ride to Stardust City was relatively short, only a few hours. Alex had decided that the best way to get over losing Marril was to continue on like normal. What he didn’t tell Tschel but he suspected Tschel already knew was that it still hurt whenever they did their normal things, which Marril wasn’t around for.
The gym in town turned out to be affiliated with the normal Pokémon League instead of the Neo League, so they weren’t competing for badges. Although, Tschel noted in hindsight, they didn’t have any prayer of winning at all. The battle was short but brutal…
--Begin Flashback--
“It’s six on one,” the gym leader, a man named Charlie Evans had stated. “Three each of your Pokémon versus one of mine.”
Tschel scoffed. “Your funeral.”
Tschel didn’t know what Pokémon Charlie was going to use, so he went for a balanced yet somewhat defensively oriented team of Umbreon, Espeon, and Flareon.
Alex decided on a similarly oriented team, consisting of Wartortle, Gyarados, and Golduck.
Charlie, it seemed, was using an Arcanine.
“Arcanine, flamethrower!” Charlie shouted suddenly the second the match started.
Most of Alex and Tschel’s Pokémon were caught off-guard, and Espeon staggered from the flames, although the rest jumped out of the way in time.
“Espeon, Morning Sun!” Tschel shouted, just as Alex shouted for all three of his Pokémon to use Hydro Pump at the same time.
The three Hydro Pumps all hit, but apparently had no effect.
“Fire Blast!” Charlie called, and Arcanine spewed gout of flames at Gyarados, knowing the serpent flat to the ground, kayoed instantly.
Tschel’s eyes widened. “What sort of monstrosity…?”
“Golduck, try and Disable it!” Alex shouted.
Golduck made a valiant effort to psychically stop the giant dog, but Arcanine was faster and took Golduck down to the ground almost instantly.
“Flareon, distract it with Swift! Umbreon, Toxic!” Tschel shouted, taking the opportunity to attack.
At Charlie’s order, Arcanine used Extremespeed on Wartortle, knowing the giant turtle out of the fight. The two attacks hit Arcanine.
“Extremespeed again,” said Charlie, “this time to Umbreon.”
Arcanine leapt instantly towards Umbreon, who took the hit and went down.
“Espeon, distract it with Psychic!” Tschel shouted frantically. We need the toxic to hold, Tschel thought to himself. Alex’s Pokémon were all out of the fight. It was insane.
Arcanine was hit with the psychic blast, but only turned and bit at Espeon, knocking out the psychic.
“What sort of Pokémon is that?!” Tschel demanded.
“An Arcanine,” Charlie responded, confused. “Firestorm, by the way.”
Arcanine closed its eyes and began meditating.
“No Arcanine can do this!” Tschel fumed.
Charlie sighed. Arcanine opened its mouth and shot an incredible amount of flames at the remaining Eeveelution. Flareon looked like it was going to weather the hit, but staggered under the enormous heat of the flames now enveloping the entire room. All three trainers were most uncomfortable.
Finally, Flareon fell.
--End Flashback--
“I’m sorry,” said Alex, back in their room. “If I’d have been more focused on the battle and less on Marril, we might’ve…”
“No,” Tschel interrupted reassuringly, hugging Alex in comfort. He wasn’t sure why, but the two of them seemed to have an unsaid love that they both shared. “It’s not your fault.”
“Thanks,” Alex said after a few moments. “Why was that thing so strong?”
“You mean taking three Hydro Pumps at once?” Tschel asked, and then shook his head. “I have no idea.”
“You think, even all of our Pokémon at once…?”
Tschel shook his head, and then slowly exhaled. “Well at least when I looked at his background, he was clean. Just a normal trainer with an abnormally strong Pokémon.”
Alex nodded. Still feeling a little depressed over Marril’s kidnapping, he was having a hard time letting go. Every attempt they’d made to find Marril so far was a dead end. It seemed like Marril had simply vanished.
He didn’t say anything more for quite a while, just feeling glad that Tschel was still with him.
He tried to say the Three Little Words™ but couldn’t muster the will to.
Her footsteps loud in the streets of Rueni, she continued running despite the stares she was receiving. Stardust, they’d be at now, or maybe even Darkwood. She’d head to Darkwood city, just to be safe. It would take a long time to get there, but she had to make it. She had to.
Giovanni’s eyebrows rose. “He what?”
Ryan looked sideways at Giovanni, still standing with his right side to the man. “He released all of our successful Orthan test subjects, all seven hundred and thirty two of them.”
Giovanni growled. This level of incompetence he’d expect from Jessie and James, not from an Executive. No, he decided, not incompetence. Impudence.
“What do you want me to do with them?”
“Nothing,” Giovanni said, his voice surprisingly light. “We have the data and should be able to recreate the results given enough time. All we’ve lost is time, nothing more, and I am a patient man.”
“What’s going to happen to Thompson?”
Giovanni smiled. “It all depends on what he does from hereon in. If he stays loyal, nothing. If this sort of insubordinate behaviour becomes a pattern, we terminate him. And not his employment if you know what I mean.”
Ryan nodded curtly. Giovanni was a ruthless man, one who would tolerate little but accepted much. These orders were what set him apart from most of the Executives and normal operatives.
“That is enough, you are dismissed,” Giovanni said, waving Ryan out.
Ryan was pensive as he exited the room. He heard little from the other Elites, owing to the fact that he was still only a newbie, to use blunt terms. However, there was indeed rumour that the Executives were about to lose a lot of their power to the Elites for the very reason that Ryan was merely musing about—namely, their softness.
Juliet, Thompson, and their like weren’t true Rockets. They were political weasels, pretenders, thought Ryan. All of their work was dedicated to projects that were irrelevant. Genetic engineering, indeed. Although Mewtwo officially never happened, Ryan knew the consequences that creating that trio of psychic cats had wrought. To repeat these mistakes was to call disaster from the very devil himself.
Stein and his like were somewhat better off, since they dealt with the external threats to Team Rocket, namely Aqua and Magma. Team Snatch and the CIPHER organization were defeated long ago, but Aqua and Magma were still at large. Stein’s work represented, to Ryan, the defence of what Team Rocket really was.
And Kenneth… Executive Kenneth was a pretender, a clown in an Executive’s uniform who had not the skills or dedication to Team Rocket for continued employment. Ryan wasn’t quite sure how, but Kenneth had especially gotten under his skin.
Giovanni picked up his phone right after Ryan left the room.
“Executive Kenneth,” he said, “you might wish to put a close tab on Elite Ryan. I am starting to, ah, regret promoting him.”
“Idealistic son of a…” Kenneth started to ask, but remembering whom he was talking to and therefore cutting his sentence short. “Idealistic to the extreme is he?”
Giovanni chuckled. “No need to censor yourself like that. In truth, I agree with you. He is far too idealistic, and could easily become a liability.”
“So keep watch on him and if he shows signs of going too far, snap down? Seems pretty clichéd, but what the heck. Sounds fun.”
Giovanni put down the receiver and couldn’t help but laugh. Kenneth had a sense of humour, and he liked that. If he didn’t know Kenneth long before he became an Executive, he too would be one of the many people who saw him only as a clown or a joker. However, he knew better than to trust someone at face value.
While running Team Rocket had its rewards, Giovanni thought, it also had its seemingly inescapable pitfalls, such as making sure its higher-level operatives stayed in line.
The right side of his chest stung. Phantom pains, the doctors had told him, and nothing to worry about. Giovanni didn’t care if it was phantom or real pain so long as it wasn’t life threatening. It was merely an irritation, was all. Like idealists were.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Whee, Giovanni. And we have Ryan angst too! Kenneth's more overworked than Juliet, I say, though, if you actually take a look at all the jobs he has to do and the people he has to keep track of. Oh you might wonder what Firestorm is. Made it up meself I say. By the way here it is:
Firestorm
Type: Fire
Base PP: 5
Base Power: 120
Base Accuracy: 99.6%
Effect: All opposing Pokémon, nondiminishing damage (unlike, for example, Surf), skip a turn after using a la Hyper Beam style, ignores Protect/Detect/Endure as well as Flash Fire.
Next chapter goes up when it goes up. Fear the Arcanine by the way.
If you guys like hers, you should check out mine too, she helps inspire me to write. </shamelessplug>