Heading into the final ten right now, which means I have to get the plot moving and use less filler. So in other words, I have to stop having fun and rush, right? Meh, not really, but it does mean I have to make sure I keep things up the way I like it—if I do that, then maybe, just maybe, I can make other people like it if only by virtue of SS not sucking (not implying anything else on this forum sucks, just that I take pride in my work sometimes, this chapter being one of those times). Yes, any readers out there who caught that Simon was mysteriously back from the dead just to watch TV, you were right in noticing. I have since caught that mistake, and changed him to Vashou, who was acting only slightly out of character. Ah well, live and learn, and know that even people like me can make a mistake (hey, I'm not nearly so arrogant and aggressive when I'm not actively arguing :tongue
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Ryan stood just outside of the actual coliseum's arena with Juliet, waiting for the most opportune moment. He'd already taken care of the actual Elite Eight pair that Rei's kid and his boyfriend were going to have to fight, who were a French pair specializing in Fire-types. Of course, he didn't actually battle them, he simply knocked them out with his Hitmonchan before they had a chance to react.
"I don't like it," Juliet said as Pat Lopf was doing his preliminary speech. She leaned against the wall across the archway from Ryan. "It's just... dirty."
"Dirty," Ryan countered, "Is the only way to fight in today's world."
"You've changed," Juliet said seemingly at random, still not even looking Ryan in the eyes.
"Oh?"
"Yeah, you used to be less cynical, and more, oh what's the word, upbeat I guess it would be," Juliet said.
"As opposed to what, idealistic trash?" Ryan's voice was almost mocking.
"Sometimes it seems that way," Juliet nodded. "You've really come a long way, you know, since I first met you and had you as one of my only two combat operatives. You remember the time you attacked Tschel and wound up getting beaten? I wonder how you'd have fared there now."
"I'd win," Ryan said simply. "I'm a far better man now than I was then."
"Oh really?" Juliet asked, cocking her head towards Ryan. "Are you really so much better?"
"I'm stronger in spirit, willing to take charge and not falter when I need to," Ryan reasserted himself.
Juliet scoffed lightly. Male posturing was all it was, she decided. "I wonder what Melanie would think."
"Eh?" Ryan asked.
"You can't have forgotten her," Juliet said. "Your ex-partner. You two never did get along spectacularly well, at least not to the degree Jessie and James, or Butch and Cassidy do. Teamwork was not your strongest suit."
"We worked better together than you think," Ryan corrected her.
"If that's what you say," Juliet sighed. She again looked out to where Lopf was speaking, the rabbitty man taking as long as he could for some reason.
"You've come a long way too," Ryan pointed out. "You used to be tough as nails, unbreakable, nothing could get through to you."
"I'll take that as a compliment," Juliet said, trying to keep her cool demeanour about her, but she was afraid her curiosity was going to betray her. "I assume there's another line coming?"
"After you adopted our biological superweapon as some surrogate child, you've changed quite a lot," Ryan scoffed at Juliet, standing up straight and strolling leisurely towards Juliet, trying to be as intimidating as he could. She could not say as it was working very well.
"It's a Pokémon," Juliet said. "I raised it as such, because it was born as such."
Ryan postured himself to be at a maximum of apparent superiority over Juliet and said, "It is a weapon. I've seen its specifications, genetic details you yourself wrote up. I am not an idiot, and I know how to interpret them."
Juliet glanced past Ryan, down the hall, at something, but glanced back towards Ryan quickly enough that she assumed he thought she just had a moment of indecision. Of course she didn't want to let Ryan know that the specifications she provided him were nothing more than what he wanted to see, and that only a small handful of scientists knew of this. The reports had to be carefully altered.
"I guess," Juliet began, "That genetics don't always tell that much about someone, then."
"About humans, no," Ryan said. "Pokémon are simpler, they aren't as, ah, complex."
Juliet smiled, biding her time. "I quite like these little arguments of ours, you know that? They give us so much insight into each other. However," at this Juliet waved her hand to behind Ryan, and continued, "I'm afraid our argument for now is at an end."
"Eh?" Ryan asked, turning around. He saw, much to his evident surprise, his ex-partner Melanie, in her white Team Rocket uniform, red R on its chest. While less exposing than those of Jessie or Cassidy, it still fit her form quite closely.
"Hello there," Melanie said coldly. She then turned to Juliet, "Ma'am."
"This doesn't accomplish anything," Ryan told Juliet.
"Of course it does," Juliet smiled coldly. "Or at least I assume it does. Melanie?"
"They got the message," Melanie said absentmindedly. "Heard your little argument, by the way. You two did that often?"
"Unfortunately," Juliet nodded.
Ryan chuckled. "I assume this means all pretense is off?"
"If you mean pretense of pretending to get along with you, you'd be surprised how well I actually do," Juliet said. "On the contrary, I think it's you whose pretense is now off. You flat-up hate my guts, and see this as a challenge to your authority."
"Isn't it?" Ryan advanced on Juliet. "You go around behind my back on my mission, and don't see it as a challenge to my authority?"
"Authority," Juliet countered, "is a matter of respect. Respect is a matter of both trust and faith. Both are earned. You have not earned either. And yet I have not betrayed your authority in this regard. Why?"
"You're asking me?" Ryan asked, looking out again at Lopf.
"Well, both Kenneth and his successor Mikhail would be able to answer that," Melanie pointed out to Ryan, eliciting a rather withering glare from the man.
"Both Kenneth and Mikhail would also plainly see that the audience is waiting," Juliet continued, nodding towards the open coliseum area where Pat Lopf was standing quite confused making improvisational excuses as to why the next Elite Eight members were so late.
"Showtime, then," Ryan hissed to Juliet. He afforded her one last attempt at a withering glare before turning and striding off to the coliseum arena. Juliet stood for a moment, time appearing to be quite still. It was hard to believe that this long-awaited power play of the Rocket Elite, the attack on the Neo League Finals of which she'd heard of for months, the first inklings of which came from Executive Kenneth, who was now in hiding for his attempt to stop it, was finally starting.
It was an odd feeling, because she knew, intellectually, that it was going to happen. She'd always thought, given the massive delays, that it was going to happen "some other time." That it wasn't going to happen now. She was sad, almost, to be wrong.
The fact that the day was actually quite sunny, being just after noon with the sun still bright, made it seem all the less real to Juliet, watching Ryan stroll up towards Lopf in almost slow motion, his black Rocket uniform looking quite dark against the bright colours of the arena, quite like some stereotypical villain.
So, Juliet decided, fingering the pokéball with Tribo in it, this is what it had come down to. This is the group she decided to join up with after graduating with honours from that prestigious university whose name she cared so little about, to blot it from her mind entirely. It was like a haze to her, nothing more.
Juliet sighed and took her first step out into the sun, pausing only long enough to wave Melanie still. The world, which had seemed quite mute up from the moment Ryan stepped out up until this moment, which could not have been more than three or four seconds later, hit her with the enormity of this sound.
"Who are you people?" Lopf asked defensively as Ryan was the first to get to him. "Rockets?"
"That's right," Ryan smiled, "We're from Team Rocket. Not that weak criminal aspect, but the real members of Team Rocket, those who get things done. And you can tell the world that we are very, very ready to get things done. We'll start with the son of Megumi, and his boyfriend over there."
Juliet looked to Alex and Tschel, faces she wasn't accustomed to, but people she knew all too well by reputation. To her, Alex looked so young and frail, with his slight frame and clothes that did nothing but enhance his slenderness and make him look, for a boy, rather beautiful. Tschel, too, someone she as a Rocket was told to loathe, looked little more than a kid to her, as he moved defensively between Alex and Ryan. His pale skin looked almost unhealthy in the bright sunlight, but his eyes showed he wasn't going to do anything but fight if he had to.
"Kids, get out of the way," Ryan said firmly. "This is your chance."
"Espeon," Tschel grabbed a pokéball and called out his psychic Eeveelution. "Quick Attack!"
"Sneasel, Feint Attack and block it!" Juliet reacted without thinking, throwing her pokéball so her Sneasel could bat away the psychic with minimal distance to travel. Her brain snapped into a combat gear she hadn't used in months, when she fought against that psychic, David Kirin. It was funny how battle and genetic research was, to her, quite similar. She saw the flow of battle just like the flow of calculations in her head, like a mathematical theorum she just had to solve to win.
"Hitmonchan, Mach Punch!" Ryan opted to continue the speed.
"Golduck, Gyarados, gang up on Hitmonchan!" Alex showed with his attack that he was not as frail and gentle as his appearance might otherwise say. The serpent grabbed Hitmonchan in a grip that slowly constricted it, and Golduck, with nothing else to do to the boxer, turned towards Sneasel.
"What are you waiting for?" Ryan demanded.
"A chance," Juliet said the first thing to come to mind. It didn't even make sense to her.
"Well, your chance is now!" Ryan hissed. "Hitmonchan, try and break out!"
"It's not going to break out," Alex told him. Juliet couldn't help but smile sadly. Alex's face, which to her seemed like it should be doing nothing more than smiling with compassion, showed the ability to harbour so much hostility, especially in his eyes. "You're a vigilant type, you'd have been watching our win against the British champions. You should remember how my Gyarados fights. Golduck, hit that Sneasel with a Hydro Pump!"
"Jump out of the way and Slash!" Juliet called without thinking, but seeing the Pokémon's moves several turns in advance. Yes, Golduck would dodge right of the slash, and try to Ice Beam her, despite the attack having no effect on an Ice Pokémon, and then...
"Golduck, dodge to the right and Ice Beam!" Alex ordered.
...and then she had the chance. "Sneasel, rush in and Beatdown!"
Ducking under the beam, Sneasel ran in and delivered a quick one-two punch to the kappa's midsection, following up with a roundhouse kick and then another flurry of punches, before Golduck fell.
"Now!" Ryan shouted as Hitmonchan lost consciousness and Gyarados released it, allowing it to slump to the ground.
Juliet didn't want to, she really didn't. To do so would have been to break some kind of final barrier, taking her Pokémon out from test battles to the real thing. It was an experience she didn't want it to face, but knew that for her own survival she had to. She grabbed the pokéball from behind her and threw it.
"Go, Tribo!"
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That's it for this week, folks. Next chapter goes up when it goes up. Until then, remember that even though a prettyboy may look weak, he's still not as weak as you'd think. Oh yeah, and those fortysomething women are dangerous when you let them be, because they're smarter than you give them credit for, if only because of experience. I'd also like to think that those very long three or four seconds I wrote as Ryan stepped into the coliseum were some of the best in SS, but I know I can't give that sort of assessment to myself.
Oh yeah, and anyone who thinks Pokémon is just for kids, go read this whole thing and get back to me. It hit me as I was writing this that it's not characters I'm writing for (else I might as well be writing a sappy AAML fic), but actual people, who have feelings and lives and concerns of their own, and favourite colours and all those little idiosyncracies. To heck with killing and dealing with "mature issues" like homosexual main characters (despite that I don't view Alex and Tschel like that... they're just two boys in love, no labels attached) or genetic research into superweapons—when characters become actual people is when the story becomes mature.
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Ryan stood just outside of the actual coliseum's arena with Juliet, waiting for the most opportune moment. He'd already taken care of the actual Elite Eight pair that Rei's kid and his boyfriend were going to have to fight, who were a French pair specializing in Fire-types. Of course, he didn't actually battle them, he simply knocked them out with his Hitmonchan before they had a chance to react.
"I don't like it," Juliet said as Pat Lopf was doing his preliminary speech. She leaned against the wall across the archway from Ryan. "It's just... dirty."
"Dirty," Ryan countered, "Is the only way to fight in today's world."
"You've changed," Juliet said seemingly at random, still not even looking Ryan in the eyes.
"Oh?"
"Yeah, you used to be less cynical, and more, oh what's the word, upbeat I guess it would be," Juliet said.
"As opposed to what, idealistic trash?" Ryan's voice was almost mocking.
"Sometimes it seems that way," Juliet nodded. "You've really come a long way, you know, since I first met you and had you as one of my only two combat operatives. You remember the time you attacked Tschel and wound up getting beaten? I wonder how you'd have fared there now."
"I'd win," Ryan said simply. "I'm a far better man now than I was then."
"Oh really?" Juliet asked, cocking her head towards Ryan. "Are you really so much better?"
"I'm stronger in spirit, willing to take charge and not falter when I need to," Ryan reasserted himself.
Juliet scoffed lightly. Male posturing was all it was, she decided. "I wonder what Melanie would think."
"Eh?" Ryan asked.
"You can't have forgotten her," Juliet said. "Your ex-partner. You two never did get along spectacularly well, at least not to the degree Jessie and James, or Butch and Cassidy do. Teamwork was not your strongest suit."
"We worked better together than you think," Ryan corrected her.
"If that's what you say," Juliet sighed. She again looked out to where Lopf was speaking, the rabbitty man taking as long as he could for some reason.
"You've come a long way too," Ryan pointed out. "You used to be tough as nails, unbreakable, nothing could get through to you."
"I'll take that as a compliment," Juliet said, trying to keep her cool demeanour about her, but she was afraid her curiosity was going to betray her. "I assume there's another line coming?"
"After you adopted our biological superweapon as some surrogate child, you've changed quite a lot," Ryan scoffed at Juliet, standing up straight and strolling leisurely towards Juliet, trying to be as intimidating as he could. She could not say as it was working very well.
"It's a Pokémon," Juliet said. "I raised it as such, because it was born as such."
Ryan postured himself to be at a maximum of apparent superiority over Juliet and said, "It is a weapon. I've seen its specifications, genetic details you yourself wrote up. I am not an idiot, and I know how to interpret them."
Juliet glanced past Ryan, down the hall, at something, but glanced back towards Ryan quickly enough that she assumed he thought she just had a moment of indecision. Of course she didn't want to let Ryan know that the specifications she provided him were nothing more than what he wanted to see, and that only a small handful of scientists knew of this. The reports had to be carefully altered.
"I guess," Juliet began, "That genetics don't always tell that much about someone, then."
"About humans, no," Ryan said. "Pokémon are simpler, they aren't as, ah, complex."
Juliet smiled, biding her time. "I quite like these little arguments of ours, you know that? They give us so much insight into each other. However," at this Juliet waved her hand to behind Ryan, and continued, "I'm afraid our argument for now is at an end."
"Eh?" Ryan asked, turning around. He saw, much to his evident surprise, his ex-partner Melanie, in her white Team Rocket uniform, red R on its chest. While less exposing than those of Jessie or Cassidy, it still fit her form quite closely.
"Hello there," Melanie said coldly. She then turned to Juliet, "Ma'am."
"This doesn't accomplish anything," Ryan told Juliet.
"Of course it does," Juliet smiled coldly. "Or at least I assume it does. Melanie?"
"They got the message," Melanie said absentmindedly. "Heard your little argument, by the way. You two did that often?"
"Unfortunately," Juliet nodded.
Ryan chuckled. "I assume this means all pretense is off?"
"If you mean pretense of pretending to get along with you, you'd be surprised how well I actually do," Juliet said. "On the contrary, I think it's you whose pretense is now off. You flat-up hate my guts, and see this as a challenge to your authority."
"Isn't it?" Ryan advanced on Juliet. "You go around behind my back on my mission, and don't see it as a challenge to my authority?"
"Authority," Juliet countered, "is a matter of respect. Respect is a matter of both trust and faith. Both are earned. You have not earned either. And yet I have not betrayed your authority in this regard. Why?"
"You're asking me?" Ryan asked, looking out again at Lopf.
"Well, both Kenneth and his successor Mikhail would be able to answer that," Melanie pointed out to Ryan, eliciting a rather withering glare from the man.
"Both Kenneth and Mikhail would also plainly see that the audience is waiting," Juliet continued, nodding towards the open coliseum area where Pat Lopf was standing quite confused making improvisational excuses as to why the next Elite Eight members were so late.
"Showtime, then," Ryan hissed to Juliet. He afforded her one last attempt at a withering glare before turning and striding off to the coliseum arena. Juliet stood for a moment, time appearing to be quite still. It was hard to believe that this long-awaited power play of the Rocket Elite, the attack on the Neo League Finals of which she'd heard of for months, the first inklings of which came from Executive Kenneth, who was now in hiding for his attempt to stop it, was finally starting.
It was an odd feeling, because she knew, intellectually, that it was going to happen. She'd always thought, given the massive delays, that it was going to happen "some other time." That it wasn't going to happen now. She was sad, almost, to be wrong.
The fact that the day was actually quite sunny, being just after noon with the sun still bright, made it seem all the less real to Juliet, watching Ryan stroll up towards Lopf in almost slow motion, his black Rocket uniform looking quite dark against the bright colours of the arena, quite like some stereotypical villain.
So, Juliet decided, fingering the pokéball with Tribo in it, this is what it had come down to. This is the group she decided to join up with after graduating with honours from that prestigious university whose name she cared so little about, to blot it from her mind entirely. It was like a haze to her, nothing more.
Juliet sighed and took her first step out into the sun, pausing only long enough to wave Melanie still. The world, which had seemed quite mute up from the moment Ryan stepped out up until this moment, which could not have been more than three or four seconds later, hit her with the enormity of this sound.
"Who are you people?" Lopf asked defensively as Ryan was the first to get to him. "Rockets?"
"That's right," Ryan smiled, "We're from Team Rocket. Not that weak criminal aspect, but the real members of Team Rocket, those who get things done. And you can tell the world that we are very, very ready to get things done. We'll start with the son of Megumi, and his boyfriend over there."
Juliet looked to Alex and Tschel, faces she wasn't accustomed to, but people she knew all too well by reputation. To her, Alex looked so young and frail, with his slight frame and clothes that did nothing but enhance his slenderness and make him look, for a boy, rather beautiful. Tschel, too, someone she as a Rocket was told to loathe, looked little more than a kid to her, as he moved defensively between Alex and Ryan. His pale skin looked almost unhealthy in the bright sunlight, but his eyes showed he wasn't going to do anything but fight if he had to.
"Kids, get out of the way," Ryan said firmly. "This is your chance."
"Espeon," Tschel grabbed a pokéball and called out his psychic Eeveelution. "Quick Attack!"
"Sneasel, Feint Attack and block it!" Juliet reacted without thinking, throwing her pokéball so her Sneasel could bat away the psychic with minimal distance to travel. Her brain snapped into a combat gear she hadn't used in months, when she fought against that psychic, David Kirin. It was funny how battle and genetic research was, to her, quite similar. She saw the flow of battle just like the flow of calculations in her head, like a mathematical theorum she just had to solve to win.
"Hitmonchan, Mach Punch!" Ryan opted to continue the speed.
"Golduck, Gyarados, gang up on Hitmonchan!" Alex showed with his attack that he was not as frail and gentle as his appearance might otherwise say. The serpent grabbed Hitmonchan in a grip that slowly constricted it, and Golduck, with nothing else to do to the boxer, turned towards Sneasel.
"What are you waiting for?" Ryan demanded.
"A chance," Juliet said the first thing to come to mind. It didn't even make sense to her.
"Well, your chance is now!" Ryan hissed. "Hitmonchan, try and break out!"
"It's not going to break out," Alex told him. Juliet couldn't help but smile sadly. Alex's face, which to her seemed like it should be doing nothing more than smiling with compassion, showed the ability to harbour so much hostility, especially in his eyes. "You're a vigilant type, you'd have been watching our win against the British champions. You should remember how my Gyarados fights. Golduck, hit that Sneasel with a Hydro Pump!"
"Jump out of the way and Slash!" Juliet called without thinking, but seeing the Pokémon's moves several turns in advance. Yes, Golduck would dodge right of the slash, and try to Ice Beam her, despite the attack having no effect on an Ice Pokémon, and then...
"Golduck, dodge to the right and Ice Beam!" Alex ordered.
...and then she had the chance. "Sneasel, rush in and Beatdown!"
Ducking under the beam, Sneasel ran in and delivered a quick one-two punch to the kappa's midsection, following up with a roundhouse kick and then another flurry of punches, before Golduck fell.
"Now!" Ryan shouted as Hitmonchan lost consciousness and Gyarados released it, allowing it to slump to the ground.
Juliet didn't want to, she really didn't. To do so would have been to break some kind of final barrier, taking her Pokémon out from test battles to the real thing. It was an experience she didn't want it to face, but knew that for her own survival she had to. She grabbed the pokéball from behind her and threw it.
"Go, Tribo!"
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That's it for this week, folks. Next chapter goes up when it goes up. Until then, remember that even though a prettyboy may look weak, he's still not as weak as you'd think. Oh yeah, and those fortysomething women are dangerous when you let them be, because they're smarter than you give them credit for, if only because of experience. I'd also like to think that those very long three or four seconds I wrote as Ryan stepped into the coliseum were some of the best in SS, but I know I can't give that sort of assessment to myself.
Oh yeah, and anyone who thinks Pokémon is just for kids, go read this whole thing and get back to me. It hit me as I was writing this that it's not characters I'm writing for (else I might as well be writing a sappy AAML fic), but actual people, who have feelings and lives and concerns of their own, and favourite colours and all those little idiosyncracies. To heck with killing and dealing with "mature issues" like homosexual main characters (despite that I don't view Alex and Tschel like that... they're just two boys in love, no labels attached) or genetic research into superweapons—when characters become actual people is when the story becomes mature.