This long, yes, but I don't really mind since, uh, something. I dunno, rambling. What I should point out is that this actually just goes over what happened last chapter, but from a different perspective. It also explains one of the longest-running mysteries of SS, or at least part of it. See, the fact that Charlie Evans has strong Pokémon has been known in SS since Alex was literally 11 years old. Yes, that's right, Charlie Evans is that old, SS-wise. He predates David in terms of creation, and is almost tied with Sam (she was introduced a chapter or two earlier than he was). I also get to have fun explaining how pokéballs work, or at least tap-dancing around it.
----------------------------------------------------
"Something's wrong," Sam whispered to David. She was sitting with him in the stands of the Coliseum, while that annoying politician Pat Lopf was making a speech.
"Eh?" David asked, sounding a bit confused.
"Something's wrong," Sam repeated. "Lopf's just buying time. I can tell, something's not right."
"It isn't?" David asked, blinking.
"I know that man loves his speeches," Sam explained, "But this sort of speech-making is insane. Trust me. Can't you just see what's going on or something?"
"What, psychically?" David asked.
Sam groaned.
"All right, all right," David grumbled, closing his eyes and sitting back in his seat.
Leaning back herself, Sam tried to think of what might be going on. It could just be something as simple as random sickness on the part of one of the Elite Eight members, or another thing that was equally mundane. It could be a sinister plot by Team Rocket, or by foreign terrorists, or by a paramilitary group or anything else equally as improbable. She didn't want to admit that it was mostly her impatience that was bugging David about something being wrong, altough he'd certainly know anyways, despite her constantly telling him to stay out of her head.
"Holy crap," David said.
"Eh?" Sam asked, trying to keep it quiet, but the look of surprise on David's face was enough for even Sam to know that this was not going to be a secret.
"It's Team Rocket," David said, standing up. "Where'd your dad say his seat was? We have to see him."
"Uh?" Sam asked.
"It's where Kenneth will be," David explained, grabbing Sam's arm and pulling her up to her feet. She gave him an indignant look. People, of course, stared, but Sam tried fervently to pay them no mind. She wasn't sure how well she was succeeding in not caring, given that she was giving it so much thought and all.
"Fine, let's go," Sam grumbled, following David. They weaved their way through the stands, across bored-looking people and the occasional attentive person. After a short while of not being able to see either her father or Kenneth, Sam asked, "Do you even know where you're going?"
"Oh, yeah," David shrugged.
"Do you, uh, even know you're still grabbing my arm?" Sam then asked.
"... Oh," David said, embarrassed, releasing it. "Sorry."
Sam coughed to clear the tension, but it didn't do a very good job of that. She looked around again, mainly in the direction David was dragging her. She didn't initially see either Rei or Kenneth, but she did see a blonde guy moving across the stands in the same way she was, with a green-haired guy. That could only mean one thing.
Yeah, it was her father and Kenneth, all right.
"Oh, hey, look, there they are," David said, nodding in their general direction.
This wasn't good, decided Sam. She didn't usually see her father or Kenneth acting like this, so what it really was was probably going to be something that would drag her into yet more trouble, as it were. She sighed and waved them over.
Kenneth reached them a few moments before her father did, and David's eyes flickered to him for a moment. Sam didn't really have much doubt in her mind that he was reading Kenneth's mind for something like he usually was.
"Nothing much there, kid," Kenneth snickered to David, obviously having figured out what he was doing.
"Well then, what now?" Sam asked, getting right to the point.
Kenneth's mood darkened. Rei caught up to them, and noticed Kenneth's mood.
"Oh no," Rei said. "Last time I've seen him like this was at Mossdeep."
"The Mewtwo incident," Kenneth nodded. "This is actually not that much different."
"How so?" Sam asked.
"Not here," Kenneth raised his hand. He waved over to the inside of the coliseum. "Follow me."
Sam followed Kenneth, who was looking very serious indeed, more so than she thought he was. The walk wasn't especially long, just down a few of the stairs along the stands and through one of the doors leading into the coliseum itself. The place was completely empty, given that there was supposed to be an Elite Eight battle going on, except for a small group of people standing near one of the turnstiles. Sam recognized them almost instantly, especially given that she'd never known any male versions of Officer Jenny to hang out with blonde women, other than Mikhail and Izumi.
"Kenneth," Mikhail said, arms crossed, half sitting on one of the turnstile bars, "Nice to see you again."
"Same," Izumi nodded.
"Yo," Yuusuke half-waved listlessly.
"Gang's all here," Rei said, sounding mainly like he was only talking to himself.
"First time in fifteen years," Izumi's voice was alomost sorrowful. "But we're not all here."
"Yamato," Kenneth also sounded sad. "Well, we can't really afford to stick in the past, expecially since Roland's dead because of it."
"Yeah," Mikhail nodded. "In any case, what Rei and his daughter here don't know is that it's Ryan making his push for whatever his goal is. Right now."
"What?" Rei asked.
"Ryan, Vashou, Buson, Domino, and a bunch of guys under them," David shrugged.
"Would you stop doing that?" Sam asked, unnerved that David was randomly reading peoples' minds.
"No, actually that's a really useful skill," Kenneth shook his head at Sam. "Psychics are really rare, remember. A kid of his talents, even though he's not as powerful as Sabrina, that's very handy. Especially with what we're up against."
"Let me guess, I helped design it?" Sam asked, a nervous feeling tightening her stomach.
"Bingo," Kenneth nodded. "Ryan's got Juliet ready to use Tribo to its fullest, against her will I might add."
"But why?" Sam asked. "What's his point?"
"He's ambushed the two Elite Eight members that were supposed to be fighting in this match," Izumi explained. "We've all put our heads together and decided that his goal is to draw out Charlie Evans' super-Pokémon."
"Why?" Sam asked.
"That's what we can't figure out, really," Izumi shrugged.
"My best theory is that it's because they're the only Pokémon that can compete with Tribo," Kenneth shrugged.
"Where'd they come from, anyway?" Sam asked.
Kenneth chuckled. "That, my dear, is a story that you will never believe."
"Why wouldn't I?" Sam asked, indignant.
David shrugged. "It's weird, I can't read his mind for it."
Tapping his left temple, Kenneth grinned, "What, you think you can just read everyone's mind for everything?"
"His Alakazam is just a freak," Yuusuke spoke up. "The story goes that he found it on the shores of Cinnabar Island as an Abra, and took it as his starting Pokémon. After that, he noticed it was... different, so he took it to the Cinnabar Genetics Lab for examination."
"That didn't happen," Sam crossed her arms. "I should know, I read their scientific journal."
"You think they report everything they find?" Yuusuke asked.
"They're scientists," Sam retorted.
Kenneth clapped Sam on the shoulder. He shook his head slowly at her before saying, "And I'm an ex-Rocket. I'll let that sink in."
Sam didn't want to admit that she'd just made a fool of herself, of course, and certainly didn't want to admit that she'd just misjudged the very people she looked up to. She looked around the empty foyer, with its overbright lights and annoying oversanitization.
"Do you really want to know what they found?" Kenneth asked, looking deadly serious.
"What?" Sam asked.
"Nothing. That's the part that nobody's been able to explain, least of all Charlie himself," Kenneth sounded almost sardonic. "It's what they didn't find that they can't explain, rather. I trust you know how pokéballs are configured, such as why they can't catch humans?"
"It has to do with the DNA recombinations," Sam shrugged. "It uses a motion sensor, figures out just before impact what it's going to hit, and determines if the target's a Pokémon or not. There's nothing actually stopping it from catching a human."
"Kid, stop talking," Izumi cut off Sam and Kenneth's back-and-forth. She waved her hand derisively, "The reason it can't catch humans is because of a particular genetic makeup that seperates us from Pokémon."
With that, Izumi picked up a pokéball from her belt and enlarged it.
"This," Izumi explained, "is a pokéball with its motion sensors disabled. It can only detect by impact, so this might hurt a bit."
Izumi threw the ball underhand at Sam, hitting her with a thump on her upper chest. The ball opened a fraction of a second later, covering the area it hit with a reddish glow, before the ball closed and clattered to the ground. Wordlessly, Izumi picked it up, shrunk it, and put it back on her belt.
"Same thing happens to Orthan Pokémon," Kenneth shrugged. "Actually, I think this explanation would be better suited to Rei, wouldn't it?"
Both Sam and, to Sam's surprise, David looked quizzically at Rei, who seemed quite put off that he suddenly had to explain something. Rei pretended to find a light fixture very interesting, but the confused looks got to him enough that he couldn't ignore them.
"It's for psychic reasons," Rei said, not sounding all that sure of himself. "Humans have just a different psycho-psychological... aura, I guess would be the word, around them, preventing the pokéball technology from working on them. It's also why human psychics can do fun stuff like resize things or create alternate versions of themselves, like Sabrina does, while Pokémon can't mimic them effectively. Back to Evans, the reason is that his Alakazam has the same brain makeup as a human. In essence, it's the same as David here."
"Or Mewtwo," David grumbled.
"No, David, I was just thinking about Mewtwo because comparing you to them is strange indeed," Rei corrected.
"Whatever," David shrugged. "Guess you'll see later. Just so you know, that Ryan guy's making his move."
"He's what?" Izumi hissed.
Kenneth didn't even say anything, he just took off through the gates and into the coliseum proper. Izumi, Mikhail, and Yuusuke weren't far behind. Sam looked between her father and David for a moment, puzzled, and then decided to see what all the ruckus was going to be about, and so went through the gates into the coliseum.
It wasn't pretty.
A brown-haired man in a black Rocket uniform, and a black-ponytailed woman were battling Alex and Tschel. It wasn't going well, either. Her brother and his boyfriend were quickly losing, but the brown-haired Rocket, who she assumed was Ryan, was shouting at his partner.
"Damn it all," Kenneth growled. "Juliet really is going through with it."
Sam focused her entire attention on the battle, or more importantly, on the black-haired woman who she just now recognized as Juliet, the woman she'd worked for for a short time. A surge of distaste grew in her stomach from seeing that. Sam knew what was coming, before Juliet could even shout it.
"Go, Tribo!"
----------------------------------------------------
That's it for this week, folks. Next chapter goes up when it goes up. Until then, remember that pokéballs are really weird pieces of technology. Oh yeah, and for those of you who completely deprive yourselves of the Pokémon video games back when they were great, the Cinnabar Island thing was a reference to super-Pokémon you could find by "blanking" your last-encounter address, which either caused you to fight a MissingNo. or a Pokémon above level 100. Charlie Evans' Abra is the latter. This is not the source of his Arcanine, and that is a spoiler for which I will leave another chapter.
----------------------------------------------------
"Something's wrong," Sam whispered to David. She was sitting with him in the stands of the Coliseum, while that annoying politician Pat Lopf was making a speech.
"Eh?" David asked, sounding a bit confused.
"Something's wrong," Sam repeated. "Lopf's just buying time. I can tell, something's not right."
"It isn't?" David asked, blinking.
"I know that man loves his speeches," Sam explained, "But this sort of speech-making is insane. Trust me. Can't you just see what's going on or something?"
"What, psychically?" David asked.
Sam groaned.
"All right, all right," David grumbled, closing his eyes and sitting back in his seat.
Leaning back herself, Sam tried to think of what might be going on. It could just be something as simple as random sickness on the part of one of the Elite Eight members, or another thing that was equally mundane. It could be a sinister plot by Team Rocket, or by foreign terrorists, or by a paramilitary group or anything else equally as improbable. She didn't want to admit that it was mostly her impatience that was bugging David about something being wrong, altough he'd certainly know anyways, despite her constantly telling him to stay out of her head.
"Holy crap," David said.
"Eh?" Sam asked, trying to keep it quiet, but the look of surprise on David's face was enough for even Sam to know that this was not going to be a secret.
"It's Team Rocket," David said, standing up. "Where'd your dad say his seat was? We have to see him."
"Uh?" Sam asked.
"It's where Kenneth will be," David explained, grabbing Sam's arm and pulling her up to her feet. She gave him an indignant look. People, of course, stared, but Sam tried fervently to pay them no mind. She wasn't sure how well she was succeeding in not caring, given that she was giving it so much thought and all.
"Fine, let's go," Sam grumbled, following David. They weaved their way through the stands, across bored-looking people and the occasional attentive person. After a short while of not being able to see either her father or Kenneth, Sam asked, "Do you even know where you're going?"
"Oh, yeah," David shrugged.
"Do you, uh, even know you're still grabbing my arm?" Sam then asked.
"... Oh," David said, embarrassed, releasing it. "Sorry."
Sam coughed to clear the tension, but it didn't do a very good job of that. She looked around again, mainly in the direction David was dragging her. She didn't initially see either Rei or Kenneth, but she did see a blonde guy moving across the stands in the same way she was, with a green-haired guy. That could only mean one thing.
Yeah, it was her father and Kenneth, all right.
"Oh, hey, look, there they are," David said, nodding in their general direction.
This wasn't good, decided Sam. She didn't usually see her father or Kenneth acting like this, so what it really was was probably going to be something that would drag her into yet more trouble, as it were. She sighed and waved them over.
Kenneth reached them a few moments before her father did, and David's eyes flickered to him for a moment. Sam didn't really have much doubt in her mind that he was reading Kenneth's mind for something like he usually was.
"Nothing much there, kid," Kenneth snickered to David, obviously having figured out what he was doing.
"Well then, what now?" Sam asked, getting right to the point.
Kenneth's mood darkened. Rei caught up to them, and noticed Kenneth's mood.
"Oh no," Rei said. "Last time I've seen him like this was at Mossdeep."
"The Mewtwo incident," Kenneth nodded. "This is actually not that much different."
"How so?" Sam asked.
"Not here," Kenneth raised his hand. He waved over to the inside of the coliseum. "Follow me."
Sam followed Kenneth, who was looking very serious indeed, more so than she thought he was. The walk wasn't especially long, just down a few of the stairs along the stands and through one of the doors leading into the coliseum itself. The place was completely empty, given that there was supposed to be an Elite Eight battle going on, except for a small group of people standing near one of the turnstiles. Sam recognized them almost instantly, especially given that she'd never known any male versions of Officer Jenny to hang out with blonde women, other than Mikhail and Izumi.
"Kenneth," Mikhail said, arms crossed, half sitting on one of the turnstile bars, "Nice to see you again."
"Same," Izumi nodded.
"Yo," Yuusuke half-waved listlessly.
"Gang's all here," Rei said, sounding mainly like he was only talking to himself.
"First time in fifteen years," Izumi's voice was alomost sorrowful. "But we're not all here."
"Yamato," Kenneth also sounded sad. "Well, we can't really afford to stick in the past, expecially since Roland's dead because of it."
"Yeah," Mikhail nodded. "In any case, what Rei and his daughter here don't know is that it's Ryan making his push for whatever his goal is. Right now."
"What?" Rei asked.
"Ryan, Vashou, Buson, Domino, and a bunch of guys under them," David shrugged.
"Would you stop doing that?" Sam asked, unnerved that David was randomly reading peoples' minds.
"No, actually that's a really useful skill," Kenneth shook his head at Sam. "Psychics are really rare, remember. A kid of his talents, even though he's not as powerful as Sabrina, that's very handy. Especially with what we're up against."
"Let me guess, I helped design it?" Sam asked, a nervous feeling tightening her stomach.
"Bingo," Kenneth nodded. "Ryan's got Juliet ready to use Tribo to its fullest, against her will I might add."
"But why?" Sam asked. "What's his point?"
"He's ambushed the two Elite Eight members that were supposed to be fighting in this match," Izumi explained. "We've all put our heads together and decided that his goal is to draw out Charlie Evans' super-Pokémon."
"Why?" Sam asked.
"That's what we can't figure out, really," Izumi shrugged.
"My best theory is that it's because they're the only Pokémon that can compete with Tribo," Kenneth shrugged.
"Where'd they come from, anyway?" Sam asked.
Kenneth chuckled. "That, my dear, is a story that you will never believe."
"Why wouldn't I?" Sam asked, indignant.
David shrugged. "It's weird, I can't read his mind for it."
Tapping his left temple, Kenneth grinned, "What, you think you can just read everyone's mind for everything?"
"His Alakazam is just a freak," Yuusuke spoke up. "The story goes that he found it on the shores of Cinnabar Island as an Abra, and took it as his starting Pokémon. After that, he noticed it was... different, so he took it to the Cinnabar Genetics Lab for examination."
"That didn't happen," Sam crossed her arms. "I should know, I read their scientific journal."
"You think they report everything they find?" Yuusuke asked.
"They're scientists," Sam retorted.
Kenneth clapped Sam on the shoulder. He shook his head slowly at her before saying, "And I'm an ex-Rocket. I'll let that sink in."
Sam didn't want to admit that she'd just made a fool of herself, of course, and certainly didn't want to admit that she'd just misjudged the very people she looked up to. She looked around the empty foyer, with its overbright lights and annoying oversanitization.
"Do you really want to know what they found?" Kenneth asked, looking deadly serious.
"What?" Sam asked.
"Nothing. That's the part that nobody's been able to explain, least of all Charlie himself," Kenneth sounded almost sardonic. "It's what they didn't find that they can't explain, rather. I trust you know how pokéballs are configured, such as why they can't catch humans?"
"It has to do with the DNA recombinations," Sam shrugged. "It uses a motion sensor, figures out just before impact what it's going to hit, and determines if the target's a Pokémon or not. There's nothing actually stopping it from catching a human."
"Kid, stop talking," Izumi cut off Sam and Kenneth's back-and-forth. She waved her hand derisively, "The reason it can't catch humans is because of a particular genetic makeup that seperates us from Pokémon."
With that, Izumi picked up a pokéball from her belt and enlarged it.
"This," Izumi explained, "is a pokéball with its motion sensors disabled. It can only detect by impact, so this might hurt a bit."
Izumi threw the ball underhand at Sam, hitting her with a thump on her upper chest. The ball opened a fraction of a second later, covering the area it hit with a reddish glow, before the ball closed and clattered to the ground. Wordlessly, Izumi picked it up, shrunk it, and put it back on her belt.
"Same thing happens to Orthan Pokémon," Kenneth shrugged. "Actually, I think this explanation would be better suited to Rei, wouldn't it?"
Both Sam and, to Sam's surprise, David looked quizzically at Rei, who seemed quite put off that he suddenly had to explain something. Rei pretended to find a light fixture very interesting, but the confused looks got to him enough that he couldn't ignore them.
"It's for psychic reasons," Rei said, not sounding all that sure of himself. "Humans have just a different psycho-psychological... aura, I guess would be the word, around them, preventing the pokéball technology from working on them. It's also why human psychics can do fun stuff like resize things or create alternate versions of themselves, like Sabrina does, while Pokémon can't mimic them effectively. Back to Evans, the reason is that his Alakazam has the same brain makeup as a human. In essence, it's the same as David here."
"Or Mewtwo," David grumbled.
"No, David, I was just thinking about Mewtwo because comparing you to them is strange indeed," Rei corrected.
"Whatever," David shrugged. "Guess you'll see later. Just so you know, that Ryan guy's making his move."
"He's what?" Izumi hissed.
Kenneth didn't even say anything, he just took off through the gates and into the coliseum proper. Izumi, Mikhail, and Yuusuke weren't far behind. Sam looked between her father and David for a moment, puzzled, and then decided to see what all the ruckus was going to be about, and so went through the gates into the coliseum.
It wasn't pretty.
A brown-haired man in a black Rocket uniform, and a black-ponytailed woman were battling Alex and Tschel. It wasn't going well, either. Her brother and his boyfriend were quickly losing, but the brown-haired Rocket, who she assumed was Ryan, was shouting at his partner.
"Damn it all," Kenneth growled. "Juliet really is going through with it."
Sam focused her entire attention on the battle, or more importantly, on the black-haired woman who she just now recognized as Juliet, the woman she'd worked for for a short time. A surge of distaste grew in her stomach from seeing that. Sam knew what was coming, before Juliet could even shout it.
"Go, Tribo!"
----------------------------------------------------
That's it for this week, folks. Next chapter goes up when it goes up. Until then, remember that pokéballs are really weird pieces of technology. Oh yeah, and for those of you who completely deprive yourselves of the Pokémon video games back when they were great, the Cinnabar Island thing was a reference to super-Pokémon you could find by "blanking" your last-encounter address, which either caused you to fight a MissingNo. or a Pokémon above level 100. Charlie Evans' Abra is the latter. This is not the source of his Arcanine, and that is a spoiler for which I will leave another chapter.