Well, I can't really say as the massive delays in chapters is really what I want, especially at this part of the series. That said, there has been a lot of junk happening that I won't get into (aside from the fact that my ex-boyfriend is a female dog) and a lot of other things taking up my time (most notably my game design work). So not a lot of time left over for Pokémon, which means less SS than I'd prefer. But I still find time to write, even if it's a monthly chapter or something, which is annoying to me, the writer, because it means I can't keep it as coherent because all the writing is spaced apart, and even more annoying to any readers (all five of you) who have to wait longer between chapters and who would lose interest out of annoyance. Anyone who has the patience to stick around reading at this point really deserves the quality I try and put into SS.
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"Go, Tribo!" Juliet shouted, throwing the pokéball. The ball burst in a short explosion of light, revealing the shadowy Pokémon, which hissed in the sunlight. The few observers she glanced at seemed a bit odd. Some held out pokédexes or pokénavs, trying to identify the genetic Pokémon. Juliet smirked internally at the confused looks on their faces.
"Feint Attack on Gyarados!" Juliet gave her first ever battle command to Tribo.
Tribo hissed and moved almost like a shadow towards Gyarados, flexing its clawed hands before leaping towards the serpent faster than Juliet's eye could track it. It seemed to almost teleport to the ground behind Gyarados, and several of the serpent's scales flew from its long body, the serpent howling.
"Gyarados, Hyper Beam!" Alex shouted.
Rearing back, Gyarados cocked its head and then spewed a beam at Tribo, which passed harmlessly through the Pokémon and hit the ground around it. Tribo's eyes twitched but it showed no signs of pain.
"Ghost type," Tschel noted. "Go, Umbreon! Crunch it!"
Crunch, Juliet wondered. Umbreons couldn't normally learn that move. No matter anyway, as Tribo didn't look in the least hurt as Umbreon's teeth glowed a vile purple and bit into it. In fact, Tribo looked mainly more annoyed than anything else, shooting a quizzical look at Juliet before kicking Umbreon off it, and then slashing the Eeveelution with its claws.
"Now that," Ryan sneered, "is more like it."
Juliet didn't feel the same way. In fact, she felt more sick than anything else. This was not what she wanted for Tribo, despite actually having designed it to fight. She'd put her heart and soul into the Pokémon, and so put more into its genetic code than fighting instincts. To see it fighting was painful.
"Tribo, Shadow Ball!" Juliet ordered.
Tribo's right hand crackled, and a black ball shot out from it at Umbreon, hitting its flank and sending it to the ground. Umbreon whimpered and tried to stand, but faltered.
"Umbreon, Moonlight!" Tschel's voice was almost frantic.
"Push the attack!" Juliet called. "Slash!"
Juliet winced at the result. Umbreons were known for three things, generally. The first was their immunity to Psychic attacks. The second was their resilience to not only the elements but all forms of special attacks. The third was their unusually thick skin which gave them great resistance to physical blows. It came as a great surprise to her, then, that this slash not only drew blood, but to her disgust, sent not only a spatter of blood along the ground, but drew a ribbon of flesh from the wound.
She also noted that Alex looked pale, and as if he was about to be sick. Tschel didn't look very good, either.
"That's it, screw rules," Tschel grumbled as he grabbed all of his pokéballs. "Everyone, come out!"
Alex was only a few seconds behind, sending out all of his uninjured Pokémon.
"How long do you figure before the police gets here with their snipers?" Juliet asked.
"Eh?" Ryan wondered. "Oh, about ten or fifteen minutes, I guess. This place relies more heavily on its Pokémon for security than anything else."
"Great," Juliet muttered. "You do realize that when that time comes, I'll have to send Tribo after their snipers just to keep us alive, right?"
"I am... prepared for that eventuality," Ryan said hesitently, which told Juliet instantly that he wasn't.
"Tribo, fend them off!" Juliet shouted as the last of Alex and Tschel's Pokémon finished materializing. She probably didn't have to say it, but as an afterthought added just in case, "But don't kill any of them!"
Ryan hissed to Juliet, "And you do realize that I have also made preparations for that, right?"
"Vashou, Buson, and Domino are not 'preparations,'" Juliet hissed back, shouted "Tribo, Thunder!" and then continued to Ryan, "They are the Rocket Elite, but cannot stop a dedicated police force by themselves."
A screeching howl shook Juliet's nerves as she watched Vaporeon stagger to the ground, smoking from several electricity burns. Tribo's power was certainly as great as she had measured it to be in testing. It was, arguably, too great.
"Blastoise, Hydro Pump!" Alex shouted.
The turtle hunkered down close to the ground, its shell opening up to the water cannons on its back. They fired, and Tribo simply shoved the water aside with its mind. Alex growled to himself, probably noting that Tribo seemed able to counter anything thrown at it.
Well, that is what Tribo had been designed to do, Juliet smirked.
"We've got company," Ryan nodded his head to the left.
Juliet called, "Tribo, Fire Spin!" and looked. Well well, she thought sarcastically, here comes the cavalry. Executive Mikhail and his main division of Izumi and Yuusuke, as well as Kenneth, who Juliet was surprised to see, and Rei Megumi. Lot of people.
"Go, Typhlosion!" Kenneth sent out his sole Pokémon, just as Rei sent out his with a call of, "Go, Saturn!"
Juliet wasn't sure if she should order Tribo to attack the pair of Fire-types or not. On one hand, Kenneth's Typhlosion and Rei's Ninetails were very well trained and, although the threat to Tribo was minimal, could prove annoying. On the other hand, Juliet felt she should at least talk it out with her fellow Rockets.
"You've got some guts, Juliet," Kenneth's voice was a low growl, without a single bit of the cheer he normally sported.
"It's not like I had a choice," Juliet said, glancing at Tribo, who had just felled the last of Alex and Tschel's Pokémon without orders.
"Kenneth," Ryan sneered, reaching into the jacket of his Rocket uniform.
"Good old Ryan," Kenneth's words were joking, but his words were deadly serious. "Maybe I should have killed you instead of Simon."
"Really?" Ryan pulled out a small, but still lethal, gun. Although Juliet had been oblivious to the panic of the stands emptying themselves, the sight of the gun somehow sent them into a little bit more of a panic as the few stragglers left, such that she finally noticed the terror she'd been instilling.
"You're going to shoot me?" Kenneth asked, looking around. "No witnesses but us Rockets and Rei's kids."
Juliet looked over towards Alex and Tschel. They seemed out of place, just children in a dispute amongst adults, but by the looks of them, they weren't children and longer. Alex's face showed nothing but disgust and anger at her, mixed with a bit of fear as Tschel held an arm around Alex shelteringly. Tschel himself didn't look any happier than Alex.
"Bad idea," Kenneth shrugged. "Unless I've gotten Juliet's loyalties incredibly mixed up. Shoot me and you'll have Tribo to deal with."
Juliet winced. She should have guessed that Kenneth's first order of business would have been to form a schism and antagonize Ryan. He hadn't been entirely mistaken, as her loyalties were higher to Kenneth than Ryan, but she did not want to be on the spot like that.
Rei started towards his son, but a wave of Ryan's pistol stopped him in his tracks.
"Let him go," Kenneth's voice was commanding. For a man who demanded so little respect most of the time, he was truly frightening when he started to be serious. She could see now, and it was something she couldn't for years, why Giovanni favoured Kenneth so much. The man was truly Rocket material.
Ryan's hand wavered, and he held his gun yet again towards Kenneth. Rei took that moment to quickly close the distance between him and his son. Juliet watched the reunion with interest.
"Alex, are you all right?" Rei asked as he reached him.
"Yeah, dad, I'm fine," Alex's voice, now not tainted by anger, seemed to be on the verge of tears. "Where's Sam?"
Rei was silent.
"I know her enough to know she wouldn't leave with everyone else," Alex said, "So where is she?"
"Kenneth... Kenneth thought she was ready to take responsibility where she wanted to," Rei's voice cracked. "So she went after the other Elites. I tried to stop her, but she went anyway."
"Goddish damn it," Alex said.
Ryan reached into his front pocket and pulled out a small cellular phone with only one button on it. The device resembled more of a child's walkie-talkie than anything else.
"You seen Samantha Yasashii yet?" Ryan asked over the thing.
"No, why?" Juliet heard Domino's voice. Kenneth shot a look at Rei that said more than words ever could have.
"Be advised she is on her way," Ryan said curtly. "Do not be fooled by her age, she is indeed a Pokémon Master."
Turning it off, Ryan put it back in his pocket and said, "Now then, where were we? At a standoff, I assume."
"At the biggest mistake of your life, yes," Mikhail said.
"I fail to see how," Ryan sneered. "We have Tribo, we have sent our message. Now we wait."
"For the police snipers?" Mikhail asked. "I could probably tell you exactly which Jenny it would be, too."
"You would, you little birth defect of a 'male Jenny,'" Ryan spat.
Mikhail winced microscopically at the jab at his lineage. Juliet could just tell that someone wasn't going to walk away from this alive.
"Anyway," Ryan continued, "I've got that well taken care of. No, my goal was just to send a particular message, and that message has been sent."
"So don't let us keep you around," Yuusuke grumbled.
"You still have two Pokémon out," Ryan nodded each to Typhlosion and Saturn. "That's quite a threat. If you would, Juliet?"
"No," Juliet's response was pretty much automatic.
"Tribo, attack them," Ryan tried giving the order himself.
"Tribo, do not under any circumstances fight them!" Juliet called to her Pokémon.
"Ryan seems to forget which of you two Tribo considers its mother," Kenneth noted aloud. "Do you honestly think you command even the most miniscule iota of the same respect Juliet does?"
"Goddish-damn mother complex," Ryan proved yet again to Juliet his mental instability, or at least a very good attempt at conveying the same. "It is a fighting machine, nothing more. I've seen its genetic code."
"You couldn't interpret genetic code if I gave you a textbook on it," Juliet said.
"Face it, Ryan, you're on shaky enough ground as it is," Kenneth said. "This is not going to earn a very small response. The police is going to come in here, full riot gear, with lethal force, just to stop you."
"And we have Tribo, who will defend us just to ensure its mommy doesn't get hurt," Ryan retorted.
"Tribo is no match for—" Kenneth began, but was interrupted by Ryan.
"Tribo exceeds Mewtwo!" Ryan shouted.
"You son of..." Kenneth began yet again, before Ryan aimed his pistol right at Kenneth and fired.
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That's it for this week, folks. Next chapter goes up when it goes up. Until then, remember that the Rocket Elite really sucks sometimes. Anyhow, for the post-chapter ramble. I don't like how I only briefly mentioned that people emptied the stadium really quickly, since the focus was mainly on the main characters, but I fell into my habit of writing them as if they were in a bubble. That's great for character interaction but absolutely terrible for realism. And as anyone who's read SS can tell you, realism is something I deal in quite well. But it's okay, I had Subway for lunch. In any case, Tribo is strong enough to take on entire teams and come out without a scratch. That was the point of this chapter, as well as to establish that Ryan is a complete rear-end.
Uh, just breaking that beginning of a wall of text with one final ramble: SS went up another half-rating with this chapter, but that's done with a bunch of animés so I figure I'm in the clear (Trigun, I hear, is especially infamous for this). That's yet another point of SS: To prove that not only can Pokémon be intelligent and respectable, but also that fanfiction, especially Pokémon fanfiction, can not only be good, but in this case better than the junk called the official animé.
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"Go, Tribo!" Juliet shouted, throwing the pokéball. The ball burst in a short explosion of light, revealing the shadowy Pokémon, which hissed in the sunlight. The few observers she glanced at seemed a bit odd. Some held out pokédexes or pokénavs, trying to identify the genetic Pokémon. Juliet smirked internally at the confused looks on their faces.
"Feint Attack on Gyarados!" Juliet gave her first ever battle command to Tribo.
Tribo hissed and moved almost like a shadow towards Gyarados, flexing its clawed hands before leaping towards the serpent faster than Juliet's eye could track it. It seemed to almost teleport to the ground behind Gyarados, and several of the serpent's scales flew from its long body, the serpent howling.
"Gyarados, Hyper Beam!" Alex shouted.
Rearing back, Gyarados cocked its head and then spewed a beam at Tribo, which passed harmlessly through the Pokémon and hit the ground around it. Tribo's eyes twitched but it showed no signs of pain.
"Ghost type," Tschel noted. "Go, Umbreon! Crunch it!"
Crunch, Juliet wondered. Umbreons couldn't normally learn that move. No matter anyway, as Tribo didn't look in the least hurt as Umbreon's teeth glowed a vile purple and bit into it. In fact, Tribo looked mainly more annoyed than anything else, shooting a quizzical look at Juliet before kicking Umbreon off it, and then slashing the Eeveelution with its claws.
"Now that," Ryan sneered, "is more like it."
Juliet didn't feel the same way. In fact, she felt more sick than anything else. This was not what she wanted for Tribo, despite actually having designed it to fight. She'd put her heart and soul into the Pokémon, and so put more into its genetic code than fighting instincts. To see it fighting was painful.
"Tribo, Shadow Ball!" Juliet ordered.
Tribo's right hand crackled, and a black ball shot out from it at Umbreon, hitting its flank and sending it to the ground. Umbreon whimpered and tried to stand, but faltered.
"Umbreon, Moonlight!" Tschel's voice was almost frantic.
"Push the attack!" Juliet called. "Slash!"
Juliet winced at the result. Umbreons were known for three things, generally. The first was their immunity to Psychic attacks. The second was their resilience to not only the elements but all forms of special attacks. The third was their unusually thick skin which gave them great resistance to physical blows. It came as a great surprise to her, then, that this slash not only drew blood, but to her disgust, sent not only a spatter of blood along the ground, but drew a ribbon of flesh from the wound.
She also noted that Alex looked pale, and as if he was about to be sick. Tschel didn't look very good, either.
"That's it, screw rules," Tschel grumbled as he grabbed all of his pokéballs. "Everyone, come out!"
Alex was only a few seconds behind, sending out all of his uninjured Pokémon.
"How long do you figure before the police gets here with their snipers?" Juliet asked.
"Eh?" Ryan wondered. "Oh, about ten or fifteen minutes, I guess. This place relies more heavily on its Pokémon for security than anything else."
"Great," Juliet muttered. "You do realize that when that time comes, I'll have to send Tribo after their snipers just to keep us alive, right?"
"I am... prepared for that eventuality," Ryan said hesitently, which told Juliet instantly that he wasn't.
"Tribo, fend them off!" Juliet shouted as the last of Alex and Tschel's Pokémon finished materializing. She probably didn't have to say it, but as an afterthought added just in case, "But don't kill any of them!"
Ryan hissed to Juliet, "And you do realize that I have also made preparations for that, right?"
"Vashou, Buson, and Domino are not 'preparations,'" Juliet hissed back, shouted "Tribo, Thunder!" and then continued to Ryan, "They are the Rocket Elite, but cannot stop a dedicated police force by themselves."
A screeching howl shook Juliet's nerves as she watched Vaporeon stagger to the ground, smoking from several electricity burns. Tribo's power was certainly as great as she had measured it to be in testing. It was, arguably, too great.
"Blastoise, Hydro Pump!" Alex shouted.
The turtle hunkered down close to the ground, its shell opening up to the water cannons on its back. They fired, and Tribo simply shoved the water aside with its mind. Alex growled to himself, probably noting that Tribo seemed able to counter anything thrown at it.
Well, that is what Tribo had been designed to do, Juliet smirked.
"We've got company," Ryan nodded his head to the left.
Juliet called, "Tribo, Fire Spin!" and looked. Well well, she thought sarcastically, here comes the cavalry. Executive Mikhail and his main division of Izumi and Yuusuke, as well as Kenneth, who Juliet was surprised to see, and Rei Megumi. Lot of people.
"Go, Typhlosion!" Kenneth sent out his sole Pokémon, just as Rei sent out his with a call of, "Go, Saturn!"
Juliet wasn't sure if she should order Tribo to attack the pair of Fire-types or not. On one hand, Kenneth's Typhlosion and Rei's Ninetails were very well trained and, although the threat to Tribo was minimal, could prove annoying. On the other hand, Juliet felt she should at least talk it out with her fellow Rockets.
"You've got some guts, Juliet," Kenneth's voice was a low growl, without a single bit of the cheer he normally sported.
"It's not like I had a choice," Juliet said, glancing at Tribo, who had just felled the last of Alex and Tschel's Pokémon without orders.
"Kenneth," Ryan sneered, reaching into the jacket of his Rocket uniform.
"Good old Ryan," Kenneth's words were joking, but his words were deadly serious. "Maybe I should have killed you instead of Simon."
"Really?" Ryan pulled out a small, but still lethal, gun. Although Juliet had been oblivious to the panic of the stands emptying themselves, the sight of the gun somehow sent them into a little bit more of a panic as the few stragglers left, such that she finally noticed the terror she'd been instilling.
"You're going to shoot me?" Kenneth asked, looking around. "No witnesses but us Rockets and Rei's kids."
Juliet looked over towards Alex and Tschel. They seemed out of place, just children in a dispute amongst adults, but by the looks of them, they weren't children and longer. Alex's face showed nothing but disgust and anger at her, mixed with a bit of fear as Tschel held an arm around Alex shelteringly. Tschel himself didn't look any happier than Alex.
"Bad idea," Kenneth shrugged. "Unless I've gotten Juliet's loyalties incredibly mixed up. Shoot me and you'll have Tribo to deal with."
Juliet winced. She should have guessed that Kenneth's first order of business would have been to form a schism and antagonize Ryan. He hadn't been entirely mistaken, as her loyalties were higher to Kenneth than Ryan, but she did not want to be on the spot like that.
Rei started towards his son, but a wave of Ryan's pistol stopped him in his tracks.
"Let him go," Kenneth's voice was commanding. For a man who demanded so little respect most of the time, he was truly frightening when he started to be serious. She could see now, and it was something she couldn't for years, why Giovanni favoured Kenneth so much. The man was truly Rocket material.
Ryan's hand wavered, and he held his gun yet again towards Kenneth. Rei took that moment to quickly close the distance between him and his son. Juliet watched the reunion with interest.
"Alex, are you all right?" Rei asked as he reached him.
"Yeah, dad, I'm fine," Alex's voice, now not tainted by anger, seemed to be on the verge of tears. "Where's Sam?"
Rei was silent.
"I know her enough to know she wouldn't leave with everyone else," Alex said, "So where is she?"
"Kenneth... Kenneth thought she was ready to take responsibility where she wanted to," Rei's voice cracked. "So she went after the other Elites. I tried to stop her, but she went anyway."
"Goddish damn it," Alex said.
Ryan reached into his front pocket and pulled out a small cellular phone with only one button on it. The device resembled more of a child's walkie-talkie than anything else.
"You seen Samantha Yasashii yet?" Ryan asked over the thing.
"No, why?" Juliet heard Domino's voice. Kenneth shot a look at Rei that said more than words ever could have.
"Be advised she is on her way," Ryan said curtly. "Do not be fooled by her age, she is indeed a Pokémon Master."
Turning it off, Ryan put it back in his pocket and said, "Now then, where were we? At a standoff, I assume."
"At the biggest mistake of your life, yes," Mikhail said.
"I fail to see how," Ryan sneered. "We have Tribo, we have sent our message. Now we wait."
"For the police snipers?" Mikhail asked. "I could probably tell you exactly which Jenny it would be, too."
"You would, you little birth defect of a 'male Jenny,'" Ryan spat.
Mikhail winced microscopically at the jab at his lineage. Juliet could just tell that someone wasn't going to walk away from this alive.
"Anyway," Ryan continued, "I've got that well taken care of. No, my goal was just to send a particular message, and that message has been sent."
"So don't let us keep you around," Yuusuke grumbled.
"You still have two Pokémon out," Ryan nodded each to Typhlosion and Saturn. "That's quite a threat. If you would, Juliet?"
"No," Juliet's response was pretty much automatic.
"Tribo, attack them," Ryan tried giving the order himself.
"Tribo, do not under any circumstances fight them!" Juliet called to her Pokémon.
"Ryan seems to forget which of you two Tribo considers its mother," Kenneth noted aloud. "Do you honestly think you command even the most miniscule iota of the same respect Juliet does?"
"Goddish-damn mother complex," Ryan proved yet again to Juliet his mental instability, or at least a very good attempt at conveying the same. "It is a fighting machine, nothing more. I've seen its genetic code."
"You couldn't interpret genetic code if I gave you a textbook on it," Juliet said.
"Face it, Ryan, you're on shaky enough ground as it is," Kenneth said. "This is not going to earn a very small response. The police is going to come in here, full riot gear, with lethal force, just to stop you."
"And we have Tribo, who will defend us just to ensure its mommy doesn't get hurt," Ryan retorted.
"Tribo is no match for—" Kenneth began, but was interrupted by Ryan.
"Tribo exceeds Mewtwo!" Ryan shouted.
"You son of..." Kenneth began yet again, before Ryan aimed his pistol right at Kenneth and fired.
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That's it for this week, folks. Next chapter goes up when it goes up. Until then, remember that the Rocket Elite really sucks sometimes. Anyhow, for the post-chapter ramble. I don't like how I only briefly mentioned that people emptied the stadium really quickly, since the focus was mainly on the main characters, but I fell into my habit of writing them as if they were in a bubble. That's great for character interaction but absolutely terrible for realism. And as anyone who's read SS can tell you, realism is something I deal in quite well. But it's okay, I had Subway for lunch. In any case, Tribo is strong enough to take on entire teams and come out without a scratch. That was the point of this chapter, as well as to establish that Ryan is a complete rear-end.
Uh, just breaking that beginning of a wall of text with one final ramble: SS went up another half-rating with this chapter, but that's done with a bunch of animés so I figure I'm in the clear (Trigun, I hear, is especially infamous for this). That's yet another point of SS: To prove that not only can Pokémon be intelligent and respectable, but also that fanfiction, especially Pokémon fanfiction, can not only be good, but in this case better than the junk called the official animé.