JMJ
CHAPTER ONE:
Two Years Later
"KRRRREEEE—vah!"
The eldritch cry echoed along the wind and over the thick green fields and bringing a chill to the otherwise calm, warm night. Anyone who may have heard it would have shivered to hear the sound cracking through the night unlike any pokémon in this part of the Kanto Region. Even the wild, nocturnal pokémon out and about had to stop from the silent nightly routines to listen a moment and wonder whether it was a predator's call or the call of some grieved creature.
But not everyone who was out on the field held this apparent chill or obliviousness. Two in particular were very aware, and if any chill at all ran down their spines, it would only be the chill of the moment, more the thrill of the hunt.
The rusted, wreck of farm truck rumbled to a stop strangely quiet for its appearance. At the top of a hill it came to rest, and the driver and passenger, a farmer and his wife stared out over the fields.
The wife leapt over the side of the open-roofed door and thrust a dramatic finger out into the brush below.
"There!" she hissed.
The husband under a broad, straw hat nodded, with a queer sort of smile tugging at his lip.
"I see it," said the farmer through his heavy orange beard. "Finally. Results."
From the pocket of her apron the wife snatched a pokéball and throwing it as hard as she could, she released in a blinding light a pokémon with which to pursue their prey.
"Go, Skarmory!" She cried. "Get the keva!"
At once the skarmory dove in for the brush where the creature, barely visible, lifted up her head on her long, spindly neck in alarm.
"For Team Rocket!" cried the farmer and his wife together, and they laughed in their pride.
"KRRRREEEE!" cried the creature in brush and instantly darted into a run.
The skarmory with a cry of its own began its pursuit.
"C'mon!" cried the farmer, who upon turning his head to the wife looked quite younger without his beard that he had suddenly ripped off his face.
Without bothering to consent, the wife, leapt back into the vehicle, and they drove after the two pokémon. They broke through bushes and trees, rattata, pidgey, and a few bug pokémon fled as the truck crunched through. Neither the farmer nor his wife took any notice, after all these little pokémon had no worth and they would not do damage to the vehicle, for its rusted front was just as much a phony as its driver's beard. They drove over the field, the ground rumbling beneath the pair as the farmer turned up the truck to full speed, for the skarmory and his prey were still gaining speed. The keva whooshed through the weeds with the veracity of her cry.
Then for a moment the truck lost the pokémon. A row of thick trees burst suddenly between them.
"Do you still see them!?" growled the farmer.
"No!" snapped the wife in return. "Matte, they're still just on the other side! Keep going!"
However, just as the wife spoke her last word, the truck, instead of complying, came to such a halt that the wife in her start nearly broke right through the wind shield. Swerving the wheel as hard as he could, the farmer just barely turned in time before his stop to keep the front wheels from rolling over the ledge.
And what a ledge! Down into the soft fields below, farmland as far as the eye could see below this the starry, summer night. A soft breeze blew past the dyed hair of the pair in the vehicle and whispered tauntingly to them in the trees of how their prey had gotten away.
"Where is it?" breathed the wife.
"Where's Skarmory?" the farmer demanded, and he leered darkly in the wife's direction.
She paid him no mind. Leaping out of the vehicle again, the wife scanned the area below but could see no sign of either creature.
"I didn't know that kevas could fly," she grumbled. "Those wings don't look like they'd be able to carry her."
The farmer shrugged, but the leer did not yet leave his face. "Skarmory's don't exactly look airworthy either."
Suddenly a metallic swoop, something akin to the sound of the chains of a playground swing swept behind them, and turning, they saw Skarmory landing behind them empty handed.
"Where is the keva?" demanded the wife of the pokémon.
The farmer, with a low growl, closed his eyes and slumped into his seat with defeat. Muttering something under his breath about the uselessness of assigned pokémon as he rubbed his temples, he then lifted his head to the wife and called, "C'mon, Yamato! Stop wasting time!"
Returning Skarmory to his ball, Yamato turned around and leaned idly against the door.
"It got away for now," she said.
"Well, we still don't need to be wasting any more time out here," he replied. "If anyone sees us, it could blow our cover. I saw a couple kids already poking around where they don't belong earlier today."
"Soo da," agreed the wife with a sigh.
This time, she pulled open the car door and climbed inside beside her partner.
Blowing a strand of hair from her face that had escaped her otherwise tight, pink bun, she leaned back in her seat, and the farmer revved up the vehicle for its return but stopped suddenly as he glared down over the cliff once more.
"What?" demanded the wife.
"I think I see it," said the farmer. "It's down by that little shack down there."
The wife leaned forward and leered out of the windshield window. Just barely did she make out the moving shape of ruffled body and scooping beak atop that spindly neck. It fluttered as a silhouette upon the dimly lit cottage of a house below, one of the only houses in the whole valley.
"I don't think we'll need our cover much longer," said the wife.
"Me neither."
If luck went their way, they would have the creature in the hands of Team Rocket before the sun had fully risen, and dawn was already upon them.
#
Nyaasu remembered the wedding fondly, or rather he remembered the refreshments afterwards with great relish. The wedding cake happened to be sublime — ten layers and real custard filled it with delicious vanilla cream for frosting — and the caviar proved as rich as spiffy pants rich food could taste! The delicate red wine, and not to mention the shushi orderves had been more than lovely. Just thinking about it all made the cat's mouth water.
The wedding on the other hand, Nyaasu remembered rather oddly. After all that time of teasing Kojiro and teasing Musashi about liking each other, after all those photos he mocked them with of them at their more snuggly moments, it had never really occurred to Nyaasu that they would actually settle down and get married. Almost two years had passed and Nyaasu still was not sure he believed it had happened.
Besides, the caviar tasted a bit too dreamily to have been real, yet here he was now eating breakfast in a small house that they had managed to build mostly by themselves. No longer members of Team Rocket, no longer even residents at the Niwa Estate, and Kojiro and Musashi, not only a married couple but recently parents as well.
Here, believe it or not, Kojiro lived an independent man, working in town earning money on his own and supporting his wife who helped in her own way with fixing up and making kimonos and other traditional clothing for festivals and the like to sell. She had to do something, and both she and Kojiro knew how to make costumes. Nyaasu too helped somewhat, making contraptions and gadgets that sold fairly well in town. Basically Kojiro had decided to not have to rely on his estate money but to try to live fresh in this way; though, his parents often asked him if he needed money (they kept in contact all the time to make sure everything was going well and Kojiro was always rather happy that they did rather than annoyed as Nyaasu thought he should be).
What made Nyaasu most unsure of the reality of his situation; however, was the tiny, pink bundle of joy, as they were called, now fast asleep in the cradle. It had been a month or two now, but Nyaasu still could not escape the oddness of the idea of Musashi and Kojiro having offspring.
Could anybody?
Musashi and Kojiro themselves apparently did not, for they could hardly keep their eyes off of her, as if she would disappear like a mirage in the desert at any given moment. Even now, they leaned over the cradle with arms relaxing lazily over the side and dreamy, goofy smiled on their faces just as they had all afternoon.
"She's so beautiful …" Kojiro sighed, looking liable to melt into the floor at any moment.
"So squishy," agreed Musashi with a quiet squee.
Kojiro made a little squeal as well, and closing his eyes and clenching his fists together with unstoppable emotion he now seemed more as if he would explode rather than melt.
"So little!" he barely whispered.
"Baby, baby," Musashi cooed as she snuggled into Kojiro's side.
Unprepared for her, Kojiro had to catch his balance as Musashi's weight fell upon him, but as soon as he recovered he grabbed Musashi tightly in return.
"Bara-chan," he breathed.
"Bara-chan," Musashi agreed.
"Our, pink, little hana," said Kojiro.
The tiny body of the infant lifted and fell with each new baby breath. Her head carried just the faintest hint of dark purple hair in a hue somewhere in between the raspberry of her mother and the lavender of her father. So far that appeared to be the only sign of whom she had been born to. All human babies looked pretty much the same to Nyaasu. Her wide, round eyes with which she beheld the world when awake shared their simplicity though, Nyaasu had to admit, and now that he rarely saw a sinister glint in either of his former Team Rocket partner's eyes, he could honestly say they were always almost childishly simple these days.
"So perfect!" Musashi said.
"We could have picked you from a rose garden," Kojiro told his sleeping daughter.
"Uh … guys, nya?" Nyaasu asked finally from behind.
Slowly the pair pried their blissful faces off of dear Bara and turned to Nyaasu behind their shoulders, the cat giving them a pout like that of a jealous older sibling.
"Don't you have other things to do, nya?" Nyaasu asked lightly. "She's not going anywhere, you know. She's just sleeping."
Musashi laughed. "Oh, what do you know?"
"That I wouldn't really like a bunch of people staring at me while I was sleeping, nya," said Nyaasu.
"We're not just a bunch of people," Kojiro pointed out. "We're her mommy and her daddy."
"Besides, she's a baby," said Musashi.
"We'll go finish housework soon," Kojiro said.
Nyaasu shrugged. "Yeah, well, you two have fun with that then, nya."
He did not roll his eyes until he turned away.
Weirdos, he thought.
At least now was a good opportunity for cat time. The surrounding area of the house had been picked out perfectly, and though it really was only no more than twenty miles from the Niwa Estate, it was as if they were completely isolated from the rest of the world as far as Nyaasu felt concerned. Nyaasu as the cat of the house had a whole world completely to himself, and he had often heard it said that Kanto was too industrialized for that.
He claimed every tree and every shrub. The wide open sky was his, the wildflowers, which he leapt about and played in were his. Even the creek and the stones were his, not to mention the fish. Not a human or another cat and certainly no dog (except Gar-Chan, but he stayed out of Nyaasu's way) for miles! It was glorious! Cat paradise!
Out here, Nyaasu completely forgot about everything else. He even forgot he had lived anywhere else. He chased the crickets, and batted the reeds, and lazed in the sun on rocks and logs and in trees. And with a nice, warm house with a silly, young couple who would feed him when he returned to the house, it made life as close to perfect as a cat life could get. The only thing that would have made it better would have been that he no longer felt jealous when he saw Musashi and Kojiro together in a way he never had any luck in with female felines.
"But, I guess, you can't have everything, nya," Nyaasu told himself.
Now, of course, as I said all thought and worry left him now as he went outside. With paws behind his head as he lay down in a low branch in a tree, he watched the pidgeys fly happily over his head. Too high to be caught, and he was too lazy to try to catch them. He had already had such a good romp with the crickets that the hypnotic movement of the birds would soon have him lulled to sleep.
Just as a soft dream as gentle as the summer breeze began to seep in, however, he heard it.
A strange call over the fields.
"KRRRREEEE—vah!" the cry echoed in all directions, vibrating through his sensitive feline ears.
Nyaasu lifted a curious eye.
Lots of strange noises swept this rural landscape at times, but Nyaasu knew it was of no pokémon he was familiar with unless the sound had been distorted by the distance or the echo. He would have paid it no further mind and fallen back to sleep, but the sound he heard next made him rather annoyed.
Something was moving through the brush very near his tree, and with a low grumble, Nyaasu pulled himself up and glared down.
Then he let out a cry as in a burst of blue and red and orange a strange creature exploded out of the brush like a feathered rainbow. It leapt right up over Nyaasu's branch, and a face full of feathers almost caused him to fall out of the tree. Before he could know fully what had happened he barely snatched onto to the next branch to keep from falling, and when he looked up again, the creature had vanished.
Nyaasu spat out the feathers and brushed them away as he resituated himself on his branch. Leering in the direction the creature had gone, he wondered what in the world that could have been.
In its place, unfortunately was something Nyaasu considered far worse, for the skarmory which next came out of the brush from which the first creature had come, had its claws aimed just for Nyaasu.
"NYAH!" Nyaasu cried, and this time he did fall out of the tree.
At least he missed the metallic skarmory claws which ravaged the tree branch upon which Nyaasu had been sitting into a mangled mess.
Skarmory did not live in the Kanto Region!
He must belong to somebody, Nyaasu thought, and he surmised that he belonged to whoever approached now, for he heard the shouts of humans not far away.
Scrambling to his feet, Nyaasu turned to make himself scarce, but the moment he was about to leap into the brush, the wild-eyed skarmory blocked Nyaasu's path with a savage beak attempting to slice the poor cat in two.
"Nya! Wait, wait! Matte!" Nyaasu cried. "I'm ny-ot who you're after, nya!"
Something strange emanated from this creature. The rage in its eyes seemed to glow with a poison purple flame, although too faint for normal human detection unless one was paying very close attention, but Nyaasu could see it quite distinctly, maybe sensed is the more proper word. This was no mere anger about missing his prey, this pokémon was uncannily angry. It reminded Nyaasu a little of something he had witnessed in a few Team Rocket experiments, except that there was no mechanism on his body that Nyaasu could see.
Nyaasu stumbled backward.
With eyes that told Nyaasu he was ready for the kill, the skarmory opened his beak once more and—
"Skarmory!" snapped a disturbingly familiar voice.
"Nya?"
The skarmory threw up his head and screamed angrily over Nyaasu's sprawled body and into the direction of the voice.
"I heard someone," said another voice as equally familiar in the way that Nyaasu wished it wasn't.
"A nyaasu!" gasped two humans in surprise.
Nyaasu threw his face around despite the skarmory, and saw in full uniform, who else? Oh, Murphy loved Nyaasu! Who else but Kosaburo and Yamato, and they were glaring right at him.
NOTE: If you haven't already guessed, the keva is a nod to Kevin in Up XD
JAPANESE PHRASES:
Matte: wait
Soo da: right
Hana: flower
