A/N: Hi everyone, sorry that this chapter is a little later then I intended to post. I've been busy catching up with schoolwork. Word of advice NEVER procrastinate, especially in college!
Anyway, here's Chapter 10, something that's building up to for awhile finally occurs. Enjoy!
Chapter 10
Gray walked into his small dorm and heard the door shut behind him with a small, soft click. He laid down on the small bed and quickly fell asleep, worn out after the long meeting.
A few hours later, the young teen woke up. He glanced to the bedside table, and the pokeball clock read that it was just after three in the morning.
"Perfect timing," Gray muttered and quickly changed into clothes that were more suitable for the darkness. I've stumbled onto something I'm not supposed to know, and if the admin's reactions are anything to go off of, its something important and I'm going to find out what it is.
The teen carefully put cyndaquil's pokeball in the bedside table drawer, sorry, I don't want you getting me caught here.
Prodigy quickly retrieved the spring lock-pick that he had fashioned earlier and unlocked the door. He stuck his head out to make sure the coast was clear. On either side of the hallway there were rocket grunts stationed.
"Damn," the young rocket agent said as he pulled his head back in and relocked the door, "No way I'll be able to get through both of them without getting caught. I guess I'll have to find another way."
He glanced around the room, I really wish I wasn't underground, I could easily climb out of a window and around the building to an area that's clear. He could feel a light breeze as he paced around the room and saw near the top of the rear wall an air vent.
"That'll work," the teen muttered and he quickly ran, jumped off of the concrete wall and was hanging just below the vent.
After some wiggling with his fingers, he was able to pry the vent loose enough that he could get it off. He pulled himself up and replaced the vent. Hopefully no one will come to check on me and notice I'm not there.
Gray began to climb through the grimy, cold metal air vent. As he climbed through the shaft, he glanced through the vents and saw various rocket agents going about their business.
He quickly crawled passed two agents that were going at it like two aipoms in heat. He shimmied passed a grunt watching tv looking bored out of his mind. He passed a woman giving her raticate a bath.
He crawled passed a different vent and recognized a face. Down below in the small dorm, Gravity sat at his table polishing and sharpening his large knife.
"Damn fucking kid," Gray heard the Delta Leader mutter, "I'm gonna kick his ass for putting knicks in my knife."
He continued making his way through the rocket headquarters ductwork until he caught the scent of sterilizing chemicals. That has to be coming from that lab I saw earlier.
Gray soon was staring down out of a small vent into the rocket base's laboratory. There were several tables spread out across the room that had large holocomputers, towers and other high tech devices. Along a small section of one of the walls was a large rack full of beakers, bottles, and test tubes that had chemicals of every color. In the back of a dark corner, the teen could barely make out a group of cages.
He peered down from above and was surprised to see that in the large room, there were only three scientists walking around working on various experiments. I guess no one around here ever actually sleeps.
The teen kept an eye down below and as soon as the scientists were out of sight, he slowly removed the vent, careful not to make any noise, and hung down from the ceiling for a moment. He loosely fit the vent over the hole before he dropped down to the floor.
"Is this the right chemical?" one of the scientists asked himself. Gray quickly ducked below a table, and the scientist walked over to one of the holocomputers and swiped around on it for a moment before walking towards the racks full of chemicals.
Prodigy climbed out from under the table and dashed to the computer. He quickly brought up the command prompt and did a system wide search on pokemon experiments. It immediately brought up a page with dozens of different results in various towns across both regions. He narrowed it down to just Cinnabar and it resulted four different experiments.
"Hey!" one of the scientists called across the room. Quick as a flash Gray slipped out of sight under a table. "We got another shipment in!"
Gray let out a sigh of relief, that was close, I got way to sucked into the search. What the hell are they doing though?
"Odd," an elderly scientist said as he was passing by, "I don't remember leaving that one on." He quickly swiped a few more things across the screen before moving out of sight to where the rest of the scientists were gathering.
Gray returned to the computer, Dammit, the old bastard logged out. He tried to log back in, however, he could not break through. He glanced over to where the dark corner where the group of scientists were huddled around a group of cages. He quickly crept over and hid in the darkness behind them.
"Ooooh," one of the scientists said gleefully, "I can't wait to get started on experimenting on this batch."
"I know," one of the other scientists said and he poked the creature through the cage.
"Let's go notify the others that they've come in," one of the scientists said and they walked to another section of the lab.
Prodigy quickly emerged from the shadows and was astonished at what he saw within the cage now that he had an unobstructed view. Inside, there was a large pikachu that had a deep orange fur, with random sections tinted yellow. Its long ears had dark brown tips instead of black. Its face had yellow pouches, and along its back were several dark brown stripes.
"What did they do to you?" Gray asked disgusted as he realized that the creature he was staring at was a pikachu in mid-evolution to a raichu. "Did they inject you with a liquid thunderstone or something?"
The large electric pokemon glared and growled at the rocket agent, it didn't trust him. The pokemon bared its teeth and there was a sharp crack as several small bolts of electricity leaped from the electric pokemon's pouches and ran down the length of the cage.
Gray quickly took a step away from the pokemon and noticed that there were six more metal cages near the first, and they all had the same mid-evolution electric pokemon.
"Hey! They're in here!" Gray heard one of the scientists call.
He spotted the entrance door to the lab open and saw the first three scientists walk in followed by another eight. Shit, there's no way I'll be able to escape with all of them, unless…
The rocket agent rapidly unlocked all of the electric pokemon's cages and sunk into the shadows. The evolutions quickly scampered out and started running all over the lab.
"Fuck!" one of the agents that just walked in said, "They're out! Didn't you guys lock them up?"
There was a loud crash as one of the pokemon knocked over a rack of beakers that held chemicals. They hit the floor and shattered and the mixing chemicals started smoking instantly.
"For the love of Mew! Get those pokemon back in their cages!" the lead scientist shouted.
All of the scientists quickly scattered around the room and scrambled to capture all of the pokemon.
Gray saw his chance and took it, while all of the scientists were distracted, he melted out of the shadows and ran, jumped on a table, and leaped from it to the ceiling vent. He quickly moved it aside and pulled himself up into the shaft.
He slid the vent back over the opening and laid and watched the ensuing chaos below.
Three scientists cornered one of the electric pokemon. Its orange fur stood on end for a moment, its yellow pouches sparking.
"Chu!" the large electric pokemon cried and the room was blinded by a bright blue bolt. It went straight into the center scientist's chest and an instant later his head exploded sending bloody grey matter all over the room. The bolt traveled out of the now decapitated scientist's arms as he was falling and arced across into the other two scientist's chests. A second later they fell back and hit the ground, their chests smoking.
Gray's breath caught in his throat, Shit, they're dead, he started breathing rapidly, I killed them… I let those pokemon out and I killed them…
The rocket agent quickly tried to make his way back to his dorm. He made a wrong turn into a dead end and let out a small cry of frustration, argh! I know it was this way! Why the hell am I so confused?
Its because you've killed someone, a dark voice in his head whispered, you killed them and you liked it. You just don't want to accept it.
No! the teen shouted in his head at the voice, I didn't kill them. I wasn't the one that shocked them.
But you were the one that unlocked the cages, the dark mysterious voice in his head told him, So it was you that killed them.
"No," the teen whispered quietly to himself and he continued to crawl through the air-shafts.
"Do you believe what Charcoal says? That he is the real thing?"
Gray stopped and backtracked to the vent he just passed, Are they talking about me? he peered down through the vent. Gray recognized the four men down below were admins. They were seated around an expensive looking table. They all had on black pinstripe suits, and a few of them were puffing on cigars.
"I'm not sure, I still think he may be a spy," the admin that was skeptical in the meeting said.
"I firmly believe that he is the Prodigy," a different admin said and he puffed on his cigar. "I'll tell you what I've heard from the upper executive admins, the ones that are above this rivalry we have between Johto the and Kanto divisions. They said that the Prodigy is an experiment, and that it is to see how well they can train an agent from a very young age and then integrate him into the dark ways of being a rocket," the admin took a long drag on his cigar, "Executive has some theory about keeping them pure and the faster they will fall or some hocus pocus shit like that. Anyway, what the exec admins did was they found a suitable candidate and went in, killed his parents and kidnapped the kid."
Gray let out a small gasp, No, no, no, no, no, no. It can't be, that can't be me. A few tears started to stream down his face.
"How do you know for certain that its this kid and not some other young well-trained agent?"
"He isn't some other well-trained agent that's young because it all fits, the Prodigy was rumored to be a Johto division project and suddenly some well trained kid agent from Johto turns up and says he's Prodigy."
"What about him being some Johtan agent that claims to be the Prodigy?"
"He isn't, because I searched through the Johto division's databases and there were no other teen agents over there within his caliber of training. Furthermore, I searched through our databases and there's only a handful of teens at his level here. He is the Prodigy, there are no doubts about it."
Gray crawled through the vents as quickly as possible to his dorm. He had tears streaming down his face freely the whole time. They lied to me, about everything. Cornelius and Jenny were both right, cyndaquil was stolen. He made it to his dorm and kicked out the vent and crawled down.
He quickly made it to his bedside table and in a flash of white light cyndaquil appeared in front of him. The little fire pokemon dropped down into its fighting stance instantly.
"I was wrong," the teen said to the pokemon laying on the floor, "you really were stolen."
Cyndaquil's expression softened and it stopped growling. Gray tried to pick the small pokemon up, but it let out a small growl and moved away.
"I guess you still don't trust me, I want you to trust me."
Cyndaquil kept its eyes glued on Gray as he took a few steps away.
"I'm sorry you were stolen," he said quietly, "I promise you, I am going to be the best trainer I can possibly be for you."
The small fire pokemon's body relaxed for a moment, but it was still on guard.
"I found something out tonight," the teen laid down on the bed, "I found out that you weren't the only one that was stolen. Team Rocket has been telling me a lie my whole life," he said angrily through the tears, "A rampaging scyther didn't kill my parents, they did. They wanted me to be the best agent they ever had," Gray laughed darkly, "Well they got what they wanted, the admins said so themselves."
"There were men killed tonight," the teen whispered, his face growing pale as he remembered the scientists' horrific deaths.
And you killed them, the dark voice in his head said, you killed them. You are a murderer.
"No, the teen said firmly, "No, I didn't, Team Rocket did. They created those…shinies...evolutions...whatever they were. Its no wonder they killed those scientists, those pokemon were probably the most scared they had ever been. When I let them out, it was probably the first time they had been out of their cages in who know how long. Those pokemon would stop at nothing to escape. I didn't kill those scientists, those pokemon didn't even kill those scientists, Team Rocket killed those scientists."
"They are going to pay for what they did," Gray whispered and held the now sleeping cyndaquil closer. "I swear, to Mew they are going to pay, for doing all of those horrible experiments on all of those innocent pokemon, for stealing you, cyndaquil, from your original trainer, and for killing my parents and robbing me of the life I could have had. They are going to pay, I swear."
He glanced down and saw that by now cyndaquil had fallen asleep on the floor. He quickly and gently scooped the little pokemon up and laid down with him.
The teen close his eyes to go to sleep.
"I doubt there really even is a Team Rocket code…."
Standing just outside of a forest along the Lake of Rage stood three people, a twelve year old boy with gray hair, a purple haired youth, and a middle aged man with black hair that had only one or two flecks of gray.
"Prodigy, after two years of hard-working and perseverance in learning the ways to be a rocket thief, you can now be elevated to become an elite member of Team Rocket," the man with black hair said.
"It is an honor commander."
"Now, Nate here will give you the code that all Rocket Agents live upon becoming elite agents."
"Repeat after me, I state your codename,"
"I Prodigy,"
"Promise to do what is best for Team Rocket,"
"Promise to do what is best for Team Rocket,"
"To never steal any pokemon," Nate said, barely concealing a look caught between looking guilty and looking smug.
"To never steal any pokemon,"
"And to do my best to help Team Rocket help those that are in need."
"And to do my best to help Team Rocket help those that are in need."
"Congratulations," the Commander said and he stepped forward and shook the boy's hand, "you're now an official elite member of Team Rocket."
"That's great," Prodigy said, "but why are we doing this out here in the middle of nowhere in the forest?"
"We are out here because...very few Rocket Agents ever become elevated to elite agent status and many resent those that do for it," the Commander said finishing quickly.
"So, I shouldn't spread the word about me being an elite agent?"
"No, the title sometime helps, but most of the time it doesn't. It's more of an empty title, but it is an honor nonetheless."
"The important part," Nate said cutting in before the commander could say anything else, "is to always remember the code," he paused and another flash of guilt appeared on his face for a moment, "no matter what."
Miles away in the complex, a woman with blue hair slowly crept through the nearly empty police half.
She opened a door and slowly slipped inside to the mostly darkened office. A small desk lamp was on, shedding light onto the papers strewn on the desk. The holocomputer next to them gave off a light glow.
"Chief," Jenny whispered to the elderly man slumped over in the chair asleep, "Quincy! Wake up!" she shouted and poked him in the arm.
"Huh? Whuzzat?" he said waking up with a snort, "Jenny? What are you doing here?"
"I came here to talk to you chief, and its a good thing I did so I could wake you up."
"I'm getting too old for this," he said and yawned, "So, what is it that you wanted to talk to me about?"
"Its about Lane, sir."
"Jenny, I'm tired of you two constantly bickering back and forth."
"Sir, this is very important though."
"What is it?" he said with a sigh.
"Sir, I believe that he is a member of Team Rocket."
Jenny saw the man's demeanor change in an instant from calm and pleasant to angry and irate.
"Jenny that is preposterous! In all of the years that Lane has been working for us. He has never once given any inkling of an idea for him to be apart of Team Rocket."
"Until now sir."
"Enough! Jenny, he is not a part of Team Rocket! He is one of our best most intelligent officers we have. Now, stop trying to throw him under the bus and start doing something that is much more important! Like finding the fucking damn escaped prisoner that we know is apart of Team Rocket!"
Jenny balked at the sight of the fuming chief momentarily, she had never seen Quincy this angry, before she quickly turned on her heel and stormed out slamming the office door.
A/N: What did you guys think of this chapter? Please review!