Tradition is important. Villain songs are even more so. New readers, I'm sorry. Old readers, you're welcome.
This one is to "Gaston" from Beauty and the Beast. Watch any episode of the anime with Team Rocket and tell me it was a bad decision. On another note, the other writer has said that this is the last time she'll ever work on a crowd song. I can't say I blame her, this thing was a pain.
Silver obviously wasn't happy to see them, but the feeling was mutual. Ethan made a face at the other boy before declaring, "We came for my second badge, and ended up stopping Team Rocket's Slowpoke Tail plot. What did you do?"
Silver glanced back at Lyra, who just gave him a friendly wave, and didn't bother to look at Kris at all. "You guys beat Team Rocket?" he asked, and Ethan nodded. "Wimps like you? Don't be stupid."
"It's true!" Lyra insisted. "Kris chased off the guy in charge of blocking the entrance to the Gym, and Ethan chased them all out of the Slowpoke Well."
Silver glared at her. "And what did you do to help, Mario?"
"Lyra," she corrected him, "and I took care of the one hanging out around the Pokémon Center."
"And you guys expect me to believe this?" When Ethan bluntly answered that, yes, he did kind of expect instant belief, Silver reached for a Pokeball. "Then I challenge any of you to a battle. If you can beat me, I might believe you stood a chance against Team Rocket."
"I'll take that challenge," Ethan declared. "Send out your first Pokémon."
Silver threw out the ball. "Let's start this with Gastly!"
Meanwhile, in a Team Rocket base in some unknown town, Proton had reported his failure to his boss, and was currently awaiting punishment. But Giovanni seemed much more calm than what Proton had expected. That wasn't always a good sign, but at least he was less likely to die.
"I should've known stupid kids would ruin it," the man said, fingers tapping irritably on the bar in front of him. "It was just the same with those boys from three years ago...stupid color names," he added bitterly, still reeling from the previous loss.
"But at least we made a bit of money off it," the younger man pointed out.
"I don't care about the money we make from selling Slowpoke tails," Giovanni hissed. "I wanted to get the attention of my son. Team Rocket is the family business, and the boy can't hide from his destiny forever."
"But sir," Petrel complained, "don't you remember when your son was four years old and you brought him to work? He called Team Rocket 'stupid,' threatened to burn our base to the ground, and ordered a pizza on your business phone."
"I know," said Giovanni, "and I have never been more proud of him."
"Well, I'm sure he'll come back someday," Arianna tried to reassure him. "He's not likely to resist a position of power."
"You don't know the boy very well at all, do you?"
Proton figured it was best to act now, before his boss could get too depressed. Clearing his throat, he selected a tune vaguely familiar to everybody in the room, and began to sing.
"Gosh, it disturbs me to see you here, boss
Looking so down in the dumps.
Everyone would like to be you here, boss
This Ethan kid just had some luck."
Drawing the attention of the entire Team Rocket base, Proton continued on with his song, becoming very pleased with how well it was going.
"There's no villain alive that tries twice like you do
At least not until Black and White
But at Team Rocket we simply idolize you
And it's not very hard to see why…"
"Please no," Giovanni tried to protest, but his order fell on deaf ears. The other members of Team Rocket had decided that this would end up as the story's main villain song, and had begun their own parts of it before the boss's order had left his lips.
It was Petrel that had the next line: "No one plots like our boss
Calls the shots like our boss
No one hides out and never gets caught like our boss!"
Arianna took her turn, and that was when Giovanni decided to just let it all happen.
"Because Hoenn may have Max and Archie
They're bad, yes, but you're king of crime!"
A grunt took the next line, and Giovanni recognized him as the one who had presented him with some Rattata called the Bazooka.
"And you've got lots of grunts at your calling
And there's no doubt, for you we're willing to do time…"
The rest of the grunts, male and female alike, took their leader's indifference for permission as they continued on:
"No one robs like our boss
Bribes the cops like our boss
Plans to steal all a trainer's Pokémon like our boss!"
Giovanni sighed. If you can't murder them, join them. "I hear Ghetsis is calling it liberating…"
"But he's not as great as our boss!
Give five hoorahs! Give twelve hip-hips!"
Arianna was getting into it, too. "And he doesn't need to read your stupid scripts!"
Giovanni would have to fire her later. At the moment, he just watched as the chaos spread through his base, hoping that the police wouldn't burst in and see this nonsense. Or maybe he should let them come, just to claim an insanity plea.
"No one fights like our boss
Knows his rights like our boss!"
Petrel couldn't help but laugh as his next addition came to him. "Or beat up all Team Plasma's knights like our boss!"
A young female grunt, a new recruit by the look of her, decided to test her own abilities.
"For there's something about Giovanni…"
But you know, there actually was something in singing that made everything seem better. Whatever it was, he found himself singing along easily. "As you see, I have grunts left to spare!"
"You can ask trainers Kate, Pat and Johnny…" Archer suggested, making his first comment of the song.
"That I don't take anything unless it's rare!" Giovanni finished, wondering to himself how he'd stooped so low. Oh, well. It couldn't be helped.
"No one hits like our boss
Matches wits like our boss!"
"And in secret, nobody knits like our boss!" Archer added, and then made a sound that could only be described as a 'yelp' when said boss smacked him upside the head.
"Do you want to wake up in a cemetery?" Giovanni challenged, somehow not breaking the rhythm of the song. Archer gulped, but the grunt army didn't care.
"Beware of our boss!"
Everyone was looking at Giovanni now, obviously expecting him to sing more than one line at a time. With a quick look toward the door, making sure no one else would witness, he decided to give in.
"Just three years ago, a boy stood up to me
And he gave me my very first loss.
But I have a new plan to make sane people flee
And it's one that he won't come across!"
"No one recruits like our boss
Conquers routes like our boss
And no one wears bright orange suits like our boss!"
Proton grinned, happy that his superior was starting to lighten up.
"As a Gym Leader, he was intimidating…"
"He'll rule again
Just a matter of when
And he'll conquer once more
Whether by peace or war
Who's a super success? Don't you know? Can't you guess?
And even though his son is gone
The boy will come around once his dad owns this town…"
"Because he is the best…at stuff…like…" Petrel thought hard, before coming up with, "stealing…and crime…" Thinking even harder, so hard that the other executives immediately assumed that his brain had blown a fuse, he finally threw his hands up in surrender. "Forget it."
"Our boss!" the grunts finished in one loud cheer.
It was probably a good thing that the beloved boss's son was nowhere to be seen, because if he had been, he would be backing away slowly before turning and running as fast as his legs would carry him.
"That was one of the weirdest things I've ever seen."
No one bothered to disagree with Kris. If they did, they would be lying.
After Avery had beaten Gastly, Pidgey had defeated Silver's Zubat by pure luck. The final challenge had been Slowpoke against Quilava, a battle which hadn't really been a battle at all. Instead, Ethan had called for a Water Gun as the opening move, but Slowpoke had just sat there like the big useless lump of Pokémon it was, and Quilava had been too busy batting at its head with his paw to actually listen to Silver's commands.
And then, just when Ethan had started to think that Silver deserved this disobedience, having not actually acquired Quilava in ways that one would describe as 'legal,' Slowpoke seemed to process his trainer's command and launched the attack, nailing the poor Fire-type in the face. Quilava puffed out a half-hearted cloud of smoke, and then it fell over, one leg twitching.
So, yes, it was pretty strange to witness, but Ethan wasn't about to let a victory pass him by, no matter how unusual. 'Unusual' happened to be what won him his first badge, after all.
Silver recalled the Pokémon that had once peacefully sat in Professor Elm's lab, probably the very same Cyndaquil that had nearly scorched Ethan before the professor took him to the back room. "That was pathetic," he told it through the case. "You really need to start training harder."
"Hey, your Quilava just let its guard down," Ethan pointed out. "That's nothing to get mad at it for."
"Slowpoke is a useless Pokémon," Kris agreed. "I don't blame Quilava at all."
But Lyra seemed more interested in the boy than his Pokémon, and he caught her curious stare. "What?"
"I was just wondering, that's all," she said, as if she'd already asked her question and gotten yelled at. When the other three all stared at her, she held up her hands. "It just seemed like he was a little too interested in beating Team Rocket, don't you agree?"
That brought her companions to silence. That much was true. But before either of them could ask, Lyra had declared that they should probably get moving if they wanted to make it out of Ilex Forest by nightfall. After Ethan and Kris had started on their way, she gave the redhead a conspiratorial smile.
"Don't worry," she said, as if she'd seen into his head through the battle. "You're not the type to sit through personal questions. Team Rocket's your business, so we'll try not to get involved again. No promises, though," she added hastily, almost as if she knew that Team Rocket was inescapable.
And then, with a wave, she'd followed her friends. Silver stared after her, concerned for a moment that she knew too much of what she wasn't supposed to...and then he dismissed it.
"Dumb girl," he grumbled to himself, kicking a small rock. "She's going to end up dead one of these days."
But she didn't ask personal questions. At least she had that going for her.
Exploring Ilex Forest with Ethan was not something that Kris had wanted to do without Lyra, and within five minutes, he'd proven exactly why.
The boy had ticked off a bunch of Caterpie, and had wound up wrapped in their String Shot attacks, and that meant that now he was a big lump at Kris's feet, only his head unwrapped. He glared up at her, very displeased with her lack of concern.
"Aren't you going to help me?" he demanded, and she shook her head.
"You got yourself into this," she pointed out. "You can get yourself out of it."
"But what about the forest gods?" Ethan whined. "They could be zooming in on us as we speak!"
"Forest gods?"
"You don't want to know," Lyra sighed, alerting them both to her presence. "Other than that it's probably why he wanted a Dunsparce in the first place." She looked down at Ethan, and, after he explained his situation, turned back to Kris. "Should we help him?"
"And ruin the fun?"
"Don't leave me here!" Ethan wailed. "What about the forest gods?"
There was a crack, as though someone stepped on a twig. Then two small Farfetch'd came from out of nowhere, cut Ethan free, and tried to disappear again. Fortunately for their trainers, Kris and Lyra were fast, and each of them secured a small, squirming bird in their arms, carefully avoiding the pecking beaks. The trainer showed up a second later, thanking them and taking back the Pokémon, and left the trio to continue their journey through the forest.
It would have gone without a hitch, if it weren't for a pretty young lady dressed in a kimono. Ethan remembered seeing another one that looked almost exactly like her in Violet City, laughing at the three as they got thrown out of the tower, but this girl looked lost.
Apparently, that was exactly the case.
"Where is that exit?" she said to herself, nervously tugging on her sleeve. "I could have sworn it was right up here. I suppose, if it comes down to it, I could always sleep out here tonight...but the forest gods..."
Ethan nudged Kris. "See? She believes in forest gods."
"I can see that. She must be an escaped mental patient, too." As Ethan opened his mouth, Kris just smiled and held out a finger. "You gave me one shot, remember?"
"You didn't have to bring her into it!" Ethan whined, attracting the pretty young lady's attention.
"Hello," she said, apparently oblivious to Kris and Ethan's little discussion. "Are you lost, too?"
"Not really," Lyra admitted. "Turn left, and the exit's just out of sight."
The Kimono Girl looked, squinted, and then laughed nervously. "Oh, look at that! You're right!"
"No kidding," Kris muttered under her breath, but Ethan shushed her with a jab in the ribs.
The Kimono Girl still didn't seem to notice the conversation, though she clearly saw them. Instead, she thanked Lyra and started off, catching Ethan's eye in the process. The mysterious smile she gave him filled him with fear, but that wasn't anything new. He'd been afraid of things like this since Professor Oak had given him his Pokedex, knowing very well what happened to the boys he'd chosen three years earlier.
Lyra didn't catch any of it. "Come on, guys!" she cheered, pointing toward the exit herself. "My grandparents are right up ahead. Maybe they'll let us sleep on the Day Care floor!"