Two Paths to one End

Fridge raiders

A/n: Another short chapter…

It wasn't as dark as he'd like. Feeling naked under a barrage of omnipresent electric lighting, he walked through brightly illuminated rooms and halls. While he searched, he cursed Samuel's obsessive cheer with all his heart.

Dismissing such thoughts as worthless –Samuel wasn't going to change at this late date on Giovanni's account- he pulled the door before him open. He didn't brazenly kick the door open as say… a blue might. Or unprofessionally lunge into the quiet, confident that his status as a criminal would shield him like a brash young Grunt… Quietly, silently, he turned the knob, opened the door a bit, then there was a familiar brush against his calf, a flash of white at his feet.

Persian was in, and after a mental count of five seconds he followed.

Nothing greeted him, save silence and a cheerful Persian. It had been like this all down the hall and through a once dining room area, now makeshift library. There ahd only been one surprise, a family of ratatta had made a nest in some long forgotten broom closet. He'd defused the almost bloodshed by grabbing Persian and quickly closing the door so the sleeping mice –it was a wonder they hadn't woken up screaming- could carry on.

"We're hunting bigger game." He had growled.

And as if to agree, they both heard another of those thumps, it was louder, and there was an undercurrent of muffled words.

Ears pricked up in excitement at the prospect of large pray, Persian forgot the cluster of mobile snacks and went ahead.

And Giovanni had followed, old patterns, old ways, were all coming back with a vengeance. Excitement stirred blood turned stagnant by endless days of intrigue and word games. More alive than either of them had been in years, Persian lead, and Giovanni followed.

X

Broken glass, he did not disturb it, it had been broken enough already by careless boot prints. Kneeling he studied the patterns of breakage, and saw the way of entry. Persian discovered the rock, and Giovanni sniffed in time with Persian on that one.

Amateurs, it was a blatantly childish, so basic that a child could have done it.

They pressed ahead, steeping onto familiar linoleum floors and then froze. They stared at the refrigerator in shock. Both rooted by the words that someone had spray painted onto the door of the fridge.

"I knew I should have killed, them." Giovanni said at last.

"Merow." Persian agreed.

And that was all that needed to be said.

X

"Well, it looks like a Rocket attack." Officer Jenny said, directing one of the forensic photographers to take photos at the broken glass.

"Are you sure it's not an imitator or something?"

Taking off her hat, the Officer ran a hand through her short cropped blue hair. She shook her head, and the photographer wandered off to the back of the kitchen, to gather what books had been knocked over. They'd be taken for fingerprint samples, but Samuel felt that there destruction –which the tests would result in- was needless. So he offered a token protest, and was silenced by the officer's glare.

"I'm sorry Professor, but we have to be sure. We've expected a… surge of Rocket activity in Pallet for quite some time actually. If this is it, the beginning, then we need to be prepared."

"You don't need to dance around me, Officer, I know why, and you know why. Let's just say that he told me that if it is Rocket cell thirteen we've got nothing to worry about."

"Well, it might not be." Jenny said firmly. "And that's what we need to find out, if it is or isn't." She considered him, her midnight blue eyes dark with thought. "I wasn't aware the civilians were being told."

"I'm a special case, we're old friends."

If nothing else, Jenny's suspicion grew more obvious, but Samuel shrugged it off, and looked to his ruined fridge. It had been raided completely, and the hot red words that were on it promised that he'd be spending an hour or two coating the steel fridge with a skin of white paint. He winced at the sound of steel scraping wood when they pulled the fridge out of it's customary place. One officer called Jenny to take a look at this.

Expecting cut wires, he was surprised to see the vandals had finished their odd rhyme/song on the back, clearly having ran out of room on the front. Sketched in pen were three letters and a trade mark red "R".

"J, J, & M"

The newspapers would call it the case of the Rocket Fridge Raiders. The tabloids would say the Ghost of Leonardo Giovanni was rallying the Rockets to make evil food pokemon hybrids.

Samuel just sighed, and eventually bought a new refrigerator. Giovanni refused to say a word about it to anyone, even to the police. Ash thought it was funny –the stories, not Oaks' loss of food- until the next place hit was his house. Then he went to Giovanni and yelled at the ex-Rocket leader. Chaos fell upon Pallet for all of two weeks, then after a span of half a month, when nothing new happened, all was quiet, and the refrigerator raiders were soon forgotten.