The Team Rocket Chronicles
By Red Dragonfly (aka Rebecca Lang)
. . .
Chapter 10
Prepare for Trouble
. . .
. . .
After the wall collapsed, the Nidorinos and Nidorinas rushed forward eagerly. They soon screeched to a halt, puzzlement written on their faces. It didn't take them long to figure out that Team Rocket was not where they were supposed to be.
"Miss us?"
Karen leaned casually on her Mr. Mime, her rubber suit sleek and shining in the sunlight. She gave the befuddled pokemon a charming smile, aimed her gun, and fired. A blast of electricity hit a poor Nidorina. It bowed low to the floor, legs paralyzed and helpless. Its outraged friends tried to attack Karen.
Karen smiled again and vanished. From behind them Kris attacked.
True to her word, Jaquie did not allow Kris to have a weapon. He did, however, have Fire Rage, his Charmeleon, with Jaquie's ridiculous TTM stuck to its head.
TTM 30, teleport.
"Take that," cried Kris as Fire Rage flame-tailed a hapless Nidorino.
A Nidorina tried to spray them with poison. Kris jumped in front of his pokemon and blocked him. The Nidorinos and Nidorinas looked on in shock as the poison slid off Kris' rubber suit without having the slightest effect.
Charmeleon attacked again, then teleported out of sight.
A Nidorino went berserk. He began attacking the other Nidorinos as though they were the enemy, pounding one with a double kick, freezing another with an ice beam, startling fast and efficient. One Nidorina tried to charge it. She found herself suspended in air, as though a giant invisible hand had picked her up.
Jaquie's Slowbro's eyes glowed red as he lifted and threw the poison pokemon, making sure it landed far away from Jaquie's Nidorino. A wild Nidorino spied Jaquie and rushed forward spewing poison. Jaquie teleported, and the Nidorino accidentally crashed into one of his teammates.
From the safety of the apple tree, Jesse and James reported the scene. They had used Jesse's Lickitongue and Jaquie's TTM to get up there. Somehow, in the flurry to get on their suits, James had ended up with the video camera again. The height of the tree gave James a good view of the battle, as he faithfully taped the scene below.
"As you can see the Nidorinos have been thrown into utter chaos," Jesse said sweetly into the microphone.
James panned the field. Karen, Kris, and Jaquie were teleporting madly in all directions. The Nidorinos were going wild, charging into one another, striking each other with their own attacks. Jaquie shouted orders in her own cool, calm voice.
"Maybe we should have warned the Nidorinos to prepare for trouble," joked Jesse.
But there was one pokemon who was not dragged into the roaring, charging mess of the battle, and that was Nidorina. She was the oldest, the strongest, the leader, and, though she boiled hatred, she assessed her enemy with sober concentration. They were strong, she had to admit. The fight would not be as easy as she thought.
A small cry caught her attention. The baby Nidorans were huddled together next to the tree. Most were whimpering and silent, but one was unabashedly crying with fright. They were so little, barely able to stand, and here they were witnessing their first battle. With two humans, one controlling a Lickitongue and the other holding some black metal device, perched in the branches above.
Nidorina barked a swift order to her troops. Keep up the battle, but focus. Don't waste your energy or attacks. Don't fight each other. I need three volunteers to help me with the children now.
She herself ran towards the two humans in the tree.
Through his camera, James saw Nidorina running.
"Uh oh," he said. "Jesse..."
Nidorina twirled a huge whirlwind up on her tail and tossed it into the tree.
"Hold onto something!" James yelled.
He himself grabbed onto his camera and clung to the tree branch for dear life. Jesse clung to the trunk. The whirlwind hit, and it was like being caught in a great, sucking vacuum cleaner. All James could hear was the rushing of the wind and Jesse's high pitched screams.
Jaquie heard them as well. She looked at the tree, bit her lip as Jesse and James were being ripped from their tree up into the unknown sky. Quickly she called out her bird pokemon.
"Dodrio, contain it!" she ordered, then had her Slowbro teleport her before she was hit with a body slam from an outraged Nidorina.
Dodrio flew into the air and created its own whirlwind. The two whirlwinds collided in midair and clashed in a great wind storm.
Jesse and James didn't know what hit them. First they were being uprooted from their tree, kicking and screaming, into the air. The next thing they knew, the air pushed them back down. But they were still being pulled up. But they were also being forced down. Everything had become a colorless merry-go-round at some nightmare carnival, when the whole thing just stopped, and Jesse and James found themselves in the same spot they had been in, thoroughly nauseated, but unharmed.
Fortunately Nidorina hadn't paid them any more attention after throwing the whirlwind. She got to the Nidorans, quietly sobbing and mewing for help. She and one other Nidorino gathered them up and began leading them out of the field, whispering encouragement, herding them to safety.
Just to the end of the field, thought Nidorina. Just to the end of the field and they would be safe. Then she could return to battle. As for the other two volunteers...
"Rina, rina, rina." Attack the humans.
Jesse and James barely had enough time put themselves back together before they were attacked again. This time it wasn't one pokemon with a whirlwind. It was two.
Two Nidorinos came rushing forward, horns flashing in the sunlight. At first they tried climbing up the tree. Dodrio swooped down upon them. The pokemon grimaced back, with new red scars, but attacked again.
Jesse and James screamed, and Dodrio delivered another round of pecks to the pokemon.
Pokemon, thought Jesse. Should I? she wondered. She reached for her pokeball.
A Nidorino saw her and slammed into the tree. Jesse lost her balance and desperately grabbed onto a tree branch. Encouraged, the Nidorino slammed into the tree again. The tree quaked. Jesse and James clung to branches. The Nidorino kept shoving itself against the tree, causing it to move like an earthquake, while its companion battled Dodrio.
"Jaquie!" yelled James, every time the tree shuddered. "Jaquie!"
And Jesse joined in, crying for her sister.
But Jaquie didn't hear them at first. She was watching, with an edge of worry, as Kris became more and more cocky.
. . .
"Ha! Think you can catch me? Guess again!" taunted Kris, as his Charmeleon teleported away.
A Nidorino rushing at him, charged straight into another poison pokemon.
"Where am I now?" Kris reappeared behind the Nidorino.
Fire Rage tailed-whipped it once, twice with its thick, heavy tail, then teleported away as the Nidorino tried to attack. "Aw, you can't hit nothing," jeered Kris from elsewhere.
"Kris, stop teasing the Nidorinos and fight," shouted Jaquie. The battle had become a constant crossfire of attacks, and Jaquie, without a suit, was forced onto the sidelines. Unable to fight, Jaquie was limited to watching the battle from afar.
She could see that they were winning. Some Nidorinos lay paralyzed on the floor, while still more were confused, hesitant, slowly being beaten into submission. A few more hits, a few more blasts of electricity, and the massive army would be vanquished. What they needed was a quick and decisive victory. They had the element of surprise, but they were greatly outnumbered; trying to win a long battle would be disastrous.
Karen, of course, was doing her job, going from Nidorino to Nidorino and paralyzing them in a neat orderly fashion. Kris, however, kept playing around. Instead of concentrating on just one Nidorino, he began teleporting all over the place, prodding Nidorinos and Nidorinas alike. His Charmeleon would knocked down Nidorinos, embarrassing them but not really hurting them.
Kris, like Jaquie, must have sensed victory. Unlike Jaquie, he had gotten drunk on it.
Jaquie tried to call out to Kris, but either he couldn't hear her or he wasn't listening. The battle had died down enough for Jaquie to risk teleporting in to stop Kris herself. The command to Slowbro was right on the tip of her tongue when her plans were ripped apart by a familiar scream.
Jesse and James were trapped on the apple tree with two Nidorinos fiercely battling at its trunk. James had gotten a firm grip on the base of the tree, but Jesse was lying prone on one of the branches. A Nidorino slammed into the tree. Jesse shrieked. With every slam she jolted further and further away from the trunk and on to the edge of the branch, her weight bearing it slowly downward, closer and closer to the Nidorino's grasp.
Instantly torn from the battle, Jaquie changed her order mid-command. Slowbro teleported her to the tree where her sister was in peril.
Nidorina herded most of the Nidorans into the bushes but there were five or six left mewing in the open. Most of them were crying and howling outright. Nidorina was trying to comfort them and keep them quiet as well as bring the stray Nidorans in and keep an eye on the humans all at once.
The Nidorino who had come with her had been a great help, but now the battle had distracted him. He stared at it, anxiously jumping about.
"Nido. Nidorino, rino!" he yelped. We have to help them.
Nidorina glanced over her shoulder. "Nida. Rina, rina." You're right. But I have to stay with the little ones. You fight. As an after thought, she added, "Nida nida." Use the fire spin we've been working on.
Nidorino nodded. Then, with a cry, he ran into the fray.
. . .
There were days when Karen could tolerate Kris, and there were days when he was an impossible nuisance. This was one of the latter.
Karen tried to get a clear shot at the Nidorinos but Kris kept hopping around like a magician's rabbit on steroids, getting in her way. It wasn't Kris that Karen was afraid of hitting-his suit would repel the electricity-it was Fire Rage. If she paralyzed his Charmeleon, it wouldn't be able to teleport and then Kris would be in trouble.
"Kris, would you just pick some place and stay there!" she yelled in frustration.
"Come on, catch me if you can!" Kris shouted at the Nidorinos, completely ignoring her.
Now there was something alarming happening. Two Nidorinos had stopped chasing Kris and stood, back to back, firing attacks. The trend had caught on and now all the Nidorinos were forming into a tight circle, sending ice and electricity at Kris and sometimes Karen.
"Now look what you've done," raged Karen. "They've gotten organized."
The three remaining Nidorinas followed this example, forming a group and firing at Karen. There was no point in teleporting anymore, so Karen had Maimer build an invisible to block the attacks.
"Oh, so that's the way you want to play it," Kris told the Nidorinos, still high on adrenaline. "I'll show you."
"Kris, don't do anything stupid," Karen warned.
Kris grinned and teleported into the middle of the Nidorinos' circle.
Karen groaned. Great. Now she had to go in and rescue her stupid partner from himself (or possibly kill him-she couldn't make up her mind). She called out her Dodrio and her Rapidash.
Maimer would have to maintain the invisible wall, while Tunneler dug a secret hole towards Kris. Karen would ride Accelerator through that passage, grab Kris, have Tunneler collapse the tunnel, and then beat Kris over the head for being so darn reckless. It was a strategy Karen had used several times before when Kris got into trouble, head beating and all.
While Karen was forming her plan, Kris' Charmeleon had gone into rage mode and so had Kris.
"Come on! You want a piece of me!" he yelled, punching and tackling Nidorinos here and there.
Charmeleon backed him up by throwing fire at all the poison pokemon in sight. While this basic strategy seemed to be working, Kris and his Charmeleon were still outnumbered five to two.
"Kris, would you stop acting like an idiot and get away from there!"
"I can handle this," was Kris' only response.
Fire Rage leapt up to claw a nearby Nidorino. Nidorino pushed him back, and Fire Rage fell to the floor. He was immediately up again, fighting back even more savagely. Only Karen noticed that Jaquie's TTM (the very one that gave it teleporting powers) had fallen to the floor.
"Kris!" screamed Karen.
"I can handle this!"
. . .
"Help! Help! I'm going to fall!"
Jesse clung to the shuddering tree branch She could see the Nidorino beneath her. He jumped, and Jesse could just feel the breeze of his claws. Unsuccessful, Nidorino resumed pounding the tree trunk.
"Help!"
"I've got you," said James. With one hand gripping the trunk, he tried to grab Jesse. The tree shuddered. Losing balance, James clung to the tree trunk with both hands. "Okay, so I don't got you."
"HELP!" screamed Jesse.
Jaquie appeared.
She materialized on Jesse's branch but closer to the base and tried to grab Jesse's suit. But Jesse, paralyzed with fear, held the branch tightly and refused to budge. The tree was shaking and Jaquie was having trouble hanging on herself.
"Dodrio, fury attack," she ordered. "Slowbro, water gun. Nidorino, come here," she yelled out into the crowd.
As her two pokemon attacked the Nidorinos, the tree stopped shuddering. Jesse backed slowly away. Jaquie helped pull her up so that she was able to sit, balancing on the tree branch and using other nearby branches for support.
"Are you okay?" asked James immediately.
Jesse primly dusted herself off and said in an embarrassed, haughty sort of way, "I was doing fine on my own."
Jaquie shook her head slightly and sighed. Jaquie's Nidorino came running in from the heated battle.
"Nidorino take care of those two," said Jaquie, pointing to the two Nidorinos.
He complied, involving the hostile pokemon in a battle far from the tree and Jesse and James. Dodrio was tired so Jaquie withdrew it. She rubbed her forehead.
"James," she said, "do you have your camera?"
Amazingly he did.
"I want you to keep a look out for a certain Nidorina. She's the leader; you should recognize her at once because she's a much better fighter than any of these ones. When you find her, record everything she does.
"I have to get back to that battle-" Jaquie began when a cry interrupted her.
A Nidorino from only a few yards away came rushing by. His eyes locked on the battle. He shrieked again. The remaining Nidorinos heard and all backed away at once, revealing Kris and his Charmeleon in the middle of their circle.
The charging Nidorino twirled his tail clumsily but still managed to form a huge tornado of fire. Slowly gathering speed, the tornado headed for Kris.
"Kris, get out of there!" Jaquie yelled. "Teleport!"
Kris and Charmeleon just stood there.
Jaquie shouted again and disappeared.
Jesse and James watched as spinning flames hit. The tornado of fire whirled in the center of the Nidorino and flared brightly. The fire cackled. Then, slowly it faded away. Nothing remained of either Kris or his Charmeleon. Jesse and James stared, aghast.
"What happened?" James said. "Did they disintegrate?"
The view from the tree was excellent, and had Jesse and James looked in the right direction, they would have seen Jaquie, her Slowbro, Kris, and his Charmeleon teleport to the bushes near where they had started off.
They would have seen Kris, his suit only slightly charred, angrily trying to get back into the fight. Jaquie restrained him, and the two exchanged harsh words. In the end, Kris sulkily withdrew his Charmeleon and sat down in a huff. Jaquie teleported away.
If Jesse and James knew where to look, they would have seen Kris slowly slither towards the discarded backpacks, making his way to the remaining weapons. But Jesse and James weren't paying any attention to the bushes.
They were too busy watching the Nidorinos attack Karen.
. . .
Accelerator sped through the tunnel. "Run, run, run!" Karen yelled.
Kris was in trouble. She'd seen the tornado of flame moving toward him, knew he couldn't get out. She had to save him. Just then, Dugdrio burst from the ground and told her the passage was ready. Karen was already on her Rapidash.
"Move!" she cried.
Accelerator's mane lit the dark tunnel. Shadows flickered as they raced. Karen gripped the fire horse's warm fur.
Too late, her mind kept telling her. The fire will have got him by now.
She gritted her teeth. Sunlight was pouring through the tunnel. Rapidash burst out of the ground just as the last embers of the tornado fizzled away.
Karen blinked. Where was Kris? Where was Fire Rage?
The Nidorinos blinked. What had happened to the male human? Why was this female human now here?
Karen was left with the feeling of a knight who had stormed into a castle to rescue a princess only to realize the princess was gone and, in the storming process, the knight had awakened the dragon.
Muttering how she would murder Kris, Karen ordered Accelerator back into the tunnel. It almost worked. While most of the Nidorinos had frozen in surprise, one remained charging.
Nidorino hadn't stopped running after he had thrown the fire spin and didn't care if it was a male human or a female human he hit as long as it was some human. As the Rapidash turned back for the tunnel, Nidorino leapt. He slammed into the female human and knocked her off the horse.
Karen fell hard onto the ground. Nidorino was on top of her, attacking. Karen instinctively blocked, then used a practiced martial arts move to thrust her opponent away. She sat up and twirled to her feet.
The Nidorinos had regrouped and prepared for an attack. Karen grabbed a pokeball and released her Electrode.
"Explosion, flash!" she ordered and the Nidorinos were temporarily stunned by a dazzling ray of light.
Karen tried to back away, only to practically bump into the three Nidorinas that had been attacking her before. Electrode tried to shock them, but it was a weak attacker and the Nidorinas jumped all over the poor electric pokemon.
The situation was not looking good. Karen was an expert of defense and escape, when her pokemon were with her. But now her main ones were all at the other side of Maimer's barrier, stupidly waiting for Karen's orders.
Suddenly, Jaquie's Dodrio came running into view. It nimbly scooped up Karen and frantically flapped its wings. While it was probably a miracle enough that Dodrio could actually pick her up and fly, it didn't really improve the situation. Karen and Dodrio hovered five feet into the air, not moving in any direction.
In short, they were easy targets.
Jaquie, thought Karen, as the Nidorinos and Nidorinas aimed attacks at them, I hope you have some brilliant plan ready.
. . .
It was not one of Jaquie's better days.
She had ordered her Slowbro to use a complicated swing teleport, which meant that they basically jumped into the fire, picked up Kris and his Charmeleon, and jumped back to the bushes so fast that Jaquie didn't even get singed. That in itself had tired Slowbro out, but she still had more work for it.
First she took care of Kris. She told him, in less pleasant terms, that she was tired of having him pull crazy stunts and from now until the end of the battle he was to stay there and not move. To say the least Kris was unhappy about this, but he eventually did what she said, and she gave him no further thought.
She didn't have time to, because by then, Jaquie had noticed Karen's predicament. She called out her Dodrio and sent it to pick up Karen.
No, Jaquie didn't have a brilliant plan-at least not what she would call brilliant. But she did have an idea of what to do. One thing Jaquie had learned as a trainer was that poison pokemon were weak to ground attacks, while flying pokemon were immune to them.
Jaquie called out her last pokemon, a combination of rock and ground.
. . .
Kris finally reached the weapons. Jaquie was a fool not to let him use them. Especially when Karen was in danger. Carefully, he picked up a bunch of bombs then searched around for a flamethrower.
. . .
"Earthquake," Jaquie ordered. Ryhorn stomped the ground, causing a deep rumbling reaction. The earth began to quiver and shake. The Nidorinos and Nidorinas fell and fell onto one another. Rocks jolted loose from the ground.
Karen, safely in the air felt none of it. Jesse and James, far from the battle felt none of it. Kris, slinking stealthily for the weapons, felt none of it. The lead Nidorina, still with the babies and away from the group, felt none of it. But the attacking Nidorinos and Nidorinas were thrown back and forth on and off the ground, bruised, battered, pained.
Jaquie looked at her Slowbro. "Okay. Your cue is coming up."
. . .
When Jaquie told Nidorino to take care of the two attacking pokemon, Nidorino knew well enough that she meant to get them away from the tree first. So he fired a hyper beam that sent the two Nidorinos flying into the bushes halfway across the field. Then he followed.
They tried to attack him, but Nidorino backed away, luring them further into the forest and farther from Jaquie. For all he knew these pokemon could have been raised in the forest, but it didn't matter; Nidorino was an expert at battling in environments.
He attacked one Nidorino, then retreated into the leaves. Attacked another and retreated. Over and over until the two Nidorinos were so paranoid they huddled together, bristling at the leaves, listening.
Nidorino jumped into the middle of them. Jabbing, scratching, double kicking, throwing attacks everywhere, the Nidorinos didn't know what hit them. They were so flustered that they attacked anything they saw, and Nidorino slipped away and watched as they fought each other. He waited until, beaten and exhausted, they both fainted.
Then he made his way back to Jaquie. Nidorino had barely broken a sweat.
. . .
Dodrio could no longer support Karen's weight. It dropped her. Karen fell easily onto her feet. All around her the Nidorinos groaned and tried to get up.
Karen's Explosion had been on the ground when the earthquake struck. Dodrio could not support the 147 pound sphere and Karen didn't have the chance to recall it. Her Electrode had fainted.
Karen patted it softly. "Good job, return."
"Take out your Ditto," Jaquie ordered. "Have it turn into Slowbro. Then get out of the way."
Karen nodded and obeyed.
Jaquie took a deep breath. Everything was prepared. But she didn't like what she was going to do.
"Slowbro, Ditto," she ordered in a tired voice. "Blizzard."
Slowbro was not an ice type. This attack was difficult for it, even more so because it had used up so much energy in the battle. But it used blizzard. And Karen's Ditto, mimicking Slowbro, did the same.
The air around the field became cold. An icy wind swirled. Ice, ice, everywhere was ice and cold and the already weak Nidorinos could not resist it. The ice covered them in a film of clear blue and there they stood, like strange misplaced statues on the field. Nine of them.
The last of Slowbro's energy had been sacrificed for the storm.
Jaquie smiled. "Thank you, Slowbro. Return."
. . .
The camera was still rolling. It panned on the ice statues, then focused on Jaquie.
"She did it!" exclaimed James. "Your sister beat them!"
"Well of course she did," said Jesse as though the outcome was obvious. "What did you expect? She is my sister."
James put down his camera and stretched. "It's all over."
Something caught his eye.
"Uh oh," he said, bringing his camera back up. "Maybe it's not."
"What do you mean?"
"Remember the leader Nidorina Jaquie told us to look out for?"
"Yeah."
"I think that's her over there." James pointed. "And she looks mad."
. . .
Mad wasn't a strong enough word to describe the outrage and torment she felt. Nidorina had finally gotten all of the Nidorans into the bushes and had convinced them to keep quiet. By the time she turned back to the battle, there was nothing left. Just all of her troops, her friends laying frozen on the ground in their agonizing poses.
Nidorina stood there, alone, her heart cold with hatred. Visions of revenge floated in her mind. She realized with startling clarity that it was up to her now to defeat these humans. She realized she was up to the challenge.
These cruel humans may have been able to take down an entire army of newly-evolved, peace-loving Nidorinos and Nidorinas, but she was another matter. Not only was she an experienced fighter, not only was she the top graduate in her military school, not only was she a brilliant strategist, but she was angry now. Angry beyond description.
Her brave friends and soldiers would be avenged.
With a yell, she attacked.
