Chapter 21: Big Trouble in Little Celadon, Part 2
(High Stakes Stakeout)

Briggs was growing irritated. Kepler had been inside the cabin for a very long time, interrogating Bill. Torturing him, more likely than not. Briggs hated waiting. Especially when he had to be so close to the sea. Briggs hated the sea.

He stood now, leaning against the door to the cabin, the cold, salty air blowing past his massive frame. Phaeton was a yard or so away, sitting on a rock, his dark cloak just barely reaching the grass that waved in the wind. He whittled while he waited, deftly handling a short, curved blade that looked very much like a large claw, peeling away strips of wood from a block and slowly revealing the figure whose shape it would soon take.

"You'll never finish that thing." Briggs' voice broke the silence between them, a low grumble. It carried the heavy sound of a threat, even when none was intended. "I've known you a year, Phaeton. You always carry it, you always work on it, you never finish it." Briggs uncrossed the large arms that were over his chest, and gestured with a sausage-like finger to the wooden sculpture in his companion's hand. "What's it supposed to be anyway?"

Phaeton worked on. He didn't lift his head or open his mouth. His fingers continued to whittle, unperturbed by the personal intrusion. A year of working together was hardly incentive to share information about oneself, especially with an oaf like Briggs.

A whisper of cold wind blew past. Briggs shivered. Winter was coming, soon it would start to snow. Briggs hated the snow.

A knock came from the door he leaned on.

"We're done here" came the sound of Kepler's drawl from behind the wood.

Briggs stepped aside, allowing the knob to turn and the door to open outward. Kepler's boots crunched as they pressed into the grass and his eyes immediately fell to Phaeton whittling on the rock.

"Why don't you throw that garbage away, and carry something valuable in your hands instead?" Kepler's volume increased as the sentence came to its end. The whittling angered him. It was pointless work.

Phaeton's knife immediately stopped its rhythmic stripping of the wooden block, and was sheathed in a flash. The half-finished statuette was pocketed, and without looking up, Phaeton outstretched his hand palm-up. He felt the weight of a cold, metal cylinder fall into his hand, and his deft fingers instinctively closed around it.

"The Silph Scope" Briggs breathed. Kepler nodded.

"Just one step closer."

Phaeton examined the device. It resembled a flashlight, with a lens instead of a bulb at one end. The metal felt painfully cold in the winter air, and Phaeton pocketed the Scope before addressing his superior.

"And what of the Master Ball?"

Kepler's dark eyes locked eyes with the subordinate's icy blue ones. "A myth, apparently. William claims no such device was ever built." Kepler didn't sound convinced. Phaeton definitely wasn't.

Briggs shrugged at the news. "It makes sense. Silph would've mass-produced it if it did exist, or at least advertised it if there was only one. A ball that catches anything without fail?" The large man scoffed. "Almost as believable as those Pokémon of legendary power."

In a flash, Kepler unlocked his eyes from Phaeton and attacked the heavier man behind him. In the blink of an eye, Briggs was pressed against the wall of the cottage, his commanding officer's bony elbow pushing dangerously into his throat, as if he were being constricted by the Arbok that Kepler carried around his belt.

Kepler hissed, his fury breaking through his teeth like a potent venom. "You don't believe in the legendary Pokémon? Have you forgotten what we're hunting?!" Briggs gasped for air, his hands flying to his throat and desperately trying to pry off Kepler's icy fingers.

"If I hear any words of doubt about the beasts strength from your filthy mouth again…" Kepler pressed harder. Briggs' face was beginning to turn blue. "…then I will make personally sure that it rips apart every fiber in your worthless body."

Briggs fell to the ground on his palms, coughing and sputtering. Kepler breathed heavily, then turned back to Phaeton, who had quietly drawn his whittling knife to arm himself in the event that Kepler had redirected his rage elsewhere. There was a pause as Briggs regained his breath and the burning in his throat subsided.

"We're going to Celadon" Kepler said ominously. "The boss will be waiting."

As the trio walked away, their cloaks whipping around the in the wind, Phaeton glanced through the window of Bill's cottage. The man's crumpled body lay inside. Phaeton looked inside long enough to see Bill's chest rise, drawing breath. Once he saw Bill was alive, Phaeton released his grip on the hilt of his short knife. His icy blue gaze followed the path of his commanding officer and the larger man beside him, still struggling to breathe normally through the frosty air.

Kepler hasn't crossed the line just yet...but I'll be ready when he does.

Leaf and I stepped up the creaking wooden stairs that led us out of the tunnel and into the basement of an apartment building. Greg followed behind us, guiding us up the stairs. Marcel the Mr. Mime and the game corner patrons who were attacked stayed in the safety of the cavernous room below. Greg had decided to show us the state of Celadon for ourselves, and we offered to help where we could.

As we ascended the stairs, Greg spoke to us from behind. "Hangin' out on street level ain't the best idea right now. I'm takin' you to my apartment, quiet and out of the way."

The apartment building seemed to be in rather poor condition. Rusted, peeled, broken, and generally dilapidated in every sense of the word. Graffiti overlapped with itself on the stony walls, whose layers of paint are long gone and likely not soon returning. The rails of the stairs were splotched and crusty with patches of rust that flaked and fell apart at the touch. Damn, even the rust is old…Greg noticed my looking around and chose to comment. "It ain't no 5-star hotel, son. I'd even say that little cave we got goin' on below gives better living conditions than this place."

The stairs we climbed continued to spiral upwards. Several times, I noticed Leaf visibly disgusted and horrified at the state of the place. "This…this is worse than a prison…" she said.

"Aye", Greg responded "That much is true, and don't I know it."

"How can people live here?" she asked.

Greg's only response was a shrug.

The rest of our climb was silent. We reached a door, finally, marked as A704, into whose grimy lock Greg slid a matching key, and pushed the door inward on its hinges. Surprisingly, the inside of his apartment was much more pleasing to the eye than the stairwell of the building in which it was located. Not lavish, but tidy. Greg indicated with a beefy finger to a pair of chairs by a table, one spindly and wooden, the other a large and cushioned armchair.

"It's alright, I'll stand" I said, when Leaf looked at me quizzically, wondering which of the two of us would take the wooden chair, as Greg had already dropped his massive body into the other.

"So why did you want to come up here anyway?" he said, half grumbling.

"We want to help" Leaf and I both responded at once, almost as if one voice.

Greg seemed amused by our response. "And how in the world do you think you can help." It wasn't a question.

"We're trainers, skilled ones too. We can help you take back your Game Corner, and then clean up the rest of the city of the Rockets" I said. I felt awkward commenting on the situation, since I only had the bare minimum amount of knowledge about what was actually going on with the villainous gang. It felt even more awkward calling myself a skilled trainer, but I knew that I had to convince Greg that it was true, or my journey would have ended right there in the dilapidated apartment building in Celadon City.

Greg seemed to consider my offer. "What do you got with ya?" he said, gesturing toward my belt lined with Pokéballs.

I had to think about it. I wasn't really keeping track of who was with me and who wasn't, but after a few seconds of retracing my captures, I remembered. "An Ivysaur, a Butterfree, a Golbat, a Gyarados, a Diglett and a Growlithe".

"Not bad." He said, nodding slightly. "And you?" he said, turning to Leaf.

"Wartortle, Vulpix, Eevee, and Spearow" Leaf said nervously, almost too quickly. "He's far better than I am" she added, pointing to me. "He has Badges to prove it!"

The comment seemed to agitate Greg, as if it were insulting. "Let me make something really clear to ye both" he leaned forward in his chair. "Your badges don't count for nothin'."

An uncomfortable pause followed.

"How…I…what do you mean?" I said, losing my composure. I worked hard for these; I'm not going to let some fat oaf tell me they're meaningless.

"How'd you get them badges, boy? You won 'em, right? Yer first gym battle nobody even saw, so we don't know how good you was or whether ya even earned it. Yer second was against some girly who doesn't know the first thing about Pokémon. And yer last one nearly killed a man. You don't even got a badge from Surge, do ya..."

I felt myself breaking out in cold sweat.

"The gym badges are symbols of a trainer's strength. They're prizes for passing tests of power, of your will. You win them through perseverance 'n' fortitude, not by attacking your challenger, or by going up against someone with less experience than you. All your victories are flukes, so them badges pinned to your jacket don't mean a thing."

I was growing mad at his accusations. Not because they were offensive, but because they were true.

"You didn't win 'em right, boy, so yer badges don't mean nothin'."

That did it. Before I could lash out and do something I would regret, I left. I turned out of that room and walked right out the door, slamming it behind me. I heard Leaf call after me only after the door crashed closed behind me. I didn't go back into the tunnel. I couldn't even if I tried; the stairs were far too well hidden. Instead, having nowhere else to go, I went into the snowy streets of Celadon.

Bill slowly regained consciousness. The world blinked back into existence, and the interior of his cabin materialized around him through the fog of venom that was being filtered from his blood.

I'm lucky to be alive he thought.

Kepler's interrogation of Bill ended only partially successful. The Silph Scope was gone, but Bill had managed to protect a far more valuable item.

Bill rose from the ground and stumbled over to his desk. The drawer he kept the Silph Scope in used to be locked, but not anymore. The lock itself lay on the floor, pierced through the middle with a single enormous fang, damaging the interior mechanism beyond any repair. Bill picked up what remained of the lock. The metal was hot to the touch, as if the acid of the Arbok's venom literally burned it.

I'm VERY lucky to be alive Bill reconsidered. But now it's time to put that life to good use and fix this all.

Bill turned his attention to the computer. The monitor flashed to life from its sleep mode, awakening on the last screen Bill was on, before the Rocket intrusion. The screen was a spreadsheet of DNA markers of the Eevee species, each labeled for their known role in the Pokémon's evolution. Most of the markers were labeled as unsubstantiated, several were plausible, and only handfuls were likely. Bill's latest project was to isolate these markers and manipulate them independently to induce new "Eevee-lutions", as he had begun affectionately calling them. But for now, this project had to be put aside.

The spreadsheet was minimized and replaced with the interface for a video phone. Bill spoke into his computer screen.

"Call Oak" he spoke clearly and concisely. The telephone numbers on the screen lit up as they autodialed the number of the Professor, and the other line began to ring. After two rings, the call was answered.

"Bill! It's so good to hear from you! How long has it been?" Professor Oak seemed genuinely delighted to be talking to an old colleague, but this was not the time for pleasantries.

"It's good to see you as well, Professor, but I can't waste time. I have to leave for Johto immediately, but I need to share some information before I do."

The Professor seemed taken aback. "Um, by all means, Bill. What happened?"

"Team Rocket is amassing its resources. They want something, and they want it badly enough to make house calls. They've been doing their research too, it seems. They just took the Silph Scope from me and not without cost to my health." Bill was starting to hyperventilate from the excitement of narrating his story.

"Bill, Bill, slow down!" The professor was shocked by the news but continued to listen intently.

"I can't slow down; I need to leave as soon as I can, to protect myself. I'm going to my family in Goldenrod City. Listen Professor, The Rockets were asking about the Master Ball, I'm pretty sure they're looking for it, and decided to start with me, but I didn't give them any clue about where it is. I'm pretty sure it's still where I last left it."

"How can you be sure?" The Professor was entirely drawn into the conversation at this point. The resurgence of Rockets in a way that is actually threatening is enough to arouse Oak's otherwise very busy attention.

Bill scoffed. "I don't think he would throw away a gift like that, even if he isn't sure what it does. The important thing is that the Rockets are willing to invade and injure to get it. You of all people should be aware of that."

The Professor nodded solemnly. "I'll keep that in mind, Bill. Was there anything else you needed?"

"Yes, I need to contact Red. Do you have any idea where he might be?"

The Professor shook his head. "I've lost contact with him a few days ago. I assume he's somewhere around Vermillion City or the periphery, since that's where he was last."

Bill cursed to himself. "The first thing I'll do when I get to Johto is design a mobile phone" he grumbled under his breath.

"What was that?"

"Nothing, nothing. If I record a message for him, will you be able to send it to him?"

"Of course" said Oak, "Go right ahead"

There was a click as the Professor pressed a button with a large red circle on his keyboard, and the screen flashed with bright red letters. RECORDING.

Bill took a deep breath, realizing he was about to share a secret only two people in the world knew. He began to speak. "Hi, Red. I hope this message finds you well. I have something very important to tell you…"

I ended up at Greg's Game Corner by complete accident. I didn't have a clue where I was going; I couldn't have. Celadon was a very large, practically labyrinthine city, currently being drizzled in a flurry of snow. The cold was astonishingly quick, and within only seconds of walking outside of the apartment building, I could feel cold hands clutching at my chest, as if I were back in Pokémon Tower in Lavender Town. Visibility was roughly 5 feet in front of my own nose…not that I was looking in front of me. My gaze was directed at my own feet for most of the time I was storming through the streets and alleys, kicking over anything that was upright to release my pent up frustration at Greg's systematic shredding of the only accomplishments I had. Part of me wanted to unpin the badges from my jacket, and throw them into a snowy drift, never to see them again. Another part of me restrained itself from doing so, hoping against hope that Greg was wrong in what he said.

And yet another part still thought that, even if he was right, I had a chance to redeem myself. After all, another Gym Leader was waiting for me somewhere in Celadon right now…hopefully one who would battle me as a gym battle should be.

With all of these thoughts blowing through my mind at twice the ferocity of the snowstorm, I had no idea where I was going or where I had been. But something brought me right in front of Greg's Game Corner, the brightly lit casino and bar whose dazzling neon lights were only a few of the ones around still lit, the colors scattered by the blizzard in all directions. I knew there were Rockets inside, but the place seemed fully operational and entirely undamaged. Even the glass door that Greg had said was broken in the assault seemed good as new.

The Rockets must be trying to make it look like nothing happened.

I definitely wasn't prepared to assault, nor spy on, a posse of Rockets. I hated Greg for what he had said to me, and I had no intention or desire to help him, but his criticisms of me were not as high on my list of priorities as taking care of the Rockets.

You can figure out what they're up to, report back to Greg, and get back in his good books. And if you don't, you'll still be getting rid of those bastards. Maybe you'll even learn about the Celadon Gym. Without giving myself time to come up with reasons as to why it was a bad idea, and remembering that icicles were quickly building at the bottoms of my earlobes, I pushed open the doors of the Game Corner and stepped inside.

Bright colors, excited voices, loud ringing, all assaulted my senses as soon as I had crossed the threshold. There seemed to be nothing wrong with the Game Corner; at least, not how Greg described it. There were plenty of excited patrons, seated at the slot machines, dressed in fine tailored suits or lavish cocktail dresses, pulling on the large glowing levers excitedly and staring at the rolling dials that would tell them whether they had just won or lost some amount of their income. Not that it would matter, since regardless of the outcome, they would just spend a little more. I didn't notice myself how long I was standing in the doorway until a woman with long white hair, and a dress to match, approached me. She carried a bright red drink in her hand, and a frighteningly predatory look in her pale eyes.

"Hello there, handsome" she purred, resting a slender gloved hand on my snow-capped shoulder and brushing it off daintily. "You're quite the star to be hanging out in a place like this, aren't you, Mr. Red?"

My nickname suddenly sounded awful when she said it, especially with the unnecessary title in front of it. Whether she was a Rocket or not, I did not know. There wasn't any easy way to tell when they weren't wearing their uniforms. I suspected that the woman at the counter handing out tickets to patrons was a Rocket, and the guards who paced the alleys of slot machines were as well, but I decided to play the fool and improvise as best I could from there.

"What do you mean? Where am I?" I did my best attempt to look dazed and confused, and looking around at all of the bright colors and lights.

"Why, you're in Greg's Game Corner, darling! Only the best gambling facility this city has to offer". She took a long and suspiciously quiet sip from her drink, maintaining eye contact with me throughout. There was a smack of her lips, which were also a dazzling white color, then she said "I know you won't be staying here long. You're a traveling soul and all, but how about you try the slots? On the house!" she added, hooking her arm into mine and pulling me towards the bar.

I continued my charade of seeming lost and confused, but this time I really was. The Rockets clearly recognize me. Why would they want me to stay here and play on their dime?

As we walked towards the bar, I asked her "You...uh, you said this is Greg's Game Corner? Would...um, would you know where he is?"

She gave a laugh. "Away on some business, darling, I'm sure."

"Business? What business would the owner of a gambling corner have?"

I caught the brief flash of fire in her eyes, but she gave another laugh and it was gone. "Oh, how I wish I knew, dear."

The pet names in particular were really starting to agitate me. If this woman was a Rocket, I couldn't wait until I had the chance to defeat her in a battle.

We reached the bar, and the woman in white sat down at one of the stools, knocking against the counter with her gloved hand. Another woman, this one with much shorter and much darker hair came over almost immediately. She wore dark spectacles that covered her eyes, forming a nearly seamless band between the plastic of the shades and the ebony of her hair around her whole head. She wore much less distinguished attire than the woman in white, garbed in what looked like the uniform of a train conductor, complete with shiny golden buttons and a dark, stiff collar.

"Ah, the Gym Challenger!" she exclaimed. Her mouth formed into a bright smile, but I wasn't buying it; anybody who needed to hide their eyes indoors and at night was clearly not someone known for genuine facial expressions.

"I'll start you off with 10 coins, on the house" she said, reaching under the counter and pulling out a handful of large golden coins. She counted out 10 onto the counter and passed them to me, along with a small satchel, presumably to hold more coins in if I won any.

I scooped the handful of coins into the satchel and decided I may as well stay for a little and see how much I could discover. As I turned to leave and find myself an unoccupied slot machine, the woman in white grabbed my arm once again.

"Have fun, darling, and remember, you never know when the next spin is going to be a winner!"

Her words were accompanied with only the slightest hint of a seductive wink, which promptly forced me to exercise my gag reflex. I gave no response to her, thanked the woman at the counter, and left quicker than I intended.

Each of the slot machines seemed to have a motif based on an individual Pokémon. I found one styled after a Gengar, with the three brightly lit slots making up the front teeth of its wide, devious smile. The slots themselves showed three images each in a 3x3 grid. Any line or combination made across horizontal or diagonal lines counted towards the jackpot.

Well, here goes I thought. I put in 1 coin, and pulled the lever at the side, shaped like the Gengar's arm. The slots spun for several seconds while pumping out a loud and very bright-sounding melody. Once each slot had stopped, a dinging sound replaced the music, and 3 cherry shapes lit up on a diagonal. Some coins were then spit out of the machine and into a tray at the bottom.

Lucky me I thought, pushing in another coin and pulling the lever. If this description sounds entirely boring, that's because it was. I was not at all invested in my robotic pushing of coins and pulling of levers; I wasn't even aware of how many coins I had anymore. My attention was devoted entirely to the surroundings. Specifically, the Rockets. Unfortunately, there was nothing immediately suspicious about the Game Corner, except for the obvious absence of its owner. None of the patrons seemed bothered by that.

Wait, all of the patrons are still in the tunnel. They were the ones who were here when the Rockets attacked. So who are all of these people…

I took another look around, still robotically pushing coins and pulling the lever of my slot machine. There was a man only two seats away from me. He, just like me, was pushing coins and pulling levers as if on autopilot, occasionally giving out a cheer of glee or a cry of disappointment. A quick look around confirmed what I had already suspected; the vast majority of the patrons were also Rockets, simply acting and maintaining an appearance of normalcy.

Are they putting on this show just for me? Or is it as long as someone not from their group is here?

I decided to observe the security guards who were browsing through the slots, looking for cheaters. Rather, that's what they would be doing if they weren't Rockets. Instead, they were likely keeping an eye on me, and others like me who weren't aware that they were almost completely surrounded.

The crushing realization hit me soon after the thought itself. I'm entirely surrounded, in enemy territory. I can't make a single move for any of my Pokémon without the Rockets being all over me. I was considering releasing Andrea or Buffy to assist in my spying, and realized that it was far too futile. For every Pokémon I have with me, the Rockets probably have 20 with them. The more I did the math, the more I saw that I was in the middle of a powder keg, ready to explode at any wrong move I made. It was far safer to continue playing slots than to pull any stunts here. At least, not without some backup from Greg later.

As the slot machines continued to ring, I kept an eye out for the woman in white who greeted me. She was nowhere to be found, but her dark-haired companion at the bar was still there, likely keeping me in her sights beneath her dark glasses.

If I leave now, it'll be suspicious, and they'll try to take me out if they haven't started planning to already. I had no choice. I had to stay.

I don't know how long I sat there, monotonously staring at the slots, since there was no clock in the room and no way to track the time. The satchel of large golden coins continued to fill, occasionally stopping when a row of BAR symbols lined up in the slots. When I started to doze off is when I decided it was time to leave. I was there long enough to pass off as a regular patron (well, as regular as my reputation would allow me to be) and I needed to get out and report back to Greg. Rising from my stool in front of the Gengar slot machine, I approached the bar with my satchel swollen with coins. The dark-haired woman at the bar greeted me, but none too pleasantly.

"Finally turning in your haul for the night, huh?" she swiped the satchel from my weary hands and dropped it unceremoniously onto a scale. The numbers fluctuated back and forth as the weight settled and the number read a surprisingly large sum.

Two-thousand seven-hundred and twelve coins.

The woman was shocked. I was shocked too. The patrons surrounding us who weren't absolutely mindlessly drunk or completely asleep were shocked as well.

She leaned her elbows on the bar and looked at me over the rims of her dark glasses. A bright green eye glimmered at me from behind those shades between the strands of dark hair. It was the kind of green you would expect Meowth or Persian to have, or only people who knew the deepest secrets of the world. Such a vivid green color was alluringly beautiful in a deadly way. For a moment, I felt hypnotized.

Get a hold of yourself. She's a Rocket.

"You've got enough coins in there to net yourself a hefty prize" she said to me, reaching over to nab the satchel from the scale and plopping it onto the counter between us. "You sure know your way around the games, champ-in-the-making."

There was an ominous tone in the way she said the word "games". I decided to issue a response; one only she would understand the meaning of.

"I only play to win. There are far more dangerous games here than slots."

There was a strained silence that even the patrons and other Rockets-in-disguise picked up on. It was a threat, and a thinly-veiled one at that. The air was charged with tension as the words left my mouth, as if the powder keg of the Rocket hideout was closer to detonating for the syllables I had dropped. When the dark-haired woman didn't respond, I gave an upward flick of my cap and turned to leave. On the way to the exit, a sign lit up with the words "Prize Corner" caught my eye, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to see what my hours of slots in coins were actually worth.

The prize corner was little more than a vending machine, but without a glass window into its contents. Instead there was another scale-like platform for the weighing out and removing of the appropriate number of coins, and a set of buttons for the prizes of choice to be vended. Among them were some valuable TMs for powerful moves (I still didn't have a clue how to use them) and some rare items. My eyes fell upon the bottom row, which listed Pokémon.

It has been a while since someone was added to the team…

The Pokémon seemed like they were rare and valuable. The small blurbs by their buttons told me that. I read about Scyther, a fierce and agile Bug-type Pokémon, roughly the size of an adult human. And Porygon, an enigmatic creature able to synthesize itself entirely into computer data and travel through cyberspace whilst interacting with digital devices. Every option sounded enticing, but the last Pokémon beat all of the others hands down. The button prompt read:

"Dratini: wield the power of the Dragons. 2600 coins"

That was all the convincing I needed. A few seconds later, my satchel was 2600 coins lighter, and the vending machine dropped in my hands a Pokéball, engraved on the top with a stylized silvery-blue D.

A Dragon!

The only thoughts in my mind were about the legendary strength I had heard about these creatures. The Dragon-type Pokémon were not only exceptionally rare, but also supremely powerful. Both of these attributes were demonstrated by the near-Champion of the Pokémon League, Lance, who is the only individual in the Kanto region to even possess a full team of Dragon Pokémon. And now I held one of them in my hands. I suddenly saw myself up in the ranks of the Elite Four, clashing against Lance with my very own Dragon, which was hidden like a gold nugget in a shady corner of the fallen Celadon City.

Perhaps I was being a bit dramatic and over-excited. In either case, there was only one name I could come up with for what was likely the only Dragon-type Pokémon I would ever possess.

"Welcome to the team, Jupiter."

I had to share my good fortune with my mom; it had been a long time since we talked, and a lot had happened. Lavender Town, most notably. Luckily, the Prize Corner had a videophone just like the ones in the Pokémon Centers just a few steps from the vendor. I pocketed my prize and approached it, tapping in the number to dial as quickly as I could. Only after the first dial did I realize that it's actually rather late and my mother wouldn't likely be awake at the hour. To my luck yet again, she answered.

"Mom, are you there?"

"Hi, honey! I'm so glad you called, I have the most amazing news to tell you!" She sounded very excited, but also on the verge of tears. I think this is an odd quality a lot of people, mostly women, have; being so excited or happy that they start to cry.

"Really? I actually had some great news to share with you too, but you should go first." I wondered what it could be, and my mind began to race, trying to figure out every possible event that could make my mom so excited.

"Well, I don't really know how to tell you, so I'll just spit it out, I guess!"

Nothing in the world could've prepared me for what came next.

"Honey, you're going to be a big brother!"

So how do ya like THEM apples!

Hi guys, I'm back again with another update, and hopefully a good one. I spent a lot of time writing and re-writing and editing and re-re-writing this chapter during my spring break. I tried to recap the Pokemon (who are going to be seeing quite a lot of action soon), introduce some new conflicts, answer a few questions, spring up some more, and add a brand new member to the team.

Be on the lookout for more soon. The Celadon/Rocket Hideout arc was one of my favorite ones during the planning stages of this story, and I plan on completing it before the end of the month (it'll probably go up to Part 4 or Part 5).

Please, please, PLEASE, leave your feedbacks, reviews, comments, and all! I really do read them and consider your criticisms, ideas, and comments constantly when writing. You guys keep me going.

Thank you for reading!

Edit: Some etymologies, since I've neglected to use them for the last couple of chapters

Maxwell (Voltorb): After James Clerk Maxwell, the physicist who first wrote the equations that describe the behavior of electromagnetic waves (AKA light).

Jupiter (Dratini): After the largest planet in our solar system, which in turn is named after the king of the Roman Gods. Since dragon-types are sorta the shit in my version of the Kanto region, I gave him a boss name.

Henry, Irwin, and Greg: I knew from the start I wanted some minor characters here and there similar to Fuji, and I wanted their names to be related. I couldn't change Fuji's name, so I made up three other "old man" names to fit the alphabetic pattern F, G, H, I.

Marcel (Greg's Mr. Mime): I dunno, I guess I just picked a French name. Mimes are a French thing, right? No real story here.

The Rockets:
Kepler is named after Johannes Kepler, the German astronomer who worked on figuring out the movement of the planets.
Briggs is named after Fort Briggs, from FullMetal Alchemist, which I happened to be watching when I came up with the character.
Phaeton (pronounced FAY-tun) was the name of a character from another story I began writing some time ago which never came to light. I liked the name though, so I recycled it and some of the character traits as well, like the eyes and the whittling.
Vega is a reference to the star of the same name. It's one of the brightest in the sky, part of the constellation Lyra.
Echo is just what it sounds like, mostly a reference to the fact that she has a team of Golbats (everyone knows that bats navigate primarily via echolocation, right?)

Aside from that, I just wanted to thank everybody again for reading and for giving me the reviews I need to keep writing. Stay awesome, guys!