November 29
Brock took half of a deep breath before stepping into the Briefing Room. The intense bright lights hanging from above didn't faze him; he had grown used to the effulgence of the G-Men base by now.
Sanus sat alone in the middle of the room, hunched over a desk, hands jammed through his curly blonde hair. It took him a few moments to notice Brock in the doorway. "Brock, my boy! Good to see you!"
He stood up and advanced toward Brock with an outstretched hand, his expression as bright as the room itself. Brock reluctantly returned the hand shake, confusion washing over him.
"You seem happy to see me," Brock remarked. He grabbed for a metallic folding chair that leaned on one of the walls.
"Well, I haven't really gotten to talk to you much in the past few days," Sanus responded. "Besides your little briefing yesterday morning, we haven't had much time for a casual conversation, have we now?"
Brock couldn't help but feel uncomfortable at Sanus' cheery demeanor. Sure, he was almost always jocund, but now, when Brock had been called down for seemingly no reason…it felt creepy, almost.
"So, Brock," Sanus continued, "I just wanted to make sure that you're adjusting alright to the whole training thing. Everything going alright?"
The two of them sat back down, Sanus in his revolving chair and Brock in the folding one. Brock took the time to get his first good look at the Briefing Room. Monitors lined the wall in front of him, most of which were blank. A few of them displayed news broadcasts, but Brock didn't bother to stare at them for too long.
A score of wanted posters, lists, and other papers were tacked to the wall on Brock's left. Some of them look tattered, but the ones on top are fresh, their edges-
"Well?" Sanus raised his eyebrows.
Brock looked at him for a moment before blinking in confusion. "Did you say something?"
Sanus' booming laughter returned, reviving the fresh scars of the battle two days prior. Brock flinched in pain, but Sanus paid no attention. "I had asked if you were adjusting to everything alright. Judging by the way you zoned out, I think you're still in shock!"
He gulped before turning back to Sanus. "Yeah, I'm doing alright. I wouldn't call it shock, though. More like disbelief."
"Disbelief at what?" Sanus asked.
Brock shrugged. "Everything that's happened, I guess."
"Care to explain?'
He breathed deeply. "These past two and a half weeks have been laced with crap that I can barely believe. Not only has the entire region fallen to shit, but I've nearly died, like, half a dozen times now!"
His face turned red, and he stood up out of his chair. "To top it off, I've had to watch countless people die, whether they were fighting against me or with me. So many people that I know are either dead or missing, and that includes my parents!" He raised his voice to a shout and slammed his fists on the table in attempt to release his anger. It didn't work. "And now I'm stuck with you guys as you try to take down the Empire somehow! If you don't call that unbelievable, Sanus, then I don't know what is!"
Deep, shallow breaths quavered out of Brock as he closed his eyes and slumped into the chair. Sanus simply stared blankly before grinning a little. "That's the normal response," he countered. "There may be a hint of survivor's guilt in there, too."
Brock stared back with weak, searching eyes. "Is what we're doing right? Fighting back, I mean?"
Sanus leaned back in his revolving chair and breathed deeply. "Lemme tell you something, Brock. Of the thirty four years I've been alive, I've been with the G-Men for eighteen of them. In those eighteen years, I've seen a lot of the same shit that you have. But every time I saw that shit, there was always a reason to fight back."
"But why now, when we're the only ones left standing?"
"Someone has to, right?" Sanus stood up and paced back and forth. "Someone, or something, has to be there to keep darkness at bay. Because what's light without a little darkness?"
"How is that supposed to justify killing, though? Why is it that we can't-"
"Because when you're being shot at, you don't worry about morals!" Sanus shouted. Brock recoiled at his temper, having never experienced it first-hand. "You worry about saving your own goddamn life!"
Brock cast his head toward the floor, fighting to keep the tears of frustration from flowing. "Lance used those same words," he mumbled.
Sanus breathed deeply, flushing the anger out of his body. "It's sort of a mantra around here. It's true, though. You can't think about killing, you just gotta do it. Sorry I-"
"Forget it. What about some of the other regions? Are they doing anything?"
Sanus looked away from Brock and turned to the monitors. "No idea. The regions under Rocket control – Sinnoh, Kanto, Johto, and Hoenn – have been isolated from one another since their respective invasions. As for some of the others – Unova, Almia, the Orange Islands – communications can't be established with them, and even then they're too far away to offer any help."
"So it's just us, then?" Brock asked.
"Just us." The older agent became fixated on a news broadcast, a dimming display in the corner of the room. Three men were kneeling on a cracked and holed-up street, shotguns nuzzled against their heads. Sanus could only continue staring as three gunshots cracked in unison, as the bodies fell to the ground, their skulls as broken as the road they lay on. It may have only been television, but to the two of them, it may as well have happened right there in person.
Brock had to cover his eyes from the television, but Sanus didn't bat an eye. Instead, he turned away from the monitors and back toward his chair. "Algernon and Mara are working on battle strategies, ways that we can pull off a counter-offensive," he rambled. Any hint of remorse or shock in his voice was latent. "For now, though all we can do is wait."
He wanted to say so much, ask a billion questions, but he suppressed them all. "Alright, then. Is that all that you wanted to talk about?"
Sanus grinned. "There was one more thing, actually. I dropped in on your conversation with Kieran a few hours ago."
A wave of curiosity crashed over Brock's annoyance at Sanus' eavesdropping. "How'd you hear that?"
The agent opened his mouth and pointed at the roof, reminding Brock of the microphone bug. Brock internally winced at the pain of having that thing implanted inside him. "Right," he said. "Forgot about those things."
Sanus exploded in a booming laughter once more, but Brock didn't even flinch. "So, you and Kieran are in some kind of a relationship, now?" Sanus asked.
"No! It's not like that!" Brock said a little too quickly. He could feel his cheeks going red, his insides turning over in knots. "At least, not yet. We- well, I mean, uh-"
The agent smirked and leaned back in his chair. "It's alright, lad, I've been there. Hasn't everyone at some point?"
Brock shrugged.
"But there's one thing you should know, however. We're not against love, but we know how dangerous it can be. At the worst of times, it can change people for better or for worse. Usually the latter. Love Kieran all-"
"We're not in love!" Brock defended.
"Let me finish, will ya? Love Kieran all you want, but don't become obsessed with it. Love can do pretty drastic things to a person, and that's the last thing we want for you, is too drastic of a change. Got it?"
He nodded. "I understand. We're not in love anyways, so I guess that can't be too hard. Anything else you wanna lecture me about?"
"Yes, actually. Almost directly above us is a parking garage. It'll be next to the junkyard. In case we ever have to evacuate, there'll be manholes, much like the one you use to get to the junkyard, that lead up to the garage." His playful expression abdicated in favor of a stern one. "We have a bunch of getaway cars up there, if it ever comes to it. You know how to drive?"
He shook his head, prompting a sudden boom of laughter from Sanus.
"None of us do. But if it ever comes to it, we'll learn by doing. For tonight, though, just go grab yourself some dinner and kick your feet back for the rest of the day. You probably need some time alone, too, given the eventful past few days."
He started for the door, but he stopped midway and turned again to Sanus. "You say I need some time alone, but you don't think I'll be alone, do you?" he asked coyly.
"I don't think it, I know it."
Jasper kicked the door to the laboratory wide open, knocking it off of its hinges. The men in the lab snapped their heads wildly, staring at Jasper with a wild, frightful expression. Jasper eyed each and every one of them, looking them in the eyes despite the dim light of the laboratory.
"The egg," Jasper growled. "Where is it? I need to see it!"
A man in the far back, decked in an apron and horn-rimmed glasses, sheepishly raised his hand from the back of the room. "It's back here, sir. In the Containment Pod."
Jasper brushed past the scientists and approached the man, who held a clipboard under his arm. "Back to work, all of you!" he barked. Everyone except for the horn-rimmed glasses man shuffled back to whatever they were doing before he made his grand entrance.
He turned back to the man. "Don't just stand there! Where's the damn egg?"
The scientist, whose name was Edward judging by his name tag, hurried over to a small machine, with Jasper close behind. The executive could only gawk in disbelief at the contraption, which looked more like a microwave than anything else.
"It's just some metal box!" Jasper shouted. He surged toward Edward until he was spitting in his face. "I can't even see the egg in that stupid thing! Are you supposed to tell me that-"
Edward held up his hands in defense, but that didn't stop the barrage of blows to his face. Jasper dealt blow after blow to him, stopping only after he held up a tiny remote. Edward only smiled as he clicked the lone button on the remote, sparking a whirring sound behind the two of them.
Jasper said nothing as he turned back to the machine, gasping slightly when its metal exterior retracted to reveal the egg. Various wires and hooks poked from the egg, which lit up with a faint blue hue.
The executive felt his insides warm up in relief. He extended his hand toward the egg until he laid his hand on it, stroking it with a passionate finger. Suddenly, his anger collapsed to nothing but calmness.
"Sorry about that," he mumbled to Edward.
"I wouldn't touch that if I were you," he said. "We haven't done enough tests to corroborate its stability."
Jasper frowned. "What tests have you done, then?"
"At this point in time, all we've done are tests to pinpoint what species it might be. Every single test has come back inconclusive."
"That can't be!" Jasper barked. "Show me!"
The scientist nodded and started tapping at a screen on the console. A slew of search boxes popped up, and Edward poked at the first one before clicking "Go."
"I'm opening up the data range so that no pokémon is excluded," said Edward. "But when I do that…"
A long list of Pokemon appeared on the screen. Jasper read the first few names on the list before his heart sank. The first result read, "Bulbasaur," the second, "Ivysaur," the third, "Venusaur." The names went in National Pokédex order, Jasper realized, but every single pokémon was listed.
"It's simply giving me every single Pokémon that exists within the database," the scientist explained. He pushed his cracked glasses back up his nose. "That's almost five hundred of them. No matter how much I tinker with the search parameters, I come up with this every time."
But Jasper was beyond hearing now. He could feel everything he had worked for, everything he did to get this egg, collapsing inside of him. "So exactly what are you saying, sir?" he trembled.
"That until we run more tests, there's absolutely no way of-"
Jasper didn't let him finish before knocking him to the ground. "Don't you feed me that bullshit!" he shouted. "I didn't hire the world's most renowned lab technicians for you to fail me now!"
In his anger, he flipped over a table of papers, sending them flying like it a ticker-tape parade. Edward stumbled back several feet away, but that didn't stop Jasper from advancing toward him.
He raised his fist to strike Edward again, but caught the disgruntled looks of the other technicians in the room. "What are you looking at?" he shouted. "Did anyone tell you to stop? Just because I'm beating this poor man to death, does that make it alright for you to stop working?"
A single scientist stepped forward from the pack, tightening his grip on his clipboard. "No one told us to stop," he said. "But I'm telling you to."
Jasper smirked at his bold approach. "Wrong answer."
Lying on a table to his right was a scalpel, its tip bloodied from an earlier dissection. Clenching it with his good arm, he raised it and drove it into Edward's heart. The scientist's eyes lit up with shock, but to Jasper it was nothing more than pain. Everyone else in the room screamed, or ran out of the room, but Jasper lingered and smiled at the dying man's suffering.
He motioned to remove the scalpel from Edward's chest, to stab him again, but a sudden stinging sensation in his neck stopped him. Putting his hand to neck, he gasped as he plucked out an empty Sleeping Syringe, a lone drop of the orange solution remaining in the vial.
Slipping to the ground, the last thing he saw before he fell under was Laina, standing in the doorway, a Syringe gun pointed at where he lay. A single tear rolled down her cheek, for she knew that she failed to keep Jasper in check. The egg had finally consumed Jasper, and it was all her fault. She dropped the gun and wiped the tear away, taking away with it every will to be a Rocket.
Ash fumbled in his backpack for the roll of bandages. The sunlight had been extinguished for the night, and he didn't dare use Pikachu as a flashlight, not when they ran the risk of being seen. He glanced at Dawn and Zoey, cocooned in the only blanket that they had. Pikachu lay next to them, with Dragonite sitting up against a fallen tree, his eyes half open.
His hand chanced upon the bandages after what seemed like hours of searching. Unrolling them, his heart sunk when he saw that he had less than a quarter of a roll left. "Will this even be enough to wrap my leg?" he thought.
He slid his pant leg up to reveal the diminished wound, dried blood only dotting the surrounding area. A massive sigh of relief escaped him when he saw the miniscule damage. The cut from Laina's knife had clotted over. "At least it isn't infected anym-"
"How'd that happen?"
Ash turned his head slightly to see Dawn, her elbow propping her up. Her eyes bugged at his wound.
"It's nothing, Dawn," said Ash. "Just go back to sleep."
Dawn frowned. "Not until you tell me what happened to your leg!" she whispered
"Shh!" Ash hissed. "You'll wake Zoey up!"
"You're being louder than I am right now!" Dawn retorted. "And I wasn't shy about what happened to me, I think that you-"
"I got shot, alright?" Ash snapped. Dawn gasped in horror, her eyes growing even wider. "I'm fine, though. Just don't worry about it. This leg's the least of my worries."
Dawn remained silent as Ash finished wrapping the bandage around his leg. Once he finished, he turned back to her. "And no, we're not gonna die, since you've asked me twice in the past two weeks."
"I wasn't gonna ask that," she said defensively. "I was just wondering about your egg, was all."
Ash said nothing as he lay down on the ground, clutching the grass like a blanket. The uncontrollable shivers took hold of him once more, but he didn't bother releasing Torkoal to keep him warm.
Thirty minutes came and went, but he didn't find sleep in any of them. Somehow, he could still feel Dawn's eyes staring him down, even when his back was turned to her. A quick rotation of the head proved his suspicions to be true.
"Yeah?" Ash asked.
It took Dawn almost a whole minute to respond. "Do you think Brock's okay?"
"No," he wanted to say, "I think that he's dead, because he deserves it for ditching us." He opened his mouth to say exactly this, but stopped himself at the very last second.
"I don't know," he said instead. "Depends on where he went off to. He might not even be in Sinnoh, provided he was able to make it out."
She sighed. "It's just…Jasper made me believe that he had died, along with everyone else."
Ash sat up again, sending a wild Burmy that nuzzled against his foot to hurry off in a frenzy. "None of that happened, remember? It was all just an illusion. I'm sure that he's fine." He said that last part with gritted teeth.
Dawn said nothing and looked up toward the canopy that enveloped them. "How can we know for sure, though?"
Ash shrugged. "We can't, I guess. You just have to feel strong about it. You never know how strong you have to be until all you can do, right?"
He barely saw her nod in the darkness. "I suppose. Goodnight, then."
"G'night." Ash turned away again and lay down, falling asleep even after he felt Dawn's eyes upon him once more.
Brock forced himself to wait until the other agents in the Barracks were asleep before rising from his cot. He would've moved out quickly on his own, but his bare feet trickling against the cold linoleum flooring sent him out into the hallway in a mad dash. He immediately turned right, then made a left down the first adjoining hallway he saw.
"She said left, then right, then the first door on the right," Brock muttered to himself. "But why would Kieran have us meet in a broom closet?"
Caught up in his thoughts, he almost missed the right turn. He backtracked into the correct hallway, finding himself standing in front of the first door on the right. With a small breath of anticipation, Brock lightly grasped the doorknob and pulled the door open before being pulled in by an unknown force. The door seemed to shut on its own, leaving Brock in the pitch-black closet.
"Ow!" hissed a voice. "You're stepping on my foot!"
Brock sighed in relief when he realized that it was Kieran that pulled him in. "Maybe if we had a light, we could actually see what we're doing! You're the one that's trampling over my cast!"
A flashlight blinked on suddenly, revealing Kieran's upper body in the light. She still wore her G-Men uniform, but her hair flowed down her shoulder much more smoothly, a step up from the frizzled mess it normally was.
"This better?" she asked.
"Loads," he replied. "Listen, Sanus knows about the two of us."
He expected Kieran to start worrying, but she only smirked and shrugged her shoulders. "It's not like he'll tell anyone. We're sworn to secrecy about practically everything here." She laughed. "Granted, this'll be more of an unspoken agreement."
She moved in for another kiss, her lips slightly puckered. Unlike last time, Brock didn't even bat an eye. Their lips met, and even in the darkness Brock could see Kieran's eyes light up with excitement. Judging by the sudden butterflies in his stomach, his eyes were probably doing the same.
One kiss became two, and two became several as they held each other in their arms in silence, neither of them desiring to ruin the mood. With each passionate kiss that passed, their grips on each other grew tighter, their breathing deeper.
Brock realized then that of all of the girls that he had met, let alone flirted with, Kieran was the only one that he felt truly happy around. Sure, the other dozens of them were nice, but Kieran…she was different, but in her own way. Not even Croagunk's Poison Jab could efface his newfound feelings for Kieran. "So this is what I get for spending more than three days around someone other than Dawn," he thought.
After almost ten minutes of love-making, Brock finally broke away from the embrace out of exhaustion. "Never made out in a broom closet before," he panted.
"A date's a date, I suppose," said Kieran. "Have you ever kissed anyone at all, even? No offense, but you kiss like a Politoed."
Brock laughed. "Easy on the sarcasm! Maybe it's my first time kissing a girl, but that's only because you're the first one I've ever wanted to do it with. You've beaten out at least twenty nurses, Kieran. I'd take pride in that."
She smiled. "I guess I'm just one of the lucky ones, then."
November 30
Laina frantically shuffled through her pockets with her one good arm in search for any loose change. Finding none, she cursed and cocked her head toward Jasper. She sighed in relief when he saw that he still lay unconscious.
Another look at the grocery bag of belongings that she had assembled prompted her to dump its contents on the adjoining hospital bed. A plastic bottle of water, her Pokémon, a few packets of food, and some spare ammunition rolled onto the bed, clunking noisily as Laina cringed in fear, clenching her hand over Jasper's gun in her holster.
The early morning sun peered in through the lone window, which caused Laina to re-pack with renewed vigor. There was no telling when Jasper would regain consciousness, but Laina didn't want to stick around for that show.
She reached for a first aid kit in a cabinet above her head. "Is this all I'm gonna need?" she thought. "There's only so much I can take with me, especially if-"
A loud moan from behind Laina startled her. She turned to see Jasper, his eyes slowly opening, mouth cracked open. Her mind told her to run, but she didn't budge. In her frightened state, she could only watch in fear as that…that madman woke up.
When his eyes were fully opened, they narrowed on Laina almost instantly. The anger, the sheer fury glazed over his face, but he said nothing.
"I tried to keep you in line," Laina trembled. Her eyes were nearly closed, trying to hold back tears. "But this is just too much. I'm done."
Jasper stared at her incredulously before allowing himself to chuckle. "The Rocket Empire isn't something you can just walk away from, bitch."
"Watch me," she said, pursing her lips defiantly.
His face wrinkled up in rage, and he tried to get up out of his bed. The coarse medical straps kept him down once more. "Who keep using these fucking straps on me?" he roared.
"That was me, this time. Maybe when you decide that killing is bad after all, I'll have someone take those off."
"You can't do this! You can't leave The Empire!"
Laina grabbed her grocery bag and started for the exit. "I didn't join up with The Empire to be the right-hand woman to a murdering psychopath! Doing what I do is one thing, but I'm not gonna stand by and watch you kill innocent people!"
Her hand was on the doorknob when Jasper said, "But imagine the power we can share, Laina!"
Out of curiosity, she sighed and cocked her head back toward her former superior. "What are you talking about?"
Jasper's anger turned to giddiness. "Forgetting about what happened last night, I feel like we're on the verge of a breakthrough with this damned egg! The power that I know it can deliver can, and will, change the world! That's the power I'm talking about."
Laina turned the doorknob again. "Does power matter if you're off killing everyone as you get it?." Without another word, she left the room and exited the building, ignoring Jasper's death threats that followed her out.
