14. The Dawn of a New Team Rocket

After a busy day, with a lot of training and a rematch, Danny and Richard had decided to sleep early and, for once in his life, Danny actually overslept. When he walked into the main lobby, Richard had already finished his breakfast.

"I guess you needed that," he said to Danny, who nodded and yawned, while sitting down.

While Nurse Joy brought Danny breakfast, Richard was looking at the map.

"I suppose you want to continue towards Vermillion immediately?"

"Well we can take a walk around Cerulean before we go, we hardly got the chance to sightsee here. Besides, I heard there were some interesting things nearby."

Richard looked up from his breakfast. "Are you sick?"

He looked genuinely concerned, before he started laughing.

"Danny who doesn't want to rush to the next gym, that's definitely new."

Meanwhile, Danny shrugs his shoulders. He was in a good mood and decided to not let anything spoil it.

So they found themselves wandering through Cerulean City. The fountains they saw, drawing water from the underground lake, were everywhere, and a lot of Pokémon and their trainers enjoyed it. It wasn't a particular hot summer day, but the water was fresh.

Squirtle for one made sure he jumped in every fountain they passed. Every time he did, Charmander looked at him with a questioning look. He would never understand why someone would like to do something like that.

Cerulean wasn't a large city and it didn't take the two boys and their Pokémon long before they were back at the Pokémon Center. When they walked inside, they heard a girl cry.

"She's just gone, Nurse Joy," the girl said. "My poor little Rattata… I was sitting next to it outside of my house. I turned around for a second and she was gone, she's never done anything like that before."

The girl, and Nurse Joy, were sitting on two of the chairs standing against a wall nearby. Joy had her arm around the girl.

"Don't worry, we'll find your Rattata," Joy said.

"Maybe we can help?" Richard asked, stepping forward.

Joy looked up and smiled.

"Danny, Richard, how convenient. This little girl has lost her Rattata. Would you mind going through the city to look for it?"

Both boys nodded.

"Sure! But isn't it a good idea to check the routes as well?" Danny asked, but the young girl shook her head vigorously.

"No she never goes there, she was born with me and has never lived out of the city before."

Danny nodded.

"Don't worry, we'll find your Rattata," Richard said, and the two boys ran out, followed by their Starters.

'Let's split up," Richard suggested. "I'll take the west side; you take the east."

Danny nodded and ran off, letting Beedrill and Pidgey out of their Pokéballs in the progress.

"There's a little girl who lost her Rattata, can you fly over the city to try and find it?"

Both nodded and flew away.

Meanwhile, Richard and Squirtle were searching as well. Under the motto 'more eyes see more', Richard had let Sandshrew out as well.

He walked past a sign that said 'Route 24', and later saw a golden bridge, apparently called a Nugget Bride. It was completely deserted though. Richard played with the idea of crossing, but decided the likeness of Rattata going there was small.

As the three of them walked back into the city, they didn't notice a shady figure following them.

"A Sandshrew is nothing new, but that Squirtle… I don't get the chance of grabbing such a rare Pokémon too often," a manly voice said to himself. "Let's get myself one."

Richard turned around. He had heard someone talk, he was sure of it, but there was no-one around.

"Did you guys hear that too?" He asked his team, but both shook their heads.

"Well then it must be the wind."

In the bushes, where the man was hiding, something sighed.

"You need to be more careful Carl," he whispered to himself. Once Richard was further away he crawled out of the bushes and started following him. Slowly, making use of the shadows the buildings gave him.

As always, patience is rewarded. Carl followed Richard for close to half an hour. Luckily for him, everyone in the city was busy with their own things and they didn't notice the weird figure following Richard. When he crossed a small intersection, he saw Squirtle had stopped and was looking into a narrow street. Richard, who was looking the other way for the Rattata, didn't notice Squirtle had stopped and neither had Sandshrew.

The street was completely deserted, Carl knew this was his chance.

He walked forward, opening a burlap bag. Squirtle still didn't suspect a thing and Carl crept closer. On his toes, he almost looked like a classic villain. Richard and Sandshrew walked on and Squirtle was about to as well, when Carl dropped the bag down on the Water-type, who was too surprised to react.

But Sandshrew heard something, maybe the sound of the bag hitting the ground or the breeze of air that occurred when the bag went down, but it made him turn around. His eyes widened and he pulled Richard's trousers, who turned around as well.

"What is .."

For a second, both men looked into each others' eyes.

"Give me back my Squirtle!" Richard practically screamed, bringing Carl back into reality.

"No way, it's mine now."

Carl turned around and ran off, but Richard went into pursuit. He quickly returned Sandshrew, as the Ground-type would not be nearly fast enough to keep up.

"Give him back!" Richard screamed, while Carl didn't waste energy reacting. He just kept running, past the intersection and he turned left.

But Richard was faster. He kept pushing his limits, haunted by the idea of losing Squirtle forever. The Pallet Town native kept closing the distance between him and the thief, who grew more worried.

Another left, Richard was now so close he could almost feel the bag with his hands.

Carl felt sweat dripping on his face, this was going wrong. He took another turn and could barely avoid running into Danny, who just happened to search there. Richard couldn't avoid his friend and the two fell to the ground.

The thief didn't waste any time and kept running.

"What's wrong?" Danny asked, as Richard jumped up.

"That guy stole my Squirtle," he said, before running again. But he had hurt his ankle in the fall and couldn't keep up. He watched helplessly as the thief got away.

Danny had gotten up and laid his hand on Richard's shoulder.

"I'm really sorry, you would've gotten him if I hadn't been here."

Richard didn't react and felt a tear sting in his eye. This was not supposed to happen.

Danny guided Richard back towards the Pokémon Center, followed by Charmander. Beedrill and Pidgey, who had no success finding Rattata, circled above them. There was no use in trying to find the burglar, instead they needed a plan.

Nurse Joy had gone back to work, as there were still some people coming in with injured Pokémon or people that would like something to eat, but she could see from their faces it hadn't been a success.

She quickly walked towards them.

"No luck?"

"No… and now some guy has stolen my Squirtle," Richard said sadly.

Joy's eyes widened.

"Oh no…"

She sat down in a booth and gestured to the two boys to do the same.

"We don't really have Pokémon thieves in Cerulean, it really doesn't happen at all actually. So the only people that I can think of, that would actually dare to do something like this, would be the New Team Rocket."

Both boys froze for a second.

"I thought Team Rocket was gone?" Richard asked.

Danny nodded slowly. He had beaten them in his game multiple times, but he did not look forward to facing them in real life.

"Well yeah, the old Team Rocket. I'll try to tell you what I know," Joy said.

"So as you might know. Our current champion, Red, defeated Team Rocket's leader Giovanni in a Gym Battle, after which Giovanni disbanded the organization and decided to better his life. But not all the Team Rocket members were happy about that. In fact, some of them grew angry. One of the members, we don't know who, stepped up and said Team Rocket will never die. This person recruited multiple former members and other goons and founded the New Team Rocket, they are like Team Rocket but worse."

"Worse?" Danny exclaimed. "Team Rocket was awful; how can they be worse?"

"They steal Pokémon and sell them on the black-market of Kanto, the place no police can get their hands on. But unlike Team Rocket, they actually kill Pokémon a lot. If a Pokémon doesn't sell, it ends up dead."

Richard felt his stomach turn. He couldn't imagine that faith awaiting Squirtle.

"I won't let that happen…." He softly said, as tears filled his eyes.

At the Cerulean Warehouse, NTR's new headquarters in Cerulean City.

"Shana, I have another Pokémon for you!" The thief, Carl, called out.

Inside the dark and moist warehouse, a woman turned around. She was clearly younger than Carl. The thief pulled off his mask. He wore a completely black suit, complete with a hat. On the sweater, there was a thick 'R'. With red paint, there were two new letters added, a 'N' and a 'T'. The girl wore the same outfit, only did she not have trousers but a short skirt .

"Not bad," she reacted. "What did you take?"

Shana was leading this small fraction of the NTR. There were multiple members, but most didn't come out here. Only Carl did.

Carl reacted enthusiastic. "A rare on this time. A Squirtle in good condition. I snagged it from a trainer."

The thief didn't look older than 30. He was completely shaved, which made a small scar visible on his chin. The woman, Shana, was even younger.

"From a trainer? Have you gone mad! Stealing from a trainer is asking for the police to show up," Shana responded angrily. She seemed panicked.

"Don't worry, no-one even noticed me taking it. Just like with that other rare Pokémon I took," Carl tried to calm her down, but the fact he had to take a deep breath before he spoke did the contrary.

"Carl, you're panting and sweating. The trainer chased you, didn't he?"

Carl shrugged his shoulders. "He did, but he clashed against another kid so I could easily get away. He didn't see where I went."

That somewhat calmed Shana down.

"Fine, put it with the others and let's get out of here."

Carl put the bag on the ground and pulled Squirtle out of it. He looked at the Water-type, who seemed quite angry, turned around and walked away. Shutting the lights as he followed Shana out of the door.

Translated from the Pokémon Language

Squirtle looked around, even though it took some time before his eyes were adjusted to the darkness. Once he could see again, he noticed five other Pokémon. There was an Abra, kept in a box, a Spearow, a purple-Pokémon known as Nidoran, a Rattata and an Eevee. However, this Eevee wasn't brown as most Eevee are, this Eevee was white.

"That must be the rare Pokémon," Squirtle said to himself, as he walked towards the others.

"So they took you as well.." The Nidoran started.

"Then you are doomed," the Spearow said.

"Just stay calm," Abra added.

Rattata walked forward. "They said you are a trainer Pokémon, do you happen to know my trainer?"

Squirtle nodded. "I did, we were out looking for you when they captured me."

Meanwhile, the Eevee remained silent, so Squirtle walked up to it.

"Are you alright?"

Eevee looked up, really frightened.

"What are they going to do to us?"

"You are shiny so you'll be okay," the Spearow snapped. "The Squirtle is fine too, a Starter is worth something as well. For the rest of us, we are just random Pokémon."

"Don't listen to him, they wouldn't capture all of us if we weren't worth something," the Nidoran countered, causing Spearow to make a cynical sound.

Squirtle ignored both and sat down next to Eevee.

"I know my trainer very well and he won't stop until he has found me. We're going to be okay."

"Do you think so?" Eevee asked timidly.

"Yeah of course he will," Squirtle said confidently. It wasn't played, he was absolutely sure Richard would find him.

"Don't listen to him Eevee, it's all downhill from here." That was Spearow again, which immediately caused a reaction from Nidoran, who fiercely disagreed.

"Hey Abra, why are you in that cage anyway?" Squirtle asked, to get the others to shut up.

"They are afraid I Teleport away, or at least from what I've heard. This is a specially designed Abra cage, so I can't Teleport. I'm stuck here," it answered. "But as soon as they open this cage I'm gone anyway, just waiting for them to make a mistake."

"They caught me when I was running through the grass," Nidoran continued. "There were two of them, I couldn't outrun them at all."

Nidoran turned to Rattata, gesturing to share her story.

"I was just sitting next to my trainer Nicole near her house. She looked away for a second and a man grabbed me."

Squirtle slowly nodded. "That's what happened with me as well."

"And how were you captured?" Squirtle asked Eevee, noticing Spearow had no intention of sharing its story.

"They took me from a building, I think it was in Celodon, maybe Celadon?" Eevee sounded really saddened, causing Squirtle to comfort it, but he ended up hugging it.

"I'm afraid", Eevee said.

"You don't have to be, my trainer will be here any minute to save us," Squirtle once again reacted, hoping to calm the Eevee down.

In the Pokémon Center

His trainer was sitting in the Pokémon Center, worried sick and not sure what to do. With his emotions clouding his thinking, Danny was the one making plans right now.

"Maybe I can help?" It was the girl that had lost her Rattata.

"Sure! If we work together I'm sure we can find both Squirtle and Rattata," Danny answered. "I'm Danny and this is Richard."

"I'm Nicole. I'm not officially a trainer yet, but I will be in a few months when I turn 15."

Nurse Joy had sent word out to Officer Jenny, who had sent multiple police officers out in the city.

"I have Beedrill and Pidgey flying over Cerulean City, looking for anything that might indicate where to find them," Danny quickly brought Nicole up to speed.

"But aren't you worried they will be captured as well?"

Danny waved her concerns away.

"They are flying in the sky. Low enough to see clearly but too high for them to be captured."

As they spoke, the automatic doors of the Center opened and Officer Jenny walked in, Cerulean's Jenny that is.

"Can I have a word with the trainers with the stolen Pokémon?"

Danny, Richard and Nicole stood up and walked towards the officer.

"Did you find anything?" Danny asked, doing the talking for Richard.

Jenny shook her head. "I'm afraid we haven't. My men are searching the city as we speak, but we haven't been able to find out where they are located. But we have an inside man inside the black-market organization, and he told me the next meeting will be in two days. That gives us 48 hours."

Danny was surprised to hear about the inside man.

"But if you have someone on the inside, why don't we just go there?"

"That is too risky," Jenny explained. "They would find out before we would leave. The Kanto black-market is a wasp's nest filled with criminals, mafia and other scum. With that comes good security. If they would find out we were planning on raiding them the thing was canceled. We would be putting the lives of the Pokémon in danger, not to mention the life of our inside man, it took us half a year to get him there."

"But what's the use of him if you can't do anything with his information?" Richard snapped.

Jenny understood his reaction, and for once allowed someone to talk to her like that.

"His information has prevented a lot of Pokémon from even ending up there. While we can't take down the black-market directly, if we know where it is we can organize 'coincidental road checks' on the way there. We can't do it all the time, but the times that we do we usually take out ten to twenty bad guys. In the worst-case scenario that's what we could do now."

Richard nodded.

"But first we will continue the search here. We are doing house searches, luckily the people of Cerulean are cooperative. No-one likes a Pokémon thief and they all want us to do our jobs, so that's going really well timewise, but it hasn't given us anything yet. You just stay here so I know where to reach you."

Jenny nodded them goodbye and walked out again.

"Well I guess it's just waiting then," Nicole said, as she sat down again, but Richard had no plans to sit down.

"Let's go," he said to Richard.

"Richard, you heard what the officer said," Danny reacted, but Richard wasn't having it.

"I'm not going to sit around and wait for them to 'maybe' find Squirtle."

Danny hesitated. He wanted to find Squirtle badly as well, he was crazy for the Water-type, but they were given orders from the Police officer.

"What if this was Charmander?" Richard asked.

Without thinking, Danny answered: "I would go myself. You are right, let's go."

And for a third time that morning, the two boys left the Pokémon Center, ignoring Nicole's call to stay.

"So where would a thief hide out?" Richard asked himself. With a clear goal in mind, he was able to think again, instead of sobbing in a corner.

Danny thought out loud: "I would probably go somewhere old and on-used, a place people wouldn't show up but that would also not be too obvious."

They didn't have a city map, but with their walk around the city and the Rattata search, they knew it pretty well. But they couldn't decide where they could hide out.

"Hey, do you remember those warehouses we saw when we first entered Cerulean? They look pretty old," Richard said, which got Danny thinking.

"Yeah, but how do we get there?"

Well the 'how' of it wasn't too difficult. Some people along the way were able to help, some asking why they would even go there as no-one had been there in ages. Richard started hoping more and more.

Once they arrived there, they could see why no-one would come here. The gate giving access to the warehouses was broken and buildings themselves were dilapidated. The scent around them was not too pleasant either.

"It smells like someone died here a hundred years ago, but people forgot to bury him," Danny said, squeezing his nose.

Richard, however, was too focused to even smell a hint of the scent surrounding them. He took a good look at the warehouses, four in total. All of them had a small door to the side, and a larger, garage door that could be pulled up.

The first door was locked, the second one was open but the warehouse was completely empty, aside from a few dusted boxes. Warehouse 3 was locked again and inside Warehouse 4 there was nothing.

They walked back towards warehouse 1. The door didn't seem too sturdy and Danny tried kicking open, which wasn't too hard. Sadly, there wasn't anything inside, aside from a pile of empty boxes.

That meant only Warehouse 3 was remaining. This one had a newer door and the lock was new too, indicating it wasn't as abandoned as the others.

"Let's try to find a window to climb through," Danny suggested.

Translated from the Pokémon Language

"Do you guys hear that?" Squirtle asked, while the other Pokémon were sitting or lying down.

Spearow looked up. "What sound?"

"I heard voices, human voices."

"It's probably our captors returning," Abra sighed, as he turned around to go back to sleep.

Squirtle listened closely, and the more he heard the better it was.

"No! That's the sound of my trainer and his best friend, they've found us!"

The Water-type jumped up, causing the others to look up again.

"They couldn't have found us," Spearow reacted. "We don't even know where we are, now sit down or they will hurt you."

Nidoran seemed to disagree. "Maybe those voices do belong to his trainer?"

"I doubt that," Abra said, followed by a snore. Meanwhile, Rattata and Eevee were just lying on the ground. They didn't want to get their hopes up.

"Aren't you guys happy? You will be free again!" Squirtle said while turning around.

"I have nowhere to go," Eevee complained. "I can't go back to Celadon, all by myself? Besides, I didn't much like it there either."

"Maybe you can come with us?" Squirtle asked and, for the first time, there was a glance of hope in Eevee's eyes.

"Stop making her happy," Spearow intervened. "You're only getting her hopes up for nothing."

Meanwhile, outside, Danny and Richard had gathered several stones, broken things and the boxes from the other storage units to make something they could climb on, as they had found a window on the right side of the building.

Richard went first, but the window was locked as well. He tried to look inside, but it was too dark. This one, small window only let through a little bit of light.

"Can you give me a rock or something? It's locked."

Danny threw a small rock up to Richard, who smashed through the glass on his first try. Inside, he heard some sounds. Maybe people?

"I'll send Pidgey in to check," Danny called.

Richard wanted to go in himself, but without knowing what was on the other side, he allowed Pidgey to fly by.

More sounds came from inside and Richard started feeling more hopeful with the second, as he used the rock to get rid of all the glass remaining, so they could safely get inside.

He was almost startled when Pidgey returned, nodding his tiny head to confirm the Pokémon and Squirtle were indeed there. Richard sighed and felt a lot of pressure falling from his shoulders, while joy filled his heart.

"Are they there?" Danny asked. He hadn't seen Pidgey nod and didn't know.

"Yeah they are!" Richard reacted relieved, starting to laugh while he said it. "We've found them."

He wasted no time climbing through the window and was lucky enough there were some wooden crates to climb onto. He hadn't put his feet down before he was blown away by something. It was Squirtle, very happy to see his trainer again.

Meanwhile, Danny climbed down as well, letting Charmander out of his Pokéball to check out the surroundings. He saw multiple Pokémon, most of them curious to see what was going on.

"What the hell is going on here?"

While they were climbing through the window, Carl and Shana had arrived to check up on the Pokémon. Shana was too nervous to keep them there and they had decided to move them anyway.

Both stepped in, Shana angered, Carl more neutral.

"Put that Squirtle down, it's ours," Shana said.

"Like hell it is. This is my Squirtle," Richard reacted.

Shana turned around furiously.

"You idiot," she said as she slapped Carl. "I told you we would get in trouble if we took trainer Pokémon."

She was angry, but also a quick thinker.

"Okay fine, you can take the Squirtle. My colleague shouldn't have taken it, my apologies. You can go."

While Richard, and Danny for that matter, were a bit shocked by the certain change in attitude.

"We will go, but with all the Pokémon," Richard said resolutely. He wouldn't let any of these Pokémon end up on the black-market.

"Okay kid, you've had your chance. Now we'll take all of your Pokémon," Shana reacted enraged. "A Charmander will sell just as nicely."

Now she also got Danny mad, as he stepped between her and his Charmander.

"To get to him you'll have to get through me."

The NTR member took a Pokéball from her belt.

"That won't be hard."

She pressed the button and a Koffing came out.

Carl, who had finally decided to come into action as well, let out a Zubat to help out.

"Charmander, Pidgey.." Danny started, but Richard stepped forward.

"I'll take this battle. Squirtle, Sandshrew!"

Richard let out Sandshrew again, who was happy to see Squirtle again.

"Let's play a little," Shana laughed. "Koffing use Tackle on that Squirtle!"

"Zubat use Leech Life," Carl ordered.

Richard saw the two Pokémon coming and had a strategy in mind.

"Squirtle jump up, onto that Koffing, and push it onto the ground. Sandshrew use Dig!"

Squirtle jumped onto the Koffing, who was moving forward to hit with Tackle. The sudden increase of weight caused it to lower to the ground, where Sandshrew jumped out and hit it even harder, defeating it with breaking a sweat.

"What!" Shana said shocked, as she saw her strongest Pokémon fall to one attack.

While Zubat had come closer to attack, this sudden course of events had caused it to stop moving.

"Use Leech Life Squirtle!" Carl ordered, knowing Zubat was their last usable Pokémon. "Defeat them!"

"Use Bubble," Richard ordered, and watched as one Bubble was enough to cause the Zubat to fall to the ground in defeat.

Both NTR members were out of moves and had no idea they would be defeated this easily.

"I can't believe your Zubat is that weak," Shana said angrily towards Carl.

"I'm sorry, I should have trained it more," Carl reacted ashamed.

"Well it appears we find ourselves at a stalemate now don't we? You can have the stuff, but we're out of here," Shana turned around, only to freeze when she heard police sirens.

"They sound close," Richard said surprised and Danny laughed.

"I bet it's our lucky day after all, they must want to search here next. We just beat them to it."

Shana turned around, completely out of options her eye fell on the shiny Eevee. She started to make a run to grab the Normal-type, but found Squirtle in her way. The Water-type used Bubble, aimed at her face. She tripped and fell.

Translated from the Pokémon Language

"Not today you won't," Squirtle said.

Eevee ran forward and gave Squirtle a quick hug.

"Thanks for saving me," she said, causing Squirtle's cheeks to grow a bit red.

While they were talking, Officer Jenny and two officers bashed through the door. While the lock was new, it was no match for a lockpicking expert.

"Freeze! You are under arrest!"

They quickly handcuffed Shana and took her away, but there was no trace from Carl.

"How many people were here?" She asked the two boys, who told her two.

As she ordered the officers to look around, she turned towards the two boys with an angered face.

"I thought I told you to stay in the Pokémon Center. Why did you disobey my orders?"

"Squirtle is my Starter Pokémon," Richard answered fiercely. "And I would've done anything to get him back."

"But you two could have gotten hurt," Jenny countered, but couldn't be mad with the two boys. She understood how strong the bond between a trainer and their first Pokémon is.

"Well luckily it all turned out well."

As they talked, Spearow was the first to fly away. As one of the officers opened the Abra box, The Psychic-type simply teleported away. The others stayed.

Jenny took the two boys back to the Pokémon Center. Nicole was overjoyed to see her Rattata again, and the feeling was mutual.

"The Nidoran we'll let go again near the border of the city, that leaves Eevee. Since it's shiny I would've known if anyone here owned it, but I've never seen it before. Besides, a Pokémon this rare would've been reported missing but no-one has."

Richard looked at Eevee and noticed how Squirtle was standing next to it.

"Maybe it will join my team," Richard started.

He kneeled down.

"Do you want to be on my team?"

Eevee looked at Squirtle before slowly nodding. Richard smiled warmly as the took a Pokéball from his belt and pressed it against Eevee, quickly sucking it inside.

Danny and Jenny watched with a smile as he let Eevee out again, who walked up to Squirtle and Sandshrew to really meet her new teammates, she finally had a home.

"Well I'm glad this turned out well, stay safe you two," Jenny said as she walked out of the Center.

With all of that done, the day had already come to an end again. Danny yawned, which caused Richard to laugh.

"Please don't tell me you are tired again?"

"What do you want? I've been on the move all day."

Both boys laughed, but also realized this day could have ended completely different, had they not found Squirtle. Richard shook the feeling and decided to enjoy the sunset, together with his team and his newly captured Eevee.