Chapter 37: The Berlitz Blitz Pt.2
(A/N: Sorry! New job has made me very busy along with doing my podcast on the LCS for league of legends, and Inazuma releasing in Genshin Impact)… Also a big mistake I made at the end of last chapter. For some reason I wrote Driftveil City when I very much meant to write Veilstone City (ya know… the one in Sinnoh lmao). I was probably thinking of the iconic music from that city when I was writing the city's name down. Anyway, that has been amended in the chapter, sorry for all the readers who were confused by them traveling to Sinnoh but also Driftveil lol. Anywho, on with the chapter hope y'all enjoy this one.)
General
The group boarded the plane to Veilstone City and most of them were once again blown away by the difference of the interior of a private jet vs a chartered plane/commercial plane.
Most of them had gathered for the mission through the chartered planes that Professor Oak had helped arrange. Those flights were already a step up from the typical commercial flight as each member had plenty of space to relax and collect their thoughts on their way to meet up with Red and co.
After the whole team entered the jet, Platina began giving a tour of the jet. Just the concept of having to give a tour for an aircraft gave Red a strong impression of how ridiculous the jet was. Before they had even entered, Red had issues comprehending the scale of the jet as it felt like it wasn't different in length to the S.S. Anne.
There was even more space than Red , large monitors adorning important spots on the walls and what looked like a large gridded table in the middle of the first cabin.
Red stopped Platina before she could continue to the next cabin. "Wait, what is this super large table that looks like it came straight out of a military HQ doing here?" He said in a slightly incredulous tone.
Platina took a glance at it, paused, and then her eyes lit up as she remembered that this piece of equipment did not come standard in every plane out there.
"Oh this? This is the hologram war table for the war room. While officially that's what it's called, we don't actively employ a military force usually so generally this table and the monitors in the room are just good for strategic meetings of any sort. Every device here is linked to our satellite system so it has perfect internet connection, as well as live GPS data of most things that our GPS network can capture. My parents used to like to say that if it was above the ground, the Berlitz family could know about it." Platina said nonchalantly with a little chuckle at the memory of this old family saying.
This time it wasn't just Red that was openly reacting, even the more well off members like Lisia were left with mouths agape.
Blue commented in a confused tone "Aren't the Berlitz's supposed to be a family of scholars?"
Platina was confused by the confusion directed at her and stated "We are a family of scholars, that's why we need to be able to do our research all around the world and track down ruins and mythical pokemon too."
Blue replied with a lukewarm "Oh okay… that makes some sense…"
While that explained some of the extravagant equipment in the room, Red still was shocked by the concept of a civilian family having employed a military force at some point or another.
He didn't want to pry too much more and made a promise to himself to never upset Platina's parents too much for the sake of self-preservation.
Platina continued with the tour of the jet and it turned out that there was a recreation room complete with pool table, PC gaming setups, and a large mini-LED TV with multiple video game consoles hooked up to it.
The next major cabin of note was a sleeping quarters area with multiple rooms (kind of like a fancier version of the sleeping arrangements on long distance trains).
The final major cabin had a long bar counter and what felt like a fancy Izakaya with a fully equipped kitchen behind it. "Chef Sebas is able to make whatever you want here so if you ever need something, there's an app you can use from your phones to custom order whatever sushi, ramen, pasta, dish in general that you're craving. Or you can use any of the interfaces around the plane to access the same features." Platina continued to inadvertently show off the insane setup of her family's jet.
Blue spoke up again "You know… we could hangout in the jet while Red and Platina have to do family meeting stuff in Sinnoh…"
Blue had grown up in relatively less fortunate financial situation, so while she was much better off now, absolute luxury like this was not something she was entirely used to partaking in.
Yellow "Blue, we still have a mission to carry out while they're handling their side of things with Platina's family." She chastised her friend off to the side.
Platina chuckled at their interaction and said "Since Sinnoh isn't too far from Unova, we won't have too many opportunities to use all the facilities, still in the meantime, everyone can feel free to use the jet for the meeting planning until Red and I finish meeting my parents."
While what Platina said was a perfectly reasonable statement on the surface level, Mei didn't let the last part slip past her.
"You mean when you finish the business you have to handle with your parents, right?" She corrected Platina in a gentle but firm tone.
Platina felt the pressure a bit and amended her sentence "R-right, when we finish the business with my parents."
There was a bit of tension in the air before Korrina coughed and said "Alright then… let's get down to the strategy meeting while we wait the few hours out."
Everyone quickly nodded in agreement and they headed back to the main war room.
On their way there, Platina explained that they should change their phones to the Berlitz private cell phone satellite network so they could utilize the mega stone detector app more accurately.
This would also help them sync up to the war room's system which would help them interface with the hologram table.
It would seem that the team members weren't even surprised anymore by the existence of a "Private Berlitz cell phone satellite network" and just wordlessly started changing over from Pokemobile to Berlitz Wireless.
Once everyone had connected over, they received a push notification that asked them if they wanted to download the Berlitz Everythingtm app.
The app ended up having tons of options from room service, to food ordering, to entertainment options as well as the war room control feature.
While some of them were certainly tempted to try out all the other options, for now everyone started with the war room feature.
Inside the war room feature there was an AI powered functionality that apparently allowed for integration with other apps.
Red tried dragging in the mega stone tracker app over and after a few seconds of processing, the AI gave a little success message and put the tracker app's map up on the war room hologram.
With the GPS signal boost from the new network, Red's mega stone tracker application became a lot more precise and what was initially just a directional heatmap-esque tracker arrow became a much smaller circle in Sinnoh.
Platina then requested "Berl, can you show us where exactly in Sinnoh this circle is pointing to?"
Apparently the AI assistant was called Berl and it began to carry out Platina's request.
The location that Berl found for the team was… in Veilstone City.
Not only that, the AI read out that the precise location was likely where the old Team Galactic HQ was based in assuming that the tracking app was functioning properly.
Red didn't know too much about Team Galactic besides the likely fact that they were cooperating with Team Neo. Still this would make the most sense for the culprits to hide out there, with Team Galactic's cooperation or not, this building probably was well suited for such nefarious deeds.
Platina was much more acquainted with Team Galactic and she gave an annoyed sigh.
"I'd like to think they weren't integrated into Team Neo, but honestly it wouldn't surprise me in the least if that group was interested in joining up with them. They didn't really have very… grounded beliefs from the beginning." Platina looked particularly annoyed, probably due to the fact that she didn't think that they would still be operating after the efforts she had made to eliminate them in the past.
"Now that we know where we'll be infiltrating, we can do some more research beforehand, I'll help everyone out with what I know about their HQ. Assuming it hasn't changed too much since the last time I infiltrated it." Platina went straight into planning mode with the rest of the team.
The strategy session went on for the rest of the flight and what was mostly covered was the assumed layout of the HQ, where to best attack it from, and also what Red and Platina would be doing after finishing the meeting with the Berlitz family.
Platina shared what she remembered of the teleporter locations, where the doors were located, and generally what threats to look out for in the building.
Then, as if she had suddenly received a revelation, she remembered that she still had the key for the doors in the HQ stored in her jet's vault.
"Sebas, can you please find the key for Galactic HQ and bring it to the war room?" Platina asked into her phone as she clicked on the room service function on her phone.
In a few minutes Sebas came and presented a key with the Galactic symbol on it.
"With this, we can have the main group infiltrate and disarm as many doors and traps as possible while Red and I… work on disarming my parents." Platina said with an apologetic look on her face.
Before the plan could be finalized though, Red cut in by saying "I think that this is the optimal method to do this if we're trying to be as time efficient as possible so I think that's a well thought out plan in that regard." Red led off with what sounded like a precursor to an objection.
To which he then followed up by saying "The thing is, after the last time we split up at the Tower of Mastery, I was really concerned about the safety of everyone here. You're all my valuable partners and while I know that we can't avoid splitting up for the sake of missions, I think I'd only be comfortable with us splitting up if I'm also already in the operation. That way I can at least help out if something goes wrong."
Red said his honest feelings in as humble a manner as possible, which subsequently threw everyone off in the room. They weren't expecting an objection to the plan in the first place, to top that off, Red was expressing care for them all in a more straightforward manner than they were ready for.
As a result, many of the girls there averted their gaze slightly as they tried to hide their blushing faces and Red was left wondering if he had said something weird.
Crys was the first to recover and she replied by saying "Okay how about we at least get in position and then when you get past the uh… business with the parents then we can infiltrate the HQ from two different directions?"
The others agreed to this idea and with that, the preliminary approach to the attack on the HQ was solidified.
There was a bit more discussion on some of the details including which pokemon to bring, that conversation generally came down to the mega pokemon that they had just obtained and their most reliable members for a sneaky operation. If they caused too much noise it was going to be a bad time.
Luckily, most of the team members there had some experience with infiltrating criminal organization HQs so there was a certain odd air of veterancy among the team members.
As plans were starting to come together, Platina got a notification on her phone from a specific number that she knew well.
They hadn't contacted her in a bit since she had left Sinnoh, but the sender of the message was someone who she wouldn't ever avoid (or think of ignoring).
"Papa" was what Platina had registered her dad under and it would seem that he had sent a message noting that he knew that Platina had taken one of the private jets and was on her way to Veilstone City.
As a result, he was going to come with Platina's mother and come meet for an important conversation.
Platina had no doubt this was going to be about the fiancé talk again so she replied that she would be happy to see them and to choose a location and time for the meeting to happen.
After a few moments, her dad replied with the Grand Veilstone Hotel immediately after she landed, to which Platina replied with an "okay, see you there."
She wasn't surprised in the slightest that this was the location he had chosen, it was actually kind of close to the old Galactic HQ and it was a very high class place that perfectly suited the Berlitz family's image.
No doubt they wanted to have "the marriage talk" there in an appropriately extravagant place.
Unfortunately for the Berlitz patriarch and matriarch, they weren't going to expect that their little girl was going to bring home her first boy ever.
(A/N: I wanted to get this out before August ended but didn't want to cut it short just for the sake of an arbitrary date. Hope y'all enjoyed this chapter, the new company I'm working for will be launching a new mobile game soon so I'm going to be busy again. Wanted to get this chapter out before that launch went live so I hope there'll be a followup in a reasonable amount of time. Let me know your thoughts on the chapter and I hope to see y'all in the next one!)