pbPart Six- Kojiro appears!/b
p
pThe last thing i expected when i hit Vermillion was to see a Team Rocket operative. Usually we tried to keep our involvements discreet in this town. The streets were wide and the alleyways were teensy, so no one needed to see us, really. Not for any long period of time. The air smelled like salt, which i liked because it reminded me faintly of Cinnibar island...that was where my sister and i had lived before we'd run away. At any rate, Vermillion was far more prospurous and definitly more alive then Cinnibar. Some guy was selling Sock Mankeys on the docks. i decided to pretend i didn't see him.
pTrying to avoid the Sock Mankey vendor and people selling "Tasty Toasty Tentacool on a stick" i backed towards a lot where some demolition was going on. And i mean DEMOLITION. there was a Machop beating the ground to little teensy peices and some guy standing nearby ordering it around. I tripped backwards over the low fence in that area and fell over it, hitting my head on a rock in the road.
p"Oh, damnit! That hurt!" I levetated up and Psy blasted the rock. It flew on a direct trajectory into a nearby bush. The bush yelped and someone fell out of it.
p"Oh no, not you!"
p"Hi!" Kojiro picked himself up, dusted off his TR uniform and scrambled towards me. Kojiro was also called James by most of our operatives, and usually was out working on odd end jobs with his pink-haired counterpart. I didn't know her real name, we all called her Jesse.
p"What are you doing here?" Seeing Kojiro was a bad thing. It meant that something was going to go haywire, because it always did when either he or Jesse were around. That was why they were only Peon-class members. That was also why they were almost NEVER at the actual base. No one wanted it blown up. They'd already ruined the boss's theme park. Oh well, i'd heard it sucked anyway.
p"I'm investigateing a way to get the Magikarp in the bay to go home." Kojiro explained proudly.
p"The bay IS their home."
p"Oh.." Kojiro blinked and seemed to think about that for an unusally long amount of time. "That explains why nothing is working then!"
pI moaned and slumped a little, gritting my teeth. "Kojiro, please tell me you're joking.."
p"No way! Hey, maybe if i used a really big net.."
p"NETS ARE NOT ALWAYS THE PERFECT PLAN!" i screamed. I think i scared the human. he screamed and fell over.
pHe didn't seem to be going anywhere. I started to walk towards town hall, where maybe i could find something leading up to my sister's past. I glanced over my shoulder at Kojiro. "Heh." He wasn't too smart, but he was kind of cute...in an idiot type way.
pKojiro picked himself up and ran after me. "Hey wait!" he called. I quickened my pace but he matched it. Oh, bugger. "You're a pokemon! Tell me how to get the Magikarp to leave!"
p"I am not a pokemon," i said, somewhat aggitated. Breeder Girl had classified my sister and i as Pokepeople. She also speculated Myuutu was a pokeperson, and that there were others out and around in the world. Basicly a pokeperson was a bipeadal pokemon that showed above-average reasoning skills, and sometimes mastered spoken language. There also had to be a trace of Human in teh DNA, but that came second. Without the Human they were just superpokemon. That is, really smart monsters.
pStopping and blinking in confusion, Kojiro's mouth formed a little "o." i kept walking, and he kept following. "So, where are you going?"
p"Out," i muttered. "Around. Possably Lavender. Possably Cerulean."
p"That's great! That's where i'm going too! There's people in both those towns who are pokemon experts. I'll steal any records on Magikarp they have, then use them to clear the bay!"
p"Kojiro..."
p"What?"
p"Nothing...nothing at all." He wasn't thinking ahead. He would probobly get his hand slammed in a filing cabinete, but that wasn't my problem. HE wasn't my problem. I was on a seperate mission.
p
pbPart Seven- A little bit of this, a little bit of that aaaaaaand....PRESTO! Instant perminant problem...AKA Kojiro.
p/b
pKojiro was leaning on the tabletop, looking pretty bored and not really reading the book on Magikarps he'd found. "Let's get out of here, this is boring," he whined.
pI didn't listen. I was busy looking through old newspaper clippings. So far i'd found a few on the destruction of Cinnibar's labs, and a tape of the broadcast we'd heard while in Vermillion. It was something like i"Attention! Attention: the pokemon lab on Cinnibar Island has been destroyed! While it was not as badly damaged as the ajoining manor where the researchers stayed, all but three rooms were leveled. Casualties are high. Eye-witnesses report the destruction was brought on by a top-secret pokemon experiment named Mew-two. No further information is available at this time, although the local gym leader has locked his gym tightly and will allow no-one to enter. Anyone planning on taking the sea route to Pallet through Cinnibar, please avoid doing so."/i
pBut that didn't do me much good. I needed something more solid, something that i could build on. I wasn't sure what, though. Kojiro wasn't helping at all. I flipped through another bunch of yellowed papers, searching.
pSomething caught my eye. "Hey, check this." I spun the paper and showed it to Kojiro.
pHe looked at it for a minute with minimal intrest. "A kidnapping. So?"
pI rolled up the paper solomly and hit Kojiro over the head with it soundly. He fell forward and smacked his face on the book he was supposedly reading. "Look, dipstick. It was a little kid who was kidnapped. In fact, a couple of them. Who kidnaps around here?"
pHe gave me a blank look. "Us?"
pI hit him again. this time he fell backwards, knocked over his chair and hit his head on the floor. I levetated over him. "No! Idiot! Cheeze and Rice! There's NO ONE who kidnaps around here. That's why this is weird!"
p"What does that have to do with anything, then?"
pI sighed and narrowed my eyes. Was i the ONLY person who could think on logic? "I'm thinking that these kids had to go somewhere."
p"Ah. Good deduction."
p"Shut up, i'm not done." I continued. "I'm thinking that the DNA for my sister and my Human parts came from somewhere. I'm also thinking that the first few attempts at Pokepeople weren't done straight from test tubes. Maybe grafting, maybe something was added to their blood to mutate them."
pKojiro sat on the floor, looking bored again. "Now you've REALLY gone off on a limb..."
pI threw the Magikarp book, and it hit him square in the face. He fell backwards again.
p"OW!"
p"Stop being an idiot. Look at it in the trimmed down version. Cinnibar needs Human DNA, Vermillion looses several kids over a short period of time. They never show back up. Got it?"
pHe nodded enthusasticly. Probobly still had no idea what i was getting at, but at least he wasn't making inane comments anymore. "So, what are you going to do next?"
pI sniffed the air in the library, which smelled dusty and old, kind of like a funeral home. I did not like that smell, it reminded me of Pokemon Tower. "Keep with my original plan. I'm taking the underground tunnel to Cerulean in ten minutes, right after i stop off at the pokemart for supplies. Bill has the most world-wide computer network in the world. I'll patch into it and check Cinnibar's records for anything on these kids."
p"Why are you so interested in these kids anyway?"
pI wanted to hit him again, but i didn't. "They might be able to patch up Soshika's mind. I mean, they are from the same place we were from."
P"You think."
pI hit him one last time, and Teleported outside. Teleporting to Cerulean was just a tad difficult...seeing as with all the weird Psy energy coming out of the caves up there it was risky. Fact was, teleporting ANYWHERE other then a few meters away was dangerous. There was still a lot of fallout from the fight with Myuutu. Any little bit of it could catch me and cast me goddess-knows-where. A botched Teleport was not something i wanted to see.
pHolding the newspaper clipping up in my hand, i wondered if i should have tried to clone it. Nah, the library wasn't gonna miss one peice of paper. Actually, three and a tape but hey! They'd never know. I'd Teleported right around their security equipment.
pThinking about it, i figured that Soshika's Abra should know something about these stories, seeing as Abras were known for visualizeing the past present and future all at once. That was why they slept so much, they forgot if they had slept or were going to sleep. They'd probobly eat a lot too, but they fed off the fat stored in their tails. I unclipped the pokeball from my belt and bounced it on my hand. Should i really risk this? i mean, the Abra might be just as weird as the pikachu, or just as rabid as the Nidoran. Did i want to put up with that?
pOh hell, there was no better way. I tapped the little nexus and Abra materialized in the air in front of me, lev-ing like normal. So far so good.
p"Abra, what can you tell me about these events?" I held up the paper with the Myuutu attack on it.
pAbra squinted, like all Abras, and started to glow green. Oh brother, i figured. Here it comes.
pInstead of something crazy like Abra imploding, i had the story played out vividly in my mind. It was like watching a hollywood reproduction of an event you were in. Like a war movie, but you know it's not all true cause you were actually in the war. It was deffinitly what had happened, but minus a lot of things that should have been there. Example being ME.
pI'd lost an arm in that battle. Thanks to a ton of Hyperspray and a lot of help from Breeder Girl, it did grow back. But it didn't glow blue like the rest of me. It glowed yellow. Most bizzare, but at least i had two arms.
pBut with Abra's retelling, i could fell the pain all over again, felt the blood and saw Myuutu larger then life destroying everything around her. I gasped, but the visualization ended just where the newspaper did. Firetrucks were arriving on the scene, but nothing seemed to be working yet.
pI blinked, back in reality. The little Abra was levetating as if nothing had happened. i was pretty amazed. This was a master-storyteller Abra. Abradbury even. Heh..that was a good pun, i thought. I handed the Abra the tapes and clippings. "Hang onto these. I might need them again. Okay? Back in your pokeball."
pAbra nodded and jumped inside. Weird, i thought. Deffinitly weird, but my favorite of them so far. I clipped Abra's pokeball to my belt and started walking again. I needed some things Skunk hadn't been able to give me. Thanks to these weird pokeballs Stryker's family had been working on called StorageBalls i didn't need a backpack or anything, but stuff like Revive and Hyperpotion you can never have enough of. Maybe i could also pick up a rare candy or two if they weren't too expensive.
pI regarded one of the mint blue and black pokeballs at my waist. It was hard to believe they held enough computer information and shelter and even booby trap material for a whole army. Actually...knowing Skunk had done my packing...no it wasn't.
PWhen i got to the pokemart, which stupidly was on the opposite side of town from the library, i was only slightly surprised to see the bushes conspicously moving to follow me. "Kojiro, what the hell do you want?"
pKojiro stood up from the bush, a bunch of leaves clinging to his hair. "How did you know it was me?"
p"You're the only one stupid enough to disguise yourself as a bush to follow somone. So what do you want?" I was only slightly annoyed. I could always Teleport straight to the tunnel and leave him all confused.
p"Well, i wanted to follow you. You were going to go to a place for Pokemon research. They're bound to know about Magikarp."
p"No."
p"But Mantis, I have to get out of here!" He looked pleading now. What did he do, i wondered.
p"Why?"
pSheepishly he pointed over his shoulder. I looked. This had to be one of the weirdest things i'd seen all day. p
Magikarp were leaping out of the water and flopping on the docks, flailing their fins franticly. Even more jumped onland every minute. The docks were starting to overflow with the dumb fish, and some houses were getting covered. I kicked Kojiro in the shin. He yelped, grabbed his shin, lost his balance and fell over.
p"YOU IDIOT! What did you DO?" I was lev-ing way above him now, my hands glowing bright white with Psy-energy.
p"Well...i thought if i mixed the repel formula with some soy sauce..."
pI groaned. He had to be the stupidest operative Team Rocket had. EVERYONE knew Soy Sauce attracted pokemon, no matter WHAT it was mixed with.
pI probobly would have blasted him with enough Psy-energy to send him over the horizon...but the town was rapidly becoming covered in Magikarp. I decided to get out of there, and i couldn't leave another Team Rocket operative to get caught. The last thing i needed was Jenny on my tail. I levetated Kojiro into the air. He looked really confused to be floating up, but that wasn't my problem for now. I Teleported us to the tunnel, which was far enough away that the Karp hadn't gotten here yet.
pI pointed down the length of the tunnel so Kojiro would have no reason to say he was lost. "Run. That way."
pHe ran. I followed, because i didn't want to be covered in slimy Magikarp. This was a majorly stupid problem, i decided.
p
pbPart Eight- a really short part./b
p
pBill's house was locked. Nice work, Billy, i thought as a snapped the lock in half with a little tweak from my Psy-energy. The door opened without protest.
pThe house was weird. There wasn't a bed or a desk or anything normal. All there was was a computer, and this weird machine. Well, what it did certainly wasn't a mystery because there was a huge sign on it that read "Pokemon DNA Spliceing Device." That was curious.
pI decided to look up a bit on that machine in Bill's computer. Flipping off the Flying Pokeball screensaver, i dug into the files. A log would be in a simple text type document...so that's where i searched.
pBill wasn't to bright, i guess. He named the file "Experiment Log" which was kind of simple to find, seeing as it was straight there on the desktop. I flipped through the file. It read easy, i guess Bill wasn't that old.
p"Log 78: I just got back from my vacation on Cinnibar Island. The Lab there is amazing! They're testing pokemon DNA splicing techniques. I only hope to emulate them now. I do not have the plans for their machines, but i believe mine has come close. I'm hopeful! -Bill"
pHmmm...interesting. I looked over my shoulder. Oh, good. Kojiro was still here. I ran at him, and shoved him into the first machine compartment. The panal slid shut on him, despite his banging on the thing. I grinned, and regarded the pokemon at my waist. I figured that all the weirdness of the pokemon wasn't genetic, so any one of them would be okay. I threw Nidoran's pokeball into the other compartment and watched as the door slid down.
p"Nidoran, come out!" i commanded. It took a second, but soon both compartments had scraping and whining noises coming from them. Aright, good enough.
pI went back to the computer and ran the program there called "Cell Merger." The machine pinged and zinged and zapped...and the doors opened.
pOnly one person stepped out. It had Kojiro's boy shape, but definitly wasn't the normal old Kojiro. Whatever it was, it had large Nidoran ears, and spikes running all down its back. Its hands, too, had small claws. I grinned, this was deffinitly something. Nidojiro turned and looked at me.
p"I wish you hadn't done that." he said.
pI grinned only halfway. "Heh." Screw what he wished. At least now i knew something. Bill had been on Cinnibar at some point, and they'd been experimenting with DNA spliceing there long before my sister and I had been created. "Okay, Nidojiro. I'll splice you back. Get into the tube."
pIn no situation to disagree, the mutant returned to the first tube. I proceeded to run the "Cell Seperator" program. Bill was sure direct in his computer lingo.
pThe machine binged once, and the tubes opened again. Nidoran and Kojiro stepped out, both of them pretty loopy. I recalled Nidoran to his pokeball and watched Kojiro walk straight into a wall. Well, he wasn't too bright but he came in useful at least then.
pHitting the wall must have brought Kojiro back around, because he started complaining. "Why did you do that?"
pI shrugged. "I'm not Human, so the machine wouldn't work on me. I figured you wouldn't protest too much, considering it's obvious i could get you back to normal."
p"Oh." He came over and looked at the computer. I pushed him aside and started messing with his own program connection to the Cinnibar Lab files. The access got banged up about fifteen degrees, which should be enough for me to find what i wanted. I hunted around for anything unusual.
pAh, good. Something simple. The year of the kidnapping rash, about five people had been brought to the lab. The year after that, three were discharged. The files didn't tell about their wereabouts, but they'd been dropped in three different cities.
PI closed out of the computer and sighed. "I wonder what happened to those kids," i said.
PKojiro didn't seem to know what i was talking about. Well, he didn't need to.
pI guess the best way to find them is to hunt around for unusual people. Let's see..." I pulled out the specially made Team Rocket pokedex. It was just plain white, but thanks to lots of research with Dittos, it could conform to any shape or colour. No one needed to know i had it. I flipped it open.
p"J.C.N., search out any kind of rumor on pokemon-people. Hunt out alien lover websites in this search too, they might tie in."
p"Okey-day, Mantis." J.C.N. flashed a lot of weird colours on its screen and binged up with a map. It showed almost all the cities. I gritted my teeth, perturbed. "Manti-sama this is all i got. You want to narrow it down somehow?"
p"Yeah, run a cross check for any kind of witness sketch. If any look like me, Soshika or Myuutu, scratch that city."
pJ.C.N. started searching again. Gradually, dots dropped off the map until only Celadon, Lavender and Pewter were left. I grinned. "Nice work, J.C.N.. I'll get you an upgrade next time we're back at the base."
p"Ooooh thanks a lot! Hey, see if you can get a chip on that little pink bulldog faced monster too, huh? I've been hearing about that thing."
pI shut the 'dex and tucked it into my belt. Kojiro just stared. I raised an eyebrow. "Weren't you issued one?"
pHe shook his head dumbly. Aparently the boss had decided not to waste resources. Nice choice.
p"Oh well, no big loss. Come on, next stop is Celadon."
p
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pThe last thing i expected when i hit Vermillion was to see a Team Rocket operative. Usually we tried to keep our involvements discreet in this town. The streets were wide and the alleyways were teensy, so no one needed to see us, really. Not for any long period of time. The air smelled like salt, which i liked because it reminded me faintly of Cinnibar island...that was where my sister and i had lived before we'd run away. At any rate, Vermillion was far more prospurous and definitly more alive then Cinnibar. Some guy was selling Sock Mankeys on the docks. i decided to pretend i didn't see him.
pTrying to avoid the Sock Mankey vendor and people selling "Tasty Toasty Tentacool on a stick" i backed towards a lot where some demolition was going on. And i mean DEMOLITION. there was a Machop beating the ground to little teensy peices and some guy standing nearby ordering it around. I tripped backwards over the low fence in that area and fell over it, hitting my head on a rock in the road.
p"Oh, damnit! That hurt!" I levetated up and Psy blasted the rock. It flew on a direct trajectory into a nearby bush. The bush yelped and someone fell out of it.
p"Oh no, not you!"
p"Hi!" Kojiro picked himself up, dusted off his TR uniform and scrambled towards me. Kojiro was also called James by most of our operatives, and usually was out working on odd end jobs with his pink-haired counterpart. I didn't know her real name, we all called her Jesse.
p"What are you doing here?" Seeing Kojiro was a bad thing. It meant that something was going to go haywire, because it always did when either he or Jesse were around. That was why they were only Peon-class members. That was also why they were almost NEVER at the actual base. No one wanted it blown up. They'd already ruined the boss's theme park. Oh well, i'd heard it sucked anyway.
p"I'm investigateing a way to get the Magikarp in the bay to go home." Kojiro explained proudly.
p"The bay IS their home."
p"Oh.." Kojiro blinked and seemed to think about that for an unusally long amount of time. "That explains why nothing is working then!"
pI moaned and slumped a little, gritting my teeth. "Kojiro, please tell me you're joking.."
p"No way! Hey, maybe if i used a really big net.."
p"NETS ARE NOT ALWAYS THE PERFECT PLAN!" i screamed. I think i scared the human. he screamed and fell over.
pHe didn't seem to be going anywhere. I started to walk towards town hall, where maybe i could find something leading up to my sister's past. I glanced over my shoulder at Kojiro. "Heh." He wasn't too smart, but he was kind of cute...in an idiot type way.
pKojiro picked himself up and ran after me. "Hey wait!" he called. I quickened my pace but he matched it. Oh, bugger. "You're a pokemon! Tell me how to get the Magikarp to leave!"
p"I am not a pokemon," i said, somewhat aggitated. Breeder Girl had classified my sister and i as Pokepeople. She also speculated Myuutu was a pokeperson, and that there were others out and around in the world. Basicly a pokeperson was a bipeadal pokemon that showed above-average reasoning skills, and sometimes mastered spoken language. There also had to be a trace of Human in teh DNA, but that came second. Without the Human they were just superpokemon. That is, really smart monsters.
pStopping and blinking in confusion, Kojiro's mouth formed a little "o." i kept walking, and he kept following. "So, where are you going?"
p"Out," i muttered. "Around. Possably Lavender. Possably Cerulean."
p"That's great! That's where i'm going too! There's people in both those towns who are pokemon experts. I'll steal any records on Magikarp they have, then use them to clear the bay!"
p"Kojiro..."
p"What?"
p"Nothing...nothing at all." He wasn't thinking ahead. He would probobly get his hand slammed in a filing cabinete, but that wasn't my problem. HE wasn't my problem. I was on a seperate mission.
p
pbPart Seven- A little bit of this, a little bit of that aaaaaaand....PRESTO! Instant perminant problem...AKA Kojiro.
p/b
pKojiro was leaning on the tabletop, looking pretty bored and not really reading the book on Magikarps he'd found. "Let's get out of here, this is boring," he whined.
pI didn't listen. I was busy looking through old newspaper clippings. So far i'd found a few on the destruction of Cinnibar's labs, and a tape of the broadcast we'd heard while in Vermillion. It was something like i"Attention! Attention: the pokemon lab on Cinnibar Island has been destroyed! While it was not as badly damaged as the ajoining manor where the researchers stayed, all but three rooms were leveled. Casualties are high. Eye-witnesses report the destruction was brought on by a top-secret pokemon experiment named Mew-two. No further information is available at this time, although the local gym leader has locked his gym tightly and will allow no-one to enter. Anyone planning on taking the sea route to Pallet through Cinnibar, please avoid doing so."/i
pBut that didn't do me much good. I needed something more solid, something that i could build on. I wasn't sure what, though. Kojiro wasn't helping at all. I flipped through another bunch of yellowed papers, searching.
pSomething caught my eye. "Hey, check this." I spun the paper and showed it to Kojiro.
pHe looked at it for a minute with minimal intrest. "A kidnapping. So?"
pI rolled up the paper solomly and hit Kojiro over the head with it soundly. He fell forward and smacked his face on the book he was supposedly reading. "Look, dipstick. It was a little kid who was kidnapped. In fact, a couple of them. Who kidnaps around here?"
pHe gave me a blank look. "Us?"
pI hit him again. this time he fell backwards, knocked over his chair and hit his head on the floor. I levetated over him. "No! Idiot! Cheeze and Rice! There's NO ONE who kidnaps around here. That's why this is weird!"
p"What does that have to do with anything, then?"
pI sighed and narrowed my eyes. Was i the ONLY person who could think on logic? "I'm thinking that these kids had to go somewhere."
p"Ah. Good deduction."
p"Shut up, i'm not done." I continued. "I'm thinking that the DNA for my sister and my Human parts came from somewhere. I'm also thinking that the first few attempts at Pokepeople weren't done straight from test tubes. Maybe grafting, maybe something was added to their blood to mutate them."
pKojiro sat on the floor, looking bored again. "Now you've REALLY gone off on a limb..."
pI threw the Magikarp book, and it hit him square in the face. He fell backwards again.
p"OW!"
p"Stop being an idiot. Look at it in the trimmed down version. Cinnibar needs Human DNA, Vermillion looses several kids over a short period of time. They never show back up. Got it?"
pHe nodded enthusasticly. Probobly still had no idea what i was getting at, but at least he wasn't making inane comments anymore. "So, what are you going to do next?"
pI sniffed the air in the library, which smelled dusty and old, kind of like a funeral home. I did not like that smell, it reminded me of Pokemon Tower. "Keep with my original plan. I'm taking the underground tunnel to Cerulean in ten minutes, right after i stop off at the pokemart for supplies. Bill has the most world-wide computer network in the world. I'll patch into it and check Cinnibar's records for anything on these kids."
p"Why are you so interested in these kids anyway?"
pI wanted to hit him again, but i didn't. "They might be able to patch up Soshika's mind. I mean, they are from the same place we were from."
P"You think."
pI hit him one last time, and Teleported outside. Teleporting to Cerulean was just a tad difficult...seeing as with all the weird Psy energy coming out of the caves up there it was risky. Fact was, teleporting ANYWHERE other then a few meters away was dangerous. There was still a lot of fallout from the fight with Myuutu. Any little bit of it could catch me and cast me goddess-knows-where. A botched Teleport was not something i wanted to see.
pHolding the newspaper clipping up in my hand, i wondered if i should have tried to clone it. Nah, the library wasn't gonna miss one peice of paper. Actually, three and a tape but hey! They'd never know. I'd Teleported right around their security equipment.
pThinking about it, i figured that Soshika's Abra should know something about these stories, seeing as Abras were known for visualizeing the past present and future all at once. That was why they slept so much, they forgot if they had slept or were going to sleep. They'd probobly eat a lot too, but they fed off the fat stored in their tails. I unclipped the pokeball from my belt and bounced it on my hand. Should i really risk this? i mean, the Abra might be just as weird as the pikachu, or just as rabid as the Nidoran. Did i want to put up with that?
pOh hell, there was no better way. I tapped the little nexus and Abra materialized in the air in front of me, lev-ing like normal. So far so good.
p"Abra, what can you tell me about these events?" I held up the paper with the Myuutu attack on it.
pAbra squinted, like all Abras, and started to glow green. Oh brother, i figured. Here it comes.
pInstead of something crazy like Abra imploding, i had the story played out vividly in my mind. It was like watching a hollywood reproduction of an event you were in. Like a war movie, but you know it's not all true cause you were actually in the war. It was deffinitly what had happened, but minus a lot of things that should have been there. Example being ME.
pI'd lost an arm in that battle. Thanks to a ton of Hyperspray and a lot of help from Breeder Girl, it did grow back. But it didn't glow blue like the rest of me. It glowed yellow. Most bizzare, but at least i had two arms.
pBut with Abra's retelling, i could fell the pain all over again, felt the blood and saw Myuutu larger then life destroying everything around her. I gasped, but the visualization ended just where the newspaper did. Firetrucks were arriving on the scene, but nothing seemed to be working yet.
pI blinked, back in reality. The little Abra was levetating as if nothing had happened. i was pretty amazed. This was a master-storyteller Abra. Abradbury even. Heh..that was a good pun, i thought. I handed the Abra the tapes and clippings. "Hang onto these. I might need them again. Okay? Back in your pokeball."
pAbra nodded and jumped inside. Weird, i thought. Deffinitly weird, but my favorite of them so far. I clipped Abra's pokeball to my belt and started walking again. I needed some things Skunk hadn't been able to give me. Thanks to these weird pokeballs Stryker's family had been working on called StorageBalls i didn't need a backpack or anything, but stuff like Revive and Hyperpotion you can never have enough of. Maybe i could also pick up a rare candy or two if they weren't too expensive.
pI regarded one of the mint blue and black pokeballs at my waist. It was hard to believe they held enough computer information and shelter and even booby trap material for a whole army. Actually...knowing Skunk had done my packing...no it wasn't.
PWhen i got to the pokemart, which stupidly was on the opposite side of town from the library, i was only slightly surprised to see the bushes conspicously moving to follow me. "Kojiro, what the hell do you want?"
pKojiro stood up from the bush, a bunch of leaves clinging to his hair. "How did you know it was me?"
p"You're the only one stupid enough to disguise yourself as a bush to follow somone. So what do you want?" I was only slightly annoyed. I could always Teleport straight to the tunnel and leave him all confused.
p"Well, i wanted to follow you. You were going to go to a place for Pokemon research. They're bound to know about Magikarp."
p"No."
p"But Mantis, I have to get out of here!" He looked pleading now. What did he do, i wondered.
p"Why?"
pSheepishly he pointed over his shoulder. I looked. This had to be one of the weirdest things i'd seen all day. p
Magikarp were leaping out of the water and flopping on the docks, flailing their fins franticly. Even more jumped onland every minute. The docks were starting to overflow with the dumb fish, and some houses were getting covered. I kicked Kojiro in the shin. He yelped, grabbed his shin, lost his balance and fell over.
p"YOU IDIOT! What did you DO?" I was lev-ing way above him now, my hands glowing bright white with Psy-energy.
p"Well...i thought if i mixed the repel formula with some soy sauce..."
pI groaned. He had to be the stupidest operative Team Rocket had. EVERYONE knew Soy Sauce attracted pokemon, no matter WHAT it was mixed with.
pI probobly would have blasted him with enough Psy-energy to send him over the horizon...but the town was rapidly becoming covered in Magikarp. I decided to get out of there, and i couldn't leave another Team Rocket operative to get caught. The last thing i needed was Jenny on my tail. I levetated Kojiro into the air. He looked really confused to be floating up, but that wasn't my problem for now. I Teleported us to the tunnel, which was far enough away that the Karp hadn't gotten here yet.
pI pointed down the length of the tunnel so Kojiro would have no reason to say he was lost. "Run. That way."
pHe ran. I followed, because i didn't want to be covered in slimy Magikarp. This was a majorly stupid problem, i decided.
p
pbPart Eight- a really short part./b
p
pBill's house was locked. Nice work, Billy, i thought as a snapped the lock in half with a little tweak from my Psy-energy. The door opened without protest.
pThe house was weird. There wasn't a bed or a desk or anything normal. All there was was a computer, and this weird machine. Well, what it did certainly wasn't a mystery because there was a huge sign on it that read "Pokemon DNA Spliceing Device." That was curious.
pI decided to look up a bit on that machine in Bill's computer. Flipping off the Flying Pokeball screensaver, i dug into the files. A log would be in a simple text type document...so that's where i searched.
pBill wasn't to bright, i guess. He named the file "Experiment Log" which was kind of simple to find, seeing as it was straight there on the desktop. I flipped through the file. It read easy, i guess Bill wasn't that old.
p"Log 78: I just got back from my vacation on Cinnibar Island. The Lab there is amazing! They're testing pokemon DNA splicing techniques. I only hope to emulate them now. I do not have the plans for their machines, but i believe mine has come close. I'm hopeful! -Bill"
pHmmm...interesting. I looked over my shoulder. Oh, good. Kojiro was still here. I ran at him, and shoved him into the first machine compartment. The panal slid shut on him, despite his banging on the thing. I grinned, and regarded the pokemon at my waist. I figured that all the weirdness of the pokemon wasn't genetic, so any one of them would be okay. I threw Nidoran's pokeball into the other compartment and watched as the door slid down.
p"Nidoran, come out!" i commanded. It took a second, but soon both compartments had scraping and whining noises coming from them. Aright, good enough.
pI went back to the computer and ran the program there called "Cell Merger." The machine pinged and zinged and zapped...and the doors opened.
pOnly one person stepped out. It had Kojiro's boy shape, but definitly wasn't the normal old Kojiro. Whatever it was, it had large Nidoran ears, and spikes running all down its back. Its hands, too, had small claws. I grinned, this was deffinitly something. Nidojiro turned and looked at me.
p"I wish you hadn't done that." he said.
pI grinned only halfway. "Heh." Screw what he wished. At least now i knew something. Bill had been on Cinnibar at some point, and they'd been experimenting with DNA spliceing there long before my sister and I had been created. "Okay, Nidojiro. I'll splice you back. Get into the tube."
pIn no situation to disagree, the mutant returned to the first tube. I proceeded to run the "Cell Seperator" program. Bill was sure direct in his computer lingo.
pThe machine binged once, and the tubes opened again. Nidoran and Kojiro stepped out, both of them pretty loopy. I recalled Nidoran to his pokeball and watched Kojiro walk straight into a wall. Well, he wasn't too bright but he came in useful at least then.
pHitting the wall must have brought Kojiro back around, because he started complaining. "Why did you do that?"
pI shrugged. "I'm not Human, so the machine wouldn't work on me. I figured you wouldn't protest too much, considering it's obvious i could get you back to normal."
p"Oh." He came over and looked at the computer. I pushed him aside and started messing with his own program connection to the Cinnibar Lab files. The access got banged up about fifteen degrees, which should be enough for me to find what i wanted. I hunted around for anything unusual.
pAh, good. Something simple. The year of the kidnapping rash, about five people had been brought to the lab. The year after that, three were discharged. The files didn't tell about their wereabouts, but they'd been dropped in three different cities.
PI closed out of the computer and sighed. "I wonder what happened to those kids," i said.
PKojiro didn't seem to know what i was talking about. Well, he didn't need to.
pI guess the best way to find them is to hunt around for unusual people. Let's see..." I pulled out the specially made Team Rocket pokedex. It was just plain white, but thanks to lots of research with Dittos, it could conform to any shape or colour. No one needed to know i had it. I flipped it open.
p"J.C.N., search out any kind of rumor on pokemon-people. Hunt out alien lover websites in this search too, they might tie in."
p"Okey-day, Mantis." J.C.N. flashed a lot of weird colours on its screen and binged up with a map. It showed almost all the cities. I gritted my teeth, perturbed. "Manti-sama this is all i got. You want to narrow it down somehow?"
p"Yeah, run a cross check for any kind of witness sketch. If any look like me, Soshika or Myuutu, scratch that city."
pJ.C.N. started searching again. Gradually, dots dropped off the map until only Celadon, Lavender and Pewter were left. I grinned. "Nice work, J.C.N.. I'll get you an upgrade next time we're back at the base."
p"Ooooh thanks a lot! Hey, see if you can get a chip on that little pink bulldog faced monster too, huh? I've been hearing about that thing."
pI shut the 'dex and tucked it into my belt. Kojiro just stared. I raised an eyebrow. "Weren't you issued one?"
pHe shook his head dumbly. Aparently the boss had decided not to waste resources. Nice choice.
p"Oh well, no big loss. Come on, next stop is Celadon."
p
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