Chapter II: The Hunt of Meowth
Later the same day, a Meowth was walking the streets of Viridian. That wasn't such a big deal, even though most Meowths preferred to walk the streets at night, but this one was special. For starters, it walked on two legs instead of the usual four. Even more unusual was that this Meowth could speak human tongue perfectly. Well, almost perfectly. He was also a member of the notorious criminal organisation known as Team Rocket, usually stealing other people's Pokémon for a living. It might seem odd that a Pokémon was stealing other Pokémon, but Meowth reasoned that it was no worse then some of the things human's did to each other, and it was all business for him anyway. Today, however, Meowth was in a bad mood. For several months he and his teammates, Jessie and James, had been trying to get their hands (or paws, in Meowth's case) on a particularly powerful Pikachu belonging to a kid named Ash Ketchum. Each try to apprehend the Pokémon had somehow failed, and finally Meowth had had enough, called them both a couple of morons and left Team Rocket HQ. He was currently heading down the street without really knowing what to do next. He still wasn't ready to return to his friends.
Suddenly he noticed a large mass of people next to the Pokécentre, looking at a piece of paper that someone had put up on the wall. Most of them seemed to be Pokémon trainers. Meowth went up to one of them.
"What's goin' on here, kid?" he asked.
"Some Pokémon trainers encountered a mysterious, unidentified Pokémon in the forest," the trainer said without looking down. "They said it was very powerful and used attacks they had never seen before." He suddenly realised that he was talking to a voice that came from his knees. He looked down. "Hey! You're a Meowth!"
"Yeah, wanna make someting of it?" Meowth said and grinned as he showed him his claws. The trainer, who probably had experience in the pain claws like those could create, sweatdropped and backed off. "Oh, no thanks. I'm just a bit surprised to meet a talking Meowth, hehehe! Oh, and that reminds me, the trainers that meet that unidentified Pokémon said that it could talk just like a human."
"Is dat so?" Meowth said. Deep within his mind a scheme had started to form. Pokémon were not greedy creatures by nature, but Meowth had spent so much time trying to be as human as possible that he had developed several personality traits normally only found in humans, and greed was one of his specialities. "An' what kind of Pokémon was it, yous said?"
"Some sort of cat-like Pokémon," the trainer said. "There is a picture of it on the wall over there."
A talking cat-like Pokémon? Meowth started to think that it all felt a little creepy, but his curiosity was almost as great as his greed and he hurried to push his way through the crowd. "Outta my way! Let Meowth through!" he said and finally reached the wall. He looked up and studied the image. It was obviously made after directions by a person who hadn't seen the creature personally, but it gave a pretty clear picture on what to look for. The Pokémon on the image looked mainly like a Meowth, but with white fur and without the oval coin in the forehead. It had much longer ears that ended in three purple spikes. The long, snake-like tail ended in three similar spikes, and the front legs were covered with tiger-like fur. It had long, vicious claws on the paws. Over all, Meowth found it both interesting and a bit scary. Maybe it was a relative to his own race. But it did not matter much. Meowth had now devised a plan. If he could catch this new Pokémon, and then give it to Giovanni, the boss might forgive them for their constant failures to steal Pikachu, and maybe even give them a raise. Perhaps he would even finally get rid of that awful Persian so that Meowth could take his place as the boss' favourite. Maybe…
A girl standing next to him interrupted Meowth's daydreaming. "It says here that Officer Jenny doesn't want us to go after it until they have determined if it's aggressive towards humans."
"Who cares?" a boy said. "I'm not staying here when my ticket to fame and fortune is running around out in the woods, just waiting tofor someone to catch it!" There was a murmur over the crowd, proving that most trainers shared his point of view. So did Meowth. He knew that he had to act in haste, or someone else would get it before him.
Stepping into an ally, he quickly went through his supply of hardware. "Let's see now. Club, bombs, handgrenades, net, brase knuckles, knives, guns, bazooka, rubber chicken, dynamite… Oh, here it is!" Seemingly out of nowhere he pulled an Ultraball out. "I knew I was gonna need dis one day!" he grinned. "Now I only have ta find dat Pokémon and catch it before da other losers do!" He wasn't sure exactly how he was supposed to catch it, especially if it was as powerful as they said it was, but he was confident that it was nothing a set of sharp claws, an even sharper mind and a truckload of outrageous cheating couldn't fix. There was no time to lose, so he bolted out of the ally towards the forest outside the town.