Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Nintendo owns Pokemon.
Summary: Lance is set out on a mission that may very well destroy what little is left of his sanity....
Giovanni walked slowly down the hallway, listening to his shoes pad softly on the tiled floor. Several squares of light crossed his face at even intervals as he passed each room (actually, they were the holding cells of Team Rocket), but he did not notice them. Persian trotted at his feet, its eyes flickering everywhere and showing its agitation. Giovanni calmed it with a touch of his hand where the head meets the neck and stopped before a room. He peered into the tiny window to see Lance sitting on the bed amongst the wreckage that he had done: torn pillows, blankets...blood on the walls and floors where he had ripped at them. But right at that instant he was sitting calmly, hands folded and supporting his chin. He was staring at the floor, shaking slightly.
Persian growled, letting Giovanni become aware of its uneasiness.
"Hush, Persian. I know what I am doing," he said, looking down at his faithful pokemon.
"Perperr sssian (you say that so often....)."
"Ash got away from Kevin. But that is all right. He doesn't know that," Giovanni said, motioning towards Lance. Persian did not say anything more....but it did not need to. Giovanni turned back to the window.
"Hello, Lance. Feeling better?" he said loudly. Lance looked up quickly in surprise. Instantly, that surprise was dissolved by rage.
"WHERE IS HE, GIOVANNI!!?? YOU BETTER NOT HAVE HURT HIM!!!" Lance bellowed, jumping up and leaping at the door, peering through the window.
Giovanni stared confidently back into those boiling brown eyes.
"He's fine, Lance. A lot like you, as a matter of fact."
"Leave him alone."
"I will."
Lance paused here.
"There's a catch."
"Of course there is a catch, Lance. I'm a business man. There's two sides to everything."
"What is it?"
"You seem very eager to know....." Giovanni said suspiciously. Lance narrowed his eyes.
"I will do what it will take."
"How come you weren't this devoted before? I mean, you did leave him for pokemon...." Giovanni replied, knowing he had struck a vital nerve.
Lance tried to respond....but found that he could not.
"What is the catch?" he finally choked out.
"That's a good boy. Now....you know what my business is, right?"
"Ruin people's lives?"
"Close enough. My business does what any other business does: get what the owner wants. And I want rare and powerful pokemon. And now for the million dollar question: who now has the most rare and powerful pokemon?"
"Me?" Lance asked, sarcastic.
"Yes...but who now?"
Lance's eyes darkened as his mind made the connection.
"That.....Giovanni....is something I cannot...will not...do."
Giovanni rolled his eyes in exasperation.
"Do we really have to go through this every time? It gets rather tiring."
"Where do you even get the gall to ask me to do that?" Lance asked, rather calm. He was disgusted....as if Giovanni had violated some ancient taboo that was older than time itself. Giovanni just smiled amusedly.
"Simple. Get them for me and Ash goes free...unharmed."
Giovanni smiled as he watched the internal struggle play out on Lance's face.
Seeing that he was hesitating, Giovanni went in for another blow.
"Well, if you are going to take this long about it, I will go now. I am scheduled for another.....'interrogating' session with young Ash there...." he trailed off and turned to leave.
"I'LL DO IT!" Lance shouted in horror, not wanting to imagine what Giovanni did to 'interrogate.'
"That was rather sudden. How can I trust that you'll follow through?"
"When have you ever known me to break my word?" Lance asked softly, remembering their conversation when he had been first...volunteered into Team Rocket. Giovanni smiled, but far from warmly. It was the smile of an enemy that had victory in his sights.....a smile of a villain...who had won.
"Good. Tomorrow you head out...to get the Elite's pokemon."
****
Ash munched noisily on his food, staring into the fire with Mewtwo observing curiously from the other side.
"Why do humans enjoy food so much?" he finally asked. Ash looked up at him.
"Gee...I don't know. Don't pokemon?"
"To most of us, food is merely something needed to survive. We do enjoy it....but not so much as humans. I assume it is because you tend to have stronger taste buds than us," Mewtwo replied.
"You're admitting that? That humans have something over pokemon?"
"Oh, Ash, how irrelevant. Taste has nothing to do with the greater scheme of things."
"So? Who cares? We're at least superior to you guys in one way!" Ash cried triumphantly, some food flying out of his mouth.
"And I have noticed that humans tend to put much value in tiny victories...." Mewtwo said bitterly, dropping the subject after that. Ash just grinned at him and went back to eating. Pikachu crawled into Ash's lap while he munched on his pokemon food.
"How long have you had Pikachu?" Mewtwo wondered aloud.
"About...what is it, Pikachu? Year and a half? Two years now? Around there."
"You two have a strong bond that I have rarely seen between humans and pokemon," Mewtwo commented. Ash shrugged.
"Pikachu's my best friend. Can't imagine the world without him," Ash said lovingly, gazing down at his partner in crime.
"Chu pika (Vice versa)."
"Course, we weren't always the best of friends," Ash said. Mewtwo cocked his head slightly....a habit unknowingly picked up from Mew.
"Pikachu hated me at first. But after that flock of Spearows attacked us, we became friends. Right buddy? I tried to get him in a pokeball, but he wouldn't go. Made me so mad. And mom thought we were playing catch," Ash said, laughing lightly at the memory, Pikachu looked embarrassed.
"Your mom seems nice," Mewtwo said after a pause.
"How do you know that?" Ash questioned suspiciously. To Ash, it seemed that Mewtwo actually smiled at that. Though it looked sort of jerky and unsure...as if the muscles were working for the first time.
"You ask a psychic how he knows?" Mewtwo responded. Ash smiled.
"Guess you're right."
"You have your mother on your mind a lot...."
"You messing around with my mind, Mewtwo?"
"You always broadcast your thoughts so clearly that I cannot help but stumble upon them. But if you wish, I will try to ignore them more. I understand that humans have a great need for privacy."
"It's all right, I guess."
"But as I was saying, you have your mother on your mind a lot...but never your father. Why?"
Ash hesitated here, his eyes staring intently into the fire, as if the flames would provide an answer to this.
Mewtwo waited patiently...yet curiously...for an answer.
Pikachu looked up at Ash and frowned, somehow aware of the pain and confusion that was cascading through his friend.
"I....never knew my father," Ash said quietly. Mewtwo cocked his head again.
"Wait...I take that back. I suppose I knew him once...because.... sometimes, I think I hear him. See him. Late at night. When it's dark...and stormy....you know how you can never tell if you are feeling your heart or hearing it? Well, that is how it is with his voice. I can never be sure. But it calms me...tells me that everything will be all right...and that it will all be over eventually. So I must have known him. But that is all that know of him now....echoes," Ash said. Pikachu's frown deepened. He had never known this. Ash had kept the pain inside....all this time....
Mewtwo was not sure of how to respond to that.
"What happened to him?" he managed to ask. Ash shrugged.
"Don't know. He could be anywhere. Be anyone. Often, when I'm in a city, and I pass a guy on the street, I wonder if that's him. Or if that guy knows him. I'm absolutely clueless, to tell the truth. I don't even know his first name."
"But your mother...."
"Refuses to talk about it. I think it causes too much pain for her. So I just stopped asking. Get on with my life," Ash said with a certain finality in his tone that made Mewtwo stop with the questioning. Mewtwo looked at the boy in front of him who stared back through the flames as though he were looking through the fires of Hell....
The Chosen One.
16th in the Pokemon League.
Champion of the Orange League.
Beginning competitor in the Johto League.
Tamer of legends.
Greatest of them all.
Ash.
Who did not know who his father was.
****
Lance ran silently....stealthily through the forest, his black cloak trailing behind him like bat's wings. Low hanging branches tapped him lightly on the shoulder, encouraging him forward while the pricker bushes stood stubbornly in his way, as if challenging him to a duel.
Lance pushed his way through them, though, ignoring them. His mind was focused on one central idea: get the job done. It was mechanical...no emotion was able to force its way through...as if they had been sucked into a black hole. Perhaps they had been.
The forest was unusually quiet, the Pidgeys and Spearows keeping their beaks shut for once....Lance only hoped that that would not raise too much suspicion. People tended to get upset when something out of the ordinary occurred.....
The only real obstacle, however, were the alarms systems. Lance knew where they were and exactly what they did....and Lance was glad for once in his life that he attended that briefing on the systems...and he was grateful that Lorelei had made him pay attention to it.
Lance leaped over sensor beams and dodged cameras hidden up in the trees. The Elite mansion was very well protected....Lance finally came to the edge of the forest, his cloak settling to a mild swirling around his ankles. He crouched behind a large maple tree, studying the situation. The mansion was enormous....with tones of lights both inside and out, emphasizing its grandeur. It would not be that hard to get in....if it had not been for the new guards that patrolled the perimeter with their viscous looking Arcanines and Growlithes. There was even a Scyther accompanying one guards. Lance gulped involuntarily. He had handled many a Scyther before...but now the long curved blades looked far sharper this side of the battle. Lance cursed at the fact that guards had been hired....and he knew that it had been him who was responsible for it. They could not have another Elite disappearance. Lance looked up at the top window, three silhouettes apparent in the golden light. The biggest one fingered a pokeball nervously while one paced back and forth and the other sat tensely in a chair. Lance pushed back momentary sentiments before it got the better of him and went back to his task.
He was forced to wait until the relief shift came in, allowing a few seconds for him to make his move. A few seconds was all he needed. With powerful strides, Lance bounded up to the mansion and made his way up the wall, cracks in the brick providing hand and foot holds. The cracks tore at his fingernails, but he paid it no heed. He needed to get to the roof as quickly as possible. A ledge and a drain pipe made the job easier, and he made it to the roof just as a guard rounded the corner with an Arcanine.
Lance ran across the roof, his cloak concealing him like a shadow, until he reached the kitchen's sun roof. Forcing the window open with a knife, Lance jumped through, sending a shot of pain up his shin bone as he landed on the linoleum floor, but he kept going. He was quick through the pokemon decorated hallways, his feet moving practically by themselves. He could have gone through the entire mansion blind folded.
Lance paused outside the door to the Common Room, as it was called, where guests of the League often stayed. It was open just a crack, and he peered through it.
"Where could he be, that stupid idiot!" Lorelei voiced angrily, rubbing her shoulder.
"I really think that something bad has happened to him," Bruno said softly, gripping the pokeball in his hand. "Officer Jenny is thinking about declaring him officially dead," he added. Lance almost burst at this, but he caught himself.
"What?!?!?!" Lorelei voiced for him. Even Agatha, who had been silent until now, looked surprised.
"Why would she do that?"
"Well, it is the law....and they can't keep searching forever..." Bruno said, stating what he saw as fact. Lorelei looked away, a sense of hopelessness in her eyes.
"What are we going to do?" Lorelei whispered loudly.
"You're going to prepare for trouble," Lance took his cue. All three of them looked up in surprise and disbelief as Lance entered.
"LANCE!?!?!? Where have you been!?!?!?" Lorelei cried out, running towards him...arms outstretched. The coldness in Lance's features stopped her dead though.
"Lance?" she prompted.
"To protect the world from devastation," Lance said dangerously low, walking slowly towards Lorelei, who backed up.
"Lance, what's wrong? What are you doing?"
"What am I doing? I'm being a good father, Prima. Even if it means being a bad friend...." Lance answered, tears filling his eyes. He had been unable to stop them.
Bruno and Agatha rose, sensing a battle.
"Hand over your pokemon," Lance said, choking a little on the words. "They will become property of Team Rocket..." Lance said, a tear falling freely down his cheek. Lorelei was stunned. She had never seen him cry....
"Never..." Lorelei whispered.
"I'm afraid, Lorelei, that you are wrong....Aerodactyl! Dragonair! Gyrados! Dragonite! I choose you! And if they fight.....crush them," Lance said, venom dripping in his voice.
"My God...." Bruno breathed as he pulled out his pokemon along with his friends. "We're going to die......"
The darkness, when it finally came...after an eternity....was a blessing.
Lance felt the tears fall as he gathered the pokeballs from the unconscious and bleeding bodies at his feet.
"I'm sorry, guys. Forgive me someday...." Lance said softly before he left.
But he had to do it.
Lorelei had seen him cry.
And no one sees the dragon trainer cry.