Part 6 : Darkened Home

Chapter 26 : The Third Companion

They silently watched the departing Rocket member, Todd feeling very suspicious, yet not, about what they had just been told. One side of him believed her for no reason at all, while the other just couldn't bring itself to believe what she had told them, opposing the feelings of the first half with cold logic.

"So Brock...it's been a while." Suzie said behind them. Brock turned while Todd continued staring off at the empty sky, wondering how much of Felicity's words had been the truth and how much lies.

"Err...well...y...yeah..." Brock seemed to be unable to find the words.

Suzie smiled. "You haven't changed much, I see."

"Nei...neither...have...have you..." Brock continued is attempts at intelligently replying.

[i]And I thought he was bad around Nurse Joy and officer Jenny[/i] The reflection came to Todd mind as his friend continued making a fool of himself.

"So, what have you been up to?" Suzie asked Brock.

"Well...we...we've been..." Brock started, a moment before Todd decided to answer instead so that they could go somewhere.

"We've been hunting down the rockets. Because they killed one of our friends and kidnapped Ash and Misty. We got them back, but they killed that friend of ours during the rescue." He answered matter-of-factly.

"Team Rocket." She growled. "Them again."

"You've had problems with them?" he asked her.

"Yeah...They want me to go help them with some breeding project of theirs. They've been trying to get me to do that, and trying to steal my pokemon most of the rest of the time."

"But...when did...when did you get all those pokemon?" Brock asked, and Todd noticed from the tome of his voice that he was finally starting to stop acting like an idiot.

"I left to get more experience with pokemon, remember? I decided the best way to do that was to try my hand at becoming a real trainer." She smiled. "So I went, collected pokemon, got some gym badges, that sort of things." she completed.

"Really?" Brock asked in surprise. "How far did you get?" he asked her.

She slowly reached up in one of her pocket and drew a little wallet-like container, then opened it, revealing a set of badges Brock had never seen before. "I collected all the Johto League Badges." She smiled. "Kanto was too familiar a place for me...I wanted to try a more exotic place." She then flipped one of the pages of the containers, revealing a single silver badge, larger than the others, with a flame-like figure chiseled in the center. It was as he watched the strange yet somehow familiar badge that he noticed the strange saphir-adorned ring on her left hand ring finger. It was far from a common sight, but also something everyone in the world would be able to recognize - would it only be because the blue gemstone was shaped like a pokeball. The ring of an official pokemon master. "I also won the Johto League tournament and defeated their elite four." She smiled.

"Is there a thing you aren't good at?" Brock asked, his stunned amazement apparently shocking him back in normal speech pattern.

"I don't think it's talent or any such. It's just that when I want to do something, I'll work really hard to succeed at it. That's what I did with breeding, and I did the same with training." She said, not in a gloating tone, but rather in a simple, normal tone. "Now maybe we could go to the pokemon center to get our pokemon healed? She asked, and Todd nodded, followed by Brock half a second later.

They continued talking as they walked toward the ship pokemon center, though it was mostly Suzie talking about her journey so far, and what she had done. In addition to her Espeon and Vaporeon, she had a dratini as well as a Bellossom, a Jolteon and a Eevee with her.

"I don't know yet if I want a Umbreon or a Flareon for my last pokemon." She added as they entered the center. "I'll have to make up my mind soon, though." She noted as she deposed the pokeballs of her two wounded pokemon on the counter.

"But you haven't told me that much about what you guys have been doing...what's this about Team Rocket and one of your friends being killed?" she asked, her eyes intent. Apparently, she didn't like the news anymore than they had back when they had first heard about them.

"Well…let's see." Todd started telling her the story of how Ash and Misty had been captured, and of how they had all gone to rescue them. How Duplica had been shot and killed during the assault, and how they had sworn to avenge her, hunting Team Rocket ever since. How Misty had disappeared and they had all thought her dead, but how she had later reappeared as Shadow, and how they had all been reunited in Olivine.

Suzie's facial expression changed as she told the story, from outrage to sadness, to pity as she heard of Gary being left alone. It became a deadly smile as she heard of their oath, and a dark frown as she heard of the new group that had raided the Oak lab, disguising themselves as Team Rocket. She looked at them in stricken horror as they told her of Misty's death, and her face was filled with sorrow as she heard of how Ash had reacted to that death. It changed to horror again as she heard of Shadow and what she had done, and outrage as the final act of the tragedy unfolded, the revelation that someone had taken control of Misty and had used her as a weapon.

"If I had the guy who did that with me right now…" she muttered under her breath. "Well, I don't know about that guy, but what I know is that I'm going to help you guys get back at Team Rocket." Her face was now deathly still.

"Are you sure?…It's…dangerous…" Brock stated, and though his voice seemed hesitant again somehow it appeared to Todd as if the hesitation came more from not being very willing to oppose Suzie rather than his usual shyness around girl, as if what Suzie had told her recently had relieved him of that.

"Which is why I should help. I *am* a pokemon master, after all." She countered, and Brock grudgingly admitted that she would probably be the one less in danger of all of them.

With her help, their planning proceeded quickly, especially once she pointed out that Espeon was apparently very good at tracking someone's particular mental wavelength. All they would have to do would be to move around and asks her Espeon to track the wavelength of Felicity – provided they could track her down while on the ship so that Espeon could get accustomed to that particular wavelength. As soon as the psychic Pokémon located its target, finding the Rocket headquarters would be as simple as taking a stroll down the street.

It was only as they got off the ship, three days after their chance encounter with the three rockets that Brock, Todd and Suzie managed to locate the trio again, going down the ramp just ahead of them. Suzie called out her psychic pokemon as discretely as she could, hoping that the three of them wouldn't notice, and apparently they didn't, because none of them reacted. The psychic Eevee stared at Felicity for a long moment, then nodded and Suzie recalled her just as discretely They had her now. Of course, she would get away from them here, but they would catch back with her later.

As they walked off the ship and toward the local pokemon center hoping to get a place to rest at for the quickly coming night, they went back to talking about what they had each done during the time since they had been away. Brock told them that he had taken some time away from Ash and Misty, though he seemed very reluctant to tell about where he had been or what he had been doing at that time, only mentioning that it was something he preferred not to think about. He explained about his return to Pallet only to hear of the trouble Ash and Misty were in at that point, and about his decision to help the two of them – an easy decision.

The discussion on that topic then somehow turned to what Todd had been up to, and especially how he had captured his dragonite, which was a topic he was rather reluctant to discuss, because of some of the things that had happened, especially in the last few days of the mission he had been on.

"Well…it all started a few days weeks after I left you guys" he explained to Brock. "Professor Oak called me and asked me to help him on some research project of his" he continued. "He wanted to get a few pictures of Pokemon, and decided it was best to ask me for that...Anyway, he sent me to pokemon Island..."

"THE Pokemon Island - you mean, that trainers-banned island with supposedly Pokemon of each and every species..." Suzie interrupted in an awe-struck voice.

"That island, yeah. Though as far as we could see, there's only something like 60 different species there, give or take a few." He replied. "Though admittedly, there are some pretty interesting pokemon there - Dragonite, I caught a brief glimpse of what I think almost seemed to be the legendary birds - Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres, though seeing as they are supposed to live in the Falangir Islands, I don't see how that would be possible..."

"They definitely live in there. Ash and Misty told me about having a run-in with them in that vicinity last summer." Brock confirmed. "Back when there were all those weathers problems..." he added and both Todd and Suzie nodded.

"Well, anyway, maybe it wasn't them, or maybe they were there for whatever reason, but it looked like them." Todd continued. "Quite a few Lapras, Gyarados, that kind of thing..."

"Must have been interesting..." Suzie commented, while Brock looked at him suspiciously.

"Sounds like you're hiding something...there was another rare pokemon you aren't talking about?" He asked shrewdly.

Todd looked at his friend in silence for a moment. He would have liked very little more than to tell him, but there was no way he could do that, seeing as he had been told repeatedly by the team or researchers which had hired him not to talk about it to anyone.

"I...can't tell you...I'm sorry but professor Oak and his colleagues told me not to talk about it...You can ask HIM if you want..." He replied finally, trying very hard to keep himself from blurting out the secret. "I really can't talk about it..."

"Oh, I guess it's all right." Brock shrugged. "It's not like I need to know that stuff."

They continued walking down the old stone-paved streets of the great port city toward the pokemon center, finally reaching it just in time to take the last three room available. Surprisingly, Brock did not behave stupidly in front of the nurse, unlike what he usually did. Glancing at Suzie, Todd could make a few guesses as to what was keeping him from doing so, but they were only guessed, and quite possibly unfounded.

They left the next morning, heading north-west toward Celadon where Brock was planning to visit Erica to update her personally about the recent events and see if she had any clues to give them.

_________________________________________

They had spent three weeks fruitlessly walking on the road, first the five days from Vermilion to Celadon, where Erica had been unable to help them, then the three more days from there to reach Saffron, where Sabrina had been equally unable to help. Then, it had been two more days to Cerulean where Misty's sister had proved just as clueless about the situation as any of them.

It had then taken them three more days to reach Pewter, where Brock had insisted that they should stay for an additional day so that he could spend some time with his family, then three more to get down to Viridian. Now, after yet another two long days of walking, they were finally about to reach Pallet, where they were planning to start investigating again, after checking with Professor Oak if he had received any information from Ash's group.

Suddenly, as they were still a few hours away from Pallet, Espeon, who had been walking besides Suzie for most of the way, stopped, and turned her head sharply toward the left, as if she has spotted a familiar mental signature. They immediately headed through the threes in that direction, finding a rickety old cabin after a short while of wandering.

"That's not their headquarters." Todd commented, though she only half-listened.

"Doesn't look that way at least." Brock nodded, then picked up one of his pokeball. "Zubat! I choose you!" he whispered, sending out the tiny bat-like pokemon. She flew off to the window of the old cabin and looked in, then flew back toward them after a moment.

"Where there any rockets in there?" Brock asked it, getting a nod.

"Do you think it was their headquarters?" Todd added, this time getting the tiny creature to shake her head.

"I wonder what it is..." Suzie muttered, looking at the building and wondering what was going on there.

"Let me check." Todd whispered back before carefully creeping closer to the cabin, to the point where he would supposedly be able to hear what they were saying. He listened for a while, then came back as silently as he had gone.

"Looks like either they knew we were going to listen in on them today - which I doubt - or else that Felicity was telling us the truth the other day...it's a bunch of Rocket and they talk about attacking their headquarters. Which they said were about a day's walk from here." He whispered to them as he crept back.

"The question is, what do we do now?" Brock asked.

"I say we go back to Pallet first to see if the others found anything and tell them about what we found, then keep an eye on these guys." Suzie said after a few seconds of quick thinking. The other two nodded, and they slowly headed out of the forest ahead.

Chapter 27 : Storms Warning

"Felicity, Ralph, Jessie, James. I'm glad all of you managed to come..." Damian started, looking at the four Rocket agents. Felicity and Ralph had been two of his fathers most trusted lieutenant, and he had never had any doubts that they would follow. Jessie and James, Ralph had mentioned as being disgusted with the new path Team Rocket was taking. Though with their track record, Damian was not inclined to trust them very much, when Elayne pointed out that fighting against Team Rocket they had a very good success rate, he had been forced to give in.

"I've already told all of you about the situation, so now we need to plan out what we are going to do." He added.

"Well...first off, we all agree that we have to get Giovanni out of there." Felicity pointed out.

"Definitely. Logically, they'll be keeping him out of sight, and that would be the old dungeon. Almost no one uses that anymore." Elayne added, looking at their various maps of their headquarters.

"Yeah. We all stopped when Giovanni killed that bastard father of his." Ralph confirmed. Of them all, he was the oldest rocket member, being thirty, a rocket member for fifteen years. Felicity, at twenty five, had been with the team for ten years, while Damian, Elayne, Jessie and James were all recent members.

"Questions are, how do we do that, and what else do we do?" Elayne pointed out.

"We take the guys who did that out, and we..."

"And how do you propose we do that?" Damian interrupted Ralph in a bitter tone.

"Why don't we just let the police deal with the whole thing?" Jessie asked suddenly, and as Damian turned toward her to point out that this idea was idiotic, Elayne interrupted him.

"You know, that idea has merit..." she said thoughtfully. "We get in, find the records, delete the names we want to keep under wrap, and then let the records "accidentally falls in the hands of some government guy."

"You know Damian...she got it right...alone, we can't do much to Team Rocket, but if we do that trick, we'll be able to get rid of all the members who joined just for money and keep the members who know what Team Rocket really is about." Ralph admitted. "And those here, of course."

"That plan got real possibilities...most of those Rockets we would be getting rid off are the people Giovanni had been planning to send on those kamikaze raids anyway." Felicity nodded.

"All right. So we get the records, get my father out of here, and if possible get those bastard who replaced him out too." Damian agreed with them finally. "Next is, how do we do each of that?" he asked.

"Well, I say we split in 3 groups. One to get Giovanni out, one to get the records, one to get the two bastards." Ralph slowly replied.

"The groups are obvious, but who go on what job?" Elayne asked him curiously.

"Jessie and James sneak in to get Giovanni out. They're good at sneaking." He pointed out first. "Then I think you and Damian should take care of the records, while Felicity and I take the two idiots out of the way." Ralph explained quickcly, and Damian nodded. Now that they had a plan, it would be easy to strike. "Ok, so, when do we strike?" he asked, hoping they could do so as soon as possible.

"I think we should all get as ready as we can before we strike...it's not going to be an easy job." Felicity pointed out. "We'll want to be as well-rested as we can..." she added ."And most of us only just got here."

"Good point." Elayne admitted. "Three days from now?" she asked them, and slowly got all of them to approve.

"Well, three days it is then." Damian grudgingly gave in, though he wanted to get his father out as fast as he could.

_________________________________

Brock lead them as they walked in the quiet Pallet town, Suzie half a step behind, and Todd further back, looking to make sure that no one was after them. After all, there was always the possibility that someone knew they had been listening in on the strange gathering of Rocket agents. The sun was already low in the sky as they reached the small town.

"Brock!" The yell came from the street, and he looked ahead to see Ash, Misty and Gary running toward him.

"Hey! What are you guys doing here?" he asked them in surprise. "Weren't you in Olivine?"

"Well, we ran in Jessie and James, and..." Misty started then stopped suddenly, staring beyond Brock. "Who...?" she said, her face surprised at the appearance of a companion she didn't recognize.

"It's Suzie, remember her?" Brock gently reminded her.

"You mean, the one from Celadon?" she looked at him curiously.

"You know, it's not very polite talking like that about me when I'm right in front of you..." Suzie commented, and Brock winced, then took a deep breath as she let out a clear laugh.

"And what are you doing here?" Ash asked, his face filled with astonishment.

"Well, I met with Brock again on that ship, talked about what had happened, and I decided to help him. I just happened to think I might be able to help..." she whispered, and Brock, looking at her, realized that she was making sure to keep her pokemon master ring out of sight.

Ash, Misty and Gary nodded. "What are you doing here, anyway?" Brock repeated his earlier question, now that they were done with the problem of Suzie being around.

"Well, we ran in Jessie and James, and they told us the headquarters were in this vicinity, so we took the first ship, and here we are." Misty explained, holding Ash's hand as she did so. Brock nodded, looking at the two of them.

"Have you found anything since you arrived?" he asked them, hoping that they'd be able to improve the previous plan with what they knew.

"Nope. Ash and I are using our Pidgeots to fly around and try to spot the place, but no luck so far." Gary replied. "They must have it well-hidden, so..." he left it hanging.

"It's probably underground or some such." Todd commented.

"Yeah, that would make sense." Richie added, joining them. "What do we do now?" He asked them.

"Well, we overheard a few Rockets talking about rebelling...seems like there was some kind of change with the Rockets, and some members apparently don't like that and are about to rebel. We know were those members are, so we could follow them when they go around to attacking the Headquarters..." Brock explained the plan that they had came up with already.

"Sounds like the best plan we have so far." Gary nodded.

"Sounds like the ONLY plan we have so far." Misty corrected.

"Hey!" the young man protested.

"Well, do you call flying around aimlessly on pidgeot a "plan" Gary? I sure don't..." she grinned, and Gary winced.

"So, we keep an eye on them, and look around for the headquarters on our own in the meantime?" Richie asked, getting everyone to nod.

"We called in the others...Erica and my sisters won't be able to come, but Sabrina's going to arrive soon..." Misty explained.

"Correction : I'm here already." Sabrina interrupted as she arrived, and the last shimmers in the air around her easily told them that she had just teleported in.

"That's good." Gary said, looking at her, his face serious.

"Yeah." Ash nodded, though his face wasn't as serious.

"Anyway, Danea told us she had something to take care of, but that she'd help us for the raid. She should be around soon...." Misty informed them.

"Danea Ketchum?" Sabrina asked in surprise. "It's been a long time since I last saw her. I wonder if she improved..." she mused.

Before anyone could answer, Ash's mother appeared. "Ash, supper is ready now." She told him ."I've made enough for all your friends, too." She added with a smile, gesturing with her hand to invite them all.

__________________________

It was as Ash pushed the plate that had held the excellent Sushi that his mother had prepared that the doorbell rang. He made as if to move, but his mother rose first, moving toward the door.

"Stay with your friend dear. I'll see who it is." She told him.

Ash shrugged and sat back down, though there wasn't much to say at that point, as they had already said pretty much everything they wanted to. He simply moved his chair closer to Misty, and, putting an arm around her shoulders, pulled her close to him. She let her head rest on his shoulders, sighing contentedly. Sabrina, who happened to be sitting in front of him, had a thing smile. Brock was apparently lost in thought, or perhaps lost in looking at Suzie. Gary and Richie were talking about something, though Ash had never paid attention to their conversation, and thus had no idea now from what few pieces he could gather what it was all about.

"You!" The voice coming from the door was undeniably his mother's. It sounded extremely surprised, perhaps a bit pleased as well.

"Hello Deliah." The other voice was definitely Danea's. "It's been a while." She smiled. "I told your son I'd drop by to give him a hand at hitting Team Rocket."

"Ash? Does he..." the meaning of the uncompleted sentence was quite clear.

"He knows I'm his aunt." She replied.

"I thought you wanted to keep that under wrap?" his mother pointed out.

"Yeah, but it came out by accident." She explained. "I'll explain some other time..."

"All right." His mother apparently had no objections to that. "Why don't you come in?" she then asked, and Ash smiled. Now they'd all be there, ready to strike whenever it was time.

The two of them walked in the room. "How's your daughter?" Ash's mother asked her sister in law. "I hope she's less of a troublesome girl than she used to be."

Danea made a sour face.

"If anything, she's worst. You'll see soon enough, she should be arriving in a few minutes, she decided to trail behind for whatever reason, and I really wasn't up to fighting over that stuff." She shook her head, and there was a tired look in her eyes.

"Is she still..." Deliah begun, but Danea interrupted her.

"Yeah, she is...though considering the business with her father, I guess she does have some reason - less than I do..."

"Far less." Deliah interrupted.

"But still, she does have some valid reasons to think that way. Though she do carry it to extreme sometime." Ash listened intently to what they were saying. While it was obvious they were referring to Danea's daughter - his cousin - he had no idea what the reasons where, or what they were reasons for.

Someone knocked on the door, and Danea and Deliah both rose at once to go open the door. A few seconds later, they were back in the main room, followed by another white-haired woman, hardly more than a girl, at least as far as Ash could tell by the way she looked. Yet, considering what Danea had told them about her family looking younger than they were, Ash could only guess that while she looked maybe ten or twelve, she was about fourteen, just like him.

What was surprising and stunning about her was not so much her young appearance, or her silver-white hair, than it was the clothe she wore, however. Dark boots of a slightly shiny black material covered her legs nearly up to the knees, covering the long suit of black leather pants that covered her legs. She wore a tight, very tight black shirt that looked almost painful being so tight. A long dark black coat covered her shoulders and went down under her knees. A leather collar was around her neck, with small metallic spikes protruding from it, and wristbands of similar materials encircled each of her wrists. Her long hair went down to mid-back, and as she looked at them, there was a dark look in her eyes, that somewhat softened as she looked at Sabrina, Suzie and Misty.,

"Ash, that's your cousin, Tanya…" Danea sighed. "I said it before Deliah, I'll say it again. You got the easy one out of the two."

"I know." His mother smiled.

"What exactly did you mean by that mum?" Tanya asked, an hard edge in her voice. Danea winced, and elected not to answer.

___________________________

"You know, I really hate those physical training sessions." May told her roommate as they entered their room again after three sweating hours of running across the base, increasing their aim with a gun, and basically learning to be perfect soldiers.

"Yeah, so do I." Her companion nodded. "What are you going to do now?" she asked.

"I'll just hit the simulators. I want to take a shot at that scenario twenty we've been hearing about." She explained, referring to the computer battle simulators in which they took command of forces thrown against each other – usually, Lotus forces attacking pokemon league bases. Scenario twenty, the assault on Saffron, was usually considered as the hardest one, and from what she had heard the ones who had managed to beat it could be counted on the fingers of a hand.

However, she had been studying the maps of Saffron for the last few week in preparation for that test through the simulator, and she had an idea of how to do it. As far as she knew, beating the assault on Saffron on the simulator was the fastest track out of the training session, as those who actually defeated it were assigned automatically to the command section to train in strategy and tactics instead of shooting and running.

The simulation center of the base was rather empty as she entered, and she immediately sat down in one of the chair, powering up the computer. The screen in front of her lighted up, and she typed in her access code, which immediately sent her to the level 20 simulation. The "Deploy your troops for the attack" screen appeared, and she started deploying the forces she had managed to keep after the previous battles for a fight.

As soon as the action started, her first action was to send her troops to surround the city itself. The location in the mountains meant that this part of the mission had to be executed by airborne troops carried by helicopters, as most other units of the army would have a hard time crossing the mountains that surrounded Saffron on all sides but one.

On a nagging suspicion that the computer would try to reinforce Saffron by the same way she was moving her own units in place, her first maneuver was to send in her air force to raid the enemy airbases. That part of the mission was effective, probably because the computer, used to the mad rush tactic most student used, would not anticipate surgical precise attack against the airport early in the game.

Once that was done, she simply used a traditional starvation tactic, blocking all ways in and out of the city until the computer ran out of ressources. At that point, all it took was a few helicopters dropping a few troopers in carefully selected locations, and on the tactical maps, the key buildings of saffron turned from the purple marking them as League bases to the red of Lotus bases. May smiled – until a message informing her that her forces were under attack appeared.

Her first question as she received the message was "how did they get there?" before realizing that they had probably been dropped by helicopters right in the street, or that they might be another form of airborne unit. A quick analysis of the situation showed her that she was at quite a disadvantage inside the city, but that she still had the upper hand. Probably, her fighters had managed to shoot down a sizeable chunks of the transports.

The computer obviously, from the way it deployed its troop, expected her to try to pull out of the city, which was what she wouldn't attempt. Most people she had hear off had told her that was what they had done in that situation, so there had to be another way to go around that. A cursory glance revealed that the enemy forces were weaker in the northern part of the town, and, using her troops positioned in each of the mountain pass, it was a piece of cake to launch an assault against the second wave of enemies.

"Victory by default." She whispered as her forces used a standard strategy of hammer and anvil – an attack from behind to disorganize the enemy, and a force on the other side to prevent them from hiding and fleeing.

A second later, the command screen was replaced by the victory screen, and the computer was displaying a score analyzing her job.

"Congratulation May." A voice said from behind her, the voice of that young officer who had been in charge of pulling her out of her house and getting her to the headquarters.

"Thanks Eric." She replied, turning toward one of the only two members of the Lotus that she considered as friends.

"Hey, you did even better than I did!" He smiled. "So you're part of our own little Elite now, aren't you?"

"I guess so." She grinned. "How many of us are there again?"

"Four, I think. Me, the grand master, that guy named Ethan Starkhad – he's a veteran, and has spent the last two years or so on a mission or some kind – and you." Eric smiled. "And out of them all, you got the highest score, except maybe the grand master. I guess you'll get a job way up…"

"Really?" May asked in surprise.

"Well, what else would you expect? I know for a fact that they're planning to make Starkhad a general, and you got a better score than he did…plus, that trick with the Rockets outfit to get you out of your home was quite brilliant…I can't say I KNOW what's going to happen, but I'm sure you'll be given a great job."

"Thanks." She blushed slightly, hoping he didn't notice.

"In the meantime, I was going to pay a visit to the top, care to come along?" he asked her, his eyes shining. The top was the top of the mountain where the base was built, and it had been arranged as a quiet place where soldiers who wanted to get some rest after their training sessions could go. The weather was definitely a bit colder than down below, though not that much – the mountain was not that high.

"Why not? I definitely feel like getting a bit of fresh air." She answered, smiling.

Chapter 28 : The Calm Before the Storm

The beach of Pallet Town was known throughout the world as one of the most romantic spots in the world. It was a chance, Ash reflected as he walked slowly along it, his arm resting on Misty's shoulders while her own arm was wrapped around his waist. Romantic, it definitely was, and beautiful as well, but as far as Ash was concerned it was nowhere near as beautiful as Misty. She had let her long orange-red hair loose, and they were floating down on her shoulders, a rippling cascade of fiery gold in the light of sunset.

Her aqua eyes glittered like two starts in the middle of the night, two points of light that guided his entire life. He slowly stopped walking, and pulled her close to him, his arms wrapped around her shoulders now as he held her tightly. Their eyes met, and so did their lips, and for a moment Ash forgot everything about Team Rocket and the whole day they had spent on a fruitless search as he became lost in a world of pure bliss and feelings.

After a while they stopped and just stood there, holding each other, just being close. There was no one else in the world he would have wanted to be with more than to be with her, and he was. The feeling of being the luckiest man in the world swept over him. As it was, he could go and forget all about being a pokemon master, he didn't care if he was a pokemon master or an hopeless trainer, a looser as Gary had so often called him. All that mattered was the fiery-haired girl in his arms, the one girl that meant everything to him.

"I love you." He whispered softly in her ear.

"I love you too." She answered.

It was, all in all, a perfect evening. The weather was not too warm, yet not too cold either, the weather of early autumn. A breeze chased away the dampness that had been in the air for all the day, and the sky, which had been overcast for most of the day, was now perfectly clear, just in time for the setting sun to bath the two of them in its glorious golden light.

"There's just no way I could say how much I love you." Misty added, pushing his league cap out of the way and running her hand through his hair. "It's just...I never imagined a feeling that strong could exist." She told him softly, toying with his hair, wrapping them around one of her finger. Ash gently caressed her own hair, smiling at her.

"You don't need to tell me...I know what it's like." He smiled ."I feel just the same about you." He said softly.

__________________________________

"What's wrong Damian?" Elayne asked, noticing the young man sitting on the bed, looking very out of it.

"I'm worried, what else?" he replied bitterly. "I don't like all the waiting...they could do anything to my father...and now that my sister's dead..."

"You feel alone, right?"

"Yeah..." he replied sadly.

She put an arm on his shoulder and sat down beside him, holding him tightly. It was all too easy to understand how he felt about being alone - she was, after all, an orphan, and had spent the last six years of her life being alone, ever since her parents had died in a car crash that had left her a deep scar on the chest, and a shattered self-confidence. She had managed to rebuild the self-confidence after all these years, and the scar was still there, a painful reminder of what she had lost on that one night.

"Don't worry. I'm sure they didn't kill him." She told him soothingly.

"Yeah, but what if they did?" he asked.

"Please leave the what if out of this...if you keep telling yourself that they did, it won't do any good and will make things worst for you." She told him dryly.

And of course, there was nothing to say about his sister - his twin sister - being dead. That had been an official newspapers report, and unless the reporters had royally screwed up, it was true. Yet there seemed something about it that didn't work out, something that someone had told her recently about...

Yet, as much as she tried to remember, she couldn't seem to summon any memory of the particular event that kept nagging at the back of her mind. She settled for comforting him instead of trying to find out what it was she was forgetting.

She simply tightened his hold on her shoulders, holding him as close to her as she could. The world had harmed him too much, and she would make sure it didn't harm him again.

"And no matter what, I'll be with you." She told him softly, and his tense body relaxed somewhat. "You'll always have me." She added, the words barely beginning to express how strongly she felt about him. There was just no way she would ever leave him.

He moved closer to her, and as she held him tightly, she was not too surprised to see a few crystalline tears falling from his eyes.

__________________________

The three men who approached him where thugs, well trained thugs perhaps but thugs nonetheless and as he watched them coming closer, he could easily guess that they had been sent by whoever was in control of Team Rocket to kill him.

He had, of course, a variety of way available to finish them off, going from using the standard gun he was forced to carry with him as part of being the Kanto president, or sending out his pokemon to do the job...

Or else, call upon the training he had received from Koga, and teach those thugs a thing or two about just how limited guns were. [i]Guns are impressive, all that sounds, and the speeds of their bullets. But for a true Kai, focusing his mind on the fight, guns are no more than a distraction, a way to keep them sharp, and certainly not a threat.[/i] The old saying Koga had quoted so often came back to his mind as he drew his sword, a blade made on the far-away island of Hosho of some metal so hard that not even a bullet could break it - so far, only a laser had been able to do anything to the stuff.

Focusing his spirit on the blade, he fell back in the old defensive posture, slightly crouched, the blade held upward with his hands in front of his waist. The thugs laughed as they drew their guns. They had obviously never seen a Kai in action, and now it was much too late for them to learn about it. The first bullet whistled through the air, but in the instant between the firing of the gun and the moment at which the bullet would have struck him, Lance slightly altered the position of the sword.

The bullet fell to the ground, neatly sliced in half, having lost all of its speed upon striking the blade. More bullets whistled through the air, and all of them fell on the ground, neatly sliced in two, the two halves shining and showing no signs that they had been broken.

"Shit!" One of the thugs screamed. "We aren't going to do a thing here!" he started running away, but before he could go very far, Lance had sent out his Gyarados to capture him. It was an easy task for the great water dragon, and the man quickly found himself unable to flee - at which point, he aimed the gun at his head, and fired. The other two men decided to make it a fight for the end, firing all their bullets at him - and having none of them strike the target, all meeting the solid steel of a blade.

With a sigh, Lance charged the two survivors. One of them he quickly cut down, but before he could strike down the second, the man shot himself. Lance shook his head to clear away the utter concentration of the battle that it had taken to achieve the results he had achieved. As he did so, he revised his assessment of the three attackers. They were not simple though thugs, the simple fact that they had shot themselves rather than being captured proved that. That had been the third attempt on his life since his meeting with the false Giovanni, and this time it had happened while he was away from Indigo to meditate. Both earlier attacks had been by snipers and both had failed lamentably.

________________________

Suddenly, as Ash was about to kiss Misty again, he heard a strange sound coming from the forest. He threw himself to the ground, dragging Misty down with him, just in time for a stream of flame from a flamethrower attack to shoot right over their head.

He rose back up, and raced toward the source of the flamethrower. A spark of light in the forest had been his only warning of what was about to happen, and it had barely been enough to give him the time to get him and Misty both out of the way. He put his hand on Charizard's pokeball, ready to call out the big dragon if he needed to do so.

A strange, sad sad scene awaited him as he entered the forest, and stared at the group of pokemon all around. There was a huge pokemon, slightly like a dog in shape, except that it had long white horn on the top of its head. It was completely black, and had a skull-like symbol on the neck. A Houndoom, a pokemon that he would never have expected to find in the wild. Facing it were three smaller lizard-like water blue pokemon, Totodiles, constantly shooting streams of water at the beast.

The Houndoom looked weak, as if it had been fighting for a long time already, a theory which was backed up by the presence of two more totodile, fainted, on the ground. The jet of water struck the pokemon again, and Ash wondered why it wouldn't flee...

And then he saw the egg, already wobbling, near to cracking open. It wasn't a small bird egg, and Ash knew with a dreadful certitude that the egg belonged to the Houndoom - obviously a female - and that she was protecting it from the totodile. He silently cursed the fact that he didn't have Pikachu with him, as his electric pokemon would have done short work of the three totodile. Charizard, with his weakness to water, was not a really good choice for such a fight. He instead picked up his other pokeball, releasing Pidgeot, hoping he could save the great beast before he was too late, knowing he had very little chances of doing so.

"Pidgeot! Try to blow those totodiles away!" he ordered, and the great bird flapped her wings rapidly, soon pushing one of the totodile far out of the way. However, the two other were relentlessly attacking the Houndoom, and the beast would obviously not hold on much longer. Ash silently prayed that Pidgeot would hurry up, defeat the remaining Totodile before they could harm the Houndoom.

She released a last stream of flame at one of the remaining totodile, burning him and causing him to jump out of the way with a startled cry, but the last one released a last blast of water before being blown away by Pidgeot's whirlwind, and the great dog hound fell to the ground, defeated. With her last strength, she pushed the already cracking egg toward Ash, who immediately understood what she wanted him to do. As the fire in her eyes died, he sadly picked up the egg, holding it securely in his arms.

"Don't worry, I'll take care of your baby." He whispered, hoping that the soul of the Houndoom would hear him.

With a slight sound, the egg cracked open, revealing the head of a baby Houndour, who looked at Ash with big eyes. The young man helped the baby free himself of the egg, then gently held him in his arms as he carried it out of the wood before the totodile got a chance to return. The eyes of the little pokemon seemed to be filled with wonder at the world, and whenever he looked at him, with a special kind of trust. Remembering what his pokedex had had to say about Togepi, Ash could only assume that while it did not go as far with other species as it went with Togepi, some of them still assumed that the first thing they saw was their mother, or at least trusted that first living being that they would see.

"Don't worry Houndour. I'll take care of you." He whispered to the baby pokemon, gently rubbing his head, knowing just how important the role he had taken would be for the little being. It was somehow both scary and exhilarating, having that much responsibility. Houndour tentatively licked his hand, and Ash smiled. He walked back to the beach and to Misty, who was still there, waiting for him to come back.

Chapter 29 : When Battle Begins

The next morning dawned bright and promising as Ash rose up, smiling as he saw his pokemon, which he had let out for the night, rising also. Charizard had slept outside, and so had Pidgeot, which left Pikachu and Houndour with him. The yellow-furred electric mouse who had been with him since the very first day of his travel was happily talking with the baby, but as soon as Houndour saw that Ash was up, he turned toward him and threw himself in his lap, licking his face.

Smiling, Ash took the puppy in his arms and carried him, holding him closely. Somehow, he felt as though he had a debt toward the little pokemon because he hadn't been able to save his mother. Carrying the puppy in his arm still, he walked toward the window of his room, and pulled the curtains out of the way. The sun was shining, illuminating the entire field. Charizard and Pidgeot were already up and mock-fighting each other, trading back and forth tiny shot of embers and weak gusts of wind that barely even started to affect Charizard. Looking back at the clear sky, he smiled as he admitted that it would be a perfect day for flying.

He smiled and walked downstairs, Houndour still in his arms. Most of the others already were there, and as he joined them he looked curiously at his cousin, who answered by simply glaring at him. Slightly hurt by the way she behaved around him, he decided not to try to understand the strange animosity. It was, he guessed, one of those things better left unknown.

"Misty, I think I'll be making some flying around with Pidgeot " He told her as they ate. "Think you can take care of Houndour?" he asked her, getting a delighted smile as his answer.

"Of course!" she apparently liked the little creature more than he would have suspected. It was probably, he reflected, one of those things about girls that he would never understand. He had heard that there were lots of things about girls that no man had ever understood.

The two of them walked outside the house together, Misty holding the small Houndour in her arms. Ash felt a sharp pang of guilt as he watched the creature sad eyes on him, and almost felt like backing down and staying on the ground with the poor puppy, but decided not to. He had promised to take care of Houndour, true...but he had also promised to hunt down and destroy Team Rocket. Misty could take care of Houndour for him for a moment while he tried again to fulfill his other oath.

"Pidgeot!" He called, and the great bird flapped her wings, flying at an astounding speed toward him, before landing in front of him. He climbed on her back, and patted Houndour's head one last time before letting his great pokemon take flight, with him on the back. The feeling of the wind rushing past him as they rose toward the cerulean sky was without compare. It was the feeling of absolute freedom, the feeling of being unstoppable. But he was not going around flying just for the fun of it, even though it was fun, he was in the sky for a specific reason. A bit further behind him, he noticed that Gary's Pidgeot - one of his few pokemon that had not been with him, yet not with his grandfather at the laboratory either - was taking to the sky, his friend on his back.

With a few flaps of their wings, the two pidgeot were within talking distance of each other, allowing Gary and Ash to plan out their searching for the day. With what they had covered the day before, only the area south of the forest shack remained to be checked out. The fact that they knew the target was half-a-day walk from the shack made it easier to locate it, as well, as that meant it was at a certain distance of it, thus they did not have to search too wide a strip of land.

They flew toward the area that was left to check out, the strong wind rushing past them as the two birds raced through the air, their great wings carrying them effortlessly. The trees down behind them looked so tiny that they might have been pieces of one of those kids construction game he had played when he was younger. He could barely distinguish any traces of human activity in the area, as high as they were, because humans looked like ants, too tiny to even be noticed.

An exhilarating feeling, to be sure, but unfortunately, not exactly the best way to locate a headquarter. He signaled to Gary that he was going to move closer to the ground, and Gary nodded, signaling that he was about to do the same anyway. Suddenly, as they flew lower, there was a loud detonation and Pidgeot shouted shrilly as he jerked out of the way of an invisible something. Looking down on the ground, Ash saw a pair of men in black clothes standing by the door of a small building, one of them holding a gun in his hand, and realized what it was that Pidgeot had dodged in the nick of time.

Before the man with the gun got a second chance at shooting, a majestic thunderbolt fell from the sky straight on him, and the man dropped to the ground, unconscious or perhaps even dead. Ash looked up in surprise to see that the previously clear sky had suddenly become covered with dark black clouds, and as he turned back to looking at what seemed likely to be the headquarters, he felt rain splattering over his head.

"Ash! We should head back...with that thunderstorm falling around us..." Gary voice came from behind him, and he quickly nodded.

"That's the headquarters anyway!" he shouted back. "And I don't feel like staying out in a storm anymore than you!"

As they flew away, neither of them noticed the strange eyes watching them at the heart of the thunderstorm, black and white eyes of lightning and crackling electric energy, eyes carried on great wings.

_________________________________

For a brief moment, Damian wondered where the strange storm had come from as the others gathered around him for their attack. Ralph was there, his short dark hair outlining his face, his dark brown eyes shining with fierce fury. Felicity as well, looking deadlier than she ever had, ready to kill. Jessie and James were there too, no longer looking like little kids lost in a world of adults, but this time looking like adults ready to fight for what they believed in. They had done away with their usual white Rocket uniforms, replacing them with the black suites of high-ranking rocket members, and looked much more professional than they had before. Elayne, of course, was there, holding her own pokeballs ready for battling, a determined look on her young face. He smiled at her, and she smiled back, her eyes filled with love.

"Is everyone ready?" He asked them, hoping that they would come out of there with no losses, especially without loosing Elayne. That was one thing he would not be able to take, whatever else happened. As long as he had Elayne, he was safe, but without her...

Without her, there was nothing to the world, nothing worth living for.

Ralph nodded first, without hesitation, followed a split second later by Felicity and Elayne. Jessie and James, on the other hand, did hesitate, but finally nodded as well, firmly. With a weary sigh, Damian opened the door of the little forest house and led them outside, pokeballs ready. It was early in the day, and they would be close to their target in the afternoon, even if they rested frequently underway to avoid wasting energy. If there was one thing no one of them wanted, it was to attack while tired, which would be disastrous.

They walked toward the headquarters, not paying any attention to the forest around them, a forest they had all visited a hundred time already. They knew the track they were on, and they knew that they would not have much difficulties approaching the headquarters, because no one would have difficulties with a group of Rocket coming in the Team Rocket headquarters. The only danger would be once there, once they had started the fighting, that one of them would be lost in the battle.

It was a danger Damian tried to think of as little as he could.

_________________________

The storm had broken off as suddenly, as unexpectedly as it had started, and there was no way for them to explain what had just happened. As soon as the clouds had vanished, Gary and Ash had jumped back on their pidgeot, flying toward Pallet, and soon they were back there.

"Did you see that storm?" Brock asked them as soon as they arrived. "It lasted only for a few minutes..."

"Yeah, we were in the middle of it." Gary replied shortly. "Strange thing about it is, the first bolt hit the rocket shooting at Ash instead of any of the trees around." He added.

"Rocket shooting at Ash?" Misty stared at them in horror.

"Don't worry...Pidgeot managed to dodge the first shot, and that thunderbolt took him out before he got more shots in." Ash replied as Misty threw her arms around him, holding him fiercely.

"You...you..." she tried to start "You know what would have happened...if you had gotten yourself killed...right?" the question was soft, too low for any but him to hear.

"Yeah...But I'm here Misty. I didn't get myself killed...and we're together." He added, holding her close to him. The two of them turned slowly toward the others, who were talking animatedly about their recent find of the Rocket Headquarters.

"Are you sure it's the right place?" Richie was asking.

"Well, the guys who shot at Ash were Rockets. And they must have thought they were protecting something important, so I'd say we're quite sure." Gary replied.

"Makes sense. They wouldn't shoot people for no reason."

"Not sure about that. They're guys." Tanya replied sarcastically to her mother's comment, earning herself dark glare from Brock and Gary while Ash looked at her, confused.

"Just what is it with you and guys?" Richie asked her, fire in his eyes.

"You're idiot, violent, and you don't care about how others are affected by what you do. I think that's about enough reasons to hate guys." She replied darkly, steel in her voice.

"Wait a minute! Did you just say *I* was like that?" Ash protested, feeling anger rising within him for each of her comments. "I don't care? I'm violent?" he asked, trying to keep his emotions under control.

"Stop it." Danea said ."Both of you. Stop provoking them Tanya, and you Ash, stop reacting so strongly. Instead of fighting, we should be heading toward that base, if we want to hit it soon." She told them in a hard tone of voice.

"Question is, how do we get there quickly? It's a day walk from that shack and the shack is half a day walk from here.

"Simple enough. Danea, Tanya and I can teleport there, and wait for you while resting." Sabrina stated. "Meanwhile, you can use whatever flying pokemon you have to get there, send the pokemon back here with perhaps one of you to guide them, then have them carry the other backs" she explained. "You got two charizard, a dragonite and two pidgeot after all." She pointed out

"That's true." Ash nodded. "Which means we'll have to go back for two of us." He calculated.

"Actually, there's not going to be a need for the last two to fly in with our pokemon here, I think." Gary told him. "My gramp didn't keep all his pokemon in for the night all the time, so he had a few out the night the lab was raided. Birds, mostly." He said, smiling.

As it turned out, professor Oak indeed did have some bird pokemon left for them to borrow, and borrow they did. With the pidgeot and fearow they had borrowed, it was an easy thing to fly within a few minutes walking of the rocket base.

Ash grinned darkly. The stage was set for them to fulfill their oaths. And for Team Rocket to die in the process.

__________________________

There were five guards outside the Rocket headquarters, and as they approached them, Danea, Sabrina and Tanya tensed themselves. It would definitely be up to the three of them to take out the first line of defense of the opposition. They all concentrated, their eyes glowing, as Ash watched them, hoping that they would succeed.

Interestingly, they seemed to use different methods to fight. While Danea struck out with a beam of light that caused one of the guard to collapse and Tanya did the same to another, Sabrina looked at the guard and simply whispered. The guards she had aimed at stood still, apparently oblivious to anything around them. She smirked, and Ash wondered what it was that she had done.

"What was that?" he asked her.

"the other half of the powers of a psychic. Danea specialize in Control - directly making things happen with her psychic energy. I prefer alteration - making the mind of someone believe whatever I want that mind to believe." She explained, though Ash did not really understand what she was talking about. "Basically, she made them fall asleep. I made their brain think they are asleep, which mean no one else will notice that they are asleep." She smiled.

"Ah, well, if you say so..." he answered.

Entering the base proved to be a simple enough matter once they had taken out the guards, as there were no locks or any highly advanced defense system around the door - not even a security camera, or a movement detector.

They went in, walking as silently as they could in the great hallway that was the only place they could go after entering the base by the door they had taken, trying to find their way to a place where they could find a complete list of Team Rocket members and the missions they had been on, so as to get them arrested and thrown in jail.

Soon, they came upon a corner, and stopped there, unsure as to where they should be going. There was no sign indicating which way led where, and without anyone who knew the place to guide them, Ash felt like they were in deep trouble.

"We really should have thought about that." He mentioned to the others.

"No d'uh." Misty answered sarcastically, though Ash could feel somehow that she was more angry with herself for not finding out than with him for pointing it out.

"What now?" Danea interrupted.

"Well, we split. Three possible ways, means we split in three teams." Sabrina said matter-of-factly. Tanya seemed about to make a retort, but a glare from Danea apparently silenced her.

"All right. Danea, Misty, Gary, you come with me. We'll take the road up front." Ash told them, his glare challenging them to try to go against what he was saying. "Tanya, Suzie, Brock, you take the left road..."

"I'm not about to take orders from you!" Tanya protested vehemently.

"Tanya, do as he said!" Danea told her, again glaring. The two psychics looked at each other for a long moment, then Tanya finally backed down.

"Sabrina, Todd, Richie, you take the right." He finished now that Tanya was no longer interrupting him. Her eyes still seemed like he would be dead if they could kill, but at least now she was silent.

They all went their separate way, Danea spearheading his group, as Ash put an hand on the pokeball at his belt that held Charizard while Pikachu sat on his shoulders as always, ready for action. Misty had her hand on Seadra's pokeball, also ready to fight, while Gary seemed to be just waiting for the first sign of trouble to send out Arcanine.

Chapter 30 : Revelations

They raced through the hallways, looking at each room they could find, but finding only empty rooms with nothing interesting in them. The feeling that time was limited was very present, they knew that the Rockets would soon realize about them being there and not being friends. Danea had managed to put to sleep the only two rocket minions they had met so far, but the relative peace they had run in would not last that long...

"Stop! You need an authorization from the boss to go down further!" A voice was saying ahead, from just past a corner. "And no, you being the boss's son isn't enough." The voice continued. They rounded the corner just in time to see a flareon and jolteon appearing in the middle of it, flanked a second later by a Tangela.

"Jolteon! Thunderbolt! Flareon! Flamethrower!" A young man about his age, maybe a year older or so ordered the two pokemon.

"Tangela, stun spore!" A woman of about the same age ordered. The two of them wore black suits with a red R printed just over the hearth. Against them, there were three rocket guards, all of them wearing the standard black and red uniforms they were all familiar with.

"Arbok! Poison sting that Jolteon!" one of the grunts ordered.

"Houndour! Bite that Flareon!" His companion agreed.

"Venusaur, vine whip that tangela out of the way!" the third one added.

It took Ash and his friends half a second to decide to intervene, and once they did, barely a few seconds more to help the two young members who apparently were attacking the three rocket grunts. Arcanine leaped over the heads of the two young Rockets, releasing a well-aimed stream of flame at the Venusaur. Seadra sent out a powerful jet of bubble toward the houndour, knocking it back and sending it reeling. Pikachu jumped over the head of them all, releasing a powerful blast of electricity that knocked down the three grunts and their pokemon.

The two rockets turned toward them. The girl had long, golden hair held back by a leather band, while the boy had dark hair, nearly as dark as his own, but longer, and tied in a ponytail. There was something definitely familiar about the looks of the young man...something that jumped out at him, but something that he couldn't identify, no matter how must he looked at the man.

Then, just as he was opening his mouth to say somethimg, Ash recognized what it was that had jumped out at him - the young man's eyes, which were the exact same aqua as Misty's. The young man, who was about to say something, looked at them again, and his mouth opened wide, but no sounds came out as his eyes widened as well. Turning toward his companion, he noticed Misty had the exact same face, and he finally realized that the young man had to be Misty's twin brother, whom she had mentioned a week or so before.

Finally, the two of them started running toward each others, throwing themselves in each other's arms. The young man - Damian, from what Misty had told him - was first to speak of the two of them.

"I...I thought you were dead..." he told her. "There was that thing in the newspapers about you being dead..." he told her, his voice shaking.

"I'll explain later." She told him softly, a few tears in her eyes. "But what are YOU doing in Team Rocket?" she asked back. "And what about them saying you are the boss's son..." she trailed off. "So Lily and the others...they didn't lie when they said they were only our half-sisters..." she slowly realized.

"I'm afraid not." Damian replied sadly, and Ash watched the two of them, a bitter-sweet feeling settling inside him. Sweet because Misty had finally been re-united with her twin brother, bitter because of the price of that reunion in what she had learned. She sighed.

"There's one more thing, though. Someone - I don't know who - took over Team Rocket and imprisoned our father. Elayne - she's my girlfriend - and I were about to go rescue him...care to tag along?" he asked her.

"I...I guess so..." Misty replied slowly. "Ash? Gary? Danea?" she asked them all. Ash nodded, knowing that he could not leave Misty behind, and that rescuing her father would probably give them an edge, as they would be able to obtain some of the information they wanted from him.

"If Ash and you are going, then I'm going." Gary stated suddenly. "I'm not about to let the two of you down." His face was as hard as a steel blade.

"Well, then, follow me!" Damian ordered and opened the door. They found themselves in a reserve filled with pokeballs, and they rushed, following Damian, though Ash wished that they would have the time to open them to see if Squirtle, Bulbasaur and the others were there.

"There's something wrong here!" Gary shouted, a second before a shelf holding pokeballs collapsed, sending a bunch of pokeballs rolling their ways. Pokeballs that seemed everything like normal pokeballs as they surrounded them...

...Except that they had eyes.

"Damn! Those are Voltorbs!" Elayne swore as the "pokeballs" surrounded them. Not knowing what to do, Ash picked one of the pokeball in a nearby shelves and threw it to the floor. A pokemon appeared - an Abra. Watching the voltorb and the humans that had freed him in turn, he suddenly glowed blue...

And as the volotrbs exploded, Ash and his friends watched them doing so from a safe distance, with Abra looking at Ash curiously. Ash smiled at the little pokemon and patted her on the head. "Thank you Abra." He said softly, watching as the little psychic creature took a hold of his leg, apparently not intending to let go.

"Looks like you got yourself a new pokemon." Misty smiled at him.

"Yeah, I'd say so..." he agreed, picking up the Abra gently. Without his having to do a thing, the little creature psychically reached for the pokeball that had held her and recalled herself. Ash caught the pokeball before it could fall to the ground, and added it to the others at his belt. "Welcome in the team Abra." He smiled.

"I think we should get out...." Damian said. "The explosion probably alerted other members about us being here. "Follow me!"

The six of them raced toward the back of the storage room, finding a second door partially concealed behind a rack of empty pokeballs. Damian pushed the door open, revealing a stairway that lead down. He led them downstairs, where they found themselves in a damp, smelly area that looked very much like a prison. He rapidly looked around, spotting the only cell that had a closed door. There were no keys around that Ash could see, and Damian had no pokemon strong enough to destroy the door that they had seen.

"Let me handle it." Danea said, sending a powerful blast of psychic energy at the door. The ball of light collided with the steel plate that blocked their way, vanishing slowly as the door bended and twisted, before finally crashing to the door, its hinges destroyed by the powerful attack. A man stepped out of the cell, and as he did, Ash heard a strange noise, and turned to see only a shimmer of air were Danea had been.

"Now why did she teleport away?" Misty asked in surprise.

"Who?" The man, apparently the boss of Team Rocket, asked.

"A psychic who was helping us...Danea." Misty explained to her father, though he didn't know yet he was her father.

"Danea...Ketchum?" He asked in shock. "I...she had her reasons to go away...she had many reasons to go away." He said, and an ancient wound seemed to be in his eyes. Then, he shook his head clear of all thought of the woman who had just vanished. "Damian, Elayne, I'm glad to see you again..." he told his son. "Who are they?" he asked Damian, looking curiously at Ash, Misty and Gary.

"People we met when we were trying to find you." Damian explained shortly. "I don't know the two boys, but the girls...look at her." He did not need to say more. The boss of Team Rocket took one long look at Misty, and his eyes widened. "So she's the twin sister you talked so much about." He said, looking at her. "I wonder what's my daughter doing raiding the rocket headquarters..." he added, an amused smiles on his lips.

"Revenge for when your minions killed one of my friend." She told him, her voice not quite frosty but not quite warm either.

"Killed? But..." he asked in shock. "I never ordered anyone killed...in fact, I ordered the Team to avoid killing..." he said, apparently shaken by the revelation.

"That's true...but then, the two who stole your place said they had been giving false orders, passing themselves off as you for quite a while, didn't they?" Damian mused.

"Yeah, might be that. Let's just find them and take them out." Giovanni muttered darkly.

_______________________________

Brock could not help but think that things were all too similar to their raid on the lumber mill as they raced through the hallways of the Rocket base, hoping not to run in anyone. Suddenly, as they rounded a corner, a figure appeared from the other side, crashing in him and sending the two of them tumbling down. As he first opened his eyes after falling, he thought that the red in front of his eyes was blood, then as the looked more carefully, he realized they were hair. Long, red hair.

"Get off me!" Jessie screamed, and he did so quickly, knowing exactly what kind of punishment to expect form the fierce red-hair if he did not obey. He rolled off her, and stood up as she stood up as well.

"Hey Jessie! That's one of the twerps!" James said suddenly. He was a bit further back, and had not run in any of them. Jessie looked at Brock, suddenly realizing who it was she had run in.

"So you didn't like to Ash and Misty when you talked about meeting them here..." Brock said.

"And they really wanted to raid the headquarters..." Jessie said, probably just as astonished as Brock himself was.

"We were going to the main archive area, to pick up all the incriminating stuff needed to send most of the Team for a long trip to jail." James told him. "You can come along." He added.

"James! You could've asked me before offering them to come..." Jessie told him, glaring. James winced and recoiled. "But you guys are still invited to come along." She added, looking darkly at Brock as she did so.

They started racing again, soon reaching a closed door, and stopping there. There was nothing to separate that door from any of the other they had encountered so far, but the two Rockets seemed sure it was the right place, but seemed reluctant to open the door as well.

"There's someone inside..." James told them. Before he could say anything more, a group arrived from each side of the hallway. The group coming from the left included Ash, Misty and Gary as well as three others Brock didn't recognize - though Jessie and James obviously recognized them all - and the other groups was made of two rocket members as well as Sabrina, Todd and Richie.

"Jessie! James! Wait!" One of the rocket from the group with Sabrina said. "They're in there...the two who stole the boss place, I mean!"

____________________________

"They're in there?" the rocket boss looked hard at the door, as if he could make a hole through it and destroy whoever was inside with his eyes alone.

"Yes boss." The woman who had been with Sabrina nodded as Ash watched the door intently. The end of their raid was in sight, all that they had to do was to get past the door and take out the two as well as steal the files that would allow them to destroy Team Rocket.

"All right, let's attack. Ready?" he asked them.

"Ready." They all nodded. James carefully opened the door, and let the other rush in the room, ready to send in their pokemon. There were two rocket members in the room, both of which wore hooded cloaks hiding their faces. They turned to face the entering group.

"So...Giovanni wants his throne back?" one of them asked, looking at them with a thin smile. "You should have taken more people with you. We can have the rest of the team here in seconds...and they'll believe us..." One of them said in a whiny male voice that was painful to hear.

"You!" James said as he recognized the voice of the attacker.

"You have no idea what you're doing...you don't know what the Team is really about." Giovanni told the two of them.

"The team that we lead is about profit. Now, you guys are going to go down." A more female voice added malevolently. "Arcanine, Hypno, Machamp, Vileplume, Murkrow, Arbok! You go!" she said, releasing her pokemon as she silently watched the group of them from under her hood.

"Primeape, Houndoom, Fearow, Sneasel, Gengar, Raticate, attack!" the man added.

The twelve pokemon materialized in the middle of the large room, for now alone and with the advantage. But soon their advantage was lost.

"Tangela! Ivysaur! Exeggutor! You go!" Elayne yelled, releasing her grass pokemon.

"Vaporeon! Jolgeon! Flareon! Umbreon! Espeon!" Damian shouted. "I choose all of you!"

"Charizard! Pidgeot! Pikachu! Abra! Houndour! All of you attack!" Ash yelled, then stopped, recalling the still-young Houndour, knowing that the pokemon was still too weak to fight.

"Misty calls Starmie, Seadra and Lapras!" Misty shouted in her unmistakable style.

"Arcanine! Nidoking! Nidoqueen! Eevee! Get them!" Gary shouted, sending out his four best pokemon.

"Steelix! Zubat! Ninetales! Geodude! Show them!" Brock shouted.

"Bellossom, Dragonair, Vaporeon, Espeon! I need you guys!" Suzie added.

"Dragonite, time for you to come out!" Todd ordered.

"Jessie, James, Ralph, Felicity! Cover the hall! Don't let anyone in!" Giovanni ordered and watched as the four rocket stepped out. Sabrina soon stepped out to help them, as did Tanya and Richie.

The battle that broke out at that point was pure chaos. Ash's pokemon got in the first strike as Charizard and Pidgeot attacked from both side, combining their wing attack and flamethrower to take out the Vileplume, but the Stun Spore that the creature released before being taken down took Charizard out of the fight. The Hypno's eyes glowed as it released beam of psychic energy toward their pokemon, only to have them bounces off harmlessly off Umbreon's skin. The two Espeon and Abra joined in a circle, combining their psychic powers in a dreadful beam of psychic energy that send the Arbok flying out of the way. The Houndoom tried to use it's sunny day attack, but before it could even do that, Arcanine and Ninetales were attacking him from both sides, Ninetales firing rays of darkness and Arcanine taking advantage of its great speed to outflank the beast and bit it repeatedly.

The Rocket Arcanine tried to attack Elayne's grass pokemon, but was met with the combimed water guns of Seadra, and Starmie, reinforced half a second later by the jet of bubbles from the two Vaporeon. The great dog yelled in pain before falling to the side, defeated. Lapras fired a few ice beam, and the Fearow found himself falling to the ground, his wings frozen. He crashed down and fainted. The Hypno continued his attempt at attacking, but Umbreon charged, easily taking it out by biting it in the back after using her faint attack to vanish out in the shadows along the walls.

Meanwhile, the Houndoom had managed, despite being extremely confused, to take out Ninetales, only to fall at last to Arcanine's flanking attack. Suddenly, Geodude started to glow, and they all dove for cover, but the pokemon, who were closer to the rock type, were unable to reach it in time as the rock type exploded, causing nearly all the pokemon to faint. Only Lapras, who had been the farthest from the blast, and Abra, who had teleported to safety in time, were still standing. They recalled their pokemon, watching the two hooded rockets, now revealed as Butch and Cassidy, who had fainted along with their pokemon.

With Giovanni guidance, it was an easy thing to gather the needed files and with Abra to teleport them, they were back to Pallet in a moment, ready to remove the names they didn't want compromised from the list, and to hand it to the police.

_____________________________

The next morning, they all gathered in the middle of Pallet town to bring the documents to the police. Lured outside by having such a large crowd out in the morning in the usually quite town, citizens were at their windows or in the streets wondering what it was. A few of the grumpier ones yelled at them about making so much noise so early in the week end, but most of them just watched, wondering what was happening.

And so it was that when Butch and Cassidy calmly appeared, guns drawn and aimed at them, the scream that erupted in the town was nearly deafening, as it came from a thousand mouths, including Ash's. The two rocket agents calmly looked at them.

"Give us those papers back..." Butch voice was hard.

"Or else..." Cassidy added.

"Forget it." Gary answered, drawing his sword.

The two of them started firing, but strangely enough, the bullets seemed never to reach them...and Ash suddenly saw why. Gary, his eyes glowing, had become a blur of movement as he moved his blade with deadly efficiency, preventing all the bullets from reaching them, moving closer to the two rocket as the kept defeating them.

Butch dove to the ground, firing a single shot toward Ash, but Misty was there in time to push him down, out of the way of the bullet. He looked at her thankfully, and barely heard the second scream from the crowd, a scream of pain that was loss in the roars of the two guns. As Butch landed, he was caught in the chest by a psychic blast from Tanya, and Gary's sword easily disarmed Cassidy.

Ash took a deep breath has the two rockets were left defenseless thanks to Gary and Tanya intervention. It was over...or was it? Dimly, he remembered the one shot that Gary had not blocked and that had gotten through to strike someone in the crowd. He walked toward one of the larger gathering of crowd that was forming, a gathering that had started to form, from what he had seen, after the two Rockets had been neutralized.

He walked toward the gathering, wondering who it was who had been hurt. Misty joined him, walking side by side with him. They pushed aside the various onlookers, trying to reach the middle of the gathering, and finally did so, finding out who it was who had been shot...

His mother.

The Professor Oak, who was kneeling besides her, turned his head toward him and shook it sadly. Ash felt like his entire world had just collapsed as he realized what he meant, as he saw the bright red blood of his mother staining the street. He felt Misty wrapping her arms tightly around him for comfort, but somehow, there seemed to be no comfort. Not from the terrible loneliness of having lost his mother.

His tears mingled down with the blood of his mother in the street as a strange numbness filled him.