CHAPTER 5-VOYAGE OF THE LADY GOLDEEN
The very next afternoon, at approximately 1:00 p.m., the three comrades boarded a magnet train bound for Cherrygrove City Station. According to the plan they had conceived earlier, they would take a bus to New Bark Town upon arriving at the station. From there, they would rent a boat at New Bark Harbor and head for Viridian Port in Kanto. Their final destination would be Team Rocket headquarters.
Silent tension overshadowed all three passengers, weighted with the risk involved in what they were doing and the sheer outlandishness of the situation. Any conversation would prove either petty or cause more anxiety to the people involved.
Sliding her eyes to her right, Rasha could see the pale, translucent reflection of Logan's face in the train's window beyond the back of his head. His solemn eyes floated over the thick glass; the glare from the train's lights penetrated and distorted the image. Sitting in the seat adjacent to him, Rasha had transformed into a block of wood.
When the train finally came to a halt, Rasha blinked dazedly, experiencing a sense of lost time resulting from the silent train ride. She, Logan, and Falcon exited the train station and walked for several blocks to a bus station. The bus ride from Cherrygrove to New Bark Town proved about as eventful as the train ride. By the time they reached their stop, Pichu had fallen asleep.
At length, the group reached New Bark Harbor. Several boats knocked softly against rows of splintery wooden docks. The water-an amorphous plane of aluminum--flashed unenthusiastically as it sloshed in its bed. Even the few people gathered there appeared listless and windblown; they milled about wordlessly, seeing to their vessels or perhaps just looking out across the bleak water.
Falcon led the way to a ramshackle stand with chipped white paint and faded letters reading "boat rental" painted over the open window. Behind the counter, a man who looked to be in his late twenties slouched and absentmindedly puffed on his cigarette. He was a lean and wiry gentleman with a thin face that made his eyes appear large and a transparent outline of a mustache below his nose. His eyes were as gray and apathetic as the ocean. When Falcon came over and put her hands on the counter, though, he straightened up, flicked his cigarette away, and waited.
"Hi, we'd like to rent a boat," Falcon told him cheerfully. "How much would it cost to rent one for two days?"
The man rubbed thoughtfully at his thin non-mustache and asked, "Where are y'all headed to?"
Without hesitation, Falcon replied, "Viridian Port."
"That's quite a' ways. Take a good part of three hours ta make it," he commented. But without any further questioning, he slid over to the cash register and, after Falcon had paid the fee, handed over the key to their rental, which he explained could be located at dock three.
The Lady Goldeen turned out to be a much nicer craft than Rasha had anticipated, with a coat of paint that looked fresh and a room below deck. The navigational system looked about as easy to operate as the NASA space shuttle, but Falcon insisted she'd driven boats before.
Logan shifted uneasily around the dock, seemingly unable to keep still. Rasha considered this the extended result of Isaiah's abduction until they had been out for twenty minutes, and all of a sudden his face started changing colors. Suddenly, he lunged for the side of the boat and emptied his stomach's contents into the ocean.
Rasha rolled her eyes and put her hand over her face. "Logan. I told you you'd need the Dramamine."
Logan, doubled over the boat's railing, could only moan piteously in reply.
Once he'd been moved below deck to wait out the rest of the trip, Rasha joined Falcon at the helm. "What happens once we reach Viridian?"
"We rent a car," Falcon said evenly, without taking her eyes off the horizon. "We'll have to drive it down toward Pallet Town-we'll leave the road before we get there. When it gets so we can't get the car around anymore, we'll hide it and go on foot. But once we reach Team Rocket headquarters, it's up to Logan to get us in and out."
Rasha grimaced anxiously; to relieve the tension, she tried to think more about the humor of the situation. They were about to rob a secret organization of thieves. What irony.
"You know, Rasha."
"Yeah?"
"Logan. he's unusual, isn't he? I mean, I don't think I've ever known anyone as sensitive as he is."
Rasha laughed before she could stop herself. "Sensitive? Come on, Falcon. Logan's a lot of things, but sensitive isn't one of them."
"No? That was my first impression of him."
Rasha said, "Well, I think he's just having a hard time. We had that accident with Isaiah, and then this happened not long after."
"Well, that's what I'm talking about," Falcon replied. "Him and Isaiah. No one I know above the age of ten openly expresses that much affection toward their Pokémon-especially men. And with his way of life, too."
Rasha looked up. The sea, pearl gray under the cotton sky, reminded her of carved ivory. "Logan loves Isaiah," she said. "He's not on Team Rocket anymore, either." Then she added, "He's different now."
"He didn't have Isaiah when he was with the team, did he?"
"No. actually, he quit after he got Isaiah. That's what he told me, anyway. Isaiah was what made him quit."
"Mm." The glass reflected off Falcon's eyes. When Rasha looked at her sideways, she could see the transparent area between the cornea and the sclera. She could see right through it.
A few moments passed before Falcon said, "Pokémon do change people."
"Yeah," Rasha agreed, and saw again Logan in the Pokémon Center waiting for Isaiah to emerge.
"Especially kids," Falcon said. "They can make them more or less responsible. Sometimes both. And they're intelligent-very intelligent. It's like. raising children, almost."
The vaporous silence, thickened by the liquid thrashing of the water, settled back over the Lady Goldeen. To Rasha's great relief, Falcon asked no more questions about Logan. She was afraid she might answer them, and the answers were not hers to give. After awhile she left Falcon at the helm and slipped below deck to check on Logan.
An impending storm stifled all signs of life at Viridian Port. It seemed to the three weary passengers that the Lady Goldeen was the sole boat moored there. Once the vessel had been tied, thumping restlessly against the docks like a leashed dog, Rasha, Logan, and Falcon entered the city.
Though most of its residents remained inside, hiding from the brooding gray sky, Viridian managed to be lively and populated without seeming stuffy. Pedestrians roamed the streets in jackets and sweatshirts, glancing anxiously at the sky as they walked to meet unknown appointments. Falcon looked up, expecting to see the great ornate roof of the Viridian Gym pointing above the city before she remembered that it had collapsed some time before.
Now, sitting in a booth at Marcy's Fast Food Diner, Falcon let Rasha and Logan's conversation slip into the drone of chatter and the whir of ceiling fans. She stared into her soda cup, swirling the straw mechanically-to all appearances deep in thought. Rasha and Logan left her alone, thinking that she must be meditating their plan. Logan missed the occasional upward slip of her eye, as well as the analytic gaze behind it. Falcon was contemplating Logan. There was something about him and Isaiah- something Rasha knew, but would not tell. And Falcon wasn't sure if she should find out before she enlisted to help him.
When they left the diner, Falcon's watch read 4:15. They didn't need to be-no, they shouldn't be at Team Rocket Headquarters before dark. Still, Falcon wanted to see the new building. It would help her once they actually got inside.
"Well," she told her companions outside the diner's door, "I'm going to see about renting a car-you should just try to stay around this street, I suppose. Look in the shops."
"We could come with you," Rasha said.
"No, that's okay," was the calm reply. "You guys just relax for awhile. I'll get the car. It's no problem." Falcon turned and began walking briskly away. "Have fun. I'll be back."
"Okay. bye, then," Rasha called. "Well. come on, Logan."
Logan watched Falcon until she turned the corner before he followed Rasha. Walking slowly down the street, the collar of her jacket turned up against the cold, Falcon realized her casual attitude just didn't have the right affect on him. You couldn't trick a trickster, she thought, and Logan was most likely too experienced at exuding false calm to be fooled when someone else did the same. Her feelings of suppressed mistrust were mutual. In the shadow of her jacket, Falcon smiled faintly as she reached up to stroke Pichu's fur. She knew a cynic when she saw one-she'd been one long enough.
I'm not very good at it, though, Falcon mused. I still want to trust, after all.
"Falcon's acting strange," Rasha commented. In response to Logan's questioning look, she added, "She's too quiet."
Logan cocked an eyebrow. "That woman is always quiet," he replied in a don't-be-silly tone. "You couldn't make her put two words together if you had a case of dynamite in one hand and a lighted match in the other."
"I'm serious here, Logan," Rasha said, giving him a small, reprimanding shove.
"All right. I have to admit I almost see what you mean. But. it's a serious situation, so I don't blame her," Logan responded.
"All right," Rasha conceded.
Having felled the conversation, Rasha employed her senses to observe the business structures that stood at attention along the sidewalk. Having time to kill expanded inevitability's debilitating grip-so close to their destination, she and Logan had begun to squirm beneath its fingers. Rasha felt that second to the desire to escape or end the situation was the urge to sit and collect her thoughts.
"You want to go in there?" Logan asked, stopping.
Rasha followed his finger to a small place on the corner-the sign over the door read "Kozy Kafé." Deciding she would like a hot coffee to combat the cold air, Rasha nodded, and the two of them crossed the street.
Before she got one foot in the door, however, Logan grabbed Rasha's shoulder. "What?" she asked.
Logan pointed. Rasha looked at the shop next to the coffee place-a Pokémart. However, she couldn't figure out what Logan was staring at.
"The guy at the register now," Logan prompted.
Rasha looked again. The man at the counter-a tall, scrawny individual with matted brown hair-lay a pricetagged firearm on the counter. A seizure rifle, Rasha realized.
"Doesn't he look familiar to you?" Logan said in a low voice.
Craning her neck, Rasha studied the man's profile. His nose pointed sharply out of a thin face, covering a smear of stubble on his upper lip. The old black jacket he wore looked familiar.
"My God," Rasha whispered as the light came on. "It's the boat rental guy! He followed us!"
The door to the Pokémart stood open. Logan and Rasha crept forward and listened as the clerk asked to see the man's license. "You have some kind of pest problem?" he asked.
"Somethin' like that," the boat rental man replied.
"Well, good luck with it. You need cartridges or anything?" the clerk asked as he rung up the rifle.
"Naw," the man said. "I got it taken care of."
Logan's face had gone gray. "I don't like this," he said. "I don't like this one bit."
Rasha frowned. There was something else about this man that had pulled a trigger in her mind. His mannerisms. and that accent.
"Shit!" Rasha hissed. "Joel!"
"What?" Logan demanded.
Joel was heading toward the door, so Rasha pulled Logan inside the coffee shop. They sat down at a small round table and Rasha told Logan about her conversation at the Pokémon Center the day after Isaiah had gone in.
"So," Logan said darkly, "he could be out to rescue Isaiah for himself." His left hand curled into a fist on the table. "That bastard."
Rasha's eyebrows knotted thoughtfully. "As far as we know, he's by himself. He'll never get in and out of that building."
"Just an overconfident prig who won too many battles in a row?" Logan thought aloud.
"Or," Rasha said, "maybe he's waiting for us to do that part for him."
"And then he'll jump us," Logan concluded, his face clouding.
"Even then, we have him outnumbered," Rasha pointed out.
"Then he's either an extremely skilled trainer, or he's an idiot," Logan said. "Or he could be planning to get us stunned with that gun he's buying." He massages his temples. "This just keeps getting better, doesn't it?"
They sat in brooding silence until Rasha happened to glance out the window and noticed headlights moving deliberately along the side of the street. She and Logan stepped outside, and before long the car pulled over in front of them. "Sorry it took so long," Falcon said from the driver's seat. "Hop in."
While Rasha and Logan slid into the backseat, they took turns filling Falcon in on the situation with Joel.
"A tagalong on our little escapade," Falcon sighed. "I wouldn't worry too much-he is just one man."
The sun set as they drove. The droning of the car's engine filled the heavy, empty air inside the vehicle. Gradually, asphalt beneath the tires became dirt-the engine whined more and more as hills sprang up in the terrain. Green and gray mountains loomed closer and closer, a ridge of misshapen spears thrust into the marshy fields of cloud above. Trees swarmed around, laying shadow bars across the uneven road. Raising his head, Logan beheld a cap on the treetops; a seamlessly shingled point that floated on the waving leaves--a black roof that marked their destination.
Falcon stopped the engine. "The point of no return," she whispered.
The very next afternoon, at approximately 1:00 p.m., the three comrades boarded a magnet train bound for Cherrygrove City Station. According to the plan they had conceived earlier, they would take a bus to New Bark Town upon arriving at the station. From there, they would rent a boat at New Bark Harbor and head for Viridian Port in Kanto. Their final destination would be Team Rocket headquarters.
Silent tension overshadowed all three passengers, weighted with the risk involved in what they were doing and the sheer outlandishness of the situation. Any conversation would prove either petty or cause more anxiety to the people involved.
Sliding her eyes to her right, Rasha could see the pale, translucent reflection of Logan's face in the train's window beyond the back of his head. His solemn eyes floated over the thick glass; the glare from the train's lights penetrated and distorted the image. Sitting in the seat adjacent to him, Rasha had transformed into a block of wood.
When the train finally came to a halt, Rasha blinked dazedly, experiencing a sense of lost time resulting from the silent train ride. She, Logan, and Falcon exited the train station and walked for several blocks to a bus station. The bus ride from Cherrygrove to New Bark Town proved about as eventful as the train ride. By the time they reached their stop, Pichu had fallen asleep.
At length, the group reached New Bark Harbor. Several boats knocked softly against rows of splintery wooden docks. The water-an amorphous plane of aluminum--flashed unenthusiastically as it sloshed in its bed. Even the few people gathered there appeared listless and windblown; they milled about wordlessly, seeing to their vessels or perhaps just looking out across the bleak water.
Falcon led the way to a ramshackle stand with chipped white paint and faded letters reading "boat rental" painted over the open window. Behind the counter, a man who looked to be in his late twenties slouched and absentmindedly puffed on his cigarette. He was a lean and wiry gentleman with a thin face that made his eyes appear large and a transparent outline of a mustache below his nose. His eyes were as gray and apathetic as the ocean. When Falcon came over and put her hands on the counter, though, he straightened up, flicked his cigarette away, and waited.
"Hi, we'd like to rent a boat," Falcon told him cheerfully. "How much would it cost to rent one for two days?"
The man rubbed thoughtfully at his thin non-mustache and asked, "Where are y'all headed to?"
Without hesitation, Falcon replied, "Viridian Port."
"That's quite a' ways. Take a good part of three hours ta make it," he commented. But without any further questioning, he slid over to the cash register and, after Falcon had paid the fee, handed over the key to their rental, which he explained could be located at dock three.
The Lady Goldeen turned out to be a much nicer craft than Rasha had anticipated, with a coat of paint that looked fresh and a room below deck. The navigational system looked about as easy to operate as the NASA space shuttle, but Falcon insisted she'd driven boats before.
Logan shifted uneasily around the dock, seemingly unable to keep still. Rasha considered this the extended result of Isaiah's abduction until they had been out for twenty minutes, and all of a sudden his face started changing colors. Suddenly, he lunged for the side of the boat and emptied his stomach's contents into the ocean.
Rasha rolled her eyes and put her hand over her face. "Logan. I told you you'd need the Dramamine."
Logan, doubled over the boat's railing, could only moan piteously in reply.
Once he'd been moved below deck to wait out the rest of the trip, Rasha joined Falcon at the helm. "What happens once we reach Viridian?"
"We rent a car," Falcon said evenly, without taking her eyes off the horizon. "We'll have to drive it down toward Pallet Town-we'll leave the road before we get there. When it gets so we can't get the car around anymore, we'll hide it and go on foot. But once we reach Team Rocket headquarters, it's up to Logan to get us in and out."
Rasha grimaced anxiously; to relieve the tension, she tried to think more about the humor of the situation. They were about to rob a secret organization of thieves. What irony.
"You know, Rasha."
"Yeah?"
"Logan. he's unusual, isn't he? I mean, I don't think I've ever known anyone as sensitive as he is."
Rasha laughed before she could stop herself. "Sensitive? Come on, Falcon. Logan's a lot of things, but sensitive isn't one of them."
"No? That was my first impression of him."
Rasha said, "Well, I think he's just having a hard time. We had that accident with Isaiah, and then this happened not long after."
"Well, that's what I'm talking about," Falcon replied. "Him and Isaiah. No one I know above the age of ten openly expresses that much affection toward their Pokémon-especially men. And with his way of life, too."
Rasha looked up. The sea, pearl gray under the cotton sky, reminded her of carved ivory. "Logan loves Isaiah," she said. "He's not on Team Rocket anymore, either." Then she added, "He's different now."
"He didn't have Isaiah when he was with the team, did he?"
"No. actually, he quit after he got Isaiah. That's what he told me, anyway. Isaiah was what made him quit."
"Mm." The glass reflected off Falcon's eyes. When Rasha looked at her sideways, she could see the transparent area between the cornea and the sclera. She could see right through it.
A few moments passed before Falcon said, "Pokémon do change people."
"Yeah," Rasha agreed, and saw again Logan in the Pokémon Center waiting for Isaiah to emerge.
"Especially kids," Falcon said. "They can make them more or less responsible. Sometimes both. And they're intelligent-very intelligent. It's like. raising children, almost."
The vaporous silence, thickened by the liquid thrashing of the water, settled back over the Lady Goldeen. To Rasha's great relief, Falcon asked no more questions about Logan. She was afraid she might answer them, and the answers were not hers to give. After awhile she left Falcon at the helm and slipped below deck to check on Logan.
An impending storm stifled all signs of life at Viridian Port. It seemed to the three weary passengers that the Lady Goldeen was the sole boat moored there. Once the vessel had been tied, thumping restlessly against the docks like a leashed dog, Rasha, Logan, and Falcon entered the city.
Though most of its residents remained inside, hiding from the brooding gray sky, Viridian managed to be lively and populated without seeming stuffy. Pedestrians roamed the streets in jackets and sweatshirts, glancing anxiously at the sky as they walked to meet unknown appointments. Falcon looked up, expecting to see the great ornate roof of the Viridian Gym pointing above the city before she remembered that it had collapsed some time before.
Now, sitting in a booth at Marcy's Fast Food Diner, Falcon let Rasha and Logan's conversation slip into the drone of chatter and the whir of ceiling fans. She stared into her soda cup, swirling the straw mechanically-to all appearances deep in thought. Rasha and Logan left her alone, thinking that she must be meditating their plan. Logan missed the occasional upward slip of her eye, as well as the analytic gaze behind it. Falcon was contemplating Logan. There was something about him and Isaiah- something Rasha knew, but would not tell. And Falcon wasn't sure if she should find out before she enlisted to help him.
When they left the diner, Falcon's watch read 4:15. They didn't need to be-no, they shouldn't be at Team Rocket Headquarters before dark. Still, Falcon wanted to see the new building. It would help her once they actually got inside.
"Well," she told her companions outside the diner's door, "I'm going to see about renting a car-you should just try to stay around this street, I suppose. Look in the shops."
"We could come with you," Rasha said.
"No, that's okay," was the calm reply. "You guys just relax for awhile. I'll get the car. It's no problem." Falcon turned and began walking briskly away. "Have fun. I'll be back."
"Okay. bye, then," Rasha called. "Well. come on, Logan."
Logan watched Falcon until she turned the corner before he followed Rasha. Walking slowly down the street, the collar of her jacket turned up against the cold, Falcon realized her casual attitude just didn't have the right affect on him. You couldn't trick a trickster, she thought, and Logan was most likely too experienced at exuding false calm to be fooled when someone else did the same. Her feelings of suppressed mistrust were mutual. In the shadow of her jacket, Falcon smiled faintly as she reached up to stroke Pichu's fur. She knew a cynic when she saw one-she'd been one long enough.
I'm not very good at it, though, Falcon mused. I still want to trust, after all.
"Falcon's acting strange," Rasha commented. In response to Logan's questioning look, she added, "She's too quiet."
Logan cocked an eyebrow. "That woman is always quiet," he replied in a don't-be-silly tone. "You couldn't make her put two words together if you had a case of dynamite in one hand and a lighted match in the other."
"I'm serious here, Logan," Rasha said, giving him a small, reprimanding shove.
"All right. I have to admit I almost see what you mean. But. it's a serious situation, so I don't blame her," Logan responded.
"All right," Rasha conceded.
Having felled the conversation, Rasha employed her senses to observe the business structures that stood at attention along the sidewalk. Having time to kill expanded inevitability's debilitating grip-so close to their destination, she and Logan had begun to squirm beneath its fingers. Rasha felt that second to the desire to escape or end the situation was the urge to sit and collect her thoughts.
"You want to go in there?" Logan asked, stopping.
Rasha followed his finger to a small place on the corner-the sign over the door read "Kozy Kafé." Deciding she would like a hot coffee to combat the cold air, Rasha nodded, and the two of them crossed the street.
Before she got one foot in the door, however, Logan grabbed Rasha's shoulder. "What?" she asked.
Logan pointed. Rasha looked at the shop next to the coffee place-a Pokémart. However, she couldn't figure out what Logan was staring at.
"The guy at the register now," Logan prompted.
Rasha looked again. The man at the counter-a tall, scrawny individual with matted brown hair-lay a pricetagged firearm on the counter. A seizure rifle, Rasha realized.
"Doesn't he look familiar to you?" Logan said in a low voice.
Craning her neck, Rasha studied the man's profile. His nose pointed sharply out of a thin face, covering a smear of stubble on his upper lip. The old black jacket he wore looked familiar.
"My God," Rasha whispered as the light came on. "It's the boat rental guy! He followed us!"
The door to the Pokémart stood open. Logan and Rasha crept forward and listened as the clerk asked to see the man's license. "You have some kind of pest problem?" he asked.
"Somethin' like that," the boat rental man replied.
"Well, good luck with it. You need cartridges or anything?" the clerk asked as he rung up the rifle.
"Naw," the man said. "I got it taken care of."
Logan's face had gone gray. "I don't like this," he said. "I don't like this one bit."
Rasha frowned. There was something else about this man that had pulled a trigger in her mind. His mannerisms. and that accent.
"Shit!" Rasha hissed. "Joel!"
"What?" Logan demanded.
Joel was heading toward the door, so Rasha pulled Logan inside the coffee shop. They sat down at a small round table and Rasha told Logan about her conversation at the Pokémon Center the day after Isaiah had gone in.
"So," Logan said darkly, "he could be out to rescue Isaiah for himself." His left hand curled into a fist on the table. "That bastard."
Rasha's eyebrows knotted thoughtfully. "As far as we know, he's by himself. He'll never get in and out of that building."
"Just an overconfident prig who won too many battles in a row?" Logan thought aloud.
"Or," Rasha said, "maybe he's waiting for us to do that part for him."
"And then he'll jump us," Logan concluded, his face clouding.
"Even then, we have him outnumbered," Rasha pointed out.
"Then he's either an extremely skilled trainer, or he's an idiot," Logan said. "Or he could be planning to get us stunned with that gun he's buying." He massages his temples. "This just keeps getting better, doesn't it?"
They sat in brooding silence until Rasha happened to glance out the window and noticed headlights moving deliberately along the side of the street. She and Logan stepped outside, and before long the car pulled over in front of them. "Sorry it took so long," Falcon said from the driver's seat. "Hop in."
While Rasha and Logan slid into the backseat, they took turns filling Falcon in on the situation with Joel.
"A tagalong on our little escapade," Falcon sighed. "I wouldn't worry too much-he is just one man."
The sun set as they drove. The droning of the car's engine filled the heavy, empty air inside the vehicle. Gradually, asphalt beneath the tires became dirt-the engine whined more and more as hills sprang up in the terrain. Green and gray mountains loomed closer and closer, a ridge of misshapen spears thrust into the marshy fields of cloud above. Trees swarmed around, laying shadow bars across the uneven road. Raising his head, Logan beheld a cap on the treetops; a seamlessly shingled point that floated on the waving leaves--a black roof that marked their destination.
Falcon stopped the engine. "The point of no return," she whispered.