Discarding his walking stick, Pryce stretched, smiling. It was a paying
strategy to pose as a senile old man when it came to pokemon battling, but
both the curved back, heavy glasses and walking stick would prove much of a
deterrent to his favorite activity.
The Shioran glacier was in the mountains, not far north of Mahogany, and had long been a great mountain climbing challenge. No one had ever made it to the top, and a heavy shroud of fog covered anything that may have been set beyond the wall of ever-present ice deep in the mountain.
He rapidly put on his equipment, triple checking everything. The boots he wore were made just for mountain-climbing, steel hooks beneath allowing him to maintain his grip on the slipperiest surfaces. Today, he decided, was the day. He had attempted twice to climb the Shioran glacier, to see what was beyond, but both time had been repelled at some point.
He thought for a moment, wondering what kind of forgotten animals would live there, forgotten by the moon and sun since eons forgotten. Aerodactyls, perhaps, or even more, rarer pokemon the like of which he had never seen? It was enough to make his face break in a vast smile of enthusiasm.
"Let's get going." He smiled to himself, attacking the first part of the enormous cliff gleefully, digging in it for handholds when none were to be found. The going was actually rather easy for the first few hundred meters, stopping on the numerous narrow ledges to take some rest. By mid-day he had already reached halfway through the cliff, but the true challenge - the straight ledgeless eight hundred meters of cliff - remained ahead. He stopped, thinking things through. Climbing further now would be much of a risk to run, so he rapidly installed his lightweight yet warm and comfortable tent on the current ledge. It was quite cold already, but things would certainly get worse by the time he'd reach the end of the cliff.
___________________________
"Whoa, glad this one's over." The young man - twenty-two of age - dropped on a chair in the pokemon center in Torambro. The last two months spent in the following jungle had been long, away from civilization. He had volunteered of course to come here to help in their study on bugs, but it took nothing out of the lenght of time the whole project had required. He wiped his forehead.
"I thought things would get cooler by the time we got out of the jungle." He pointed out.
"Tsukushi?" His real japanesse name came easily to the lips of his colleague rather than his far better known nickname of Bugsy. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah..." He hesitated, his voice bluring as he answered - among other things. "Well...not really, come to think of it..."
"What's wrong?" A figure - he couldn't focus his eyes enough to find out more - reached out to catch him as he fell.
"Who's that? I don't see really well...got an headache now..." The pain, coming all of a sudden, threatened to overload his poor nerves. He felt like he was exploding, sweat dripping down every part of his body even though he was shivering as if naked in the cold of winter.
"Get him to the hospital!" Someone yelled. "He must have gotten some tropical disease in the jungle!"
He felt hand rushing him outside - the blinding light that had to be that of the sun told him they were outside clearly enough. The racing footsteps thundered near his head - were they near his head? That would be too strange, it would mean he was on the ground, and he knew he wasn't.
The doors of the hospital opened with a loud bang - too loud, like someone had just detonated an atom bomb near - no, inside - his head.
A strange white shape looked at him, entirely too close, the hot breath creating ripples in the pools formed by his sweat. The shape...there was some red on it, he thought, though he couldn't be sure.
"Take him to the operation block at once!" The order crashed around his ears, threatening to destroy his eardrums. He winced, feeling a shriek of pain in his body as he did so.
________________________________
"No. First we set up the new defenses, THEN the command center Jessie." Ash repeated, his voice stern
"I'll now point out to our illustrious twerp-leader that the defense system need a command center to function properly." James smiled as Ash shook his head.
"But if we set up the defenses now, they'll get online as soon as we can set the proper part of the command center up and running - and they are on top priority. Whereas if we do the whole command center first..." Normally, with most member of the team, he would simply have ordered and cut any opposition. But Jessie and James were close friends, and moreover had been among his earliest supporters during his campaign to bring down Giovanni. They were a special case.
"Are Gary and Misty in a safe place?" He questionned next. There would be little point to setting up the best security systems.
"I have a ring of Elite Agents protectiong them. The Black Talon." James reported rapidly, setting Ash at ease - if only a bit. The Black Talon were not only among the best agents the team had, but they had also been handpicked by James on the ground of personal loyalty to Ash himself. They, of all people, would be the best to keep Ash and Misty safe.
The rocket agents busied themselves around the new headquarters, installing the numerous arrays of detection equipment, control systems and - of great importance as well - the defensive weaponry. Most of what they were putting in was extremely costly, extremely dangerous, and of course highly illegal, but none of these proved much of a problem for an organization with the vast networks of contacts and undercover agents that Team Rocket had.
"Who's on the field investigating?" There would have been shifts in active agent ; he had simply handled Butch the list of what he wanted down, letting the selection of which agent would accomplish which task up the green haired man whose eyes now burned with an hunger for revenge.
"Mondo is in Vermillion, investigating Surge's death. Domino is out at large, tracking down what she claim is an interesting trail. Agent Alpha and Agent Bravo also report they are on to something." A curious eyebrow or two raised in the room at the last. Alpha and Bravo were the two most secret agents of the team, placed were no one would find them, and reporting treasures troves of information to headquarters. Ash alone knew their true identities, all others had to make-do with codenames and - mostly very far from the truth - guesses. "Felicity and Ralph have reported something interesting within the old archives at the Viridian base, though."
"What is it?" These two...they had been long time member of team Rocket, in the team before Giovanni even took charge. Yet they had been among the first to join Ash, just as Jessie and James - and Butch and Cassidy, for that matter.
"I assume you have heard of the M2 project?"
"Of course." The information, though hard to come by, had been pieced together thanks to the help of Domino, who had proven more than willing to cooperate after the defeat of Giovanni.
"It would seem more than one sample of Mew genes were produced. Five of them, in total. Three were used in the Mewtwo project. The question is..." He did not have time to complete - Ash had already jumped to the question.
"What happened to the other two?"
__________________________
"There's nothign we can do." Terrence Awlinson shook his head sadly. He was a doctor, not a miracle worker, but he knew few doctor - none at all, in fact - who would be willing to happily admit defeat in front of the enemy they always battled.
The working colleague of the dying young man shook their head too, in shock. Few people, he had observed, were ever ready to hear that statement regarding someone they knew and respected - or liked, or loved.
"Do you know at least what it is doctor?" The young woman had a tear or two running down her cheek.
"Only suspicions. I assume you guys were working in the deep jungle?"
They both nodded. It had not been very hard a guess, given the clothes they still wore.
"We've had one or two cases recently of a seemingly new and very potent form of virus striking out in a part of the jungle. It causes most of the symptom your friend seemed to suffer from. The common link between these few cases is that all the victims were bitten by a strange-looking mosquito just before turning sick."
"Bugsy complained about that...he even caught the little bugger..." The man suddenly talked.
A surge of excitement flashed through Awlinson's mind. The opportunity to directly analyze the beast at the source of the infestation would tremendously improve their ability to treat it.
"May I take the specimen?" He asked respectfully. They both nodded, of course. That was little surprise.
An hour later, he was analyzing the strange bug, noticing a few very horrifying things with it. Three more, and he was done, scribbling down a three-copy report.
The first copy went into his personal files. The second was sent by express mail to the Headquarters of the Indigo League.
The third, containing certain details omitted in the second, was put in a carefully sealed envelope. The address to which it was sent was irrelevant to most extant - there was actually no one really living there. What mattered far more was the name of the so-called person who would receive the mail. There was no one by the name of Tracey Rablerton in all of Indigo. But the name, written in red ink, served only to hide the first letters of both first and last name, which would be all whoever picked up the mail would need to know.
_______________________
The command center was almost completed already. Many agents were sitting down in front of an assortment of control panels, listening to reports incoming from everywhere in the world. Gary and Misty, flanked by a trio of Black Talons agents, had joined them, watching the ongoing events.
"Sir, something interesting." One of the man suddenly noticed. "There's been another victim of the Shianro virus."
"Oh? Have they found anything about it yet?" He had been paying some attention to the strange new virus, wondering if it would turn in a dangerous worldwide outbreak or would stay confined to the small area in which it seemed to be taking place.
"Yes, actually...the victim this time was an entomologist who captured a specimen of the bug behind the transmission of the virus. They have analyzed the bug at the nearest medical center, research headed by..." The man's face broke into a grin as he heard the name. "Terrence Awlinson. I think you'll get a complete report on what's up on your desk soon, boss." Inside Team Rocket proper, Awlinson was one of the few well-known figures. "Victim is..." The grin vanished, leaving place to a bleak face. Misty and Gary noticed it, their mind already drawing links. "Victim is Tsukushi Takenaga, famous entomologist - and Azalea Gym Leader."
"Shit." He heard someone says, summarizing pretty well what he was thinking.
"Bugsy?" Misty's stunned voice broke the silence a few seconds later.
"Yep. It might only be an accident though." Gary cautioned. "I mean, bugs are fairly dangerous on their own, without any murderous help..."
"Taken on their own, each of the events so far can be taken as an incident. It's when you put them together that things starts looking bad. We don't dare not making the link." Butch opposed. "Get agents to check the mailbox on a double-basis. We don't want to miss Awlinson's report." He had turned toward one of this underling.
"And double the guard around Gary and Misty." The last was Ash's own command. "Same things as last time. If anything happen to them, whoever let it happen will wish they were dead." Compassion in the current siutation would endanger too much.
He could only afford to be harsh.
The Shioran glacier was in the mountains, not far north of Mahogany, and had long been a great mountain climbing challenge. No one had ever made it to the top, and a heavy shroud of fog covered anything that may have been set beyond the wall of ever-present ice deep in the mountain.
He rapidly put on his equipment, triple checking everything. The boots he wore were made just for mountain-climbing, steel hooks beneath allowing him to maintain his grip on the slipperiest surfaces. Today, he decided, was the day. He had attempted twice to climb the Shioran glacier, to see what was beyond, but both time had been repelled at some point.
He thought for a moment, wondering what kind of forgotten animals would live there, forgotten by the moon and sun since eons forgotten. Aerodactyls, perhaps, or even more, rarer pokemon the like of which he had never seen? It was enough to make his face break in a vast smile of enthusiasm.
"Let's get going." He smiled to himself, attacking the first part of the enormous cliff gleefully, digging in it for handholds when none were to be found. The going was actually rather easy for the first few hundred meters, stopping on the numerous narrow ledges to take some rest. By mid-day he had already reached halfway through the cliff, but the true challenge - the straight ledgeless eight hundred meters of cliff - remained ahead. He stopped, thinking things through. Climbing further now would be much of a risk to run, so he rapidly installed his lightweight yet warm and comfortable tent on the current ledge. It was quite cold already, but things would certainly get worse by the time he'd reach the end of the cliff.
___________________________
"Whoa, glad this one's over." The young man - twenty-two of age - dropped on a chair in the pokemon center in Torambro. The last two months spent in the following jungle had been long, away from civilization. He had volunteered of course to come here to help in their study on bugs, but it took nothing out of the lenght of time the whole project had required. He wiped his forehead.
"I thought things would get cooler by the time we got out of the jungle." He pointed out.
"Tsukushi?" His real japanesse name came easily to the lips of his colleague rather than his far better known nickname of Bugsy. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah..." He hesitated, his voice bluring as he answered - among other things. "Well...not really, come to think of it..."
"What's wrong?" A figure - he couldn't focus his eyes enough to find out more - reached out to catch him as he fell.
"Who's that? I don't see really well...got an headache now..." The pain, coming all of a sudden, threatened to overload his poor nerves. He felt like he was exploding, sweat dripping down every part of his body even though he was shivering as if naked in the cold of winter.
"Get him to the hospital!" Someone yelled. "He must have gotten some tropical disease in the jungle!"
He felt hand rushing him outside - the blinding light that had to be that of the sun told him they were outside clearly enough. The racing footsteps thundered near his head - were they near his head? That would be too strange, it would mean he was on the ground, and he knew he wasn't.
The doors of the hospital opened with a loud bang - too loud, like someone had just detonated an atom bomb near - no, inside - his head.
A strange white shape looked at him, entirely too close, the hot breath creating ripples in the pools formed by his sweat. The shape...there was some red on it, he thought, though he couldn't be sure.
"Take him to the operation block at once!" The order crashed around his ears, threatening to destroy his eardrums. He winced, feeling a shriek of pain in his body as he did so.
________________________________
"No. First we set up the new defenses, THEN the command center Jessie." Ash repeated, his voice stern
"I'll now point out to our illustrious twerp-leader that the defense system need a command center to function properly." James smiled as Ash shook his head.
"But if we set up the defenses now, they'll get online as soon as we can set the proper part of the command center up and running - and they are on top priority. Whereas if we do the whole command center first..." Normally, with most member of the team, he would simply have ordered and cut any opposition. But Jessie and James were close friends, and moreover had been among his earliest supporters during his campaign to bring down Giovanni. They were a special case.
"Are Gary and Misty in a safe place?" He questionned next. There would be little point to setting up the best security systems.
"I have a ring of Elite Agents protectiong them. The Black Talon." James reported rapidly, setting Ash at ease - if only a bit. The Black Talon were not only among the best agents the team had, but they had also been handpicked by James on the ground of personal loyalty to Ash himself. They, of all people, would be the best to keep Ash and Misty safe.
The rocket agents busied themselves around the new headquarters, installing the numerous arrays of detection equipment, control systems and - of great importance as well - the defensive weaponry. Most of what they were putting in was extremely costly, extremely dangerous, and of course highly illegal, but none of these proved much of a problem for an organization with the vast networks of contacts and undercover agents that Team Rocket had.
"Who's on the field investigating?" There would have been shifts in active agent ; he had simply handled Butch the list of what he wanted down, letting the selection of which agent would accomplish which task up the green haired man whose eyes now burned with an hunger for revenge.
"Mondo is in Vermillion, investigating Surge's death. Domino is out at large, tracking down what she claim is an interesting trail. Agent Alpha and Agent Bravo also report they are on to something." A curious eyebrow or two raised in the room at the last. Alpha and Bravo were the two most secret agents of the team, placed were no one would find them, and reporting treasures troves of information to headquarters. Ash alone knew their true identities, all others had to make-do with codenames and - mostly very far from the truth - guesses. "Felicity and Ralph have reported something interesting within the old archives at the Viridian base, though."
"What is it?" These two...they had been long time member of team Rocket, in the team before Giovanni even took charge. Yet they had been among the first to join Ash, just as Jessie and James - and Butch and Cassidy, for that matter.
"I assume you have heard of the M2 project?"
"Of course." The information, though hard to come by, had been pieced together thanks to the help of Domino, who had proven more than willing to cooperate after the defeat of Giovanni.
"It would seem more than one sample of Mew genes were produced. Five of them, in total. Three were used in the Mewtwo project. The question is..." He did not have time to complete - Ash had already jumped to the question.
"What happened to the other two?"
__________________________
"There's nothign we can do." Terrence Awlinson shook his head sadly. He was a doctor, not a miracle worker, but he knew few doctor - none at all, in fact - who would be willing to happily admit defeat in front of the enemy they always battled.
The working colleague of the dying young man shook their head too, in shock. Few people, he had observed, were ever ready to hear that statement regarding someone they knew and respected - or liked, or loved.
"Do you know at least what it is doctor?" The young woman had a tear or two running down her cheek.
"Only suspicions. I assume you guys were working in the deep jungle?"
They both nodded. It had not been very hard a guess, given the clothes they still wore.
"We've had one or two cases recently of a seemingly new and very potent form of virus striking out in a part of the jungle. It causes most of the symptom your friend seemed to suffer from. The common link between these few cases is that all the victims were bitten by a strange-looking mosquito just before turning sick."
"Bugsy complained about that...he even caught the little bugger..." The man suddenly talked.
A surge of excitement flashed through Awlinson's mind. The opportunity to directly analyze the beast at the source of the infestation would tremendously improve their ability to treat it.
"May I take the specimen?" He asked respectfully. They both nodded, of course. That was little surprise.
An hour later, he was analyzing the strange bug, noticing a few very horrifying things with it. Three more, and he was done, scribbling down a three-copy report.
The first copy went into his personal files. The second was sent by express mail to the Headquarters of the Indigo League.
The third, containing certain details omitted in the second, was put in a carefully sealed envelope. The address to which it was sent was irrelevant to most extant - there was actually no one really living there. What mattered far more was the name of the so-called person who would receive the mail. There was no one by the name of Tracey Rablerton in all of Indigo. But the name, written in red ink, served only to hide the first letters of both first and last name, which would be all whoever picked up the mail would need to know.
_______________________
The command center was almost completed already. Many agents were sitting down in front of an assortment of control panels, listening to reports incoming from everywhere in the world. Gary and Misty, flanked by a trio of Black Talons agents, had joined them, watching the ongoing events.
"Sir, something interesting." One of the man suddenly noticed. "There's been another victim of the Shianro virus."
"Oh? Have they found anything about it yet?" He had been paying some attention to the strange new virus, wondering if it would turn in a dangerous worldwide outbreak or would stay confined to the small area in which it seemed to be taking place.
"Yes, actually...the victim this time was an entomologist who captured a specimen of the bug behind the transmission of the virus. They have analyzed the bug at the nearest medical center, research headed by..." The man's face broke into a grin as he heard the name. "Terrence Awlinson. I think you'll get a complete report on what's up on your desk soon, boss." Inside Team Rocket proper, Awlinson was one of the few well-known figures. "Victim is..." The grin vanished, leaving place to a bleak face. Misty and Gary noticed it, their mind already drawing links. "Victim is Tsukushi Takenaga, famous entomologist - and Azalea Gym Leader."
"Shit." He heard someone says, summarizing pretty well what he was thinking.
"Bugsy?" Misty's stunned voice broke the silence a few seconds later.
"Yep. It might only be an accident though." Gary cautioned. "I mean, bugs are fairly dangerous on their own, without any murderous help..."
"Taken on their own, each of the events so far can be taken as an incident. It's when you put them together that things starts looking bad. We don't dare not making the link." Butch opposed. "Get agents to check the mailbox on a double-basis. We don't want to miss Awlinson's report." He had turned toward one of this underling.
"And double the guard around Gary and Misty." The last was Ash's own command. "Same things as last time. If anything happen to them, whoever let it happen will wish they were dead." Compassion in the current siutation would endanger too much.
He could only afford to be harsh.