Team Rocket

Taylor scrambled to the edge of the roof, looking for a way down. Nope, just a thirty foot drop, and Lung was climbing up the wall. With nothing else she could think of to do, she pulled out her bottle of pepper spray and emptied it into his face.

He snarled and cursed, but he kept coming.

And that was it. Her bugs burned on contact, her pepper spray could barely slow him down, she couldn't run, she couldn't hide, all she could do was—

"Prepare for trouble!"

"And make it double!"

... What? What was that? Someone with a megaphone in ... in a hot air balloon. Somehow that seemed even less believable than someone flying by their own power. The balloon floated, a massive caricature of a cat's head, mouth wide, eyes manic and bulging in the night.

"To protect the world from devastation!"

"To unite all peoples within our nation!"

Heroes, really campy heroes if the rehearsed-sounding introduction was anything to go by, and horribly out of their depth. Not that Taylor had any room to talk.

"To denounce the evils of truth and love!"

"To extend our reach to the stars above!"

Wait, what? She was only half listening to the balloon capes, more worried about the super villain thrashing around in pain and frustration right in front of her, but ... what?

A pair of floodlights illuminated the capes in the balloon's basket.

"Jesse."

"James."

"Team Rocket blasts off at the speed of light!"

"Surrender now or prepare to fight!"

A two person team. A man and a woman wearing matching white outfits. The woman had long, magenta hair and looked like she went through a bottle of hairspray a day, and the man had his hair dyed blue and he carried a rose as a prop. No masks. New members of New Wave she hadn't heard of? A pair of independents?

"Meowth, that's right!"

A small bipedal cat-like creature hopped up onto the rim of the basket. Its head was terrifyingly large for its small body with a wide mouth, huge eyes, and long whiskers. Either it was a Changer, or some Biotinker had committed yet another crime against nature.

Lung threw a blast of fire at the balloon, and the three of them screamed as they fell and crashed onto a nearby building.

They crawled out of the wreckage and dusted themselves off. "Our balloon!" the blue haired man said. "There's a great big hole in it!"

"You'll pay for that, you brat!" the woman said, glaring at Taylor.

What? Don't look at me! I didn't do anything!

"Go, Arbok!" The woman, Jesse, threw a red and white ball onto the roof near Lung. It didn't come close to hitting him, but instead exploded in a flash of light. The light coalesced into a solid form that took the shape of a massive serpent.

"Go, Wheezing!" James followed suit, but the new creature that formed was far more bizarre. It was the same shade of purple as the snake, but it didn't resemble any animal she could think of. It looked like a series of balls floating in the air, covered in pustules, and connected by viscous tendrils. Worst of all, the balls had faces on them, with large, lazy eyes and wide, half open mouths with protruding fangs.

What were they? They looked like they were alive. Had some mad bio-tinker mutated them in a lab before trapping them in some sort of extradimensional space? Or were they projections created by the balls the two capes had thrown?

In any case, the creatures attacked Lung. Good. Taylor half expected them to go after her with the way the Jesse woman had glared at her, and the snake and the ... floating ball conglomerate were handling Lung better than she had. The snake wrapped its body around Lung and tried to sink its fangs through his hard, metallic scales, but that was all she could see of the fight before the other thing covered them all in black smoke.

"Hey, kid."

Taylor turned away from the fight and saw James standing on the edge of his building, waving at her.

"Wh-what?"

"Is that a steel type or a fire type?"

She blinked. "What?"

"Your pokemon. Is it steel or fire?" He seemed friendlier than his teammate, but he wasn't making any more sense.

"My what? You mean Lung? I'm not with him!"

"Oh," James said. "So it's a wild pokemon."

What's a pokemon? He seemed to be referring to Lung, but that wasn't a term Taylor had heard before.

"It doesn't matter what it is!" Jesse snapped. "It's rare, it's strong, and we're going to capture it!"

Capture? A team of heroes would try to arrest Lung, and villains would ... do whatever villains did. Drive him off? Kill him? But if they were in the business of capturing capes, why were they ignoring her?

Because you can control bugs, and he can turn into a dragon.

Oh. Right.

With a roar of rage and a burst of fire, Lung broke free of the snake's hold and sent the floating, purple conglomerate flying.

"It's too much!" James said. "Return, Wheezing!"

"Arbok, get back here!" Jesse said. They pointed what Taylor was convinced were Tinkertech devices at the creatures and somehow turned them from matter into light and sucked them back in. "It looks like it's time for plan R!"

"R for rocket?" James asked.

"R for Team Rocket!" Jesse replied. She dug under the remains of their balloon and pulled out ...

A rocket launcher.

Lung took a moment to recover from the giant snake and the toxic gas before charging at them, ignoring Taylor entirely. Jesse and James held up the rocket launcher together, aimed it together, and together they fired it right into Lung's chest.

It exploded, knocking him backwards, bouncing him off the roof and onto the street below.

"Now!" James shouted, and he threw another one of those balls at Lung.

It bounced off, doing nothing.

"It didn't work!" he cried.

"You have to damage it more before you can capture it!" Jesse shouted.

The cat thing peered over the edge of the building. "It looks like the Lung is evolving!"

"You're right, Meowth!" James said. "And if a Lung is rare, its evolved form is going to be even rarer! Look, it's growing wings! Is it a dragon type? It looks like a dragon type! The boss is going to be ecstatic!"

"Only if we can catch the thing!" Jesse said. "Nothing we've thrown at it so far has worked!"

"Fortunately," Meowth said, "I've planned for such an occasion. It's time for Plan R!"

"But we've already tried Plan R."

"Not R for rocket, you doofus," the creature said. "R for robot!"

Just then, a literal giant robot fell from the night sky and landed in the middle of the street. How ... how long had that been there? Had there been a floating platform right above her the whole time? To be fair, Taylor hadn't noticed the hot air balloon either until the newcomers had started introducing themselves.

Regardless, it was about time Taylor did something smart tonight, and she left. She had wanted to fight some drug dealers or gang members, not get between a dragon and a giant robot. As Team Rocket jumped into the pilot cabin of the mech, Taylor climbed down the fire escape and went home.

From now on, I'm sticking to purse thieves. Heck, maybe I should start out with jaywalkers and move up from there.

On the walk back, she saw a shooting star that she could have sworn shouted out, "Team Rocket blasting off again!"

Which was crazy.

They're probably fine.

WWW

A/n You know, half the reason I started this snippet thread was so I could write crack. So ... here you go. Edited by Exiled.