Disclaimer: I do not own Pokémon. Nintendo does. This story isn't written to make profit, or even to get attention from girls. It is simply written for entertainment and to keep myself busy. The main characters are mine however (except for professor Oak and some Jenny's and Joy's) and I would appreciate it if you wouldn't use it without my approval.

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Chapter 19 – Gambling time

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Okay, I had spend a day or two in Vermillion, filling out the paper work to put those guys from the Dark Squad away (I felt kinda bad about Angela but then again, she shouldn't have tied me up) and then rode off to Celadon. I don't know why but I felt good, calm and relaxed even. I just enjoyed the nature as I drove to the huge city that was Celadon and I believe my eye twitched when I saw the flashing lights. Sorry, but it's quite a shock getting thrown in a turbulent metropolis if you just spend several hours in woods. I parked my bike near the pokécentre and booked a room for the night.

As I wandered around in the city, I wondered if I should train my pokémon or enjoy the town. Oh, what the hell, let's do both. Today I'll train my pokémon and tonight I'll hit the town. I found some trainers just outside town who's ass I kicked. Well, most of them anyway. I don't know, somehow I got over the torment of losing. Ah, who am I kidding? When I lost I returned to the pokécentre and brought out my heavy hitters to kick the living snot out of whatever asshole that beat me! What? It's not like I'm out to make friends now, am I? Fuck 'em! I wanted to be the best and that meant crushing every body else. I was lucky the pokéleague was set in a short time, so all the serious trainers were already off to the Indigo plateau so all the, what's the word I should use, ah yes, rejects were left and I could handle them. In fact, I had so much fun beating those little bitches into submission I completely lost track of time and it was too late to go into town. Oh well, there was still tomorrow. For some strange reason those weren't gonna be there the next day, so I didn't need to bother to go back. Really!

I turned in for the night and had a good sleep. When I woke up I felt amazing. Little did I know shit was gonna hit the fan later on. After breakfast I explored town a bit and saw a lot of casino's. I checked my money and what the heck, let's gamble a bit, shan't we?

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"So you guys had him and you let him go?"

"We had him and HAD to let him go," the speaker corrected as he put his drink on the table rather hard, "we got called back by HQ."

The blonde Rocket motioned the waiter to bring three more drinks.

"You should have shot him when you had the chance." The first speaker said.

"You mean killed him?" the Rocket hissed and went over his trimmed head with his hand as if to put his hair back, "are you forgetting who we are talking about?"

"Listen," the blonde interrupted, "I know what he did to you, Marc, but we can't just shoot him."

"Well, I could!" Marc responded.

"You better hope the boss doesn't hear about that."

"I thought I could count on you to take care of him, but you let him go."

"Take care of him?" the trimmed Rocket reacted, "listen you're a good friend, and he almost go you arrested, but don't you think that killing him for that is a bit over the top?"

"Not really." Marc said and brought his glass to his mouth to take a sip.

"No more." The blonde Rocket took his glass away.

"Hey!"

"He's right, you've had enough. It's fucking morning, you shouldn't be drinking now!" he looked at his glass and put it back on the table, "come to think of it, neither should I."

"Anyway," the blonde Rocket concluded, "it's over."

"No, it's not." Marc muttered under his breath.

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Okay, good news is, I won about twenty bucks on the slots. Bad news? I lost seventy. Oh well, you win some, you lose a lot, who cares? I decided to move on and was momentarily distracted by a woman in a way too short skirt and got knocked on the ground by some guys who came out of a bar.

"Can't you look out?" I started as I got up and froze.

"Fuck!"

The two Rockets grabbed me, pulled me in some alley and pinned me against the wall.

"Kill him," a third guy who I never saw before hissed.

Wait a minute, I did see him before…

"We can't kill him, you idiot," the blonde responded, "we got to take him to the boss…"

"No, he's dangerous." The guy insisted.

"I know you…" my mind raced, "you're Marc, aren't you…"

The guy suddenly paled.

"I thought you had lost your memory?" the trimmed Rocket frowned.

"I did, but… we met on the boat… there was gonna be something big and we decided to have some fun…"

It was coming back, but not fast enough.

"Kill him! Now!"

Marc seemed slightly more nervous. I had heard him before like this, but when? Ah, yes…

"That girl… this girl came to us and I took her to my room…"

That wasn't the only thing…

"and the day after that… the big thing…" I felt the grip of the two Rockets lessen but I didn't think of escaping, I suddenly didn't see the need anymore for some reason, "we were gonna pull it off, we had pulled it off when bozo here pulled the alarm and left me to dry!"

Three pair of angry eyes looked at Marc who tried to slither away. The two Rockets grabbed him and pushed him against the wall.

"Well, this is interesting." The blonde guy said.

"You little asshole left me behind," I raged on, "if it wasn't for my quick thinking, I would have been arrested. And when I got safe to my quarters, you pushed me over the railing!"

Marc squirmed and squeaked, but the two Rockets kept him firmly on his place.

"Why did you do it, Marc?" the blonde guy asked, "we were buds."

"That girl would have been mine, if it wasn't for him."

"This was about a woman?" the trimmed one frowned.

He sighed, shook his head and clocked Marc. The poor guy fell unconscious.

"All this trouble because I got some and he didn't." I shook my head.

Suddenly it hit me. My memory! It was starting to come back. Sure I could only remember the time on the ship but this was a start! Hey, wait a minute, if we were on the ship together, and we had something big planned, and I had almost gotten arrested, and he was a Rocket…

"I'm a Rocket?"

"Oh, you're more than that…" the blonde guy seemed to apologise.

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Somewhere else, shortly afterwards, a phone rang.

"Hello?"

"He seems to be back," a woman said on the other side, "he's on his way to the warehouse."

"Are you sure he remembers?"

"If he doesn't, he'll know soon enough."

"Dear lord. We have to be there."

"I can get us a chopper so we can be there in half an hour."

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The two Rockets dragged Marc to a warehouse just outside Celadon. They looked at each other, not certain what they were to do and then looked at me. They seemed to reach a conclusion and opened the door. We stepped in and even in the dark I could tell there were a lot of animals here. One of them turned the lights on and revealed long rows of caged pokémon. A huge Persian, who was the only one that wasn't locked up, raised it's head when I came in and came running towards me.

"Wha…what is this place?" I asked as the Persian circled my feet.

I couldn't believe what I saw, who would do this?

"This is why I couldn't believe you had any pokémon."

"What do you mean?"

"These are yours."

"Come again?"

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"Okay, let's go over this one step at a time," I tried to focus, "I'm a Rocket and these are my pokémon?"

"You're name is Anthony Vermoné, son of Giovanni Vermoné, the head of Team Rocket."

"O-kay, and these pokémon?"

"Since you weren't really interested in pokémon or the organisation, Giovanni gave you these pokémon."

"And you let them in these cages?" I yelled, "What animal would do this?"

"Uhm, you."

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I looked around and saw all kinds of pokémon trapped in cages that were obviously too small.

"I did this?"

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"Are you even listening?" one of the Rockets frowned and waved is hand in front of Tony.

"He zoned out?" the other Rocket asked.

"I think he did, but just in case… Tony, as I was saying, you're Giovanni's son and these pokémon were given to you, but since you didn't care about pokémon you just put them here in cages. The only exception was this Persian here because… well, you know how Giovanni feels about Persians… well, maybe you don't but he thinks a Persian is the most noble pokémon there is, and if he found out you put it in a cage, he wouldn't even care you're his son."

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The chopper landed nearby the warehouse and several men jumped out, readying guns. They ran towards the warehouse and kicked the door in.

"FREEZE! POLICE!" Susan Jenny shouted as she waved her gun around, "nobody moves, nobody gets hurt."

The two Rockets and Marc put their hands in the air while Tony was still looking in the direction of the cages. Professor Oak made his way through the cops to see what was going on inside.

"Oh dear," he gasped, "who would do something like this? Tony? Are you okay?"

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"Tony?"

"He zoned out." One of the Rockets said.

Oak looked around at the caged pokémon and shook his head.

"I believe I would too. This is… this is horrible."

"How exactly do you know he was here?" one of the Rockets suddenly asked.

"Excuse me?" Susan asked.

"Well, if this was a routine bust, you wouldn't have brought somebody important but otherwise fucking useless along," the Rocket nodded towards Oak, "I mean useless in this operation, of course," he seemed to apologize.

"Yes, of course." Oak responded in an understanding tone.

"That's not…" Susan started.

"And just before we wanted to call the cops in Vermillion," the other Rocket continued, "when Tony was captured by those guys from the Dark Squad, they came running in heavily armed as well. This isn't a coincidence anymore."

"Look here…" Susan tried to retain her posture.

"When Tony was arrested in Pewter, they found out who he was, but decided to release him and to bug him. I put a bug in his pokédex so we could follow him and react if he was in any trouble."

Tony seemed to blink and slowly turned around.

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"So," Tony slowly said, so soft he was almost whispering, "you knew?"

"The thing is a bit more…" Susan tried again.

"You knew and you didn't tell me?" Tony continued, raising his voice, "you knew and you didn't tell me! "ooh, what fun it might be not to tell him about his past but let him crawl around in the dark to finish him off by letting him find out he hates pokémon" I can't believe you did this!"

"Well, I don't think she put it like that…" Oak frowned.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP! I FUCKING TRUSTED YOU AND YOU LIED TO ME! ALL OF YOU! All this time I was hoping, practically fantasising, I was this big important guy who helped people and fought crime like some retarded superhero but actually I'm the bad guy! I'M THE FUCKING BAD GUY! AND YOU DIDN'T TELL ME!"

"Oh you're right!" Susan blurted out, "we should have told you! "hey Tony, so you don't know who you are huh? Well, you're father is the largest crime boss in the country, here are you handcuffs", yeah, like you would have thought that was fair!"

"At least it's better than this." Tony hissed.

He turned around and looked at the caged pokémon.

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"Well," he seemed to reach a conclusion, "you know what happens to the bad guys, don't you. They go out with a bang. And since they don't come any badder than me."

Tony jumped to a nearby toolbox and pulled out a crowbar. Before anyone could react he smashed a cage open and released a Koffing. The Koffing became scared and filled the room with thick black smoke.

"NOBODY SHOOT!" Susan shouted.

When the smoke cleared, most of the cages were broken open and pokémon wandered around, not knowing what to do. Tony and the two Rockets had disappeared in the confusion.

Susan cursed, grabbed her gun and pulled Marc to his feet to throw him against the wall.

"At least this thing isn't a total bust," she hissed, "okay, you little fucker, you're under arrest, and you better give me what I want, or I'll make you're life a living hell."

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Oak looked at the empty spot where he had seen Tony's bike. He couldn't help himself but smile as Susan cursed at the poor Rocket they had caught. He would have no doubt his hands full at all the pokémon they released from the cages but that wasn't in his mind for the moment.

"Good luck on your journeys," he softly said, "Tony Hunter."