Chapter Six: Conflict

- Recap: Jennifer, an American worker for Greenpeace, (this story takes place in our "real" world, in part) is in Peru trying to prevent the destruction of the last acre of rainforest. However, there's a mystical explosion during a riot and her pet cat is transformed into Mew, the Origin, a pokemon that is the origin of all pokemon genetic codes. Mew feels that it is her purpose in life to reawaken the Legendaries from various mythologies, but tweak their powers a little so they become pokemon. Meanwhile, Jennifer, en route back to America, disappears when a chime sounds in the airport. It turns out this story is being written by Max (May's brother in Pokemon Advanced) and Molly Hale (girl who befriends unown in Pokemon 3), and a woman resembling Jesse of Team Rocket has recently been found in Hoenn with no idea what she's gotten into...

Peru, ca. 2010

A week had passed. Jacob Running Deer, his shoulder-length black hair dripping with sweat in the summer heat, sat in the open-air market, sipping the bottled water that he had taken with him. He had heard that it was wise to bring your own water when traveling to third-world countries, but the Peruvians he had met scoffed at what they felt was an arrogant injustice. Of course American water seems cleaner, they grumbled, because their companies come and destroy other people's resources while they're laughing about all the money they're saving on cheap and powerless employees.

Jacob, whose father was a storyteller in Sioux-sponsored pow-wows, hoped the woman he was going to meet in this tropical ghetto was worth the airline ticket. His father had died, electrocuted by the ancient Thunderbird, a fearsome creature that ate humans and brought impossibly fatal storms. He had no one left, now, and he realized that maybe he'd even see the return of White Buffalo Woman, a holy woman who had come once before and would come again before the world atop the Great Turtle came to an end. With all the reports of strange atmospheric conditions and random explosions on CNN, he dreaded the certainty that She would return in his lifetime, maybe REAL soon.

Elsewhere in Peru, ca. 2010

Man, was she late, thought Janice Williams, her strawberry-blonde hair whipping behind her as her Jeep rumbled through the Peruvian countryside. She was supposed to meet Jacob at a little cafe in the center of the town she was approaching. After losing his father, he had been researching ancient creatures and had heard about her studies of the Nasca lines in Peru - gigantic drawings in the countryside of various figures, people, animals - drawings that could only be seen from the air. People still argued about their purpose, but she didn't believe in silly mumbo-jumbo. She felt they were ritually designed to guide one toward important water or mineral sources, nothing more.

Lately though, she noticed that some drawings had inexplicably been altered, probably by the same bored pranksters that make crop circles. On the net she was learning that historical places everywhere were reporting vandalism of one kind or another, and she wondered why she couldn't catch the vandals in the act. She couldn't stand vandals or pranksters - it was hard enough to get scientific backing to study some vague lines in the dirt, and these people were just mocking serious scientific study.

The real reason she loved to be in Peru, however, wasn't just the relics. She loved being near the ocean, the salty blue water as it crashed against the shore was relaxing. She saw the fragile beauty of the creatures of the sea, an entire class of creatures so unlike your run-of-the-mill furry quadrupeds that existed only to beg for gourmet tidbits.

The Jeep bounced heavily on the uneven terrain as she approached the village where she was supposed to meet Jacob. She grabbed an envelope as it began to fly out of the vehicle, an envelope containing satellite pictures of one of the defaced drawings - a giant bird with spread wings and huge eyes that seemed to burst from its head. The ground around the figure seemed to have been burned, ashes and charred sticks and rocks surrounded the new image.

What bothered her more than the strange vandalism today, however, was the knowledge that animals were leaving the area in record numbers, even animals like lizards that had never left their territories in thousands of years...

Lavaridge, ca. 2509

Jennifer sat in the back of the jail cell, a sparsely-furnished small room with just a sink and a small mattress, sobbing uncontrollably, her long red hair matted from running through a God-forsaken forest with animals from the Twilight Zone or some stupid kid's show - animals with bright orange and yellow fur that chased her with a speed faster than any cheetah and surrounding her in a circle of flame. Really, who has fiery animals? What kind of diseased joke was this?

She had tried to tell the police that she was innocent, that she didn't know where she was and what "pokemon" were. They kept harassing her about "Team Rocket" and "James" and "Giovanni". She warned them that the American embassy would hear about this.

They didn't know what America was.

"What country hasn't heard of America?" she wondered. "It's not like our country hasn't tried to put its stamp on every living thing on the planet (seaweed: Made in America!)."

"You're taking this FAR too seriously," a half-sultry female voice complained as Jennifer continued to sob. Jennifer looked into the cell next to her to see a young woman in her twenties with long red hair, lots of makeup, and a strange (kind of revealing) outfit - long black boots, a short (very short) white skirt, a black tank top under a short-sleeved white jacket with a large red R on it. The woman stared at Jennifer condescendingly. "You're in jail. So what? James and I get locked up just about every week and it doesn't bother us."

Jennifer stopped sobbing, the anger welling up in her throat. "James? Team Rocket James?"

The woman's eyes enlarged like balloons. "You know about us and Team Rocket?" Tears started welling up in her eyes. "I was beginning to think only the cops knew about us. (Sob) You just don't appreciate what we go through to be famous members of Team Rocket! No one here in Hoenn has even heard of us!"

Jennifer shot up from her soaking place on the floor. She grabbed the bars separating her from the woman she now knew was responsible for all this, her knuckles whitening under the strain. "YOU! I'M IN HERE BECAUSE THEY THINK I'M YOU!"

The woman smiled, then laughed haughtily. "It goes to show how cops around here pay no attention to detail. I'm prettier, more intelligent, and stronger than you. These people don't know true beauty when they see it."

The young female cop with the blue hair appeared in front of Jennifer's cell with keys dangling from her gloved hand. "I'm very sorry about this misunderstanding, Miss," Officer Jenny apologized. "I thought you were this young woman from Team Rocket we caught an hour ago stealing some pokemon. If you need a place to stay, we can set you up at a hotel if you want. Of course, you could stay at a pokemon center, but you're not a trainer and there's a competition this week, so there may not be enough room."

Jennifer lay on the freshly-cleaned bed in the hotel room set up for her by the police of some kind of town called Lavaridge, a town near some kind of volcano or something and surrounded in hot springs frequented by senior citizens trying to ease the arthritis in their joints.

Kidnapped by a strange energy. Chased by fire-breathing dogs through a dark, cramped forest. Arrested for stealing these strange creatures whose existence was just beginning to register in Jennifer's confused brain. Released and set up in a posh hotel that continued the volcanic theme - red and orange walls, fake stalactites and fake lava flows backlit in the floor, and giant air filters surrounding the hotel to keep out the volcanic ash settling from the nearby volcano.

This world was so backward and forward at the same time. It seemed to Jennifer that civilization was simpler from the life that she knew, yet their technology (especially stuff dealing with these strange animals) was light years ahead of the best stuff MIT had to offer.

Relaxing on the fluffy bed, having taken a shower and getting a massage (how forgiving the cops are here!), Jennifer mused about this new environment.

Since she technically doesn't exist, would she have to pay taxes?

Japan, ca. 2010

Mew slept soundly on the stone shrine deep in the middle of a forest in the island nation of Japan. As she slept, the surrounding foliage had grown considerably, much faster than normal. The branches and vines were just beginning to touch Mew's soft, short, pinkish-white fur when she awoke, her large pink-purple eyes letting in the sunlight after a well-deserved rest.

A bright red burst of energy came toward her. She jumped up high into the air, leaves from her temporary nest flying up in a brief cyclone. She used her psychic powers to launch the leaves, now glowing pink, toward the source of the red light.

"Unnhhh!" a young male voice shouted as Mew heard a body fall into a gaggle of shrubs.

Mew surrounded herself with a bright pink barrier as she searched for the human who had tried to attack her.

The boy stood up, a teenaged boy with black hair that came down below his ears, his blue T-shirt and red jean shorts ripped slightly from the fall. He stared at Mew for a few seconds, smiling.

"I've come a long way," the boy announced with a confident, if villainous sneer. "I had to work very hard to find a stupid Celebii. Turns out, it knows about you." The boy paused to let that sink in. "My father wants you in his arsenal REALLY bad, Mew, and he has finally given me the green light to capture you myself." Mew saw him reach for a small metallic ball, divided into a gold top and a silver bottom with the initials "GS" on the gold half. The boy pressed the button and launched the opening device toward Mew, a bright red light shooting past her.

A vine snapped up from the ground and caught the ball as it continued to approach a confused Mew, who simply floated in the air, wondering what this strange device was. She wondered also how this human seemed so ... prepared ... to catch the first pokemon on the planet.

The vine hurled the pokeball back toward the boy, who yelped as he fell back into the shrubs. He cursed as he tried to get up, but he found vines wrapping around him, squeezing him relentlessly.

Mew looked back, having sensed an enormous amount of energy behind her. Floating above the shrine, in a white light, was a tiny green figure with small insect-like wings, its dark eyes staring straight through Mew as the two powerful psychic pokemon stared each other down.

Mew tightened the barrier surrounding her. The new (or old?) pokemon surrounded itself with gigantic vines, vines that shot up two stories high, branching out, twisting, reaching out toward the sky, preparing for the moment when Celebii would smack down this innocent little pokemon. Celebii had been tricked into coming back here, to this time, and after having seen what's in store for the time from which he came, Celebii came to the conclusion that Mew was responsible for the end of the world. It was the Voice Jewel (who became Mew) had heard in Peru back when she first got her powers. The vines stretched now for at least a mile, reaching back for the most massive vine whipping the world would ever see...