Sorry for everyone for not updating earlier. My computer died on me on the 12 of January. I was able to get it sent off the second week of February and got it back within a few days. I will tell you in advance that my chapters will be coming slowly since school started back up. Thanks for being patient.

On with the story:


Few days after Ash last escape attempt, Lance was in the Viridian Forest. He had received reports from the local police and eye wittiness statements saying that they had seen people in the forest with the symbol of Team Rocket on their clothes and there where two black helicopters seen flying over the forest. Lance has been in the forest for hours trying to find any signs that showed what Team Rocket was up to and their reason being in the forest, but he was not having any luck.

He was soon tired of not finding any clues and decided to leave the forest and head back to his headquarters. He called out his dragonight and took off. Few minutes into his flight, he let out a sigh of frustration. He is tired and has been overworked the past few months. To him, it all started the day Ash was kidnapped. Recent reports from Steven from Hoenn about Team Aqua and Magma planning to move in Kanto, Johto and the Orange Islands has gotten his staff of the crime unit working double shifts on surveillance and gathering information when and where one of the crime teams will first surface. He had not contact from Boyd and Monty. He feels he will never see those two again. He looks down on the forest floor, whishing he could get somewhere on his investigations.

His mind wondered until he noticed something strange on the forest floor, a burnt spot on the top of a hill. He commanded his pokemon to land on the hill. He found a burnt spot that was a few days old and was close to twelve inches across. The depth was three inches deep. He looked around and found remnants of human foot prints along with what he concluded as houndoom and growlithe tracks. He noticed a set of human tracks that where bare. Mixed with the dirt he believed was dried blood. On the tall grass he found a line of dried blood coming from the forest towards the top of the hill. He walked to the top of the hill and looked down. What he saw surprised him. A line of disturbance down the hill with more dried blood. He hunch down trying to sort out the scene around him. He looked back at the bare footprints. He studied them for a few minutes and came to the realization that they might belong to a child. His stomach tightens up in knots. He hopes they do not belong to Ash and who ever it was got away.

He got up and started to backtrack the tail though the forest. Within a few minutes he found small pieces of metal on the ground. He picked up all he could find and resumed his tracking. He followed the trail till he came across a stream. He crossed it, but was not able to find tracks on the other side. He saw he might not find the trail so he gave up and returned to the clearing. He looked over the clearing and found a set of indents in the ground. The same type of indents he and Officer Jenny found searching for Ash when he was first kidnapped. He found a small trail that lead down the hill and found a seconded set of indents from a helicopter and more blood. His stomach tightened up more, for he fears that the blood might belong to Ash.

Before he did not have time to dwell on the ideal of it being Ash, his cell phone went off. He answered it, and found his sectary on the other end. She told him that he needs to return back at headquarters, because an emergency had risen since his absence from the office. He remounts his dragonight and flies back to his base of operations in Indigo, wishing the best for Ash.

Back at Team Rocket headquarters, in a private hospital room Ash is awake. He finds himself confused, but he does not know why. He knows he needs to get out of here, away from Team Rocket. Every time he thinks of his mother and friends, memories come rushing to the surface of his thoughts. Memories he can not quite figure out. His mother smiling at him and telling him that she is proud of him, but another memory of her telling him he will never amount to anything. His friends cheering him on at his pokemon battles, while another one, he finds himself being yelled at and called names by them. He knows that his friends and mother would not do that to him, but it is hard for him to discern the truth of his memories.

The only people he has seen, where the doctors and nurses that came in to check on his vitals and change his bandages. He has tried to leave the room, but finds it difficult to walk on his feet. His back and chest hurts when he moves too quickly. When he walks, he gets a few steps from his bed, and finds he gets dizzy. He returns back to his bed, having trouble catching his breath and drenched in sweat. As he lies back down on the bed, his head starts to pound and he soon falls asleep due to exhaustion. His sleep is attacked by nightmares of his friends, family and of Giovanni.

One dream hunts him every time he closes his eyes. He is in a dark room filled with fog. He hears laughing around him and people taunting him. He cannot tell who the voices come from. His heart is pounding, and he is afraid. He starts to run, but the voices get louder. He stops and yells out at them to stop and leave him alone. He wakes up at that point of his dream, but not this night. The wind picks up and the voices die down. He hears a tapping noise around him and he looks around to find the cause of the noise. He sees a shadow to his left and finds that it is walking towards him. He can not make out the shape clearly due to the fog. As he watches it, he starts to become afraid. His fear overcomes him and he turns away from it.

He starts to run away from the shadow, deeper into the abyss of his dream. He looks back behind him, seeing that the figure is still visible, ever walking, following him, same distance away from him. He turns to see where he was going, only to trip and fall down hard on his chest. He moans in pain. He places his palms flat on the ground to pick himself up and look ahead of him, only to hear the tapping noise in front of him. The shadow figure appears and walks up to him. It stops walking once the figure was reaching distance from Ash, and the fog slowly clears to reveal brown dress shoes and red pants. Ash looks up to see Giovanni standing in front of him. Ash goes white at seeing the man. Giovanni unfurls his arms and reaches down to grab Ash. Ash pushes himself off the ground, but he finds he does not have the strength to standup to run away from the man. He falls back down on the ground to his knees. Giovanni moves closer and Ash throw up his arms to protect himself. Giovanni grabs him around his neck and pull him up off the ground.

Ash wakes up, sitting up in bed. He would have cried out in fear from his nightmare, but he cried out in pain instead. He fell back down clenching at his chest. Giovanni who had been outside of his room talking with a doctor comes running in. He races over to Ash side and place a hand on his shoulder. Giovanni found him drenched in sweat, and his breathing was shallow. Ashes reaction to Giovanni touching him surprised him and the two doctors who enter in the room. Ash rolled out of bed, ripping the IV line out of his right hand causing the stand to fall over, busting the bags and spilling the liquid in them all over the floor. He landed on his left side, causing him to injure his left arm again, but he ignored the pain. He tried to stand on his feet, but pain shot through his feet and legs and he falls back to the ground. Giovanni moved closer to Ash to stop him from hurting himself further. Ash saw him coming and managed to stand up on his feet, clenching his jaw from the pain he was in. He moved backwards into a corner, looking like a frighten animal.

Ash looked around him, only seeing the three people in the room. He saw a way out via the door, but he knew he could not make it past them. He is having trouble catching his breath and is holding his left arm close to his chest. His legs give out on him and he slides down to floor. Giovanni comes to his side and knelt down placing a hand on Ashes chest, trying to calm him. Ash swung at him with his right arm trying to fend him off. Giovanni grab his arm and twisted it around his back, forcing him to lay face down on the floor. He looked back at the doctors and one moves to a cabinet in the room. He pulls out a vile and a syringe, and quickly drew some of the liquid into the syringe. He grabbed an alcohol pad and raced over to Ash. He lifted one of Ashes sleeve and wiped down an area of his skin and quickly inserted Ash with the needle, administering the contents of the syringe.

Giovanni did not release his grip on Ash until he felt him quit struggling under his grip. Ash felt his awareness drift away from him into blankness. His harsh breathing slowed into dry wheeze. Giovanni stood up glaring at the two doctors as they replace Ash back in his bed and check him over for new injuries. Within a few minutes Giovanni left the room walking towards the reception desk. He took a phone away from one of the nurses and dialed a number that went to Mrs. Crimson office. She picked it, already knowing who was on the other end.

"Yes Sir?"

"Mrs. Crimson, come down to the hospital wing at once. It looks as if your influence with my son has failed. He may need another round of you counsel. I will be waiting in my office when you are done."

"Yes Sir, I will be down at once."

Giovanni hung the phone up, leaving the hospital wing via an elevator back to his office. He is disgusted. He believed that Mrs. Crimson had done a thorough job with his son. He knew at once that Ash was not his, when he tried to hit him.

"I do not care if it takes me countless times to convince my son to obey me, he will be mine. I need him as an heir to my organization. I will not let it go to anyone else. I have invested nearly my entire life into this organization since inheriting it from mother, and look where it is today. It has surpassed what mother has had imagined; it is far more profitable. She did not have the means of today, and never thought of domination of the world. Now I have a soft and weak son like his mother. He will not be like that for long, if Mrs. Crimson does not fail me again."

Giovanni stepped out onto the floor his office was located on. As he walked down the hall that leads to his office, Mr. Thomas came out of his office. He was surprised to see his boss, but it proved helpful, for he needed to provide updated information to him. He bowed to him and started speaking to him.

"Sir, I have finished contacting all Team Rocket bases of the possible threat from Team Magma and Aqua. Mrs. Crimson is finish interrogating the fist set of spies. Three came from Lance, two came from Team Aqua and five came from Team Magma. Right now we are seeing what information they had leaked out."

Giovanni stood still for a moment, thinking to himself. He turns to Mr. Thomas with a smile that sent shivers down any Team Rocket members. Mr. Thomas did his best to hide his fear.

"Mr. Thomas, do we have a spy placed into Lances ranks?"

"No sir, we do not. We have had problems placing a spy close enough to him in the past."

"Try again. I want to know what is going on around Lances little world. I do not want to have any surprises from him again. I also want you to place one with that Steven character. I still have plans of expanding my organization into Hoenn."

"Yes sir. Is there anything else?"

"No, but have Mr. Henry sent up to my office. I need to speak with him."

"Yes sir."

Giovanni entered into his office. Mr. Thomas left to contact Henry and to come up with a way to place spies into Lance and Steven's governmental ranks. Mrs. Crimson was making her way down to the hospital floor. She is mad at her self. She knew she did a thorough job of rearranging Ashes memories and placing him under control of his father. She enters into the room of Ash. She looked at him, puzzled with what could have caused her work to come undone. She gets a chair from outside and sets it down by the bed. She places a hand on his forehead and reenters into his mind.

As she enters, she finds the false memories she placed in him and was shocked. Many of them where gone and others where deteriorating. The commands she placed for him to obey his father where also disappearing. She finds that this has been happing the past few days since she placed them in. She searches the cause of this and finds that he still holds a strong bond to his mother and friends. She finds the memories he brought up to find the truth. She also finds a strong fear of his father, which caused the break in her work. She decides to reinstall what she had done. As she started her work, she felt that her wrist was grabbed and twisted. She removed her presence from Ash to find he was sitting up in his bed, holding her wrist away from him. She was surprised, but it was a foolish attempt to keep her from her job. She sent a small physic blast through him to take control of him again. His pupils contracted to the smallest points and she knew she had him under control again. His grip lessened on her wrist and she was pleased with herself. She removed his hand and made him lay back down.

"He has a strong mind. I underestimated him. I guess I will have more work to do here. It will be easier now, for all the memories he brought up. I do hope this does not take long."

She reentered into his mind and grabbed on one of his memories and started to twist it. As she did, she felt him struggle against her, to keep it to its true form. They battle a tug of war of wills. She felt as he begins to weaken against her onslaught. She sent another physic blast to break down his defensives and she felt as they broke under her power. She quickly added more false memories and rearranges the memories that he brought fourth in his quest of truth. She watched as his bonds to his friends and mother was broken and in doing so, a chain reaction started and all of his memories where altered. She added what Giovanni wanted and found it was easier and that he accepted them.

She came out what she felt like minutes later, but she found it was three hours since she started. She looked at him with a grin on her face. She removed the oxygen facemask and took out a handkerchief from her pocket, and wiped the blood from his nose. Ash stirred and looked at her with a puzzle look on his face.

"What happen?" he asked hoarsely

"You had a nightmare Ash. Are you thirsty?"

Ash shook his head no. He reached up and placed his unbound arm over his eyes.

"Why don't you go back to sleep Ash, you need it to get well."

Ash closed his eyes falling back to sleep. Mrs. Crimson got up and threw away the handkerchief. She found that she was stiff all over, but did not mind it at all. It was this as a punishment she rather have then one Giovanni punisher her. She returns back to her office and called Giovanni, hoping to find him in a better mode. He answered and she swallowed her fear.

"Sir, I am finished this time. He is under your complete control now."

"Tell me why you had to do this process twice?"

"I believe it is due to a strong bond that existed with his friends and family. I destroyed that bond, and also erased his memories of Mr. Cain and I as you asked."

Giovanni cut the connection leaning back in his chair. He is mad at his son for what he has done. He looks out his office window, thinking of what to do with his son now. He reaches over to the intercom and contacted his sectary.

"I need you to make preparations for me. Send a sweeper team to my privet island southwest of Johto. I need to make sure no one is there and to make sure that the defenses are online and operational. Have a small team gathered and station there permanently. Since this is my privet retreat, I do not want anything showing association to my organization."

He turned off the link, planning out Ashes future.

Lance did not make it back to his headquarters till late that night. He could not get the scene of the hill and the bloodily footprints out of his mind. When he returned, his secretary had a very grim look on her face. She told him once he enter into his office, that the police in Pewter found three dead bodies and that they matched the descriptions of his missing spies. He is now for cretin that Team Rocket was the ones who kidnapped Ash, but he does not want to give false hope to his mother and friends.

His eyes wonder out through one of his office windows and fell upon one of the bulletin board titled Missing. He looked over the posters and his gut went cold when he passed Ashes picture. He closed his eyes and let his head fall. He vows he will find Ash if it cost him his life. He gets a headache for it will be a big task and too many people are counting on him.