CHAPTER 2: INTERESTING CELL MATES
The police car slowly drove into a small coastal city. Jack looked out to see people standing on the sidewalk looking right in at him and making a spectacle of the newest criminal in town. He slumped down in his seat to avoid the humiliation of being seen by any of the other town's people. It was a very small city and Jack judged it boring seeing as how a whole neighborhood had soon awaken to investigate what new criminal had been brought in to the local jail house.
"Not much happens around here, does it?" Jack asked Jenny who was now parking the police car.
"If you mean that the people of this town are not use to the presence of Pokemon poaching scum bags like you, then no." Jenny walked around and opened his door.
"Listen lady, there has been a major misunderstanding. I don't even know what a Poke man is! Please let me go. I have business to attend to." Jacks pleas fell on deaf ears as Jenny walked into the station announcing that she had captured a Pokemon poacher in the
Viridian Forest.
"We're gonna keep you here for an indefinite amount of time until we can review all of the evidence against you," said Jenny confident that there was more than enough to convict him. Jack was shown to his cell where two other prisoners were already being confined.
"What are you in for?" asked a blue-haired man with a shady voice.
"I'm not even sure," Jack said as he continued to look out of the bars and not behind him where the other convict sat.
"My name is James, and I've been wrongly apprehended too."
"I'm Meowth, and I had jail time comin' to me ever since I joined up with this loser."
"I am not a loser!" James said indignantly now standing up. Jack turned around to see a man in a white suit with a big red "R" on it conversing with a talking cat that had three large whiskers on either side of its mouth and a golden coin in the center of its forehead. The sight was nearly unbearable and Jack moved backwards to the opposite corner of the jail cell.
"They told me it'd get interesting but I never imagined this kind of crazy," Jack thought as he continued to look at his cell mates with awe.
"So, where ya from buddy," the Meowth asked as he became uninterested in his bout with James.
"Um, well, I'm from a town up north," Jack said stammering frequently because of his nervousness due to the peculiarity of the situation.
"What's the name of this town? I'm sure we've robbed it once." James and Meowth shared a prideful smile and awaited Jack's answer. Jack pulled out from his coat pocket a small digital voice recorder and began to talk, planning to record the things he said from now one so that he might keep his story continuous and not have people become suspicious about his origin.
"Have you heard of Meridian Town?" Jack bellowed into his recorder more than at Meowth and James. The two looked at each other confused and then both began to speak at once.
"Yeah, we took loot from there all the time before we was captured," was Meowth's reply.
"I haven't heard of that town before," James replied looking confused and then changing his answer. "Oh yes, Meowth's right, we have stolen plenty from your hometown."
"That's nice, what about you two? Where are you from?" Jack asked this and then held out his voice recorder so that it might pick up the ensuing reply.
"None of your business! What's with all the questions! Are you some kind of under cover agent trying to tarnish…further tarnish my record! Get that mike out of my face." This was definitely not the reaction that Jack had hoped and he quickly put the recording device away. Jack finally sat down on a bench on the opposite side of the cell and propped his head up on his hands. Exhausted, he began to close his eyes. In moments he was fast asleep and he began to dream.
"What's this, I'm back in that portal again." Jack emerged from the portal and was back in that science laboratory in the middle of a medical room.
"Does it hurt when I do this?" a doctor questioned, punching him in the jaw.
"Yeah, gosh, was that necessary?" Jack tried to say as he held his jaw and rubbed it.
"We have to get you ready for the mission. You don't want to be stranded in some crazy dimension and end up not being able to take a punch in the jaw do you?" The doctor asked this in such a professional tone that he had Jack reevaluating whether or not the test had been necessary.
"I guess I don't," was all he could reply before he found himself sitting at his home at the kitchen table. The light blue curtains calmed him and the sun's rays came in through the window giving him a sense of warmth and coziness in what he immediately recognized as the house that he and his mother had lived in when he was only seven. Jack looked down at his hands which were propped up on the table. They had gotten considerably smaller and he felt as if he was much shorter than usual. He then examined his sleeves to find that he was wearing what had been his favorite shirt at the time: a blue and red Spider-man shirt.
"I didn't know that I still had this," Jack commented still peering at his old shirt and his odd transformation. The smell of peanut-butter cookies permeated the air as a woman turned around from facing the oven.
"Of course you still have it, you're wearing it now," his mother said holding an oven pan full of cookies that smiled and agreed with her.
"Great shirt," one cookie nodded.
"Yeah, I'd get in your belly just to be next to that awesome shirt," one cookie shouted as it jumped off of the cookie sheet and started to roll towards Jack. Jack stepped backwards and then started to run towards the door and out of his house. Upon exiting the door he found himself considerably taller and dressed in a cap and flowing gown. His name was called and he walked towards the center of the platform and accepted his bachelor's degree in trans-dimensional science. He looked at the crowd only to see a sea of people shaking their heads in disapproval.
What kind of job are you gonna get with that degree? You should've gone into engineering. Boooooo," his mother hissed from the front row and Jack slowly walked off stage and into a forest that led to a laboratory. Jack walked in, now clothed in a lab coat and wearing goggles on the top of his thick black hair. Trans-dimensional research had become quite proliferate and lucrative in the last few years and Jack picked up a phone to call his mom. It rung a few times and then the answering machine was activated.
"Leave a message after the beep and I will get back to you," was the recording and Jack began to gloat about his scientific success. He had had a lot of success in his past few years of research. He had discovered the most effective energy source for a machine that was capable of trans- dimensional travel, he had discovered an equation for estimating the most opportune time for dimensional travel, and had gotten a few raises in pay only in his first two years of research.
"I really do enjoy this side of the work," Jack said, still talking on the phone to the answering machine, "but, I want to be more involved in the field work, I want to be the first one to experience trans-dimensional travel, I want to…
"I did not ask you all that!" The answering machine barked and the beeping tone signaled the end of the recording. Jack chuckled and when he looked up, he was inside of the fourteenth dimensional transfer machine. The machine powered up and electric volts gathered in front of him into a ball of light. Jack became very fearful and half of him wanted to just wriggle out of this responsibility and go back to his desk where he would only be using his mind. Field work was much more frightening than he had imagined.
"Hey, guy, you want to get out?" a whisper of a voice said to him.
"Yes, please, I'm not sure that I'm cut out for this dimensional transfer stuff," Jack replied, relieved at a chance to shirk this amazing responsibility.
"Leave the nutcase, James!" was Meowth's response to Jack's ramblings in his dreaming state.
"No, I want to go with you." Jack jumped up finally coming to his senses and not wanting to pass up his opportunity to escape from his wrongful imprisonment.
"Well get up then." Meowth motioned for Jack to walk with him through a hole in the wall where a tall female stood outside behind a cloud of smoke. The prison guard sat outside the cell, sleeping with his hat over his face.
"Seems the criminals have found a way to escape and now I'm going to go with them so that I may be free to commence my research of this strange dimen…place," Jack dictated into his digital voice recorder as Meowth and James stared at him. "Okay, here I go." So Jack escaped into the night with three criminals as the only way to get free from the clutches of the Vermilion city law force.
That's the end of Chapter 2. Jack's dream kind of revealed some of his history and elaborated on how he was chosen to test the trans-dimensional vehicle that the scientists at D.R.L. had developed. Any comments, questions or criticisms are welcome.