Interlude Two: Evil Brewing

Buzz Bolton was not in a good mood.

He was standing by his windows once again, staring out through the sprawling metropolis towards the sun setting into the horizon. He had hoped the beautiful mixtures and shades of colours would calm him down, but Buzz was shocked to find that even one of the most amazing sights in the world couldn't bring his temper down.

His phone began ringing back on his desk, and Buzz raised his universal remote in a way more forceful than normal. The phone gave a sad bleep in the middle of a ring, almost as if it was scared about what Buzz would do.
"Sunsets are always a beautiful thing," Buzz shouted in his booming voice, today mixed heavily with blinding rage. "It is that one point of the day where everything is calm and peaceful, in between a hectic day and the bustling night. " He then turned angrily around to the phone, his tanned face twisted in a rage in anger it wasn't use to. "Pity I'm too pissed off to enjoy it!"
"It isn't my fault the cast found the girl," Amanda Anderson replied, her voice echoing around the room. "I don't have the time to mind those children every god damn minute of every god damn day!"
"YOU'RE THE PRODUCER!" Buzz shouted back. "It's part of your bloody job description!" Amanda didn't respond to this, and Buzz growled and angrily stamped on his Persian rug, the metal beneath it ringing. He took a deep breath and walked towards his desk, remembering his breathing exercises and slowing his heart rate down. A glass of sparkling mineral water was placed next to the phone, and Buzz took a long, soothing drink of it.
"Did you find a replacement trial?"

"Yes: a simple obstacle course."

"Have you removed all traces of the Beedrill?"

"Yes. The remains will be taken to old incinerator and destroyed."

"Has someone cleared the tunnel of all traces of evidence?"

"A team is working on that now."

"Good, very good," Buzz nodded, taking another drink. The Beedrill had been expensive to build, too many questions asked about it, too many people forced to be silenced, and it hadn't served its true purpose. "It is a pity that it went to waste. But at least we can use another one of the robots I had the scientists whip up."
"Would you like to have one brought into Mt Moon?" Amanda asked in a very assistant manner, and Buzz nodded, forgetting that he was talking to a phone. Amanda seemed to notice though, making notes on a pad she had with her. "Won't it seem suspicious to the cast though? I mean, Chloe knows more about celebrities and music than she does about Pokémon, and Lachlan is a tinkering on the edge of a cliff above stupidity, but I think they would notice if they come across a second gigantic robot." Buzz began to laugh, a deep, booming laugh that sound more maniacal than a normal human being would have liked.
"That's the brilliant part, my dear," he explained. "They aren't going to be the ones confronting the being. That darling angel Alaska will be walking through Mt Moon, celebrating her first badge win, getting a lolly, breathing, I don't know, when suddenly something arises in front of her. Alaska will be petrified and appalled to see a second robot and will try to fight it, but there won't be anyone to help her this time. The last thought to go through that pesky brat's head before the life is squeezed out of her will be regret, regret at ever going on this stupid journey!" Buzz hissed, not noticing as the laughter died and was replaced with rage. It was only when the glass he clutched in his hand shattered that Buzz snapped out of his angry mental state, staring down at his bleeding hand furiously.

"I shall make the appropriate calls and have something shipped in," Amanda said, and went to hang up, but Buzz quickly turned back towards it, his uninjured hand searching for a cloth of some sort.
"Amanda, wait," he called, and he could tell that she had paused. "If Alaska appears again, before you get to Mt Moon, I want you to kill her anyway. Kill her quietly, kill her out of the way, and kill her quickly. Make it look like an accident, suicide, whatever, just make sure she never bothers our doorstep again." Amanda nodded at the other end, and the line bleeped before going dead.
Buzz found a cloth in a drawer on his desk and wrapped it around his palm. He cursed the wound but ignored the glass on the floor, going back towards the window and staring out at the sky, only a hint of orange behind the skyscrapers, the rest of the sky a dull blue. Buzz had never met Alaska, but he very much hated her. She was ruining his television programme, a show he had been planning for several years, one that would bring him a sense of peace no sunset could ever conjure up. He only wanted to hear her name once more in his lifetime, and that would be from Amanda's sweet lips, telling him she was dead.
"I await the day," Buzz whispered to himself, and once more began to laugh, the strange sound echoing around the office. Anyone watching from a surrounding building would see a very tanned, very well dressed man staring at a sunset, blood dripping down his hand onto his carpet, laughing in a way no sane person could understand, and the people watching would definitely be frightened if they knew the horrific reasons why this strange man was laughing.


It had been five years since the dramatic explosion on Five Island, and it had been four and a half years since police had given up on the investigation. Arthur Reynolds had temporarily left, and the Sevii Islands Police Department were no closer to solving who caused the explosion then when they stared, so the case had quickly died down once the lead officer dropped it. The area was cleared, the warehouse torn down and a new housing complex was built there instead. Now, in 2013, it was as if the explosion had never happened.

But one part of the warehouse had remained.

The Team Rocket Scientist Gideon was still inside his little bomb shelter. When he heard through the internet that the warehouse would be bulldozed, the scientist quickly covered his tile with a mound of earth, continuing to hide him inside. None of the new houses were built over his complex, though he believed some a garden was nearby based on the small children running overhead.

Gideon didn't look like his 2007 self anymore. He had to cut his hair himself, and it had gone from smooth and gelled to prickly and greasy, resembling a toddler had cut it and washed it with tar. He covered in sweat, filth and ash, his clothes smelt like sewage and he was the same weight of an twelve year old boy instead of a nearly middle aged man. But the bomb shelter was the best place for him: it allowed him to hide from the police still hunting old Team Rocket members, it had a variety of scientific supplies he required and was the best possible workplace.

For seven years, Gideon had been working on Operation Lavender. Masses of papers covered everywhere, every row full of diagrams, numbers, calculations, hand drawn maps and long lists and explanations. He destroyed benches, a kettle, his cell phone and the spare metal bed in order to make a large evolution inducing machine, the strange black and purple disc attached to the very top in front of a light bulb. Gideon had forced his Magneton and Porygon2 to evolve, turning them into a Magnezone and Porygon-Z respectively. Now, Gideon was closer than ever to perfecting Giovanni's master plans and combining them into one huge idea.

"All I need is to get the fossils and the Old Amber…." Gideon mumbled to himself as he ran over his different papers, grabbing different things and checking multiple lists. "Yes, and I need these chemicals…. and a more suitable metal… and I need to go to the source itself…." Gideon had slowly turned more and more mentally unstable over the years he'd spent trapped and alone. His master plan could be ready in only a number of weeks, possibly within a month if he was lucky. However, one key factor was only just dawning on him.

He needed to go outside.

"Go outside…. I never thought I would have to…." Gideon mumbled aloud, pausing for a second from his rummaging. "It makes sense, I don't have everything here…." Gideon stared at the patch where the old tile had once been. He had put some metal wire there to cover up the fake patch of earth, and it was the only thing between him and the outside. He hadn't felt the cool feel of the wind, the warmness that came from the sun or interacted with another human being for years.

"I must, it is the only way…." Gideon said, and he quickly grabbed a pair of sunglasses that he had been using to shield his eyes from bright lights during his experiments. He pulled three Rocket Balls out: ball PokeBalls with a red button in the middle and a red R on the top of the ball. He threw all of them, and three Pokémon formed out of the dark energy. One of them was Electrode, Gideon's oldest surviving Pokémon. It use to be very hyperactive, but it learnt to behave itself and remained still, smiling up at its trainer.

The other Pokémon weren't as normal.

Magnezone and Porygon-Z had turned… well, evil, following their forced evolutions. Magnezone was pure black with a large red eye, resembling a squashed Rocket Ball, with dark yellow sparks shooting all across his murky body. Porygon-Z pink body had turned a dark, flowing purple, with his turquoise bits now a dark black. His eyes were also red, and papers began to rise into the air ominously around him. These two Pokémon were flowing with power, a single attack could be enough to kill a man. That was why they were Gideon's greatest weapons.

"Ok, this is how we are going to do things," Gideon explained, walking around them as he grabbed some of the more important papers. "Electrode and Porygon-Z will come with me to collect some supplies. Magnezone will stay here and produce electricity to keep this place going." Magnezone nodded, and he moved silently over towards the machine holding the strange disc. He touched it with one of his magnets, and within seconds the lights were flickering and the television turned on and off. "Excellent! Now, let's go!" Gideon didn't care that it was a rather impulsive thing to do, as it was a necessary thing to do in his quest to take over Kanto. He raced over towards the hatch, Electrode rolling and Porygon-Z floating behind him. There were the distant shouts of children playing above them, and a sick smile came across Gideon's face: it had been too long since he had last killed a human being, and he waiting to watch the pain and suffering commence.

"Electrode blast the hatch," Gideon ordered, and then turned maliciously towards Porygon-Z. "Use Tri Attack as soon as we get out: kill anything that moves." Porygon-Z nodded silently, and they watched as the hole was destroyed by a single Thunderbolt. There were the screams of the children, and then Porygon-Z floated silently up like a ninja, but he was twice as deadly….


And so ends the second arc. Up next, Alaska arrives in Pewter City and comes face to face with one of these villains.