"You know, I forgot how many filler towns the anime had in comparison to the games, " Phillip said as he walked in the next town, which was called HopHopHop Town.
"The redundancy of the name is odd, though," Gabriel responded within Phillip's head. "Couldn't they have come up with a more … creative title for their residence?"
Considering how crowded this place is, I guess not,
Phillip had taken an unusual way to get Fuchsia City, due to the main route being flooded at the time. Partly his fault taking so long in Celadon, the rest lied in Team Rocket's hideout problems.
See, before setting out to get to the next gym, Phillip noticed strange activity near the city's casino. Being ever curious, he went to check it out and, low and behold, the place had a basement that held a hoard of Team Rocket grunts. Granted, Phillip cleaned shop with his overpowered Pokémon, but he did get to meet the head honcho of the group: Giovanni.
Phillip's take on him: not that threatening.
Blastoise made short work of Giovanni's entire Ground team, so all Phillip did was allow the poor bastard to scamper off like a terrified puppy.
Unfortunately, this wasted enough time for a massive downpour to flood the entirety Route 12 just as he managed to get Lavender Town, which still gives Phillip chills with the amounts of actual spiritual entities there.
Luckily, Phillip managed to catch another group of Team Rocket grunts causing trouble in Lavender Town. This involved putting to rest a motherly spirit of a Marowak, a bipedal marsupial with a skull literally glued to its head, and beating down an admin of Team Rocket.
This led Phillip to where he is now. As luck would have it, a small path led a large, bustling city that seemed to close in on itself. How it managed come out of absolutely nowhere is anyone's guess.
Find a center so we go the hell to sleep, Black said with a grumble.
One, it's midday, Phillip responded. Second, there are few problems with this city that we need to address
"You mean the kidnappings, don't you?" Gabriel asked
Yep.
"Well, you can start by looking to your left."
Phillip did and spotted a woman holding Ash in-between her breasts while Misty and Brock stood on the sidelines.
Well, lucky me.
_Scene Change_
"I'm so upset because my son, Arnold, just disappeared," the woman told the now-group of four, the original three introducing Phillip when he had gotten close enough, her part in the growing rumor mill. "He's been gone for three days!" She reached up and cupped her cheek before saying, "I can't find him anywhere."
Brock asked if she had heard from her child, only to get a negative. Ash then suggested that the kid could have gone off to become a Trainer. The distraught mother stated that, while Arnold loved Pokémon, he had never mentioned the idea of becoming a Trainer. Misty brought up the thought that the kid might just come home at some point, only for the mother to shake her head, stating that her son wasn't the only child that had disappeared so suddenly. Ash, Misty, and Brock exclaimed a form of shock as the mother looked over to a nearby wall. Following her example, the four looked over to it as well.
Adorning the wall were a multitude of posters, each holding a picture of a child that either disappeared recently or some time ago. None of the children seen gave any form of pattern to the disappearances. Ash stated that town seemed dangerous due to this.
Misty, however, lost the train of thought and moved into her la-la town. "My face is gonna be on posters when I'm a big, famous star." Ash and Brock grew deadpan.
Phillip, however, decided to be verbal on the matter, as he looked at her with ridicule. "Did you lose the idea of the posters, or were you just not paying any form of attention?" Misty squirmed at this. Ash then threw his two cents by claiming she'd be a star in a horror film while petting his Pikachu, gaining a glare from Misty.
Glancing back at the wall, the group noticed a rather familiar face putting up even more posters. Officer Jenny had an entire sidecar filled to the brim with new posters, having one in her hand, as she contemplated why such nice children seemed to have disappeared so suddenly.
Ash ran up to her just as she had gotten off her motorbike while talking to herself about placement. Ash then asked if she was the first or second cousin of the Jenny at Maiden's Peak. She responded by telling him that she was that Jenny's "cousin's cousins."
Phillip walked up and asked, "The hell does THAT work exactly?"
Brock came running up, taking Jenny's right hand into his two, stating how willing he was in helping her locate the lost children, pushing Ash and Phillip from the scene. She pulled her hand away, before telling Brock to not get in the way.
Phillip sighed, "Well, this went exactly nowhere fast." He turned to Ash, who was looking at the mother they were talking to just seconds prior and noticing how the woman reminded him of his own mother. Phillip smiled when Ash stated he would solve the mystery. Phillip then looked to Misty, who was at a loss on how to deal with her two traveling-partners and just laughed.
_Scene Changed_
The group had begun walking side-by-side with Officer Jenny, who told them that all the children that had posters went missing three days ago. Brock asked if there was a pattern to the disappearances, to which Ash made a cry towards it as a "brilliant deduction".
Phillip groaned at this. "Unfortunately, no. Nothing on the posters suggested any possible connections, outside of their hair color." This put Ash back into a thinking pose. At this, Jenny suggests that maybe other children would know something, just as they were stopping in front of a Pokémon Center. Ash gave another "brilliant deduction" before the group entered the building.
Once inside, Phillip had to scan through the large crowd to find any suitable candidates for the investigation. Luckily, Officer Jenny had quickly found two friends of one of the missing children and began to ask them questions, only to receive negatives to them. Brock joined the fray with a menacing look on his face to deter any lies. The kids were quick to nod to Brock's suggestion to not lie but were off-put when he told them to tell the "beautiful lady" all they knew. Brock's face immediately reverted to a peaceful state when he asked the kids if they thought Jenny was beautiful.
This is when Phillip came in.
With a swift smack to the back of Brock's skull, Phillip dragged the now unconscious man to the entrance and laid him on to a bench close by. Once done with that, Phillip watched Ash and Misty chat up the Joy of the center. After a few minutes, Misty waved down him and Jenny, calling them over.
Once over, Phillip set Brock up against the counter before asking, "What's up?"
"Apparently," Misty said, "they have their own problems."
Once in the back of the center, Nurse Joy showed them several Pokémon: an unevolved Marowak called Cubone, an Oddish, a Magikarp, a Charmander, and a yellow duck that held its head constantly called Psyduck. Each one looked terrible. The Cubone, Oddish, and Magikarp looked completely drained of energy and the Charmander's fire was close to burning out. The only one that didn't seem affected was the Psyduck, but Joy stated it was. She also mentioned it all started three days, the same time as the disappearances of the children.
Just then, something on Jenny's person began to beep. She pulled an odd device with two antennas with a small screen on it. The screen showed a frequency of some kind. She told them that the device was a sleep-wave detector.
Putting two and two together, the group followed the signal's strength to a large skyscraper in the town. Entering the building and riding an elevator to the roof, the group found a mansion, fit with several shrubs, trees, and bushes.
"Well, somebody has an ego," Phillip grumbled to himself. Ash rushed the door to the place, bending down and placing an ear to the door before ushering the rest to him. Once they were close, Ash stated that someone was inside. Phillip stood up and kicked the door in.
Inside were more than just one person. A large group of what seemed to be rich people standing on a lavish red carpet in one extremely large room. In the middle of the room was two Pokémon.
One of them had a yellow upper half and dark brown bottom half with a trunk as its nose. The other was completely yellow, with only a white ring of fur around its neck as its other color, and had a large, pointy nose. Both seemed bipedal and slightly humanoid. The larger of the two, the one with a ring of fur, held a string with a metal washer tied to one end. The Pokédex identified the first as Drowzee and the larger as Hypno.
One of the rich people, a male, began to talk to them. Jenny mentioned sleep-waves and the person pointed to their Hypno as the cause. He also ended up mentioning how the Hypno was once a Drowzee that happened to evolve three days prior, connecting it to the disappearances and the lack of energy of Pokémon at the Center.
Another man told them that they began to utilize the Hypno over medication. The first man then explained that the place the group had stumbled upon was owned by the Pokemon Lovers Club, and the lives of the members were stressed due to city life. This led to most, if not all of them catching insomnia, thus the use of Hypno.
Phillip spoke up at this. "And you didn't try to use therapy?"
"Oh, we did at first, but it became much too expensive."
"So, you went with the solution that could absolutely backfire," Phillip said with a blank stare.
As if to back Phillip's point, Ash had Misty pull Pikachu from his backpack. Misty brought Pikachu to a pillow near Drowzee as Brock suggested the energy lost in Pokémon was a side effect from changing the sleep waves to also affect humans, not just other Pokémon.
Misty, in her infinite wisdom, sat down in front of the Hypno and allowed it to work its sleeping magic on her. After a moment, her eyes drooped before she began clapping and exclaiming "Seal!" repeatedly.
"What the heck?" Phillip said, weird out by the changed. Not a second later, Misty jumps up and runs out the door, with the original group following.
_Scene Change_
"Who the hell puts a park the size of a small forest in the middle of the city?!" Phillip exclaimed as the concrete jungle gave way to a literal jungle as they followed the now deranged girl.
Once they finally managed to catch up with her, they also found all the other missing children surrounding a lake. All of them were pretending to be a Pokémon. Hell, one of them came crawling down the side of a tree on his stomach. Brock called it Pokémon-itis as Jenny tried to awake the children with no success. At this point, the one rich person that followed them suggested they used Drowzee to counter Hypno's sleep waves.
"Okay, but who do we use?" Phillip asked.
"Why, the most recent case, of course."
So, they ended up dragging Misty back to the mansion, but not without resistance. The only one strong enough to prevent too much thrashing was Phillip. Otherwise, it was a complete tangle of limbs, as the others would have to dogpile the girl to restrain her.
Once back at the mansion, the group had Drowzee do its thing, and it was a success at a few minutes of exposure and a clap. The group then picked up the Pokémon and began to make a beeline towards the park.
Unfortunately, the group caught sight of three gliders coming towards them and stopped. Ash immediately noticed who exactly was coming. "Oh no, not them!"
"Prepare for -"
Phillip immediately utilized his laser vision to shoot the trio from the skies. Each glider exploded, sending Team Rocket to the horizon with a "We're blasting off again!". With this out of the way, the group continued their way.
_Scene Change_
Once Drowzee clapped, all of the children were awoken from their trance and ran off to their parents. After this, the group transported Drowzee to the Pokémon Center to fix the Pokémon there. At that point, Phillip disbanded from them to get a move on.
"This place was a waste, wasn't it?" the once silent Gabriel stated.
Told you this was filler town, Phillip responded, placing his hands behind his head. Hopefully, we get to the gym town sooner rather than later.
"That would be preferable."
Hello, again. I'm back.
This took longer than expected. Mostly because re-watching this episode was a slog.
Worse yet, trying to tie in-game events along with the anime occurring at the same time is troublesome, to say the least.
Welp, until next.
Constructive Criticism is greatly appreciative.
