Ch 16: Poke-Mart Heist

It was the beginning of a day like any other in the small town of Celmont, population 100, with Pidgeys taking to the air in their morning hunt for breakfast, and the sun just barely beginning to poke out of the horizon. The streets were clear of people and pokemon, and most of the businesses had yet to open for the day. At the very end of Main Street, the street considered the downtown area of Celmont due to the variety of shops available (restaurants, marts, apparel, etc.), there sat the Celmont Poke-Mart. The Poke-Mart was like all the other buildings on Main Street in that this one was also still closed, but this one was very different as well due to there being two figures covered in black loitering around the side of the Poke-Mart, beside the dumpsters, hidden away from plain view. These two figures happened to be Evan of Lunaris and Stacy of Wintervale.

"So, you're clear on the plan, right?" Evan asked Stacy. This was his first actual assignment as a member of Anonymous, and although it was Snake who had given him the instructions on what to do, the orders had apparently been passed down from Sir himself, the leader of Team Anonymous. Why Sir was so interested in Evan was no surprise to Evan, of course - he was the best trainer on the island. But Evan had not had a chance to gauge his partner, Stacy, on her fighting abilities so far. Evan assumed she must be a formidable trainer for Anonymous to pair them up together like this, and that this must be a pretty crucial mission if two members were sent to get the job done.

Stacy confirmed in a clear, concise manner what they would do step-by-step upon the Poke-Mart opening up, and her answer was satisfactory enough, so Evan switched gears.

"So, how'd you end up here, doing this for Anonymous, rich girl like you?" Evan wondered. He had just met her the other night, at Anonymous Headquarters, where Snake had ordered them to accompany each other on their mission. Although Stacy was wearing the required black colors, her expensive gold earrings, her custom made trainer shoes, and her designer trainer bag were all massive warning signs of her obvious wealth.

"I just got bored," Stacy replied simply. Her answer was a little underwhelming and unclear, so she elaborated. "I mean, I got bored with the whole process. Catch a bunch of pokemon, create a cohesive team of 6, beat the gyms, register for the League...I didn't want to do what millions and millions of people have done before me. I wanted to do something different. Even if it's crazy, like joining the bad guys. I just want some excitement, because the stuff I was supposed to be doing was just boring me to death." Stacy seemed much more content with this answer. "What about you?"

Before Evan could reply, the familiar rumble of a car engine pulling closer broke the background silence. Evan and Stacy were both sitting tightly against the side wall of the Poke-Mart, tucked away behind the dumpster, when on cue, the owner of the Poke-Mart was pulling into his reserved parking spot at the front of the one-story shop.

Evan and Stacy carefully crept their way to the front of the building so they could rear their heads around the corner to see what was happening. A beat up red pick up truck was the only car in the lot. The owner lazily made his way out of his car, rubbing at his eyes and yawning away the remains of his tiredness. He was a short, squat man wearing a clean dress up shirt, with the sleeves buttoned at the wrist to conceal the tattoo on his arm of his childhood Lillipup. The owner didn't think it professional for customers to see him with a tattoo on his forearm, so he only wore long sleeves to work. The owner manually locked his car door, but not before two pokemon jumped out of the pick up truck: a joyful Stoutland with a dirty rubber Psyduck toy in its mouth, and an equally chipper Delcatty that looked slightly disgusted at the toy being slobbered on by Stoutland, who paid no notice and trotted to keep up with his beloved owner.

"He's got two mons with him," Stacy commentated needlessly, which only irritated Evan.

"Yeah, a Stoutland and a Delcatty. Hardly worth stressing about. Shh."

The owner unlocked the glass front doors, let his two pokemon in before him, and then entered his shop, letting the doors close behind him and leaving the entirety of Main Street back in silence. According to Snake's intel, they had approximately twelve minutes before the next person would pull into Main Street at this early hour: the head cook of the Octillery Sushi Restaurant just across the street from the Poke-Mart. Twelve minutes was more than enough time to get what they needed.

"Let's get 'em out," Evan said, selecting a pokeball from his belt and releasing one of his newer additions to the team, a gangly Mr. Mime that seemed to walk with a hunch. Stacy followed suit, choosing a well-manicured Roserade as her partner, who looked like it spent more time lounging about in gardens soaking up sunshine than battling. Mr. Mime and Roserade gave one another the once-over, both pokemon trying to size up which was stronger.

"Get in and get out, right?" Stacy asked. Evan nodded silently, then ushered the three of them to follow closely behind him as he made his way toward the newly-unlocked front door.

"You two hide until you're needed," Evan ordered the pokemon. Roserade looked slightly offended to be ordered by someone who wasn't her owner, but Evan said it with such authority that neither Roserade nor Stacy commented.

Taking a deep breath before opening the glass door with the ratted sticker saying 'Welcome to the Celmont Poke-Mart! For all your Pokemon's needs!', Evan stepped inside with Stacy right behind him, and Mr. Mime and Roserade scurried off into the aisles to hide.

It was a larger shop than the usual stores Evan had come by, which he considered a disadvantage: the larger the place, the longer to find what they were looking for. While most marts only had about two aisles of the most rudimentary supplies, this mart had four aisles well-stocked with plenty of high-calibur pokemon supplies, leading up to the front desk where a very old register was perched in one corner, and a door leading to a room in the back, where the owner was currently brewing some coffee to begin his morning like he always did.

A bell that was set up to ring whenever the front door opened rang aloud, alerting the owner to his first customers of the day. Slightly annoyed that customers had materialized before he could even begin his cup of coffee or feed his Stoutland, the owner shrugged off any sort of attitude he might bring out to the clients, and took a look over at his two pokemon to take them in.

Delcatty, being the lazier one, was already nestling into the blanket kept in the corner for her, bracing herself to get in some more sleep. Stoutland was still enjoying playing with his Psyduck toy, furiously whipping his head back and forth with the toy clamped tightly in its mouth. The owner gave a chuckle at his beloved pet's youthful behavior, put on his cap labeled Celmont Poke-Mart, and stepped out of the backroom so he could man the front desk and greet his first customer of the day.

What the owner walked into was apparent to him almost immediately: the combination of the all-black ensemble worn by both the young girl and the young man pretending to browse through the first aisle of pokeballs as well as the unmistakable head of a Roserade poking out from behind one of his back aisles, intently scanning the whole store, told him everything. Pokemon were forbidden from being out of their pokeballs inside of poke-marts. He was about to be robbed by Anonymous members. He had no need for coffee anymore, because If he wasn't wide awake before, he was now.

"I know who you people are," the owner greeted in a dead serious voice, informing the hooligans that he saw past their charade instantaneously. He remained still as a child caught stealing, feeling a barrier of safety behind his counter, separating him from the two obvious criminals. "I just want you to understand that there is absolutely nothing special about this store; I make a little under 200 bucks a day in here, it's that slow. So before you go doing something stupid, I want you to know how little value there actually is in my store, are we understood?"

Evan and Stacy exchanged a brief look during the owner's rant, neither of them betraying their thoughts to the other as they didn't know each other that well and didn't want to reveal anything crucial to the owner. Evan wondered if this girl was as serious about completing their first mission as he was. Evan was the first to respond to the owner's challenge.

"Mr. Marsh, right?" Evan asked, already knowing the answer.

"How do you-?"

"There isn't much our organization can't find out," Evan saw no point is wasting any time and was cutting straight to the bullet points. He was finding that he was truly enjoying the thrill of his heartbeat racing in excitement over playing the ambassador for Anonymous. "Now, Mr. Marsh, we understand that you received a shipment this week of a new product called PokePlasma that's extremely hard to find in the market. So, this may come as a surprise, but as of this week your shop has become very valuable. So, we're going to be needing all the PokePlasma in your storeroom-" Evan motioned with his eyes at the door Mr. Marsh had just came from, where Stoutland and Delcatty were still playing as if there was no danger in the front of the store. "We're going to need that quickly, too, as we're on a strict time budget here."

Mr. Marsh licked the sweat off of his upper lip as the Roserade revealed itself from behind one of the shelves holding healing items, while a Mr. Mime that had come out of nowhere made its way toward the Anonymous members to stand beside them. "You both can go fuck yourselves! Get out of my store you lousy pieces of garbage, and go get real jobs! Stoutland! Delcatty! Kill! Bad guys!"

Like angels of protection, two quadrupedal pokemon both small in nature, about two feet high each and with thin coats of light grey, bounded from the storeroom behind Mr. Marsh, and landed with style on the counter where good, law-abiding customers would purchase their trainer gear. Stoutland had finally released the toy, and was now baring his large, yellow fangs viciously at the four intruders who were threatening his lifelong partner. Delcatty, although not as attached as Stoutland, was still smart enough to know when unwanted guests were endangering her homelife, and the seriousness of the situation was very clear - this was a life or death battle against criminals and their almost feral-like pokemon who had no limits when it came to battling.

Stoutland was facing the Roserade, choosing which mon to battle all on its own. Stoutland hated this Roserade for wanting to hurt Mr. Marsh. Delcatty found herself face to face with Mr. Mime, who was so thin and spooky looking that Delcatty, being a housecat with little battling experience, was much less inclined to battle than when she was a few moments ago.

"Giga Drain," Stacy called to Roserade, who immediately raised one of its arms, and proceeded to fire a long strand of thin green ivy from its bouquet-cannon hand, which struck Stoutland just under the belly, sinking into the furious dogs drooping tummy, and leeched a small amount of his energy before Stoutland leaped into the air, tearing free of the glowing ivy, and descending fast into the Roserade.

"Ice Fang!" Mr. Marsh suggested, and the Stoutland managed to sink its new teeth made of icicles into the Roserade's shoulder. Roserade fell over, bringing Stoutland down with her, and the two rolled around on the floor of the shop with extreme aggression as Stoutland kept biting into her upper body, freezing and tearing away at her leaf coating, as she was conjuring up Spikes and repeatedly stabbing into the Stoutland's back with her only free arm. They eventually slammed into one of the shelves of products for sale with such force that the domino effect of toppling shelves left the previous aisles of free space for trainers to shop nothing but five ruined shelves with broken pokeballs scattered all over the clean white tile floor, antidotes and potions contents leaking and staining all over the floors in a rainbow of different colors, and the Roserade and Stoutland both buried underneath the wreckage of it.

During this scuffle (which took place in about 15 seconds), the Delcatty and Mr. Mime were having a far more polite, refined battle on the opposite side of the shop.

"Light Screen," Evan said.

"Hyper Voice!" Mr. Marsh told his Delcatty, briefly diverting his attention from his fonder pet, Stoutland.

Delcatty sucked in a great breath of air, then bellowed a visible cone-shaped energy beam of al thel power she could muster from inside herself, which unfortunately was not much. And of the little power she did fire out, it seemed to float right over Mr. Mime, not damaging him in the slightest, and giving him a free moment to do a pantomime as he encapsulated himself within a box of energy, briefly veiling himself with a pinkish glow of protection that Mr. Marsh was aware of was a Light Screen, a move that severely weakened special attacks against Mr. Mime. And, of course, this particular Delcatty was a special attacker.

"Mr. Mime's ability is Soundproof, dude," Evan laughed. "Get wrecked."

"Shadow Ball, then!" Mr Marsh cried helplessly from behind the counter as his Delcatty joined the same fate of Stoutland as she leapt to the air to perhaps get a surprise hit against the Mr. Mime.

"Psychic," Evan said with finality, ending the battle.

Delcatty fired off a Shadow Ball just as she had planned, high in the air of the shop, and even well-aimed right at her target. Mr. Mime, unafraid because of the screen up as well as his superior endurance, closed his eyes for a moment in concentration, then opened them, revealing a hypnotic pattern of red-and-black swirls in his cornea replacing where his eyes had been - then, there was almost a shimmer in the air, a tremble felt throughout the shop as if a great gust of wind blew through everything, and then Delcatty was jolted in mid-air by some invisible force. The Psychic that Mr. Mime shot out at Delcatty hit the lazy but loyal housecat with tremendous force, with no restraint, snapping her spine in half as the power had seemed to flow upward from Mime, going in reverse direction from Delcatty descending upon him in the same way Stoutland had to Roserade, and the blowback had literally snapped the Delcatty's body backwards too quickly. She was dead before she hit the floor with a disgustingly squishy sound, as though her bones had become liquefied. The Shadow Ball that sank into Mr. Mime's chest made him almost lose his balance, but other than, he showed no sign of injury.

"S-Stoutland!?" Mr. Marsh called out, tears welling up in his eyes over the horrors happening around him. But too afraid to jump out from behind his counter, and knowing there was no exit from the storeroom behind him, Mr. Marsh was beginning to fear that his time was running out fast. "Stoutland, come out, boy! Daddy needs you!"

"You should have just given us the PokePlasma, Mr. Marsh," Evan spat. He wanted this man to be scared. He wanted this man to feel helpless and stupid over his final decisions to fight.

"You still would have done the exact same shit," Mr. Marsh responded with contempt in his eyes, eyes only for Evan. "So go fuck yourself."

"Maybe," Evan smiled. "Guess you'll never know."

A loud crash erupted from behind Stacy, and from where the small hill of unsellable, ruined goods, Stoutland leaped free from the wreckage scurried back onto the countertop, hopping in front of Mr. Marsh and barking incessantly, trying to get attention from anyone outside.

"Stoutland, Lick!" Mr. Marsh cried.

"Psychic," Evan said in that same voice of finality he had when he executed Delcatty, and it was just as effective.

Stoutland seemed to have learned not to attack from the air from his exchange with Roserade, so this time he hopped down to the tile floor, and charged toward Mr. Mime head on, moving as quickly as he could, tongue sticking out and ready to hit Mr. Mime.

Mr. Mime was able to concentrate and summon up his psychic powers even quicker this time, and that familiar shake in the air reverberated, and Stoutland's front legs were snapped clean off, one of them skidding like a boomerang across the floor, joining a pile of reasonably-priced dusk balls, and the other falling straight to the floor, leaking dark red blood on the tile. Stoutland stumbled, eyes wide open in shock at what had just happened, then the whimpering and barking and crying filled Main Street of Celmont as Mr. Marsh and his beloved dog were shown no mercy.

Stacy helped her Roserade out from under a particularly heavy shelf while Evan had Mr. Mime use Psychic one last time on the Stoutland, this time snapping its hind legs off in tandem. The shock of it knocked Stoutland out within seconds, but the dog did not survive by the time the intruders would be leaving.

Mr. Marsh was petrified in fear, and Evan wanted to relish his first moment as a member of Team Anonymous, his first moment to impress the big bad boss, this Sir guy. You only have one first impression, only one big moment to cement your status to somebody as important as this, and Evan had big plans. Evan surprised himself by picking out a pokeball from his belt, even though Mr. Mime (and Roserade) were more than enough to carry out this task. He wanted to leave the people of Celmont with a deep impression of the kind of work he would doing for Anonymous.

Evan released Dodrio, his tall, wild three-headed bird, each head looking more vicious and unfriendly than the next. Mr. Marsh had never encountered a Dodrio before, but his first impression of it was that this was the scariest pokemon he had ever seen in his life. And he was right.

"Drill Peck," Evan said with finality.

Mr. Marsh's screams lasted only 10 seconds as the Dodrio jumped 8 feet forward, landing on the counter directly in front of him, and upon cawing in rage, each head proceeded to pluck and stab and nip with an unusual anger for a trainer's pokemon, killing the man long before they stopped the barrage of stabs with their beaks into his face and cranium, exposing a decent amount of his brain, which was leaking past the bone and onto the floor.

"Mr. Mime, please, the PokePlasma," Evan spoke to Mr. Mime while his Dodrio was attacking. Mr Mime shut his eyes, focused, then held his hand forward, palms outstretched and fingers spread wide apart, aimed at the back storeroom. A small cardboard box was hovering through the air, flying straight into Mr. Mime's palm: the shipping label read Detox Corporation Product #0034 to Celmont Poke-Mart 312 Main Street, and inside it of was the treasure that they had been sent for. Mr. Mime presented it to Evan, who beamed with pride; he had gotten the package and eliminated the nuisances in under 5 minutes.

"Not bad, huh, partner?" Stacy said to lighten the tension after witnessing a manic side of Evan that she had never seen in a person before. Roserade was standing beside her protectively.

"Partner," Evan repeated in an odd tone. "Partner?"

"Yeah, man," Stacy answered. "We could be really strong together. You've got a lot of aggression in your mons. I can feel it. You fight hard."

"I fight hard," Evan repeated again in a strange voice.

"Hell yeah, just imagine how kickass we'll look when we bring Sir back the goods, without any problems, and with leaving quite a scene for the police. This is sure to get a ton of cred with everyone."

"You're absolutely right," Evan said, smiling at her and offering her his hand to shake. "Partner?"

Stacy took his hand, and shook it approvingly, happy with the powerful new alliance she had made.

Evan did not let go of her hand. He gripped it tightly, so tightly that she squealed in pain and shouted at him to let go as she tried to pry his hand off of hers with her free hand. In that moment, while Roserade had a moments delay in indecision, Evan curled his own free hand into a fist and jabbed a hard punch right in the mouth, knocking her to the floor, knocking out two of her front teeth as she spat blood, and knocking her unconscious as her head hit the tile.

Roserade lifted her arm to fire off a powerful Giga Drain at this monster, but the air shook with invisible force and Roserade suddenly exploded into a collection of a few torn, burning leaves, and its red bouquet of a hand, still smoldering from the explosion. Mr. Mime lowered his hand from aiming at her.

Evan had Dodrio finish off Stacy with a Drill Peck, then he had Mr. Mime apply some of his psychic powers on a few pieces of charcoal Evan had gathered from the wreckage, conjuring a fire in the middle of the store. It would be enough to dispose of any evidence against him, he was certain. With a newfound excitement over his next possible mission for Team Anonymous, Evan left the Celmont Poke-Mart through the back entrance, recalled Mr. Mime to his pokeball, hopped aboard his Dodrio with the cardboard box tucked safely in a pouch on Dodrio's side, and then he rode his Dodrio into the Exeter Woods, leaving the mart in a blur of fire just as the sun was beginning to fully rise to show everybody that things were about to go from bad to worse.