10

Fear and Loathing Aboard the Evacuation Boat... Good Guys Versus Bad Guys... A New Alliance?

When the last Alolan Air Force Charizard turned off from the infernal scramble of destruction that was now Melemele Island and rejoined formation, the only surviving members of R.A.T.T.A.T.A. were Lillie, Hau, Mina, Youngster Joey, Officer Jenny, and Rattata, who had withstood the air raid with one hit point to spare thanks to his handy Focus Sash. And Youngster Joey and Officer Jenny had vengefully chosen to switch sides and team up with Moon Child, so R.A.T.T.A.T.A. had relatively little to work with.

"Those foot sucking butt blisters," Youngster Joey had complained from the deck of the evacuee ship he and Officer Jenny had boarded after being expelled by catapult from Melemele. "Those scab licker, ass cruncher, cricket dicked turd nuggets."

"Chill," said Officer Jenny.

"Those penis wrinkles!" he screamed. "No one shoots Youngster Joey out of a catapult!"

"You should switch your phone service from Alolan Bell to something else," Jenny suggested. "It would be the perfect revenge."

Youngster Joey shook his head. He took off his cap and wiggled his fingertips under the band to see if any of his acid blotter squares had survived the swim. None had. "I have a better revenge idea," he told her, scowling. "Let's help Moon Child steal the guardian deities and screw up Alola bad as hell."

Jenny gasped aloud. Around them on the ship's deck, peering over the rail or distributing supplies amongst themselves, were groups of evacuees from Melemele.

"Become bad guys?" she whispered behind one cupped hand.

"Why not?" Joey said. "I'm already an official member of Team Rocket."

"But I'm a police officer! I'd have to arrest us!"

But Youngster Joey was too mentally swift for that. "Don't arrest us until after we commit our crimes," he said. "If we do it right, there won't be any police departments to call, or jails to put us in."

"It doesn't work like that," Officer Jenny insisted. "It's something in the blood. I didn't choose this life. I was born this way. Remember? How you found me at that rest stop, being shoved around by Ace Trainers? How you electrocuted that one in the nuts with the Taser?"

Joey did remember. He'd been riding with a different Officer Jenny on a motorcycle when they'd stopped to take a piss. Inside the rest stop he had discovered an act of bullying in progress and decided to rescue Lass Jenny—who had been recently kicked out of her house by her bad guy parents after they realized that their daughter was, through some poorly understood natural process, a budding Officer Jenny.

"I can't just not arrest us if we become bad guys," she told him.

"But what about all the bad guy activities we already do? Like acid, for instance?"

"Swallowing acid is a good guy activity," Officer Jenny thundered. Youngster Joey had touched a particularly sore spot in her philosophy. Her cyan locks shook with fury underneath her police cap.

"Well, so is helping our friend Moon Child on her righteous quest to steal the guardian deities."

"Maybe you're right," Officer Jenny decided. "After all, it was a definite bad guy move to shoot us out of a catapult. Maybe anything we did to pay those braindead hillbillies back would automatically be a good guy move."

"Now you're thinking like a good guy," Youngster Joey said proudly. He spun his cap around backward and grinned. "To protect the world from devastation!"

Officer Jenny's eyes grew large. "To unite all peoples within our nation," she said.

"To denounce the evils of catapulting children."

"To extend our reach to the stars above!" Jenny shrieked. She and Youngster Joey struck cool poses and cried out:

"Youngster Joey!"

"Officer Jenny!"

"Be quiet, you stupid kids!" screamed a fisherman whose fishing empire had been brought crashing down first by Moon Child's interference with Tapu Koko and then Rattata's lack of interference with the resultant purple tornados. He was in a terrible mood, would be for the foreseeable future, and had no patience for enthusiastic youngsters like Youngster Joey or Officer Jenny.

"You wanna go downtown?" Officer Jenny shouted. She pulled a pair of handcuffs off her belt and dangled them threateningly.

"Just ignore him," Youngster Joey said, pulling Officer Jenny to a more secluded section of the deck. "Our first good guy move will be to contact Moon Child and tell her about how we're bad guys now." They went to one of the boat's pay phones. Youngster Joey's cell phone, tragically, had been destroyed in the bath they'd taken after the catapulting.

"Hello?" said Moon Child. She was soaring over the ocean on the back of Charizard, headed for Ula'ula Island.

"Hi, Moon Child! It's me, Youngster Joey!" cried Youngster Joey. As soon as he got a phone in his hand, his self-control went straight out the window. It was all he could do to keep himself from screaming various Rattata facts into the receiver. "Did you hear that Rattata recently became a deity?!"

Moon Child pressed one hand against her phone's mouthpiece and rolled her eyes deep into her head. "Ohmyfuggingod," she moaned. "It's Youngster Joey."

"No, Joey," she then told him. "I didn't hear that."

"Well, it's true! And the people of Melemele were so unhappy with his performance that they shot me and Jenny out of a catapult and turned us into bad guys. We're on your team now!"

Moon Child didn't know what to say.

"Where are you headed next? Ula'ula, and Tapu Bulu?"

"As a matter of fact," Moon Child said, "that's right."

"Great! We'll meet you over there!"

Youngster Joey and Moon Child hung up. Moon Child immediately began running through her stable of excuses not to hang out with people and selected several good ones to use on Youngster Joey if and when she actually did run into him and his crazy acid head girlfriend.