29
"I already know where Veera is!" I scream and run to the window where she shot her shadow ball, and start pounding it with my fists. I look in, but can hardly see anything because the glass is so thick that it is distorting the view behind it. "GOD DAMNIT! VEERA!"
"We can't get in on this side of the compound Raizu!" Says Sakura. "We have to go to the other side if we even want in those chambers."
"Augh, why are you here? And where is my sword?"
She sighs and walks toward the wall and takes the sword off of the table it was on top of. "Here. But you can't go around killing anyone. Team Rocket is so meticulous with their cameras and attendance that I actually had to JOIN Team Rocket. I'm hardly undercover."
"What?" I ask her, stunned.
She nodded. "When you join Team Rocket, unless you're that weird duo with the meowth who have been with them since the beginning of time, everyone has a chip inside of their bodies that alerts a team to where you are. I have mine, as after the incident in Pewter, I thought I'd be more helpful in here than out there. But unfortunately, grunts hardly learn anything, since I have hardly found anything about this project with the mating they have been doing."
"All right! That seems easy Sakura!" I say, oddly excited again. I'm getting mood swings, damn puberty. "Those idiots must not think people would try and double cross, or else it'd be more than a tracker."
"Yeah, they can be stupid…" She doesn't finish her sentence as she gets behind me and grabs my hands, like I am handcuffed. "Shut up and play along. And gimme your sword."
I cooperate and she takes it from me. As soon as she throws it on the ground, another member walks into the room. He is a tall man, and wearing a mask currently. "The prisoner, hand him over."
"I got this one, okay?" Says Sakura. "He's a little annoying, the arrogant bitch, but I got his sword away."
"He doesn't NEED a sword, he has enough strength that he fought with Dark Ambition and survived. Won even. I know enough martial arts that I can handle this." He didn't sound familiar in anyway, so I guessed it wasn't a friend in disguise. If Rachamim could join back, I don't know who else could be in really…
"I have more physical strength than most people on this BASE. We'll both take him okay." She walks forward with me and the man walks in front of us, out of the room and down the hall. The entire inside of the base, if looks don't change through out it, to be made up of steel panels. They make up the walls, floors, ceilings, everything. Most are either a blue tint color or pink, and, as we walk by hallway intersections, I see the big, red Rocket logos at each one. We keep walking for several minutes when we finally come to a door in the hall. We had walked straight and taken no turns. How far away from you am I now Veera?
"All right, we're here." Says Sakura, as we walk in, the man still in front of us. It's just a supply closet. I look around and see jars of stuff all over the shelves that are on all sides of the closet. There would probably be enough room for about 10 people inside tightly, so just us three takes up no room. "Now."
I look around, expecting a trap, and jump back against the door incase I need to get out quickly, but nothing happen, albeit the man taking the mask off and his hat that every single member wears. He is a very pale man, with bright blue eyes and silver hair. I don't recognize him right away, then I realize who he is.
"STEVEN!" I yell, but Sakura clamps my mouth. I toss her hand away easily and start talking again. "What the hell are you doing here? You lead the Elite Four in Hoenn don't you?"
"I did, until I had to be relieved for a few reasons. Now Wallace is there and I can actually do something about this stupid organization. Rocket is reaching higher than Galactic or Teams Magma/Aqua ever since your Dad took over, and I recently had to go undercover. Considering those damn chips they installed, I couldn't be in the elite four as well as being here. Now, I helped Sakura into Team Rocket, she helped you escape some bad people, so you need to help ME."
"How the hell can I do that?" I say, more than ask. "Everyone wants to kill me and I can't very well take down an entire organization myself. Though I said I wanted to, I can't exactly. I just want to get Veera and Alexis out first. Then I'll do whatever."
"Some friends they kidnapped? Don't worry, we'll rescue them!" Says Steven, placing his foot on a barrel and striking some kind of dramatic pose. I kinda give him a look, and then he asks, "Who are they now? We haven't had any new prisoners in a while."
I glance over at Sakura, with a VERY annoyed look. "You DIDN'T tell him about Veera or Alexis?"
"Oops. Guess Serena is rubbing off on me." She blushes a little bit and turns to Steven to tell him about what the whole situation was.
"Oh! Wow Raizu! You are in SOME kind of pickle then. Well, I wanted to defeat the boss man first, but I guess getting your pokémon free won't hurt! And we don't have to deviate much!" He started rummaging through a barrel of clothes that seemed to come out of nowhere and throws a uniform at me. I hold it up to look at it and see it is a female's uniform, and about a foot too tall for me.
"Is this some kind of joke?" I say, not exactly asking.
"Yes. Here is your uniform." I give him a blank look as he shoves a male, correctly sized uniform at me. He and Sakura walk outside the room and stand. I change quickly, the uniform making me look very odd. Why they have an outfit for a 13-year-old I will never know. I put the clothes in the corner, behind a pile of boxes that look like they haven't been touched in ages. I walk out and they look at me and Sakura giggles.
"This is a new look." She says. I shoot her a look that would make anyone who didn't know me want to run off in terror. "Touchy…"
"You look like every other person here except for your long blue hair. Some members do it, but not many. Guess you'll be more conspicuous than I had hoped for." Explained Steven.
"So how do we get my Veera back, and find Alexis?" I ask. I asked in a concerned tone, and I was, and Sakura seemed not to have expected it.
"I'm sure Sakura already told you that you were put in the WORST place possible, and so was Veera. You see, this experiment is VERY odd. Females each live in a room, and males rotate constantly. But, because of what happened between Alexis and that stupid Lucario…
I run up to him and shove my hand at his throat, pinning him against the wall and holding one of his arms against the wall so he can't break the pin without kicking me, which he'll probably do in a second. "Don't… speak… of Markus… like that… or you're a dead man."
"You KNOW him?"
"He died saving my life!"
"Oh well, then I'm sorry I said that. Not sorry I meant it though, mate." I let him go and just sigh and glare at him.
"Now, when pokémon become mates in this program, we've learned what to do since that lucario, or Markus, whatever his name is. If two become mates or simply just fall in love, we cut them off from the rest. If the two are strong though, sometimes we keep males rotating into that room and the couple will have to fight off the others."
"This is so wrong! GOD DAMNIT!" I yell, and smash my hands into a nearby window. "Veera…"
"I'm sure… well… if I said that I'd be lying. Never mind, we should just go."
"I don't know about you, but I'm running!" I say, and dart off down the hall. I can hear Sakura and Steven calling me down the halls, but I ignore them. I also try to call out to Veera and Alexis with my mind, but I don't hear them either. I feel alone.
I pass by a few normal Rocket Members, and most of them eye me oddly as I run down the hall, but I could care less. My sprint lasts for several minutes before I finally notice that windows have stopped coming up and that the hallway branches to the right. I make the turn and see a door that leads into the rooms where the experiment takes place. There seems to be no guards around it, and I grin at my fortune. I open the door slowly and walk inside, taking a good look around.
The inside is a golden-yellow tiled room again, and it looks almost exactly like Veera's from what I could tell when I looked in there. There are no windows and I feel isolated already, even though the door is open right behind me. The wall opposite of me has two small, top-sliding open doors, and the middle of the wall has a normal door with a small window in it. I bless my luck and dart toward the center door when the door on the left slides open, letting in a Gallade. He was walking in an unsteady line, like he was drunk, and his eyes were empty, until he sees me. He looks up at me, his eyes turn fiery with anger, and he charges at me with his arm blades both glowing. I duck and roll to the side just before he would have hit me, and I get to my feet quickly. No human can take getting hit by a psycho cut… I dodge again as he charges at me, so his back is now to the door I came in and I face it. I look behind him and see Sakura at its entrance.
She has a handgun aimed weakly at the Gallade. It is almost bigger than her hand.
If she misses that shot she'll hit me! And that is one big gun! I jump to the side and the Gallade turns to her. The look still in his eye, his arm blades begin to glow again, and she takes the shot. The huge shell pounds the gallade right in the chest, leaving a hole straight through. The sound from the bullet going off makes me fall over on to the ground, both of my hands covering my ears as the sound rings in my head, only being amplified the almost sound-proof walls that reflect them back, not absorb. I can hardly hear the gallade as he somehow gives off one scream before falling to the ground dead, blood soaking his front quickly. The must have hurt her wrist as it is now several yards away from her on the ground. She is cradling her wrist and was gritting her teeth, the ringing probably still in her ears.
"I think… it's broken… Ow… What the HELL IS THAT!?" She yells, pointing at the gun. "That wasn't a stun pistol!"
"That's a freaking magnum!" Says Steven from behind her. "50 Caliber too. Desert Eagles are nasty things."
"A what?" Says Sakura, obviously confused.
"It's a gun. A harbinger of death. These things can shoot small piece of pointed metal faster than the speed of sound. I guess THIS piece of metal isn't exactly small." I walk over and pick up the piece that covered the shell before it was shot, now on the ground. It was damn big.
"A… gun? I've never seen these before in my life." Says Sakura.
"You have now." I say, and sigh. "I am cursed with this knowledge. We only think humanity has a hope of coexisting with the world and pokémon now because guns pretty much have been completely forgotten and eliminated. Way back, before even electricity was discovered, or put to human use really, people had guns. Some could shoot hundreds of shots per minutes, some fire a spread pattern. Some people used them to hunt for food, others to protect… and many more for war. Millions of people could die from huge battles that took place all over the planet and each one had been waged with guns. School teaches us they were pokémon wars, but the World Wars were in fact wrought around with guns. But, people started getting too smart. Evolution or something. People, in both government and crime organizations, would change leaders and powers and positions because people had learned how to make good use of guns anywhere they wanted, and sneak them around. Finally, a ban on all guns was made and they were all destroyed. No gun has been seen for many, MANY years, and if one does pop up, it is instantly made a cover-up by the government. Some adults know about guns, some don't. I do because my dad gave me some disturbing lessons way back when." I sigh; this speech in the totally wrong place and the wrong time, but it felt good having actually TOLD someone that.
Steven nodded. "He's right. Now only stun pistols are regular issue really. There are SNIPING stun guns, but those are not good for aiming and always pierce the skin like a bullet anyway."
"Okay, THANKS for the history lesson guys, but I just want to get out of here before someone sees what we did to this gallade." She goes off toward the door and opens it, darting inside. I go over and pick up the magnum and test that it isn't set to hair trigger. It wasn't. I sigh and walk in with Steven. There is a long, series of hallways that all seem to lead into other rooms. The hallways turn too, this way and that, making navigating weird. We look inside every door's window and see which pokémon is inside of which, and every time I look in, I almost always see something disgusting. The hallway eventually stops though, and we cross through the room of a male female Leafeon. I don't want to shoot it, but when it charges at us, I let loose a shot straight into its head. I am so sorry. We cross that room and into another net work of hallways, and I start feeling hopeless. It has been 20 minutes since we came into these rooms and we have had no luck.
"Raizu!" Yells Sakura, standing at a door that is only two feet away from me. I clean out my ears and turn to her, then look through the window and see Alexis, lying on the ground unconscious. Two scientists are injecting her with some kind of serum.
"That is the stuff that makes her mind forget who she loves. But it may not be working, and only her organs seem to be forgetting anything." Says Steven solemnly. I grow enraged at what they are doing and slam open the door, shooting one scientist in the head with the magnum. He falls over dead instantly, blood and skull bits spraying on the floor behind him. The knock back makes my hand numb for a second though, but that was long enough for the other scientist to pull out a pistol and shoot me in the gut. I gasp, feeling the bullet streak through my skin and lodge itself inside me, and I fall over, hands cradling my gut. The pain would have made anyone else faint by now, but I stay conscious. I can feel myself fading though, as all I can do is watch the next scene happen.
I watch Sakura run in to check up on me, but the scientist, dressed in his fancy-pants white lab-coat, gets up and aims the gun at her.
"Sakura… Get away… He's going to…" I cough up some blood, and she cradles my head and tries to pick me up, putting one finger to her mouth.
He fires the gun.
The bullet hits her back, right into her chest. She stops moving and drops me. I slam onto the floor painfully, and Sakura just looks at me and smiles weakly as she falls over to her side. Sakura… oh god no…
The scientist rushes over to the other one and starts looking him over, taking his pistol too and just leaves him there. Heartless monster!
Steven jumps into the room, sliding along the floor as he picks up the magnum and fires it twice at the last scientist, before dropping the gun from the knock back. The scientist takes each shot in the back, falling over and even sliding forward a bit, blood soaking his coat and body. Steven gets up, sighs, and then looks at Sakura and gasps. He runs over to her, turns her on her back, and presses one now blood-soaked finger against her throat. I can hardly see now, but I struggle to try and stay conscious.
"We have to… save Sakura…" I say between coughs.
"Sorry mate… she's dead… I don't know what we can do about you either. I'll try to wake up Alexis okay?"
I nod, and decide if these are my last moments, that I better try and contact Veera. Veera? Are you awake yet?
I don't hear anything for a few seconds, then try again. Veera?! Please be up…
I am Raizu! What's up?
You sound better. Is it less harsh now?
You could say that…
Good. Before I can continue, something happens. Steven, who is walking with Alexis' limb but live body, just closes his eyes and falls over. I gasp and look to the door and see a familiar face pick me up by the throat. I'm sorry, I'm really hurt now… I thought I'd take this time to tell you I may not see you again.
No Raizu! I know you are strong! You can do this! Don't give up, not when your best friend is in danger here! I can't get out, this place is horrible…
I look the man in the eye, and he grins at me. Veera, I'm dying here. I can't fight him off the way I am now.
Can't fight off who? Who Raizu?
He's…
"Raizu, did you think you'd never see your brother again?" Says Dark Ambition with an evil grin. He stabs me with his claws and I completely black out, fully thinking I have died.