Chapter 11: Bait
Without a bit of hesitation, Eric and Roxie leaped off of their scooters and walked into the pile or rusting metal that was Pyrite City. Their bikes would be stolen anyway; there was no security in this town and enough pilferers to snatch it up in the blink of an eye. Pyrite was the only town in Orre where there was so much crime that the police had to overlook such easy thievery and look into schemes to overthrow the government. Yet through all the paranoia, Pyrite seemed to get the most business out of all Orre. They had a shop, a colosseum, heck; there was even a psychic who wasn't just full of it.

Eric knew his way around, he often came into the colossem to sketch some Pokemon in battle, and it was as close to natural that he could get in this region of the world. Roxie hardly ever came into these parts though, she hated how so many people here viewed Pokemon only as tools, and no as the valuable companions that they could be. So, Eric, knowing the layout of the land, led Roxie to a nice little bench outside of the fortuneteller's shop. Together they sat down on the bench and read over anything they left out before arriving. When he was halfway through the file, Eric, as casually as possible, put his arm around Roxie. Unfortunately it just woke up the cute little ferret Pokemon that was there. Eric blushed, took his hand back, and read on.

When they were both finally finished, they looked up at each other; Florina scurried over into Eric's lap, and both Eric and Roxie laughed. While scratching the Furret's stomach a bit, Eric said, "Looks like we get to do an inside job… How did Wes get us into a real gang?"

Roxie's eyes widened, as she responded, "No, no, he and the some other government agencies set these fake gangs up so they could tap into information from the criminal community. There are two different ones that never make the same alliances or enemies so the can cover all the bases."

Eric was about to scratch the back of his head, but caught his hand in mid-scratch and simply ran his hand through his hair. "They would have to do something illegal to be valued by all the other gangs though…" he said, suddenly not so sure that he was on the right side of whatever this fight was. After all, if he joined up with the Colorons, he would probably be able to see his parents… But he knew it wasn't true and fought down the questionable feeling in his gut.

"Wes explained it to me once," continued Roxie, "The police set up fake records for bandits to break into, they always do, and the word of the fake stuff that they do goes around. Sometimes the police and 'gang' members have a 'street brawl'." Then she stood up and stretched, as if to say that she was ready to go; they were supposed to meet the 'gang leader' for orientation soon.

As Eric followed suit and started to walk alongside his unofficial girlfriend, a memory flickered into his mind. "Wait, I remember something like that… Gah, do you mean were going to be Mach Champs?" Although he knew it was fake, a 'battle' that he had seen a few years ago made that gang look… utterly lame. They managed to win, but only because the policemen were inexperienced… or were they just acting that way?

"Is that what your e-mail said? I was assigned to the other team!" Roxie shrieked out in horror. It would be hard to do this mission seperately, even if they were working toward the same goal… plus there were the Pokemon to split up. "Do you think we'll still be able to make contact of some kind?" she asked with a sigh. She should have asked more before she too this summer job.

Eric laughed and whipped out his PDA. "As long as we have these, we can chat any time we want," he said with a delighted shrug. Florina, on his shoulder, stared down at the screen that had the smallest little chat box in the upper left and a huge advertisement all around it.

"Speaking of these nifty little things…" said Roxie as she pulled her own PDA out. She had not taken as long as Eric to read the rest of the e-mail and designed some new clothes for Eric and herself on the Suit designer program. She pulled out the plug in Eric's pocket and hooked it up to the PDA and Eric did not show a single bit of resistance. The shirt did not change much at all, it just became more white than gray. His leather jacket turned into a dark blue windbreaker with brilliant red stripes down the sleeves. The sweat pants that replaced his jeans seemed to have the same color scheme with the red stripes streaming down the sides. When the outfit was all finished uploading, Roxie took her PDA out of Eric's jacket and handed him a blue beanie with a red star on the top, and blue tinted shades.

Eric rather liked this getup; it was the first time he felt comfortable wearing sweats in public. After making a quick look around to make sure no one was around to see the odd change, pulled the funky hat around his had and slipped on the blue shades. There was no one around; it was late in the morning. All the action around Pyrite started up around four thirty in the afternoon and ended early in the morning, at about four o'clock. Eric tilted his shades just enough so that Roxie could see his pupils and in his most excellent impersonation of Elvis said, "Hey babeh." Florina laughed so hard that she fell into one of Eric's jacket pockets.

After blushing and giving Eric a light punch to the shoulder, Roxie plucked Florina out of Eric's pockets and gave her a hug. "I was going to have an outfit that looked kind of like yours, but I guess we're assigned to different teams…" she muttered with a sigh.

"Why do we need new clothes anyway?" Eric asked while rubbing his left shoulder and pushing the glasses back up. Even if he liked it, Eric had to admit that this ensemble was a little odd.

Roxie rolled her eyes; Eric was being just too much of a newbie about this. "They know how we look. If you hide your eyes and hair, they probably won't recognize you if you pass them by again. We want to stay as secretive as possible so we can surprise the Colorons whenever we can," Then she saw him, and she didn't know at all how she knew it was him.

The man standing in front of her was obviously the leader of the Mach Champs. He couldn't have been much younger than Wes, probably nineteen or twenty years old. He had short, curly brown hair and sharp almond eyes. He wore a slightly torn white undershirt and tight blue jeans with a large black belt constricting them to his waist. Behind him smiled a large, muscular, gray Pokemon with a wrestling award-like belt and a friendly smile drawn all over its face. Behind that smile, though, laid raw power and pure potential. After the team stepped up to them, the man asked of Eric and Roxie, "Are you guys Ric and Rox?"

Eric nodded and said, "I guess I'm… Ric?" while suppressing a chuckle. He never thought someone would try to squeeze his name into one syllable.

They guy pulled Eric to the side and said, "Good, now, Rox, you can go right down there," he said while pointing down into an alleyway. Eric watched as a van came and two men, clad in yellow and green latex, ripped the backpack off of Roxie's back, threw it into the ally, and hauled her into a van. He also saw through the horror and out of the corner of his eye that the bulky Pokemon behind him threw a small device onto the back of the van. The guy looked down at Eric, whose face had been pale as a ghost's. "Wait… didn't Wes tell you that Roxie was going to be bait?" asked the man as he plugged a PDA into one of his pockets. Suddenly he was wearing a dazzling black suit with a rose in the front shirt pocket and a top hat.

Eric just shook his head and ran up to the backpack. On the way, he found Florina running up to him, they must have thrown her out a little later… He paced back up to the guy, dragging along the extra backpack and carrying the Furret on his shoulder. To the now formally dressed man, he said, "So… we're gonna go and catch her, right?"

"Man, I forgot how much Wes liked to challenge the new recruits," he said with a shake of the head. "Yea, but we want a definite location so we can take them all down instead of just the ones that you guys washed up. We can sit here a bit and plan your battle strategy a bit, then teleport to wherever we're tracking them. The only thing we know about so far, from that girl that Rox caught, is that there are 1 of these guys for each tier for each type of Pokemon and that there are at least 3 or 4 tiers. So we're hoping that a location will lead us to more. Ah, by the way, my name is Gabe for this little stunt."

Eric moaned, but he was sure with the help of some more professional agents that he would be able to pull Roxie through this. "Wait, teleport? I thought that you were the leader of the Mach Champs, fighting Pokemon," he said as his gaze slipped over to the world-class weightlifting Pokemon, Machamp.

'Gabe' blinked a few times before saying, "Are you sure that Wes was right in the head when he sent you the mission precis? I'm the leader of both the Mach Champs and the Abrakazams; it's really easy with Morph Suits. Its important that we don't invade them as the Mach Champs, they're supposed to be friends with the Rainbros' people, but the Abrakazams are almost their natural enemies." While showing Eric the PDA with the screen still set to the magician suit that Gabe had on, he asked, "So, should I do the honors?" Eric just nodded as the man swapped the designs. Eric got a suit identical to Gabe's, and Gabe got Roxie's work onto his screen; he was going to keep it in case Eric needed it later.

Eric took the Pokeballs out of Roxie's backpack and sighed heavily. Roxie seemed to work really well without him, but she had been with a Pokemon all her life. Eric had just started battle, and had only been in two battles; how would he be as good as Gabe and any of the other 'gang members' that may have been helping out? Maybe with a little bit of courage and help, he told himself… He just hoped that his partner wasn't bugging out too much.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Side Notes:
-If you don't understand how Gabe's gonna teleport, its an Alakazam. :3
-W00t, time for Eric to get some alone time!
-I may reveal Gabe's real name when this mission is over.
-I think I may have kind of excluded Pokemon emotionally from this chapter... Meh, I'll try to work in more of Blaze, the 001's, Bond, and S:008 in without making them battle. Florina has been kind of a text hog lately though. almost said camera hog
-I wanted to use a different word than bugging, but for some reason its filtered out. I didn't think it was a bad word... I'm posting it the normal way on Gaia and