Victreebell used stun spore: It was super effective
Team Rocket Grunt Bruce - Till he's blue in the face.
Team Rocket Grunt Nathan - Yeah, blue in the face!
March 26th - Northwest of Kanto - Pewter City - 2PM
"So wha-," Brock stammered back at the leader of Team Rocket. His eyes were obscured by his black fedora, his expression unreadable. Giovanni was privy to divulge much of any of his own emotions for him to draw any accurate conclusion as to what he was truly feeling. "So what if you think calling off your grunts was some kind of favor - " he would swallow another painful gasp and would say. "You're still a criminal who treats Pokemon beneath him! We're enemies!" his eyes widened in alarm, he would quickly stumble backwards after Giovanni stepped forward.
Brock could clearly hear the soft and sudden echo of the crime boss's voice around him.
"I'm only conducting business." Giovanni says, halting his footsteps.
"So what," Brock says, with a cough. "It's a poor business model."
"Inhale."
"Wha-"
"I'm asking you to breathe deeply. Breathe as deeply as you can, your life depends on it." If it were anyone else, it would have sounded like an order but Giovanni had a voice that made the strictest commands sound like gentle suggestions.
"Wha-what's that supposed to mean?" Brock says, with a huff of frustration. This would momentarily divert the fifteen year old's attention allowing him to push aside his panicked thoughts. Hopefully it would spare him enough time to open his airways a bit more before the stun spores would leave him gasping for more oxygen.
Before an ambulance would be able to arrive and administer the antidote.
"Why? Why are you helping me? What are you trying to accomplish?" Brock would ask, taking weak, unsteady breaths as Giovanni tentatively approached him.
"I don't owe you any explanation," Giovanni would say, handling Brock's pokeball that contained his Onyx in the palm of his hand. "The matter in question is really none of your business, but I saw you struggling."
"I got family," Brock says, through heavy, laborious breaths. "I'm - I'm the only one who's capable of looking after them!"
Something wasn't quite adding up for Brock…
"...I understand and that's all you need to know." Giovanni says, holding up his hand to silence any further protest under Brock's fearful and curious glare. His jaw had set firmly resisting the urge to break away eye contact with the young man.
"Under-understand?" Brock says, choking back a sob. "understand me!?" he wasn't able to understand what Giovanni meant. Let alone understand what possible tangible connections that would ever relate his own experiences to someone who owned a criminal organization.
Brock was never able to finish his barrage of questions.
BROCK BLACKED OUT!
Kanto Region Hospital - 4:50PM
"That's all you have to tell me?" Looker asks, flipping his notepad closed after conducting a formal witness statement.
He was standing near Brock's bedside while he gathered his testimony.
"That's pretty much it." Brock says, his voice dropped to a breathless whisper. Looker noticed he was fingering the hospital bracelet on his left wrist.
"...Are you okay?" Looker asked, anticipating another emergency. "Do you need a nurse?" He assured him only for Brock to stop him from pushing the call button alerting anyone he may need further medical assistance.
He weakly grabbed Looker by the wrist urging him to stop.
"Just let me out of this place," Brock pleaded. "Let me go!"
"You nearly died three times today," Looker informed him. "Twice while paramedics kept you alive during the ambulance ride and the third time before I was able to question you about Giovanni's whereabouts."
"Listen, it doesn't matter. I got kids to look after and I can't be bothered to sit around and wait all day." Brock says, sharing an uneasy expression with Looker. His hand hovering just above the IV needles the nurses inserted into his arm. He was more than ready to supply Looker with an eager demonstration and rip away the needles and sticky tape that were carefully monitoring his vital signs and were most likely connected to the nurses station. This would most likely alert someone if he flatlined as he carefully weighed his options.
"Kids?" Looker says, surprised.
"I'm not the father alright," Brock exclaimed. "My parents left me and my siblings a few years ago. I'm just lucky my mother Lola was a gym leader or else I may have never convinced my social worker I wasn't unfit to look after my nine other siblings."
"You're only fifteen." Looker says, in a horrified whisper.
"At least the fifteen year old is more reliable than both my mother and father combined."
"I'm so sorry."
"Don't trouble yourself," Brock says, warily. "Thinking back on a lot of things my parents told me before they abandoned us. I think I was better off without them."
"So you wouldn't believe me or even trust my own words if I told you I cared?" Looker says, with a touch of concern.
He gives Brock a questioning glance.
"Not like it matters much…"
The comment alone surprises Looker. He pauses thinking it over and then says. "...It matters very much to me."
"And maybe if I wasn't trapped inside this hospital-" Brock says, with hopeless indecision. "If Team Rocket never attacked me you wouldn't be saying something like that. I know it."
"I wouldn't change my answer," Looker says, quietly. "These are burdens children are never meant to handle."
"You're lying aren't you?" Brock says, biting back a sob. "What good are words anyways? What good are adults that can't even be bothered to look after their own children?" He had only wished there was some way that everything could be different. That Brock's broken family could somehow be made whole again but he knew there was no changing what could be.
"Your childhood should have been your parents first priority," Looker says, his voice had grown unusually soft.
"I can't deal with it anymore," Brock says, as his eyes brimmed with angry tears. "The betrayal, the heartache of losing the two most important people who thought cared about you." he couldn't stop those memories from seeping back into his mind. The sadness he refused to acknowledge long after his parents had left without so much of a warning would finally escape and swallow him whole.
Burying his face in his hands, he began to take many uneven breaths. He tried desperately to summon every ounce of the unbeatable spirit and the rock-hard determination his reputation as a rock type gym leader had earned him.
Those defensive emotional walls Brock had thrown up years ago were somehow crumbling beneath the weight of Looker's own kindness.
Brock would heave one last unsteady breath and it was something he hadn't done when he was ten years old. After child protective services and a few police officers would pile into his home after receiving the news as to how Flint and Lola had abandoned their own children.
He wept hysterical tears.
-.-
…The Pewter City Gym is now temporarily closed until further notice…
5PM
"I wouldn't bother going inside if he's sleeping." Looker says, taking a deep breath through his nose.
"That's a shame," Prof. Oak says, surprisingly he was very quiet and though he also looked very tired. He glanced back at the detective, a smile of relief lit up his face. "I wanted to have a few words with him."
"And who might you be?"
"Prof. Oak, I'm the boy's mentor. Since his parents had left him when he was a boy, I'm one of the few adults he does trust."
"Hmm."
"Is he doing any better?" Prof. Oak asked him. Stunned and overwhelmed, he kept trying to probe for more answers asking for whatever immediate available information he could uncover.
"Inconsolable," Looker says, with a short sigh of resignation. "He's strung out, worn out. I thought whatever medicine the IV drips were feeding him might take the edge off his anxiety but it wasn't enough to encourage him to sleep on his own."
Looker notices Prof. Oak has a far off look in his eyes. They reflect a mixture of fatigue and sadness all at once.
A few more seconds of apprehensive silence swept between them.
"Is everything alright between you…and the boy?" Looker says, at last.
Prof. Oak stuffed his hands into the pockets of his white lab coat. "Fine, everything is fine," he insisted, sparing a glare for Looker. "After one of my aides bothered to visit Brock this afternoon I knew I had to say something. Brock may be mature for his age for a gym leader but he has been known to vent. I'd say we're pretty much overdue."
Looker laughs a humorless chuckle.
"Brock," Prof. Oak says, in a calm slow voice. "Bock…please look at me." It takes only one good look at him to know he's ready to burst into tears.
"I already know what's gonna happen," Brock says, this time with a slight sobbing hiccup. "The officers, the case workers…I can't stay here anymore! They told me so! Mom and dad left and…and-" it was this action alone that earns Prof. Oak a look of betrayal.
"I've been making many phone calls for the past three days," Prof. Oak tells him. "Conference calls with the Pokemon League, my own colleagues, Brock, nobody is punishing you or your siblings for your parents' mistakes."
"If that was true! Why isn't anyone helping me? What did I do to deserve this?" Brock yells.
Without hesitation he turned to the Pokemon Professor and threw his arms around his waist and sobbing. For a minute or two Prof. Oak had knelt down and rocked the young boy in his own arms. So Prof. Oak talks. He whispers, low soft whispers one would often meant to soothe."Sshh…Sshh..It's okay, Brock. I've got everything figured out. Everything's going to be alright… Ssshhhh."
"HELP ME! HELP ME, PLEASE!" Brock's own voice was muffled and choked by his own tears. His small pudgy fingers had wrapped themselves around the fabric of Prof. Oak's lab coat until his knuckles turned white.
"Don't leave me, please don't leave me."
"Brock, Brock nobody's leaving you. I'm right here, Brock. I'm right here." Prof. Oak says, quietly. His voice reflected his own guilt and sadness.
"I don't blame him." Looker says, tugging his coat tighter around himself.
"He grew up too quickly." Prof. Oak says, rubbing his pounding temples. "Far too quickly. But I never made those phone calls to begin with. If I never had gotten involved Brock may have never seen his family again." he could suddenly feel his heart rate redouble its efforts. He could feel the rush of blood pounding in his ears. "I had no choice but to convince everyone else a ten year old was capable of handling the Pewter City Gym by himself!"