Disclaimer: These things are annoying, so just assume that I don't own anything that Nintendo owns for the rest of the chapters.
Pokémon: Remastered
Chapter Gamma: Evil Goings-on
The S.S. Blackcat sailed over the briny sea, its sail rippling in the gentle sea breeze. Several Wingull flew overhead, no doubt searching for a nice, juicy Magikarp.
Inside the captain's cabin, a man with long dark hair was reclining in his seat, chuckling to himself and gazing out at the peaceful waves.
"Aah…finally rid of that meddling kid and his Pikachu. Now, nobody can stop me from delivering those alpacas and setting the world of illegal alpaca trading in motion. All will bow down to me,"
"Arturo de Caballo!"
"What? Who dares interrupt my maniacal monologue?"
"Ash Ketchum!"
"You again!" Arturo yelled angrily. "How did you escape from the hold?"
"You forgot to lock the door."
"Well, normally I'd be impressed, but it took you five hours!"
"Yeah, shut up!" Ash made a motion as though he was going to lunge at Arturo. Suddenly, however, he heard a harshly whispered "Pika!" from behind him. Ash looked back and saw that his Pokémon was shaking its head very slightly and had a scolding glint in its eyes. Ash was puzzled, because Pikachu had done the exact same thing on several other occasions where he was about to do something rash. For example, the time he had made a robot in Saffron City drop kick a ball of C4. And the time he had lit a match to find a gas leak. Then it came to him. Pikachu was warning him that whatever he was going to do would be harmful to someone's health, and now, several explosions later, he had finally known his Pokémon's wisdom.
Ash, hoping Pikachu's instinct didn't fail him the next time he caused widespread pandemonium, decided to try an alternative. Ash thought for a moment, then said:
"I thought really evil villains locked the door. I guess you're not a really evil villain," Ash taunted.
"I am too a really evil villain! Isn't that right, Donny?" Unfortunately, Donny was engrossed in stuffing his robotic face with a wheel of Gouda.
"Ha! More like a slightly mediocre villain if you ask me," laughed the trainer.
Arturo didn't take that comment very well.
"Gasp! How dare you call me a slightly mediocre villain! I will now explain to you the reasons why I am a really evil villain and not a slightly mediocre villain! Reason one: I almost fatally injured somebody once. I was skateboarding and I almost crashed into an old man. I swerved just in time and dodged him and the old man never knew what happened, but it is with great pride that I think of that day that took place in a less complicated time, where people walked to the corner store to buy a loaf of bread every day, and every night would put fifteen huge logs on the fire, and when the house burned down the fire department would say, 'No problem, we'll reimburse you,' and at school the teachers would hit kids over the head with a yardstick if they missed the question and in their later years the kids would become raving lunatics that got taken away by men in white coats who would then proceed to…"
While Arturo continued his long, rambling, irrelevant sentence, Ash turned to Pikachu. The clever Pokémon tilted its head towards Donny. Ash understood. The pair slowly inched closer to Donny, engrossed in his consumption of cheese. The Pokémon and trainer were really on a roll today in the way of clever escape plans.
"…which is why softcore porn is technically not illegal on NBC as long as…what are you doing?"
Ash had opened the hapless Donny's fuse box, and Pikachu had charged up a dangerously large amount of electricity just begging to be released.
"Surrender or the robot gets it," Ash said in clichéd gangster movie dialogue.
Arturo began to shake and stammer. "W-What? N-No! Donny is a one of a kind collector's item! And he's an animatron, not a robot! Get it right!"
Pikachu's cheeks sparkled with electricity.
"No! Okay, okay! I surrender! Just don't short-circuit him! He's not insured!"
The "really evil villain," who was now just a pathetic, whimpering baby, slowly sat down on the floor, desperation in his eyes. Ash surveyed his hostage.
"Hmm…" Ash thought aloud. "I need something to tie you up with…ah!" He reached into his pocket, where he found the multicolored handkerchief given to him by Misty. Arturo looked at it dubiously.
"You carry around rainbow-colored bondage?"
"No! It's a handkerchief. I got it from my best friend. Er, best human friend, that is," Ash said, smiling at Pikachu.
"Does this best friend happen to be female?" Arturo inquired.
"What's it to ya?"
"You do know what it means when a girl gives you her handkerchief, don't you?"
"No, what?"
"…Never mind."
A rather puzzled Ash mentally put this on the list of things to ask Brock about the next time he saw him. If Brock told him. Brock wasn't always one-hundred percent truthful in answering Ash's questions.
Flashback…
"Brock, what does 'coitus' mean?"
"Uh…it's a type of…obscure pasta…that they only serve at really fancy restaurants. Yeah. Try ordering it sometime. The waiter will be really impressed that you know what it is."
Back to now…
"I wasn't allowed in that restaurant again. But I got back at Brock when I told him Nurse Joy wanted to ask him out."
Arturo now was giving Ash a very strange look indeed. "Well, thank you for that completely pointless and irrelevant anecdote, but weren't you going to tie me up? Oh, shoot, why'd I say that?"
Ash, now reminded of what he was doing, took the handkerchief and firmly tied Arturo's hands together behind his back. Satisfied with the knot, Ash then flipped Donny's main power switch. Not that he needed to; cheese was like an opiate for the animatron.
"Wow! I single-handedly ended a corrupt operation and saved three dozen alpacas from a horrible fate," said Ash. "Uh…with a little help, that is," he said, noticing Pikachu's angry expression.
"Yeah, but you forgot one thing," rained Arturo on Ash's parade, "who's going to drive the boat?"
"No problem. I'll drive it!" proclaimed the trainer.
Ash figured that driving a boat wasn't that different from driving a car. He also assumed that driving a real car wasn't that different from driving a Playskool car. So, Ash confidently took hold of the ship's wheel and struck a heroic pose as the cruise ship sailed off into the horizon.
One day later…
"Wow, Pikachu! I never thought I'd be this good at sailing!"
The Pokémon would have responded, but it was too busy hanging its head out the window.
"Careful, Pikachu, I wouldn't want you to fall overboard."
In the corner, Arturo was still bound, but he was snoring quietly. Donny was limp and not moving at all, which would make sense seeing as he was shut off.
"Look! Look!"
Arturo's head shot up and his eyes flew open, and Pikachu raised its head from out the window. Both were rather startled by this exclamation.
"Look! I think I can see Hoenn!" Ash was almost literally jumping for joy.
"Pika!" Pikachu seemed very excited as well. In fact, Pikachu was almost always excited when Ash was. It was almost like a mental bond.
"Oh, yeah, Hoenn. Great. Just where I didn't need to go. I could be living the luxurious life of an Andean Pachacuti right now, watching my incredibly sexy servant girls calculate my mountains of wealth on quipus if it weren't for you."
"Yeah, well, you can't win 'em all…"
But, unbeknownst to our heroes, the personification of not being able to win 'em all was lurking beneath the waves…
OOOO
"Pedal faster, James! Time is money! And the faster we get to Hoenn, the faster we'll make mountains of dough!"
"Ungh…y'know, Jessie, it might help us get there faster if you'd help pedal, too…"
"Less talking, more pedaling!"
"I think I've got a cramp…"
As the man and the woman inside a small, pedal-powered, Magikarp-shaped submarine continued to bicker, a small white and brown cat stared through the periscope intently, its tail twitching violently.
"Uh…hey, youse two…I hate ta interrupt ya cat fight," said the obviously not-your-average-cat, "but…WE'RE ABOUT TO CRASH!"
The man stopped pedaling and the woman stopped slave driving.
"See, James? I told you this would happen if you pedaled too fast," the woman said.
But before James could protest, the tiny submarine suddenly came to a violent and jolting stop, sending its inhabitants flying into a wall.
"…Uh…somebody had better go out and give us a damage report," said Jessie.
"No need," said James. "The sub's plated with reinforced titanium. It's indestructible! The least it could have gotten was a tiny dent."
"Oh, yes, so it is. And you said it wasn't a worthwhile investment," laughed Jessie.
"Jessie, you said that. I was the one who broached the idea in the first place," said James.
"Did I ask you?"
"Eh…Jessie? James? The submarine might be indestructible, but I can't say da same for da boat we crashed into," said the cat, looking out the sub's window at a now-sinking ocean liner.
"Uh-oh. I hope we don't get sued again…" said a pale-faced James.
"It wouldn't even be 'again' if someone hadn't decided he wanted to see what would happen when he put nitroglycerin into a car engine!" Jessie said, shooting a dirty look at the cat.
"I can't help it! Cats are naturally curious!" protested the feline.
"Okay, Meowth, Jessie, that's enough arguing, let's just put the past behind us and look forward to better times in a new and different place, hm?" James said brightly.
"Thank you, Richard Simmons, but I just want to get in, get rich, and get out," said Jessie. "Now, keep pedaling!"
OOOO
"Pant…I'm burning up in here! What kind of genius would put a hideout inside a volcano?"
Shelly, one of the higher members of the Team Aqua hierarchy, was sent on a secret mission to the Team Magma headquarters to attempt to find out what their big plans were. If they had big plans, that is. Archie, the head of Team Aqua, wasn't quite sure.
Incognito in a Team Magma grunt getup, Shelly walked down the winding path inside Mt. Hukilakealawao, located on some tropical Hoennese island, trying to ignore the fact that even Super Pantene Advance Mach 4 could fix the amazing frizz that the humidity was doing to her normally impeccable blonde hair. The fact that red-hot bubbling lava surrounded her on two sides didn't help either.
She mentally shrugged it off, however, as this secret mission was far more important than vanity Team Magma was the only obstacle preventing Team Aqua from enacting their ultimate goal. The converse was also true. In a way, the two Teams kept each other in balance so neither of them could do anything monumental.
"You! Halt!"
The Aqua Admin stopped in her tracks. She hadn't realized that she had almost walked past the guards in front of the Magma base, and also inadvertently drawn attention to herself. Not a good thing for a spy to be doing.
"Oh, very sorry," she said. "I was so…excited to be finally going to the Team Magma base that I forgot to look where I was going."
"Why are you here?" one stony-faced guard asked. Shelly, alwaysone able to lie on her feet,told him of her "lifelong aspiration" of being in Team Magma and how much it would mean to her and her "penniless, illness-stricken family" if she could join. All the while she broke into several coughing fits.
The guard looked at his companion dubiously. His companion gave a small shake of his head.
Since the guards obviously didn't fall for sob stories, it was time to switch to Plan B.
Shelly slowly walked away, hanging her head. "Oh...okay...darn..."
But then she quickly turned around and, without warning, kicked the guard on the left in the stomach. Then she delivered several rapid-fire punches to the other one.
"Ow! You hit me in the ear! That's not cool! Ohh..."
Shelly didn't exactly relish the fact that she had just attracted more attention to herself than a neon green elephant in the suburbs, but in her business, you did what you had to.
"Excuse me!" A tall man in a Magma uniform was walking towards her. "Did you just punch out our guards?"
"Uh..." Shelly was nervous. She hoped he would go easy on her.
"That's great! We need someone like you on our team! C'mon, I'll introduce you to the boss."
The Aqua admin was at a loss for words. Maybe this won't turn out as bad as I thought. She looked back at the incapacitated guards.
"Oh, man, I'm gonna feel this tomorrow..."
"Oh, shut up. You got your butt kicked by a girl."
OOOO
Finally, an update. I just have a few more things to say, so bear with me.
First, the future of this story. Don't worry, it's not being discontinued. The general overtone will become slightly darker. The funny will still be there, though. Also, I promise that, in Chapter 4 (or Delta), you'll find out who was laughing manically in Chapter 1 (or Alpha).
Next, at the risk of being misunderstood, softcore porn is not and probably never will be legal on NBC. Just so you know. Sorry, guys with basic cable.
Finally, as always, be sure to review. Just press that little bluish "go" button and type in your two cents. Until next update!