"Zangoose!"

A large red and white-furred being tore through the tense air of the stadium-sized gym, its narrowed eyes focused on its surroundings. Behind it stood Terotrey and Giovanni, while random Rocket grunts patrolled the area for safety measures and to make sure everything was set for the demo reel of Terotrey's technological advancements. The dark eyes of Giovanni stared bewilderedly (and somewhat annoyingly) towards the Zangoose that stood battle-ready in front of Terotrey, wondering all the same why the silver-haired scientist had let out such a wimpy creature in a moment fit for something much more epic.

Of course, with the way the Zangoose's body was half cybernetic was probably the reason why Terotrey now grinned deviously, his hands wrapped around a small controller-looking device. The Zangoose's metallic skin flashed bright with robotic switches and buttons, wires sprouting out from socket holes, connecting to others among the artificial appendages, and sometimes even digging harshly into real flesh, which explained the dried blood that could be seen matted with its damped fur. A robotic red eye zoomed in from the Zangoose's face, which was much larger than its real one, although it still carried the deadly glare the natural one had.

With rugged bolts and screws, the skin had been built into the Pokemon's body, making it appear to be the chimerical outcome of artificial intelligence and natural life. With the way its metallic skin flashed in the overhead stage lights, highlighting the horrific modifications that had been installed forcefully into the beast's flesh, Giovanni, despite that he seemed he would be interested in such a monstrosity, appeared both disgusted and somewhat intimidated by it.

Terotrey, however, only kept his devious smile glued to his lips, his maroon-colored eyes shooting a reassuring glare towards the leader of Team Rocket.

"What is the purpose of this?" Giovanni managed to question in the midst of his freaked thoughts, watching the cybernetic Pokemon turn its head rapidly, shooting its snarling frown in every direction as if it was trying to scare the very arena it was in.

Terotrey chuckled. "Why, Giovanni, this is your key to capturing the Legendaries."

The leader of Team Rocket's eyebrow quirked, his bewildered face contorting into a deadpanned one. It was obvious he didn't understand, nor did he really want to. Instead of showing repugnance or fear, though, he simply muttered, "And this inferior creature is filling that occupation…how?" He was going to ask what was up with the cybernetic features, but decided against it due to the obviousness of the upcoming answer.

"Giovanni," the silver-haired scientist began, his eyes closed thoughtfully as if he was in the act of starting an arrogant lecture, "can you please tell me you how your current Pokemon scanners and trackers work?"

Giovanni shot a bewildered look at him, mainly from the irrelevant question in which the answer was known by mostly everybody, although he eventually replied, "We place a tracker on the Pokemon, and then our computers track it and tell us where the target is located."

Terotrey nodded, a smirk now plastered to his lips. "And are there any downfalls to such a task?"

"Well, yes," the leader of Team Rocket muttered, "if the target hides in a location where so much as a dozen other Pokemon hide, our scanners sometimes get confused and either leads us to the wrong target, or shuts down from short circuiting. Not to mention there's the task of getting the tracker onto the target..."

"And even when you manage to find the target your capturing tactics don't always work," Terotrey finished for the old boss, almost matter-of-factly.

All Giovanni did was nod slightly. "We haven't been able to conduct anything that could possibly approve these flaws…yet."

The scientist cleared his throat, his cybernetic Zangoose snarling at the surrounding objects, apparently ignoring the conversation that was taking place behind it. "What if I were to tell you that such problems are now solved?"

Giovanni grunted slightly. "What are you getting at, Terotrey?"

Now somewhat laughing, Terotrey began to pace in a long line, all in the while of explaining his plan in the form of a villain's infamous monologue. "Giovanni, I have studied the Legendaries for as long as I have been in the occupation of scientific research, and I learned one thing not too long ago that contributed heavily to my experiments."

"And that is…?"

"Every Legendary out there holds a special substance inside of them – a sort of essence, you can say. These essences are what make the Legendaries one of a kind, and allows their powers to play a big part on the rules of natural order.

"You see, every time one wants to track a Legendary, they have to put a tracker on it, and the downfalls that you mentioned for such a task are one of the main reasons why the Legendaries aren't in the hands of top organizations who want them. They're just too damn slippery, being able to hide in the midst of average Pokemon, or just escape before one can find them due to the inability of their capturing devices or the weakness of their hunting Pokemon."

"Your point?"

Terotrey turned to jab a finger towards his snarling, cybernetic Zangoose. "Have you stopped to wonder what those artificial appendages do?"

Giovanni's face remained deadpanned.

"I guess you can say those metallic appendages are kind of like large trackers," Terotrey started. "Only, instead of tracking the Legendary Pokemon by the usual terms, which can easily be both misleading and annoying, it tracks them by their inner essence."

Now Giovanni started to smile, his mind comprehending what Terotrey was beginning to say.

With a short chuckle, Terotrey continued. "Since only the Legendaries contain this very essence, they won't be able to hide…anywhere. These tracking Pokemon will even be able to find them if they take refuge in a location filled with thousands of normal Pokemon. You see?"

"I must say," Giovanni muttered deviously, "I am quite impressed." His face suddenly darkened somewhat. "However, what about the issue of poor capturing devices? Yes, we can now track them perfectly, but it's utterly pointless if none of our machines or Pokemon are able to catch creatures of such destructible power."

Terotrey chuckled again. "That's no longer a problem, either, Giovanni." His eyes shifted to the far side of the Team Rocket gym, where a lone grunt was fumbling with the lock of a large wooden crate.

"My dear man!" Terotrey called out, his voice echoing throughout the mile long boundaries of the room. The Rocket grunt poked his head up in interest, apparently hearing the scientist's voice despite the distance between them. "You, yes you!" Terotrey then confirmed when the grunt attempted to point at himself. "Would you be a good man and open that crate for me?"

The Rocket grunt quirked his eyebrow, but eventually shrugged as he entered the lock's code and unlatched it from the crate's handle, opening the colossal box afterwards and nearly falling back when a gray being rushed out of the darkness concealed inside. Terotrey only smirked as the creature stopped in the middle of the room, revealing itself to be a bad robotic imitation of what looked like Entei, which black smoke blew from the large cracks between its steel plates, giving the artificial beast the impression of going through an upcoming complete breakdown.

Meanwhile, Giovanni only stared bewilderedly at the cheap machine, watching the manmade beast's glowing red eyes stare emotionlessly into space.

"That's just a quick thing I built to help demonstrate my powers," Terotrey explained to Giovanni's confused state. "Inside of it I put a substance that carries similar power waves of a Legendary's inner essence."

As if on cue the surrounding Rocket grunts released their Pokemon from their Pokeballs, watching the large array of – mostly – first-stage Pokemon make their way over to the machine as if the act had been practiced. With their blocking bodies, the robotic Entei had disappeared completely within the collage of furry, smooth, and scaly skins.

"Now, let's pretend for a moment," Terotrey muttered to Giovanni, "that the real Entei is in our sight, but we have lost him within a location that houses many types of Pokemon."

The silver-haired scientist's eyes shifted to the Pokemon crowd, his finger now carefully placing itself on top of a button among his handheld remote. "Now watch."

With a push of the button, the Zangoose snarled its name before its robotic appendages took over, releasing black smoke from the exposed holes on its back before moving forward in mind-boggling light-speed, shooting like a bullet into the midst of the Pokemon crowd, disappearing behind them as if it was nothing but a ghost. Giovanni looked awed from the displayed stealth and speed, and the large array of strength that had radiated from the robotic Zangoose in the wake of it. Meanwhile, however, Terotrey only chuckled to himself, determined eyes set on the Pokemon crowd.

All of a sudden, a loud explosion was heard from the massive group, in which the Pokemon ran off into random directions, eventually revealing a smoking, burning heap of metal that Giovanni assumed used to be the robotic Entei in the middle. However, he gasped when he noticed the cybernetic Zangoose standing firmly by it, its metallic claw dug deeply into a torn-off slab of the Entei's steel plate, almost as it was a mere piece of paper.

It…worked. It really worked! And it only took a few seconds! Such a thing definitely amazed the leader of Team Rocket.

As the Rocket grunts returned their Pokemon to their Pokeballs, Terotrey turned towards Giovanni, his devious grin returning. "What do you think?"

For a minute Giovanni appeared breathless, although his stern voice eventually replied, "It can track them perfectly, and it has super abilities of strength, speed, and stealth that outmatches those of our strongest Pokemon. Impressive."

Terotrey chuckled again. "Giovanni, can you imagine having an army of these under your control? If you did, then one thing would definitely be for certain."

"And that is?" Giovanni replied, although his own smirk signified that he already knew the answer.

"This time, the Legendaries will be ours."

"Kid…hey kid..."

Raikou groaned, mumbling incoherent words as he turned over, his back now facing Darkrai, who was trying to wake the snoozing thunder tiger up. The sun had risen, bathing Newmoon Island with light, and also sending the colors of dawn sprawling amongst the Earth's atmosphere. Of course, despite its beauty, such a time meant hell for Raikou.

"It's time to get to work, kid!" Darkrai spat, arms crossed. He was very tempted to poke the exiled Legendary in the side, although he didn't in the fear of getting rolled onto.

Raikou ignored Darkrai, too lost in his dreams to give his situation much thought, or realize that the dark-type Legendary had the power over nightmares. To his luck, though, Darkrai agreed that such an action wasn't worth it, and instead continued his invariable tries to wake the snoring Pokemon with ferocious words. When nothing seemed to work, however, he smiled deviously when a cunning alternative piled itself into his brain.

"Hey look!" he screamed out into the air for no plausible reason, apart from his new plan. "It's Suicune!"

Immeditaley Raikou sprung onto his feet, his head snapping around, his excited eyes searching for his female counterpart. When he realized that no one of such an identity was there, he only shot an annoyed glare towards Darkrai, realizing that it had been a trick when he caught sight of the dark-type Legendary's childish snickering.

"Damn, kid," Darkrai managed to choke out between chuckles. "You're really gullible when it comes to Suicune." His facial expression contorted into that of a bemused one. "Gee, I wonder why…" His tone carried sarcasm – enough sarcasm for Raikou to blush a deep red at his comment.

In the act of trying to forget the incident Raikou wandered his eyes over the boundaries of Darkrai's cave, which was quite homey, despite that little sunlight made it through the blocking stalactites and therefore shadows enshrouded the wailing cavern. The cave went on deeper behind him, but the thunder tiger paid no heed to it, seeing as how Darkrai always mumbled that there was nothing of importance back there.

"You ready to work, kid?" Darkrai suddenly asked, floating over to his island-mate's (his supposed equivalent to a 'roommate' in this situation) face so that his sea-green eyes could stare directly at Raikou's red line-covered ones. Accompanying this, the thunder tiger looked like he was ready to fall over and back into sleep again, despite that Darkrai wouldn't allow such a thing.

"Yeah…yeah…" Raikou yawned out, brushing clinging dirt from his fur before he followed Darkrai into the open. As soon as the plush feeling of wet grass met his paws, the sun's light met his eyes, causing him to squint as his ruby orbs tried to accustom themselves to the bright lights that the cave had lacked.

Darkrai turned to his island-mate. "Alright, kid, if you're hungry you know where to find food. You can have a quick breakfast, but after that I expect to be seeing you doing the favor I asked."

Raikou snorted, mumbling to himself simultaneously, "Some favor…"

Darkrai shot his narrowed eyes towards the thunder tiger. "What was that?"

"Uh, nothing!" Raikou swiftly replied as he straightened himself out to remove suspicion. He grinned nervously.

All Darkrai did was roll his eyes.

After a fast meal of fresh fruit Raikou slowly made his way over to the beaches, enjoying the sensation of sand between his paws, while his ears relaxed to the sounds of the calm, overlapping waves. Darkrai had floated off to do something, leaving Raikou on the island by himself. Of course, he was still stuck doing his job, although he had been walking on the outskirts of the tropical island for quite some time and hadn't seen even a Wingull grazing amongst the palm trees. It was then when he began to wonder if the Pokemon had overheard Darkrai's task last night and had decided to take off before they got into trouble…

When the sudden snap of a breaking twig emitted from the bushes to the side of Raikou, the thunder tiger stepped back from the startling noise, his eyes peering keenly onto the location. He was somewhat afraid of spotting a resting Pokemon from somewhere in the shrubs, seeing as how he didn't want to appear mean to anyone, and therefore finding the idea of forcing Pokemon off the island bad for his reputation when it came to generosity.

Of course, Darkrai would snap him in half if he didn't do it, and he would rather be badly spoken about then be a homeless being with two removable parts.

Sighing, Raikou slowly began to sneak his way over to the bush, his head rising to see if he could spot the figure from behind it. When his curious eyes fell upon a small Squirtle, they grew bright with softness.

"Hey, little guy," Raikou cooed happily, forgetting his job for those few seconds and instead lowering his head to come face-to-face with the baby blue turtle, who now stared at him with big eyes, its body shivering from slight fright. At the sight of this Raikou shook his head, mumbling simultaneously, "I'm not going to hurt you, little guy." His expression turned bewildered. "Where's your mother?"

Instead of a justified answer, the baby Squirtle broke out into tears, its wailing filling the area and causing Raikou to stumble back in shock, eyes widened. He wasn't quite expecting that reaction, although he was somewhat afraid of attracting attention in the midst of it. Because of this the thunder tiger immediately ran up to the Squirtle, hesitantly gesturing for it to calm down. Due to his bad luck, though, the attempts failed, and thus the Squirtle cried on.

"Oh gees!" Raikou squeaked, now starting to panic as he began to run around in circles, trying to come up with a way to stop the baby from crying.

He tried making funny faces, but instead the Squirtle stopped to stare at him with a puzzled expression before breaking out into tears again.

He tried to feed it fruit, but it paid no heed to it and continued wailing uncontrollably, even slapping the edible items from his paws at times, which some tended to ricochet off the encompassing trees and smack Raikou dead in the face.

He tried to sing it to sleep, but since his voice was the definition of a Hoenn Idol-obsessed zombie, the attempts were useless.

Eventually he collapsed onto the ground, his face expressing exhaustion, while the baby Squirtle continued to wail from the side of him. Raikou swore that he wouldn't be surprised if the crying could be heard all the way from Orre, seeing as how his ears were already breaking out into a mesh of ringing vibrations.

"Excuse me!" a female voice then spat, and Raikou only weakly shifted his eyes upwards so he could eye the Blastoise that was now towering over him, the look of an overprotective mother sprawled across her rough, blue face, while her stubby arms were attempting to place themselves on her hip areas. "That is my son!" she then continued, voice snarling, yet it sounded somewhat elegant as if she was one of those classy, rich mothers. "And you're making him cry!"

Raikou tried to deny the false theory, but seeing as how his muscles had been worn out entirely from trying to cease the baby's crying, the thunder tiger held his tongue and only watched the Blastoise stomp her way over to her child. She then started to coo it into sleep, in which its tears stopped falling and the horrible, echoing wail slowly dissipated into nothingness.

"Legendary or not," she began again, nose stuck up high in the air, apparently finding the identity and presence of Raikou nothing worth gasping over, "you 'world protectors' know nothing about taking care of infants."

"I'm not a Legendary anymore," he muttered, cutting her off when she was about to start up again.

Instead, she huffed, puffing her armored chest out. "Oh? You must've done something really stupid to have that thrust upon ya. Well, I really don't want to hear your depressing life story, though, so I'll be going."

And with that, the Blastoise, the sleeping baby Squirtle cradled in her left arm, slowly made her way over to the ocean and disappeared behind the waves. Raikou only stared at the rushes of overlapping water, deep in thought.

"Yeah, really stupid," he then mumbled, slowly getting up and continuing his depressing stroll along the beach, seeing as how he needed to finish his search for more trespassing Pokemon.

Darkrai didn't return to the island until sunset, which the sky metamorphosed itself into a deep blue, the smeared clouds turning pink as they climbed towards the orange horizon. The dark-type Legendary did a quick surveillance around the grounds, searching for trespassers, mainly to see if Raikou had been doing his job. To his surprise and relief, not a Pokemon was in sight, and therefore Darkrai made his way over to the cave, where he found Raikou sulking in a dark corner, playing finger hockey with a small pebble between his claws.

"You did good, kid," Darkrai commented, although it sounded forced as if the nightmare Legendary hadn't expected himself to say such a thing. When he didn't see his island-mate's depressed expression change an inch, nor heard him utter a work to break his awkward silence, the dark-type Legendary floated over to him, his sea-green eyes displaying slight concern. "You alright, kid?"

Raikou only sighed and nodded, convincing Darkrai to float over to the entrance of the cave, although he shot compassionate looks over to the thunder tiger every now and then. To tell you the truth, Raikou wasn't okay. In fact, the very incidents that had led up to his exile from the Legendary council had been rushing through his mind ever since the mother Blastoise had implied his past foolishness before she left.

"Hey look!" Darkrai suddenly shouted out. "It's Suicune!"

Raikou only snorted, remembering that Darkrai had tried the same tactic earlier, and assumed he was using it again to cheer him up from his depressed state. Because of this realization, Raikou only mumbled monotonically, "Nice try, Darkrai. I'm not falling for that again."

"No, you idiot!" Darkrai spat, causing Raikou to glare at him. "It really is Suicune!"

The thunder tiger noticed the lack of sarcasm or snickering in the dark-type's words, therefore finding them believable and thus rushing towards the entrance to the cave. There, he gasped when his ruby eyes fell onto the familiar concerned face of his water dog counterpart.

"Sui-Suicune?"