3.

The more she thought about it, the more Lyra knew she had seen that spiky tuff of red hair before. She's couldn't quite place him, but Lance had triggered the misty remnants of some memory, long lost to the corners of her mind. Where on earth… She would have remembered had she met him recently, so it couldn't have been in Johto. Kanto, maybe? Her memories of Kanto were hazy at best, bursts of frozen emotions permutating in a nonlinear jumble of time. Placing him there would be hopeless. Damn it.

Lyra was curled up on a chair in the Mahogany Town Pokécenter, pretending to thumb through a magazine. She had been staring vacantly at the same conditioner ad for over half an hour. The model beaming up at her became more and more disfigured as Lyra absently twisted the page around with her thumb and forefinger. She hated waiting for her pokémon to be returned to her; this visit she was even more impatient than usual. She needed to place Lance. She needed to get back out there and figure out what was going on.

"Hey, Nurse Joy."

The pink-clad veterinarian looked up from her desk. "Yes?" Her voice was so… Soprano. It was fragile, like a little fluttering leaf. Very high. Very unimposing.

"Have you noticed anything weird around here? At the souvenir shop?"

"I've heard things, yes. Yesterday I was on my lunch break and I saw a man snooping around there. Very strange, red hair and a cape. He had a Dragonite with him."

"A Dragonite?" Lyra's eyebrows shot up. "It must be strong."

"Yes, he came in to heal his team. His pokémon were very strong."

"Well cared for?"

Nurse Joy nodded. "They were very loved," She affirmed. Lyra nodded. Something about her sincerity put Lyra at ease.

"How's the gyarados?"

"It's in terrible shape," came Joy's sad response. "I'm afraid whatever was done to it has hurt it, somehow. You said it may have evolved too soon?"

Lyra nodded.

"That would make sense," Nurse Joy continued. "It is in terrible pain. I'll look after it as best I can, Lyra."

"Thank you, Joy."

"Whoever did this is a monster," The look on the nurse's face was grim. "Lyra, I'm sorry if this is untrue, but I've heard that you were able to help during a bit of a crisis at the Slowpoke Well." Lyra raised her eyebrow. She was surprised news of that incident had traveled all the way to Mahogany. "I'm not usually one for gossip," Nurse Joy, misinterpreting the trainer's surprise for agitation, rushed to explain, "But my sister works at the Pokémon center in Azelea Town and she was the one who, um, who helped the slowpoke there. She said someone was cutting off their tails? It sounded quite horrific."

"It was," Lyra replied. She thought of the slowpoke in the well. Their tortured screams had been almost synesthesic, illuminating the darkness around them and chilling the very marrow of her bones. She had pulled her own Slowbro, Totoro, then a Slowpoke, from the pile of creatures about to undergo the barbaric surgical procedure. Totoro had been cowering in the darkness, trying to hide from the blood-drenched rock where self-proclaimed Team Rocket members had hacked off its friends' tails. Slowpoketail… Wait.

"Oh my god, Joy." She jumped out of her chair. "There was a man here, in the street, he tried to sell me a RageCandyBar. That same man… Joy, it was the same man that was hocking Slowpoketails in Azelea. Shit."

The nurse frowned.

"The people responsible for harvesting those tails said they were members of Team Rocket. Joy, what if…"

Nurse Joy's eyebrows arched. "What if they're here?"

"Yes, exactly. I mean, I didn't take them seriously then. Red wiped out that organization, right?"

Joy nodded.

"I thought they were… I don't know… Sick little fanboys or something. But this, this looks legit." Lyra inhaled loudly. "Team Rocket really could be back."

Joy's forehead bunched up in concern. She shook her head, then looked sharply into Lyra's eyes. "Lyra, you have to stop them. Here… Your Pokémon should be ready to go." Joy ran behind her desk, ducking into the room where she rehabilitated the Pokémon. She came back with Peaka and four pokéballs in tow.

"They're fighting fit," Joy affirmed, her intense gaze betraying her concern. "Good luck, Lyra."

Lyra nodded. "Thanks, Joy." She fastened the pokéballs to her belt. Peaka ran behind her leg, purring.

As soon as Lyra stepped out of the Pokémon Center, she heard an enormous crash resounding from the direction of the souvenir shop. The souvenir shop was just adjacent to the center, and Lyra could tell immediately that something was wrong. The front door was flung ajar, a welcome mat crumpled alongside it like discarded paper. A man was shouting something inside. Blood started pounding in Lyra's ears and a fog settled over her brain. She felt a clutch in her chest, like a hand reaching in to still her heart, her body. It was a cold freeze, a spontaneous response to danger that Lyra had known since she was very young, and still couldn't completely shake.

She was helpless paralyzed, she knew, and so did Peaka. The furret nudged against her, growling. "Furret!" It barked impatiently, and Lyra sucked in air. She had, she realized, not been breathing. Her muscles were liberated by the heat of her breath; her finger twitched and soon she could feel a mountainous energy, a bubbling and profound force propelling her to move.

She was through the shop door before she had fully realized that she was walking.

"Dragonite, hyperbeam!" It was muted somehow, as if she were underwater.

A white explosion tore through the air in front of her. Lyra barely stopped herself from running headlong into it. In fact, it took her a few moments to register what she was seeing - the scene was immediately bizarre, but its horror became real more slowly. A Dragonite towered in the far corner of the room, Lance standing firmly beside it. The Pokémon's target was not an adversary's team member but an adversary himself - it was a man that had stood on the receiving end of that hyperbeam. The blast sent him hurling into the wall, which exploded into a mass of splintered wood, plaster and blood. The man lay atop the pile, collapsed. He wasn't moving, maybe dead.

"The fucking hell?!" Lyra heard her own voice as the words came crashing out, punching their way from her brain to her mouth even without her permission.

Lance looked at her.

"Lyra."

She stared at him.

"I didn't have a choice." His face was tense, but the darkness that had clouded his eyes seemed genuinely apologetic. For a moment, Lance seemed almost scared, perhaps more of what he had done than what she would think of him.

"T-Tea-" Lyra sucked in air. "Team Rocket?" She had intended a complete sentence, but could not seem to compose one.

Lance nodded. "This shop is where the signal's coming from."

"Ah ha."

"There should be an entrance somewhere here…" Lance turned his back to her. He started searching the back wall. Lyra reached forward, jumped perhaps, and grabbed his shoulder, pushing the red-haired dragon trainer back around to face her. "Wait." Her voice, finally coming under conscious control, was harder.

"This is Team Rocket?"

Lance pointed his head in the direction of the sales counter; A closer inspection revealed the presence of a salesman, glistening with sweat, glasses askew across his face, cowering beneath the desk. "He says they're Team Rocket."

Lyra looked at the salesman, then looked back at Lance. She nodded slowly as the salesman started to babble. She could make out words like "hideout" and "invincible" in the otherwise incoherent stream. It was them, then. They were back. Those assholes.

Lance found what he was looking for - his finger brushed a small lever in the back wall and a large door, hidden in the floor, swung open.

"There it is," the dragon trainer remarked.

Lyra glared.

"Let's go."

There we go - The third chapter! Thank you for reading. I really appreciate it :) ~AxO