A Reminiscence

Chapter Six

A Sort of Hero

()()()

A few minutes after Jack and I had recovered our Pokémon, Anne, Ralph, and I had regrouped near the town center, finally ready to get to Vermillion City, and thus, the S.S. Anne.

"All right, we have had our fun, but we really should be going soon," I said, knowing it would be best. "The S.S. Anne leaves in a few days, after all."

"I agree," Ralph said, crossing his arms. "I'm very much over this place."

"We should be able to make it to Saffron City before nightfall," Anne said.

"What if we got a taxi?" Ralph proposed.

"The fare would be enormous by the time we got there," I noted. "It would likely be better to simply walk."

"All the way to Saffron?" Anne asked. "No, thank you."

"Well, perhaps there may be some alternative method of transportation," I said. "In fact, is there not a carriage that goes to Saffron at about this time?"

"Hey, yeah!" Ralph had suddenly recalled that which I was referring to: a lovely Ponyta-drawn carriage that conveyed passengers upon Route Seven, allowing for simple access. Better still, it would be more efficient than taxi fare: the cost was up front, rather than progressively greater as it went along, and I was well aware taxi drivers took the longer routes on purpose to drive up costs.

"Excellent!" I pronounced. "We shall take the carriage at once!"

"Oh, yeah, the carriage!" Anne remembered, somewhat late in. "I've always wanted to go on that."

"Well, now you shall get your chance," I said. "It would be wise to head over now; it will likely depart soon."

With that, we three headed for Route Seven, expecting the carriage to be upon it. Indeed, when we got there, the carriage was still there, but we quickly noticed a problem: it was, in fact, preparing to leave, and we likely would not make it in time…at least, we would not if we had not realized the issue and started running very quickly.

"Hold on!" I cried, desperately trying to keep up. Luckily for me, these tour carriages never moved very quickly. "Hold on, I say!"

"What the hell?" somebody in the back of the carriage said, looking back at us.

"I said slow down!" I shouted once more. The carriage did nothing, again, and I thus had to take more drastic measures. Running up directly alongside the carriage, I grabbed hold of it, trying to keep my legs moving along with it. I quickly grew tired of trying to keep up, though, and let my legs simply drag behind me.

"Holy hell!" The driver said, grinding the carriage to a halt. He dismounted and ran up to me, looking both worried and confused. "Are you alright?"

"Er, yes, entirely," I let go of the carriage and adjusted my glasses. "Might we get on? I have fare."

"Uh…" The driver was clearly quite unsure of whether or not to let us on, and looked back at the passengers.

"Hell, that was pretty entertaining, I say let 'em on!" somebody proclaimed.

The driver shrugged. "Well, if you say so…"

"Ah, very good!" I said. "How much will that be, then?"

()()()

After our little hiccup, we found ourselves just outside of Saffron City, the largest city in the region. The skyline was truly impressive, dominated by the massive Silph Co. building, from which the entire world was provided with items invaluable for Pokémon training, including the PokeBall, one of the greatest achievements of our age. I felt, though, that it would soon relieve that title in favor of my translator. However, that was still a way off, and we had to get to Vermillion quickly, so we had little time to enjoy the sights.

"Damn," Ralph said, looking at the buildings. "Pretty impressive."

"Indeed it is. However, we must not dally much longer. I believe that by the time we get to the edge of the city, Bill will have recovered and he can carry us into Vermillion, at which point we only have to get to the S.S. Anne and thus, Unova."

"Thanks for the recap, professor," Anne deadpanned. "We still have to get to the edge."

"We seriously could take a taxi, it would save some time." Ralph suggested.

"I do not trust taxi drivers!" I announced. "The last time I took a taxi in this city, he drove halfway around the edge of the city for absolutely no reason!"

"Well, you'd want to see the sights, right?" Anne asked.

"Not when they add twenty dollars to my fare!" I countered.

"Fine, cheapskate, we'll just walk across the entire goddamn city."

"Calm down, both of you," Ralph chided. "The easiest way to get there would be going straight down Main Street, and then turn right just past the Silph Building."

"Oh. Well, I guess that's not terrible," Anne said.

We began the walk towards the building, getting quickly caught up in the hustle and bustle of the city. We were able to get a fairly good pace, if only for the sake of not getting trampled.

"Bloody hell, where are all these people going?" I wondered aloud. It went unheard, though, among the countless other conversations going on around us.

I was starting to get claustrophobic among all the people around us, so I silently thanked the higher powers once we managed to reach the Silph Co. building. We stopped for a moment to stare up at it, awing at the sheer size of the eighty-story skyscraper.

"This is still quite the feat of architecture," I said. "Thousands of tons of steel and glass that perfectly supports itself. Absolute genius."

"Yeah," Anne said, "I guess. None of the walls are load-bearing, though. All that glass is just there to keep out weather and stuff. The actual support is all just concrete and rebar in the foundation, so it doesn't really 'support itself'." As if to mock me, she did those "air quotes" that are so popular nowadays, but I ignored that.

We stayed for a few moments more, but then was when things got strange. A loud "bang" rang out and thick white smoke began pouring out the front of the building, and the quickly moving crowd halted in shock, wondering aloud at what had just happened. It became obvious very soon that it was just some sort of smoke bomb, although for what, nobody could have known.

"I'm going in," Ralph said after a few minutes, pulling his handgun back out.

"In there?!" I asked. "Are you insane? You are likely to be shot! How can you even see anything?"

"It has to clear out soon, and whoever's in there, I doubt they can see very well either." He then ran in, keeping a very low profile and expertly keeping his gun at the ready.

For a few tense moments, we waited to see what would occur. It soon became obvious that Ralphs brilliant plan was not very good, as he sprinted out of the smoke quite unprofessionally, his gun missing entirely and a bruise below his eye.

"What happened?" Anne asked, gingerly touching his bruise.

"I…may have underestimated my advantage," He answered, huffing.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means there were twenty of them with high-grade assault rifles and military equipment, and I was blind and had a handgun with half a magazine left."

"That is a significant disadvantage, yes," I noted.

Suddenly, a sleek black limousine drove out of the halted traffic, and stopped right in front of the building.

"What is this business, now?" I wondered, and was soon answered when four spec-ops looking types wielding very large assault rifles came out and took their place. From behind, a man in a rather ugly beige suit walked out and ran into the building, quickly obscured by the smoke. They immediately demanded the crowd to clear out, pointing the guns at them. Although everyone around us caught on and made their exit, we simply sort of stared.

"Hey, you!" one of them yelled, pointing at us. "Get out of here!"

"Uh…now, look, we can talk about this, surely…" My words went unheeded as Anne released Bill, who looked around a bit and then roared powerfully. The four men held up their guns, but before they could fire, Bill shot out a volley of his own fire. Two of them dodged out of the way, since they were well out of the fire's range, but two others were immediately set alight, as was the limousine behind them. While they fell to the ground and started rolling about in a desperate attempt to put out the flames, the other two began shooting wildly at Bill, who merely flew above the bullets and swooped back down, grabbing one of them in his claw and throwing him at the other man, incapacitating them both.

"Holy shit!" Anne yelled, all three of us running over to the scene. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah," Bill said, stretching his neck slightly. "I think they clipped my wing, though."

Anne looked at the membrane, and saw that, indeed, several bullets had punctured it. She grimaced and began looking at the surprisingly small wounds, Bill looking quite confused as she did so.

"What's wrong? I've scuffed it up way worse than that."

Anne looked up at him in doubt. "You got shot with an assault rifle, but your wing barely looks damaged. How did that happen?"

It was then I realized an explanation would be pertinent, and so I began. "A Charizard's wing membranes are such that rather than normal flesh, in which damage can spred outwards from a single point, only the point of impact is damaged and removed, so that the rest of the wing remains intact for flying. Quite ingenious, really."

"Thanks for the science lesson," Anne said, rolling her eyes. "What are we going to do about this?"

"What do you mean, 'this'? Do you expect us to save the day again? We may have gotten lucky the first time, but this is completely beyond the pale. We have no chance against them!"

"Look, Larch, I've had training, I can handle this situation. Especially with one of these." He picked up one of the unconscious men's rifles, along with some ammunition.

"Will that be enough?" I asked.

"If you help me, yes," he answered.

"Absolutely out of the question," I balked. "Do you really expect me to go in there and risk being turned into Swiss cheese by those psychopaths?"

"If you won't, I will." With that, Ralph ran inside the building, where the smoke had about cleared out. I thought for a moment and realized that I could not allow him to do this alone, and that he would most likely die if he did so.

"Damn it," I muttered, picking up the other rifle and running in after him.

I found Ralph waiting outside the elevator, his gun at the ready.

"Oh, you came," He greeted, turning around and pointing the gun at me. I ducked away, not wanting him to accidentally aerate me with the thing.

"Careful with that!" I yelled, getting back up. "Some training you had. Even I know you are supposed to keep you finger off the trigger and not point it at anybody!"

"Hm?" He questioned. I decided to drop it, which was probably a good thing, as that was the moment that Anne came up.

"So, what do we do?"

"You did not grab a weapon?" I asked.

"I have Bill."

"That may not be enough. He got lucky earlier, but in such a group and in such a tight space, they are likely to do more damage."

"I figured as much. Which is why I grabbed this." She held up a black cylinder will a tab of sorts at the very top. Despite not being very well versed in weaponry, I immediately recognized it.

"A smoke grenade? This is likely the same thing that they used earlier to cover their entrance."

"And we'll use it to cover ours," Ralph said, when suddenly the elevator dinged behind him. We all turned to face it, Ralph holding up his weapon, Anne readying the grenade, and me attempting to at least look threatening, if nothing else.

After a few tense moments, it opened, revealing but one of the men, who looked very surprised to see us there. Before he could react, Ralph moved his gun downwards and shot a few times at his feet, distracting him enough that he was then able to run over and clock him with the butt of the gun, sending him to the floor like a lead weight.

"Bloody hell!" I yelled, picking at my ear. "Are these things usually that loud?"

"Yes," Ralph answered, searching the man for more ammo.

"I had better take these out, then," I decided, pulling out my translators. "The noise might damage them." The others decided this was wise, and pulled out theirs.

"Well, now what?" I asked. As if to answer, the unconscious man roused, rubbing his head in agony.

"What the hell?" he muttered, catching eye of us once again. Ralph grabbed him by the collar and, in an impressive display for such a wiry man, lifted him off the ground.

"Where is the man that came in here?" he demanded coldly, sending a chill through all present.

"T-the top floor," he stuttered in answer. Ralph, having gotten the information he needed, thrust his head against the wall of the elevator, knocking him out once again.

"You are going to give him brain damage at this rate, you know," I said, getting into the elevator along with Anne.

"He probably wasn't using it for much, anyway," Ralph said, throwing him unceremoniously out of the elevator. It was likely true, but there was no time to dwell on it.

I observed the panel of buttons that would convey the elevator to the upper floors. "It seems this elevator does not actually go to the very top, only halfway. Rather common in modern buildings, really. We shall have to take the one next to it on the middle floor the rest of the way."

"They'll be waiting for us," Ralph said. "When we reach the top floor, get ready to raise hell."

"Hell, you say?" Anne asked, pulling out one of her PokeBalls. "I guess Dante would be appropriate, then?"

I glared at her for the terrible pun, but rather than call attention to it, I merely pressed the button to take us to floor forty, knowing that Anne was most likely right anyway.

As we approached our destination, we discussed the plan of action for the inevitable blockade of people. It was a relatively simple one, but we believed it would work quite well, and once we reached floor forty and the door opened, it was time to put it into action.

The fortieth floor appeared to be a sort of secondary reception area, with the actual receptionists huddled under a table. The reason for this was obvious, as at least five of those men were waiting there for any intruders, but before they could shoot us, Anne tossed out both her smoke grenade and Dante. Two of the men had foolishly removed their masks, allowing the smoke to blind them and make them easy targets for Dante. At the same time, Ralph leapt out, eyes closed and firing his gun, having already memorized the position of the other soldiers. I, at the same time, would attempt to provide covering fire so as to protect us, but I soon gave up as the recoil ended up with me firing at the ceiling.

Once the smoke cleared, we saw how well our plan had worked: Dante was standing over the two men, having easily put them out of commission, and the rest of them were lying wounded on the floor. However, while Ralph's aim was true, I found that, in my confusion amidst all the chaos and smoke, I was actually firing at the wall, and had done quite a good job of unintentionally sanctifying it.

"Good job, Larch," Ralph said, smugly patting me on the back.

"Shut up, you had the advantage!" I yelled. "You actually know how to use these!"

"What happened?" One of the receptionists asked, coming out from the table entirely unscathed. She took one look at the room, and said one simple thing: "Holy shit!"

"My apologies for all this violence, but sometimes you have to do this sort of thing to liberate the innocent."

"Now is hardly the time to be waxing philosophical on war, Ralph. We must free the building posthaste!"

"Getting excited?" Ralph asked.

"Ah…yes, I was, somewhat…anyway, we should get to the top floor. Anne, do you require armaments?"

I soon saw she had already taken that initiative, holding a number of smoke grenades and putting them in her bag.

"These things are fantastic!" she said, picking up a fair number more of them.

"What could you possibly use all of those for?" I asked. Anne promptly dropped her prizes to the ground, and Ralph and I flinched away, expecting a horrible explosion of blinding smoke. However, such did not occur, and we quickly made our way to the next elevator.

"Same plan?" Anne asked as we went up.

"Not this time. We'll need to do something else, since they'll be expecting us now," Ralph said. "Now, what I was thinking is that we'll…"

He was thoroughly interrupted as the lights in the elevator cut out and it sped up significantly, taking us to the top floor much faster than it would have normally.

"What the hell is this?" Ralph yelled, grabbing on to the wall. It soon reached the destination, although we realized that we were meant to come up here, and whoever was responsible was very impatient regarding such.

When we reached the very top floor, we finally knew what was waiting for us: a massive office, twice as large as all the other floors, with an impressive window on each wall. In the center was the CEO of Silph Co. himself, Silias Silph, with a gun put to his head, held in the arms of a colossal blond man in a beige suit.

"What is the meaning of all this?" I demanded, trying to intimidate him with my weapon. It failed, however, as the man merely laughed.

"I was hoping to meet you three after you took out my base in the forest," he said, a smile upon his face. He released Silias, allowing him to quickly clamber under a desk. "I'm honestly impressed that you managed to do this, looking at you now. I'd normally think you would barely be able to take out Chinese food."

"Oh, hardy har har," I muttered. "Who are you?"

"I am Giovanni!" he yelled, throwing out his arms dramatically. "Leader of Team Rocket, and soon, the world!"

"All right, why did you go to all this trouble to take over the building?"

"Because, I wanted to meet the three people that might spell my undoing. I knew that you would be in Saffron by now, and that you couldn't resist saving the day again, so I simply faked a takeover to bring you up here. I wasn't quite expecting you to literally be right outside when we did it, but all the better, I suppose!"

"And now that we are here, what will you do?" I asked, stepping slightly behind Ralph, who glared fiercely at me for it.

"Well, that's easy," Giovanni said. "Kill you all!" Quite suddenly, and with obvious practice, he threw his arms downwards, releasing two submachine pistols from hidden catches in his sleeves, and started firing at us. However, it was very difficult to shoot both of them at once, and we were able to duck away from the streams of lead and get behind the table that Silias had chosen as a cover.

"Who the hell are you three?" he demanded, covering his head.

"Honestly, I am beginning to have that question myself!" I yelled, as Ralph leapt up from the table while Giovanni fumbled with his empty guns, trying and failing to reload them. The three of us still under the table looked up, and saw that Ralph had gotten into a fistfight with the colossal man, Giovanni's devastating punches easily being avoided by Ralph's light frame.

"Come on, you couldn't punch the broad side of a barn!" he goaded, easy weaving between the horrendously telegraphed strikes. He continued his taunts, each one enraging Giovanni further and making his attacks even more useless.

Eventually, Ralph managed to guide the fight over towards the massive window aforementioned, himself being closer to it as Giovanni continued throwing punches.

"What is he doing?" I wondered aloud. "If he gets hit, he will fall straight through!"

"I think that's the idea," Anne said.

As we continued watching, we realized what Ralph was planning: he had kicked Giovanni away at this point, and both had stopped to catch their breath.

"Is that it?" Ralph asked, laughing. "Are you just giving up?"

"Shut up!" Giovanni yelled, charging at him like an enraged Tauros. Before the vicious impact hit, Ralph ducked beneath him, using Giovanni's own inertia to throw him straight through the window, breaking a massive hole in it and sending him straight to the ground.

"Jesus Christ!" I yelled. We all ran over to the window in shock, carefully looking down to see that he had landed on his own limousine, nearly breaking it in half.

"You just killed a guy!" Anne yelled, gesturing towards the limo in shock.

"So?" Ralph smirked. "He was the most wanted criminal in the country. I just performed a public service."

"Uh…" Silias looked at all three of us. "Thank you for saving the building, I suppose. Is there any way for me to repay you?"

I thought for a moment. "Well, there are two things I can think of. One, we will need a way to get to Vermillion City very quickly, and two, I would quite like if you were to mass produce these," I pulled out my translators, "Pokémon-to-human translation devices."

"Translation devices?" he asked. "I thought those were impossible. Everybody said the engineering hurdles would be too great to overcome."

"They were quite difficult," I admitted. "Were it not for my persistence and some very lucky breakthroughs, I likely would say it was impossible this very day. I am going to be delivering a presentation on it during the Unova conference in about a week and a half."

"Oh, yeah, I was thinking about going there, actually. I guess now I have a pretty damn good reason." He chuckled for a moment, pulling out a keychain and yanking a particular key off. "There's a Vincentio Horizon in the underground garage, floor one, space number 3. You can have it, if you'd like."

"Surely you jest!" I yelled. "A Vincentio Horizon? That is among the finest and fastest cars in the world! There only exist a hundred and two!"

"And I own three of them. Trust me, I don't have a dearth of good cars. At least half the ones I own are custom made roadsters that are completely unique. I don't have a need for three copies of a car that doesn't really stand up to those at all. Besides, I think you deserve it for saving my company."

"I…thank you!" I said, grasping the keys in surprise.

"Now, hold on, I was the one who did the work here," Ralph said, pulling the keys from my grasp. I attempted to protest, but realized he was completely correct.

"Very well then," I said, dejected. "I shall see you at my presentation. I hope you will be impressed."

"I hope so too," Silias said. "Have a nice trip!"

We nodded in assent, and quickly made our way back to the elevator, hoping the car would live up to our expectations.

()()()

"Holy shit," Ralph muttered, looking at the sleek black beauty before us. It was truly a perfect machine. I recalled a few details about its function, but those were pushed out of my head as we climbed inside, Ralph driving, myself shotgun, and Anne in the back with her bag of grenades.

"I am fairly certain those are illegal to possess without a number of licenses," I noted, looking back at her. We had no chance to discuss this, however, as Ralph pulled out, rocketing to high speeds immediately and taking us directly outside the back of the building. He made an expert turn, taking us back around the front onto Main Street, where a number of police cars and a single ambulance were waiting, taking the soldiers into custody.

"Do you have the situation under control?" I asked, rolling my window down as Ralph stopped the car.

One of the cops looked up, evidently quite surprised. "Are you the ones that did all this?" he asked, gesturing towards the ruined limo and the corpse that was being removed.

"What happens if I say yes?" I asked, worried as to the answer.

"Well, I'd congratulate you for taking out the most dangerous criminal in Kanto, and then let you go because that guy is in Special Command." He pointed towards Ralph, who smirked.

"How did you know that?" I asked.

"You kidding?" The cop seemed incredulous, which surprised me. "You three are all over the news! You'll be national heroes in no time after this!"

I immediately ducked back inside and consulted with the other two for a moment. We decided that, while being considered great heroes was certainly nice, we had more pressing issues.

"We really must be going! We must catch the SS Anne, and there is not much time left before it departs!" I yelled.

"All right then!" the cop cheered. "Good luck on whatever else you do! I'm sure wherever you go will end up pretty goddamn safe!"

"With us around?" Anne chuckled. "I doubt that."

I doubted this as well, but chose not to voice my concerns as we drove off at impressive (but still perfectly legal) speed and comfort, and we would be in Vermillion City in no time. What would await us remained a mystery, and given what had happened to us in the past few days alone, it would be completely impossible to guess what else awaited us on our journey…