Chapter II: Starlight

"Hurry up and gimme the next one."

The next starmie was handed down the line of grunts sitting or leaning along the bow of the little cutter as it rose and sank in the choppy waves off the shores of Cinnabar Island. It was pitch black, close to midnight, and the stars above shone brilliantly in the cloudless sky and were reflected cheerfully in the water. The moon was high but cast enough light that it was no troublesome task for the grunts to do their work with the cutter's decklights cut off. They had to make due, either way; they could not risk being spotted by the naval police, and the darkness made it easier for the divers to spot the crimson glow of staryu gemstones in the water. Periodically the divers would resurface with two or three of the squirming creatures and hand them up to their associates in the boat, then reaffix their SCUBA masks on their faces and submerge themselves once more.

And then the work on the boat began.

Boss Dodger—addressed as such by everyone but his superiors—waited until the starmie's limp form landed none-too-gently in his lap. He was sitting with his legs stretched out on the deck before him, his left leg wrapped in a cast and his crutches propped against the railing next to him. The blow he had received from the marowak had shattered his shin in three places, and the gang's doctor had set it and told him that he'd be crippled for at least six more months. The painkillers he had taken before setting out from Fuchsia were not helping, and his stomach churned with the rolling of the waves. Gritting his teeth in anger and pain, he dug the crowbar into the narrow space between the starmie's glittering gemstone and the gold formation that it was set in. The violet starfish's limbs trembled violently, but due to the shock of being forced to evolve with the manufactured water stones that the group had brought along with them, it could not move. The multihued stone, bright as a star, popped a little out of its place, and Dodger reached in with his hand and gave it a rough yank. The little star came out and the starmie shuddered and fell limp.

"Got anudder one," he said, handing the gem to the next associate in line and shoving the starmie's body off of the boat and back into the water. It was too much work to remove the golden parts of its body, anyway.

There was a clattering tumble on deck near the bow as one of the newly caught staryu tried to reject the water stone, even as its body began to warp in ways it couldn't even understand. It made it halfway to the edge of the deck before one of the grunts seized it by a newly grown limb and tossed it towards Dodger with a laugh. "Got a runaway there! Make sure it's done evolving before you cut it."

One of the women, her dark skirt soaking wet and clinging to her legs, squealed and dropped the crowbar she was holding. "I hate it when they squirm!" she moaned, shoving the starmie away from her lap. "Can't we kill em before we cut into them? It's like they're in pain or somethin'!"

Another grunt reached over and bashed the creature once, twice on the back. It twitched but stopped moving. "Just do it quick," he told her as he handed the pokemon back to her. "And don't be stupid, starmie can't feel pain."

"This whole place smells like rot," Dodger complained under his breath. "I can't believe I'm stuck here pullin' rocks with you assholes."

"Don't blame us for what you messed up, Boss," another grunt, Jilla, said with a smirk. "You were the one who overloaded on cubone skulls and messed up our schedules. Giovanni wouldn't'a been half as mad if you hadn't put yourself outta commission by getting to close to that angry momma. Even Erik isn't that dumb." She jerked her head towards a whip-thin man near the bow who was struggling violently with a staryu that kept rapidspinning and hitting him in the jaw with its limbs. "You're out here pulling rocks with the rest of us cuz you effed up. Just deal with it and stop whining, will you?"

When the next starmie landed in his lap, he took out his frustration by smashing each of its limbs with the crowbar before ripping the rainbow gemstone from its socket in the front of its body. "Stupid, stupid, stupid," he muttered. "I'm glad I killed it. We broke every bone in its stupid body. Goddamn, my leg hurts."

"Make sure you don't chip any of the gemstones when you're removing them." The leader of this particular nighttime operation, a man known only as Kev, stood by the door of the cabin with a lit cigarette in his hand. "If I see any flaws in these things during inspection, I'll put a matching one on your face."

"I can't believe we have to go through the trouble of makin' 'em evolve first," one of the grunts said as he struggled to hold the water stone to the staryu's body long enough for the evolution process to begin. Kev grimaced.

"Do you want to be paid six hundred or nine hundred for each of these things?" he asked. "Do you like getting swindled out of an easy three just because you don't wanna work for it? They don't even fight back! Now shut up and get back to work!"

The slow and methodic work continued without another word from most of the grunts, save for the occasional grumble or cry of surprise when a staryu was lost from someone's grip. The staryu were fished from their perches on the sandy, shallow floor of this part of the ocean, the canister of water stones gradually emptied of its contents, and the water around the boat gradually filled with the hollowed bodies of starmie floating atop the water, dark stars in dark space, the light of the moon reflecting dimly off of their now empty golden sockets.

It wasn't until early the next morning, when the divers were slowly coming up the ladder to rejoin their group, when a shout of surprise came from one of their neighboring boats across the water. With some difficultly, Dodger was able to stand up, bracing his nauseated body against the railing as he peered out across the water at the other boat. His eyes narrowed and he sucked in a quick breath between his teeth as his eyes adjusted to the darkness.

"The hell? They got themselves a lapras?"

"N'way! A lapras!" Jilla leaned dangerously far over the railing, squinting to try to see the other boat and their prize. "I thought they traveled in groups! Their fins are so delicious when you barbecue them!"

"I'm gonna be interested to see how they plan to catch it," one of the grunts said. The others nodded in agreement. Lapras were huge, and a cornered lapras was a deadly threat, especially for a tiny cutter like the other team were using. Another threat was the risk of the lone lapras's pod coming back to search for it, and pods were easily angered in the face of violence. As if on cue, their boat's engine revved and they began turning, picking up speed and cautiously approaching their sister ship to help. Kev came out on deck, still smoking.

"I guess Al radioed Giovanni and he gave 'im the go-ahead. We gotta have this thing in Fuchsia by four if we wanna do this without getting caught. Shit, why'd it have to be on my watch?" He ran his hand through his short brown hair. "Do you know how much shit we can get in trouble for if we're charged for poaching lapras?"

"Why can't we sell it to the Safari Zone?" Jilla asked, her mouth practically watering as the boat drew near to the other cutter, whose deck was filled with more Rockets, all staring at their struggling quarry.

"Cuz the Safari Zone already has one on display, and besides, Giovanni said he wants this one cut up. There's a coupla merchants he knows that would pay big for fresh lapras fins."

"Y'mean we can't get any?" Jilla's face had fallen into a scowl. Kev glared at her.

"You're not good enough to eat lapras, dipshit," he said scornfully. "Now grab a rope and wait till I tell you what Al wants us to do."

The lapras was large, which meant it was old, but the light in its storm gray eyes was angry, and its blood was up. It was tossing its head on its long neck, mouth open, its usual soothing song now piercing and furious. Several ropes that had been thrown around its neck now trailed in the swirling currents around its body, having been ripped from the Rockets' hands. Al, a corpulent form on the other boat, waved at Kev and laughed merrily.

"Didja get a good haul, Kev?" he shouted over the cries of the trapped pokemon behind him.

"Not as good as you!" Kev smiled back wanly, jealousy evident in his eyes.

"It's this lucky? Dunno where this one came from; probably it was gonna beach itself on Cinnabar. They do that sometimes, when they're sick. The meat'll be fine if we butcher it quick. Do you have any harpoons?"

"No," Kev said, eyeing the circling lapras warily, "but I think I've got some tranquilizers."

"Why bother? Do you have any real shells?"

Kev took the cigarette out of his mouth. "Yeah, I guess. Big ones, for taking down tauros and kangaskhan."

"Hell, just use those, then!" Al laughed again, watching as the lapras dodged another thrown rope. It looked dangerously close to ramming his boat. "Just aim for the head and neck. We're only gonna use the fins, after all!"

As Kev returned to the cabin to load the rifle with shells, Dodger moved the crutches under his arm and shuffled out of the way as the other gang members on his boat took their positions near the railing, ropes and, in one case, chains ready in their gloved hands.

"What if it dives?" Jilla asked, twirling her rope around her wrist casually.

"We've got nets strung underwater between our boats," Dodger said. "It'll drown itself if it tries."

"Okay, boys," called Al, "let's start up the engines and flush this baby towards the reef. Keep it even, now, we don't want it getting away!"

The twin cutters pressed towards the lapras, and with a weary cry, the pokemon whirled and began swimming away, his great flippers sliding silently through the water. Turning gently to the side to avoid the oncoming reef, the pokemon was startled to see the boat nearly brushing up against his side, refusing to allow him to turn. The humans aboard the boat took this opportunity to fling out their ropes and their chains, many of them snagging on the craggy shell on its back. One of the ropes looped around its ear and its horn, jerking its head down nearly into the water. The lapras inhaled, the wind that whistled through its nostrils sounding like a storm.

"We got trouble!" Kev said as he staggered out onto the deck with the rifle in his head. "Everyone get down!"

The ice beam hit the water underneath Al's boat with a gunshot sound, and the waves instantly froze around the hull of the cutter. Tendrils of ice crept up the sides and covered the wood of the deck with an inch-thick layer of frost, flooring every Team Rocket member aboard. Immediately after this attack, the lapras's head smashed into the side of the boat, punching a four-foot wide hole in the hull below the frozen waterline. The boat tilted and crumbled under its own weight, spilling the crew into and through the thin ice layer on the water

"Shit," Al muttered as he struggled to sit up, hanging onto the lip of the deck for dear life. The pillar of lapras's head and neck rose over him and when he looked up, he saw that the creature was staring right at him, the various chains and ropes that pinioned its body looking ridiculously small against its girth. It opened its mouth and roared at him, a sound that shook him to the core. A single point of blue appeared in its open maw, and the air crackled around him, suddenly bitterly cold, freezing the very air in his lungs. He tried to call for help but his throat had closed, the skin frozen to itself. He clawed at his fat throat as the ice beam hit him, and the sound of a double shot rang into the air.

The lapras reeled suddenly, throwing his head up and crying, dark blood flowing from the hole that had been punched in his powerful chest. Kev lowered the rifle for an instant and then turned and shouted to one of the grunts in the wheel house. "Get the boat over behind it! It'll sink if it dies and we don't have ties on it!"

His teeth clenched around his cigarette. Shit. Al was dead, he could see that plainly enough. As fat as Al was, a direct ice beam to a human body would always be fatal. The other Team Rocket members were making their way through the water towards his ship, but he couldn't stop for them. They could wait while he did away with the quarry in front of him. He raised the rifle again and tried to think of where he wanted his next shot to land. He didn't want to waste bullets.

"Throw!" He commanded, and a web of ropes and chains were flung out from the sides of the ship and landed on the floundering lapras. "Get some buoys on that bastard!"

The water around the boat was already tainted red when the buoys were roped around the lapras' arched neck. When Kev was sure that the creature's body was securely pinioned to his boat and able to be towed with the help of the floatation devices bobbing around its body, he took careful aim again at the back of its head.

The lapras turned one narrowed gray eye towards the humans in the boat, exhaling heavily out of its bleeding nostrils.

Kev fired. The entry wound in the back of the sea creature's head was neat and clean, and the lapras's neck jerked forward, its head crushing the bow of the boat underneath it. The weight of its body dragged the buoys halfway under the water, but it didn't sink.

Lowering the rifle with a groan, Kev looked at the other Team Rocket members clambering aboard his boat. "What the hell were you thinking, getting that close?" he demanded of one of the men, who was coughing up bloody seawater onto the deck.

The man glowered at him. "It wasn't our idea, it just happened," he snapped back. "It's Al's fault for being a dumbass about the whole thing. He never saw a lapras out in the wild before this. What the hell we gonna do with a whole lapras? We don't even have a saw to remove its fins!" He put a hand to his curly hair. "Damn it, I lost my hat."

Jilla put her nose in the crook of her elbow after tying off her rope to the handrail. "It smells out here now," she complained. "We have to tow this thing all the way back to the harbor?"

"Quit your bitching, all of you!" Kev shouted. "Are all of Al's team here? They are? Okay, listen up. Since Al was stupid about it and I had to save your asses, my boat's gonna be the one who gets the payment when it comes in. I don't wanna hear another word outta you lot. In the meantime, go count the gems we got from our load of starmies." He watched the other boat as it sank beneath the slowly melting ice as his boat turned slowly for home. "Since you all lost your cargo, you'll have to do the explaining to the boss. I'm not gonna take the shit for you."

A general groan came from Al's team, but after a dirty look from the man with the gun, they were quickly silenced.

"Good. We won't have to worry about butcherin' the lapras cuz Giovanni's already got someone who can pick it up back at Fuchsia. We gotta book it to make it, though. Now get to work!" He stalked back into the wheelhouse.

Jilla joined Dodger at the aft of the ship. Trailing in the wake of the boat were a handful of the discarded starmie bodies, dancing in the current before sinking into the depths beneath the stars. Dodger leaned against the railing and watched the lapras, whose head was dragging underneath its body from the weight of the water. His leg ached painfully, sending his whole left side into spasms. He grimaced. All this grief and work for a handful of hundreds—and he had to spend most of the money on medical treatment for his leg.

"How's your leg?" Jilla eventually asked, elbowing him in the side when she saw the pain on his face. "Bet'cher feeling it now, huh?"

"Shut up," Dodger said, his face turning green as the boat rolled under him. He staggered a little on his crutches. "I hate this job."

"Yeah, well, I love it," Jilla said, smiling brightly. Her face was smudged a little with red. She eyed the dead pokemon ghosting across the water as it was dragged behind the boat. "Lapras sound real pretty when they sing, but they sound even better when they scream."