The Year of Rocket's Revenge
Session: February, Part 3 (02.13.06/08.30.07)


Hey!

Hey, you!

Did you hear about that girl who bought three dozen chocolates from the East Goldenrod Super-Mart? And not the cheap ones... the really, really pricey ones!

Did you hear that she's loaded? Not just with money, obviously, but man... talk about a girl with all the curves in all the right places!

Did you hear... she's only 15? That means she's a minor, you!

Did you hear... you're lying, you crazy old coot! There's no way a girl like that ain't legal yet! It's just not right! I mean... she bought three dozen expensive chocolates! She's not exactly being gun shy about being a flirt, you know!

Did you hear... you don't know her! Just because a girl buys three dozen boxes of chocolates doesn't mean she's got three dozen admirers!

So? She's probably playing the field! That means almost anyone's got a chance... even me! I better get me one of them chocolates from her!

Did you hear that there's this thing called White Day? Where the guy is supposed to repay the girl who gave him chocolates with a present that's worth three times as much?

Land sakes alive... does that girl think I'm made of money?

Did you hear, my friend? There's other fish on the sea.

You're right. Hmmm... isn't that hot radio DJ woman still single?


Wednesday, February 13th, Hoenn Route 119

A family of Zigzagoon were startled out of their resting place in the tall grass as a teenage boy ran through, his work-duty boots stomping on the ground, causing small tremors in the immediate surrounding area. As soon as the footsteps had dissipated, though, all quickly quieted down.

Until a second, lighter pounding set of footsteps filled the air. This set of a teenage girl, who was struggling to push aside the grass blades, which were dripping wet with water particles on the verge of freezing in the cold weather. And she felt every one of them touch a part of her sweatpants, nearly leaving her lower half soaked as she waded through the grass.

A few minutes later, she emerged from the grass and found herself staring at a sign that read 'Weather Institute.' She then spotted the boy she was chasing knocking on the glass front door. She ducked behind and peered around the sign, just in time to see a beautiful, buxom young woman in her early 20s answer it. The woman was wearing a lab coat over her normal clothing, none of which was visible from the girl's point of view.

But seeing the woman bare from the calf down save for a pair of black high-heels was proof enough for the girl.

"So that's it!"


Earlier that day...

Arius and Cassie were traversing the long bridge overlooking the river that split the Hoenn region into two large islands. Waiting at the end were Mr. Mime and Ivysaur, respectively, using their abilities to hold the far end of the bridge steady, as the whipping chilly winds were blowing the bridge back and forth.

Soon afterwards, Cassie officiated a battle between Arius and his Mr. Mime, and a passing young fisherman and his Tentacool. The battle didn't last long, though, as the low-leveled Tentacool was no match for the psychic abilities of the talented Mr. Mime. Even though most of Mr. Mime's training was thanks to Cassie, not Arius.

Speaking of psychic abilities, it was Cassie's turn to shine when she spotted an Oddish stuck up on a tree, and its fellow brethren running around in a helpless panic, unable to think of a way to get them down. Using her telekinetic power, she gently brought Oddish down to Earth, to the joy of the other Oddish.

But eventually, the young couple got around to the real reason they were in that area for the day. To go fishing for a Pokémon. But not just any Pokémon. In fact, a rare and sought after Pokémon.

"You want me to catch you a Feebas?" Arius asked, a picture of it in a book staring him dead in the face.

"Isn't the point of having a Pokédex to complete it?" Cassie shot back as she pulled the book away. "Besides, you do know what Feebas evolve into, don't you?"

"Uh... Milotic, right?"

"Exactly! The most beautifully elegant and super strong Pokémon in the world deserves a spot on my roster!"

"Super strong?" Arius raised an eyebrow in doubt. "No way."

"You'd better catch one for me if you know what's good for you!" she warned.

"Ugh... if you want one so badly, why don't you catch it yourself?"

"I would, but... remember what the doctor said?"


"Remember, Miss Banks, exert yourself too much again and you might have a relapse! A body, even a young one like yours, can't take this forever."


"But your faintings have become less frequent. You haven't even gone down once in almost two weeks!"

"I thought you hated it when I passed out a lot! You don't want that on your conscience, do you?"

Arius sighed. He knew when she was right.

"Fine. I'll catch a Feebas."

"Yeah!" Cassie cheered with glee.

"As soon as I check something out," Arius said as he walked away.

"Check something out? Like what? Hey... answer me when I'm talking to you! Arius!"

But he had already disappeared into the surrounding tall grass.


Arius waded his way through the thick bunches of grass blades when, all of a sudden, he came into a very small, 20-foot circular clearing. And right in the middle of it was the remnants of a hollow tree trunk. He knelt down by one end of it and peered inside. Doing so, he spotted the object he was looking for and pulled it out.

It was a rolled up piece of printing paper, and the words inside of it were pretty simple to grasp.

'Come to the Weather Institute after dark.'

Arius nodded, then crumpled up the piece of paper and stuffed it into his left pants pocket.


Cassie was sitting on a log next to the riverbank. Having believed that Arius really had no intention to fish for her, she had taken it upon herself to do it herself.

And thus, here she was, waiting for a Feebas to snag the line off of her fishing pole. Her Ivysaur was standing next to her, using his own vines as his fishing rod.

Suddenly, Cassie felt a tug on her line.

"Whoa, I think I got one!" she exclaimed.

She reeled her catch in with relative ease. Naturally, that meant that she had a caught a small fry. And a common one at that, as she pulled up the end of her line to discover she had hooked a Magikarp.

"Karp karp karp!" the fish Pokémon chirped.

"Hey!" Cassie shouted at the Magikarp. "Didn't I catch you once already?"

She then unhooked the Magikarp and placed him back in the water, where it quickly swam off.

"It's one thing for Feebas to be really rare, but I can't believe there's so many Magikarp around here! This bites!"

"Saur," her Ivysaur agreed as he pulled his vines out of the water.

"I think we'd better find another spot, Ivysaur. There's gotta be a Feebas hiding in this river somewhere..."

"You just don't know where to fish," Arius stated as he coolly and calmly walked up.

"Nice off you to come back," Cassie growled unhappily.

"I told you that I just needed to check something out. I was only gone for about 15 minutes!"

"Yeah, and in that time Ivysaur and I caught half-a-dozen Magikarp and an old discarded snow boot... but that's not the point!"

"Chill," Arius reassured her, motioning for her to give him the rod. "You just gotta know the right way to attract your prey."

Arius pulled a lure out of his left pants pocket, unknowingly pulling out the crumbled piece of paper in there as well. As the piece of paper rolled into a nearby berry bush, Arius had finished preparing his rod by tying the lure to the end.

"That's your lure?" Cassie gasped in shock.

Arius smiled as he revealed that the lure was in the shape of a Caterpie, only it had a red coloring instead of green.

"This is the first fishing lure I ever bought. I got it real cheap, too, because of the coloring defect."

"And you don't mind having a red Caterpie? Why not get a traditional green one?"

"Because this is also my lucky lure!" Arius said, now grinning from ear to ear. "Every time I use it, I always catch something!"

"So... how many have you caught with it, and how come I haven't seen any of them?"

"Well... there's Shellder, and... and..."

"And?"

Arius then laughed hysterically. "I guess Shellder's the only Pokémon I've caught with that lure."

"You mean you've only used it once? You can't say 'always' if you've only used it once!"

"Regardless, I'm gonna catch a Feebas! Just you wait, Cassie!"


"Just you wait, huh?" Cassie growled, her eyes twitching in anger.

Arius chuckled nervously as he had caught 15 Magikarp, 11 Tentacool, and four Carvanha. But absolutely no Feebas.


A few hours later, darkness descended upon the area, and Arius and Cassie had just finished setting up camp for the night. Cassie's Ivysaur, Meowth, Kadabra, Raticate, Espeon, and Surskit, her most recent capture, along with Arius' Beedrill, Butterfree, Golbat, Venomoth, Mr. Mime, and Snorlax, were all already in the process of eating dinner. While that was happening, Arius had just finished barbecuing the food he and Cassie were going to consume.

"I hope you're hungry!" exclaimed Arius as he brought over a plate of beef and vegetable kabobs.

"Thanks!" Cassie said with a smile as she picked two of them off, one in each hand, and began munching.

"Like it? I would've tried cooking it sooner, but I didn't get all the right ingredients until the day we left Petalburg City.

"Speaking of which," Cassie inquired between bites, "where did you get the money to afford high-grade meat?"

"Huh?"

"Or keeping it fresh with no refrigeration unit for miles?"

"Well..."

"And the fact that we have very little money to spend on stuff other than the essentials."

"Just what are you getting at?"

"I'm just curious as to where all this money is coming from? It's certainly not coming out of the money I've earned by winning battles."

"So you're assuming I'm skimping on supplies and picking up luxury items? That's ludicrous!"

"Well, then explain the kabobs and the quality of the meat!"

"That's enough!" Arius shouted, putting a stop to Cassie's inquiry. "Why should it matter to you? I'm the man in this relationship, and I should be the one worrying about what's best for us!"

"And being the young woman," retorted Cassie, "it's my job to keep our finances in check and make sure there's enough food to go around!"

"I'm doing what's necessary to make sure we don't starve to death! The least you could do is give me a little respect!"

With that, Arius took the rest of the plate and walked off.

"Gee, what's his damage?" Cassie remarked before taking another bite.


At some point during Arius and Cassie's conversation, Meowth and Surskit had wandered off, back to the riverbank. As they approached it, Surskit noticed an Oran Berry bush and rushed over to it. Upon closer inspection, though, Surskit was disappointed to find out that the bush only had two berries on it, and both were really small.

But when Meowth walked up beside her, she spotted something else underneath the bush.

A crumpled-up piece of paper.


With all of the Pokémon finished with their meals, Cassie began the process of gathering their bowls and taking them to the river to get washed. As she did, she spotted, out of the corner of her eye, her boyfriend Arius skipping off again to do who knows what.

"Again?" she cried. "Man... if only I could use my mind-reading powers."

Suddenly, Meowth and Surskit bounded out of the grass, the former holding the now un-crumpled piece of paper in her paws.

"Meowth, meowth!" she cried, waving the paper up and down.

The two of them came to a stop next to Cassie, who put the bowls she was holding down on the ground and took the paper that her Meowth had.

"What's this?"

Cassie then read it aloud.

"'Come to the Weather Institute after dark.' Hmmm... and it's not signed."

"Meowth!"

"Huh?" Cassie blinked as she looked at Meowth, then where Arius had been just a minute ago, and then back at the paper.

Suddenly, a light bulb went off in her head.

"This... this was a message for Arius! It has to be! But from whom?"


A minute or two later, Cassie had changed out of her normal attire and into a gray-colored sweatshirt and matching sweatpants. With Meowth and Surskit still beside her, she recalled them to their Pokéballs.

"Sorry guys, but I'm going solo unless I need you."

She then took out her Pokédex and tried to use it to access a satellite map of the area. It took a few more button presses than expected, but she got her desired real-time map after all.

"Let's see here... from where I am right now, the Weather Institute should only be about a mile north-by-northwest from here. Good. Whatever Arius is up to, I'm going to get to the bottom of it!"

With that, Cassie took off in the direction that Arius had departed in.


It didn't take long for Cassie to reach the Weather Institute, as she got to the sign indicating the building in front of her as such. As she bent over to catch her breath, she spotted Arius knocking on the front door. Ducking behind the sign, she peered around it and saw her boyfriend being greeted by a beautiful and rather buxom young woman in her 20s. The woman was dressed in a lab coat, which hid the rest of her clothing from Cassie's point of view.

But seeing the woman bare from the calf down save for a pair of black high-heels was proof enough.

"So that's it! He's cheating on ME! And the day before Valentine's, of all days!"

Once Arius and the woman had disappeared into the building, Cassie made a break for the door.

"I'm getting to the bottom of this! You can bet on it!"

Cassie reached the entrance and went inside. She was greeted with the faint flickering glow of a single, solitary light in a hallway that left her with only one direction to proceed... straight ahead.

Walking very slowly so as to not make any noise, she started counting doors to herself as she passed them. After seven of them, Cassie came across one that had a glass, translucent window. One which she could make out the fact that the lights inside were on, and that somebody must be in there. She stood up flat against the wall and peered down both ends of the hallway. Once again assuring herself that the hall was empty, she reached for the doorknob and turned it ever so slowly.

The door creaked open, and once she was able to, Cassie peeked inside. She was greeted by a smaller hallway, which led into a much larger room that she couldn't see much of from her position. She could also hear two voices in there. And she recognized one of them as her boyfriend's.

Cautiously, Cassie slipped in, closing the door behind her, and made her way into the larger room. She found herself on a walkway overlooking a computer lab of some kind, one filled with meteorological equipment. A few crates were scattered about the walkway here and there, which circled the entire room, and she hid behind one as the voices got louder and louder. As she took refuge behind two stacked crates positioned next to the only stairwell down into the lab, she finally got Arius back in her sights. And the woman in the lab coat was with him.

"So, Luna, tell it to me straight..." Arius said aloud.

Cassie focused all her attention on the two of them, trying not to miss a word.

"Are we any closer to finding the 5th?"

"Well... there's good news and bad news," Luna explained. "The good news is that we may have narrowed the search down to three people."

"Good news? That's great news! We're ahead of the Pokémon League and Team Rocket in finding this fifth and final one!"

"Right, we get this last person and the PTA'll have two of the five in our hip pocket!"

Upon hearing the letters PTA, Cassie's mood changed from one of jealous anger to an anger of betrayal.

"So... what's the bad news?" Arius asked.

"I'll tell you the bad news!" yelled Cassie, coming out of her hiding spot and into plain view.

"Is that... Agent Banks?" Luna wondered out loud.

"Cassie! Did you follow me here?"

"Yes, I did, and I'm not happy to see you!"

Cassie stomped her way down the stairs and over towards Arius and Luna. As she approached, Cassie got a look at Luna's semi-professional dress of a green sweater and a violet knee-length skirt.

"Cassie... IT'S NOT WHAT YOU THINK!"

"Oh, you wish it was what you thought, but this goes far beyond me mistaking you for seeing someone behind my back!"

"WHAT?"

"And I'm glad, 'cause she's too old for you," Cassie stated as she pushed Luna aside.

"Pardon me?"

Cassie ignored Luna and kept her attention focused on Arius.

"But this... to still be working with the Pokémon Trainers' Association after everything they did to us? You promised me that you'd never have anything to do with them ever again!"

"Cassie, let me explain!"

"I only wish I could use my mind-reading powers again. Maybe I would've caught you in the act a whole... lot..."

Cassie was unable to finish her sentence, as she turned and ran off, with tears streaming from her eyes.

"Cass..."

Arius looked as if he wanted to chase after his girl, but he had his own feelings to take into account. And one last matter to take care of.

"So THAT'S your girl?" Luna asked. "Holy moley..."

"Never mind about Cassie... I'll make it up to her."

"You'd better," Luna warned him, as she walked over to a nearby computer.

"Why? Because tomorrow's Valentine's Day?"

"That goes without saying. But I think you should be more concerned about this..."

Pressing a button on the keyboard, Luna showed Arius who the three remaining candidates were via photographs. They were Giselle Gravelpot, Shingo Macintosh, and... Cassie Banks.

"She... STILL?"


Back at camp, Cassie was inside their tent, already buried within her sleeping bag, was filled with distraught as she tried to cry herself to sleep.


Meanwhile, halfway across the country, in the Johto region...

Deep within the cavernous recesses of the Ice Cave, former Team Rocket members Jessie, James, and Persian were huddled up together, trying to stay warm in an environment only favorable for cold weather Pokémon.

"'Why don't we hide in the Ice Cave,' he says!" Jessie shouted. "'The boss would never think of us hiding in here,' he spouts! Of course not, because no human can last more than THREE DAYS IN HERE!"

At this point, it appeared that Jessie and James were wearing only thin long-sleeve shirts and a knee-length skirt or pants, and one small fur coat for the three of them, including Persian, to share.

"Well, if you're so confident," James stuttered, "then walk right out! I'm sure some Team Rocket agent is just waiting for us to come out so he can finish us himself."

"So dying in here is bettah than dying out dere?" Persian asked, his four legs wrapped around himself.

"I guess that fortune teller we saw the other day WAS serious when she said I'd never find true love!"

"Really, Jess? Because she told me my true love was closer to me than I think."

"You don't think..."

"It could be..."

Then the two spoke in unison. "That I'm in love with..."

"Persian!" Persian suddenly jumped in. "Dat's right, now until the end of time!"

"HOW DARE YOU INTERRUPT OUR MOMENT?" Jessie yelled, kicking Persian in the head.

"ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COULD BE OUR LAST?" exclaimed James, who stomped on Persian's tail.

Persian retaliated by using Fury Swipes on Jessie and James, leaving deep scratch marks on the their faces.

"MY BEAUTIFUL FACE!"

"I'LL NEVER BE ABLE TO GO OUT IN PUBLIC AGAIN!"

"YOU? WHAT ABOUT ME?"

"WHAT ABOUT YOU? I'M THE LOOKER IN THE BUNCH!"

"YOUSE BOTH LOOKING FOR A BRUISIN'!"

Jessie, James, and Persian started tussling with each other, not caring about their health as they rolled around on the cold ice floor underneath them. Unfortunately for them, their fighting had attracted a pair of Piloswine. And they were unhappy that the trio was causing a ruckus near their homes.

So, the two Piloswine reacted by using Blizzard to freeze and encase Jessie, James, and Persian, in mid-fight, in a large block of ice. A Jynx then appeared to finish the job. She winded up and delivered an Ice Punch strong enough to send the block flying towards and out of the southernmost exit of the cavern.

And with that, Team Rocket was sent blasting off again. But hey, with none of their former compatriots around and Blackthorn City looming in the distance, it looks like they'll survive yet another day on the run!


But will Arius' and Cassie's relationship make it through the next day?

"Hey, wait up!" Arius yelled after Cassie, who had already starting walking away with Ivysaur next to her. "I haven't packed up everything!"

Arius was in the process of disassembling the tent and gathering the last of their belongings at their camp. He packed it all as best as he could and then ran after Cassie and Ivysaur.

"Come on! Let me explain the whole deal with the PTA, please! I did it for our own good, I swear!"

But Cassie and Ivysaur just picked up their pace, and started walking even faster. Arius bumbled behind them, juggling all of the bags as he tried to keep up.

To be continued next week in Part 4!