Danny's Journal, Part 10- Infiltrating the Rocket Hideout

I woke up early to get my team ready to help out Lance, and so I could eat a big breakfast. It would suck if I had to take a lunch break in the middle of a big mission. After I got my team all psyched up, I waited for Lance outside the Pokemon center like he said.

I nearly fell asleep waiting, he didn't show up for almost an hour. Vesuvius managed to shake me awake when she spotted Lance and his Dragonite going into a small building up the road from the center. I ran after him and entered the building just in time to see his Dragonite use a Hyper Beam on one of the shopkeepers there.

...What the hell? Who uses a Hyper Beam on a human, even if they did make you mad? I'm sure even a Tackle from that Dragonite would have sufficed... but oh well. Lance greeted me, and told me that the entrance to the Rocket hideout was somewhere in the building, and that the mysterious radio signal was definitely coming from here. We searched the room, and as I was checking out a desk, I heard a loud scraping noise from across the room. I turned around, and saw that Lance had moved a large bookshelf to reveal a flight of stairs descending into a basement. He motioned for me to follow, so I did (after making sure the poor shopkeeper was still alive. He seemed more stunned than anything).

The 'basement' turned out to be more of a high-tech maze of sorts. There were a lot of statues with motion sensors, and I was practically mobbed by Rocket members whenever I walked in front of one. I managed to find a room with a switch for the statues, though, so I made it through that floor with few problems.

I met up with Lance again on the second subfloor, and he healed up my Pokemon before he headed off to find the stairs again. On this floor, there was a sealed-off door I tried to get into, but it wouldn't budge. Even Indiana's Mud Bomb didn't do anything to it, so I headed off to the 3rd subfloor.

I found Lance interrogating another Rocket member (sheesh, what is it with this guy and forcefully interrogating people?), and he said that one of the Rocket executives was holed up somewhere in the base. The room he was in needed two passwords, though, and he left me the task of getting into the executive's room while he looked for a way to shut off the radio signal.

After tracking down and defeating all of the Rocket grunts that I could find on the floor, I managed to get the two passwords out of them- Raticatetail and Slowpoketail. Those are some weird passwords... but anyway, I went down a couple levels to where the boss' room was supposed to be, and of course, I ran into one of my stalkers again.

I wasn't even surprised when Silver showed up. He said he was trying to investigate the Rocket base as well, but apparently Lance thought he was with them and beat his ass. Heh, I'm not surprised. I ignored him and proceeded to break into the executive's room to confront him. He tried to intimidate me by dressing up as Giovanni, but I saw right through his disguise and proceeded to beat the crap out of him with Vesuvius. She even evolved because of the battle, and is now a kickass Typhlosion. Although she's almost as big as I am now, which creeps me out a bit. Why do my Pokemon evolve to be bigger than I am?

Anyway, before the guy ran off (apparently his name was Petrel), he told me the password to the power control room- 'Hail Giovanni'. It was useless to me, though, because he explained that the door to the room could only be opened with his voice. I spent a few minutes trying to imitate his voice before a Murkrow flew down from one of the shelves in the room and landed on my head. I flailed to get it off, and it cawed loudly at me. I asked it what it wanted, and it squawked 'Hail Giovanni' in a near-perfect imitation of Petrel's voice before flying off. Was it trying to help me?

I chased after the Murkrow, following it up to the second subfloor of the hideout. When it reached the door that was locked, it screamed the password to open it, then flew up and out of the hideout. I figured Lance was still trying to figure out how to get into this room, so I decided to sit around for a while with Thorne until he showed up.

After a while, Thorne tensed up and started acting nervous. That usually means something is happening, so I stood up and looked around. I heard a shout, and I jumped as another Rocket executive and a grunt came rushing at me. The executive was a pretty female redhead, but she had a bossy attitude that reminded me of my mother. Anyway, she and the grunt challenged me to a double battle, and I was about to take out Vesuvius when Lance charged out of nowhere to help me in the battle.

That was a quick battle, his Dragonite is pretty damn powerful. After they ran off, Lance went into the power control room to see how to turn the power supply off. Apparently, it didn't have any switches or buttons, just a bunch of Electrode hooked up to a generator to supply the power. He said that we would have to take out the Electrode in order to turn it off, even though neither of us wanted to do that. After we knocked them out, the power in the building shut off, which made the radio signal stop. Lance thanked me for my help, and gave me the HM for Whirlpool as a reward. He then told me to keep up with the good work, and left with his Dragonite.

When I exited the base, the sun had almost set. I decided to go back to the Pokemon center for the night and rest up for when I take on the Mahogany town Gym tomorrow. It's an Ice-type Gym, so Vesuvius should take it down with no problem.

Speaking of her, I think she's trying to give the team a pep-talk. Scheme seems to be mad that she's now taller than him, so he's trying to gnaw on her tail. It's rather adorable.

Current Team:
Typhlosion 'Vesuvius' Female, Lv.36
Fearow 'Thorne' Male, Lv.36
Arbok 'Indiana' Male, Lv.36
Haunter 'Scheme' Male, Lv.36
Shiny Yanmega 'Ao Tonbo' Male, Lv.36
Espeon 'Imani' Female, Lv.36