Pokémon

Well I have officially had the worst week. I'm not sure why now that I think about it, it just really sucked. And now I have to babysit tonight until 12, which has pretty much just ruined my Halloween weekend as well. And I feel like complaining right now so if you're reading this and making you feel down as well, then I'm very sorry =.=" But can I just say that I am majorly excited for the chapter after this one and the one after that as well. Like, you have no idea. Well, until then, I give you more Off to Sinnoh! Enjoy!

Chapter 20- Operation SPRAS

The pictures of four trainers appeared on screen, and four trainers made their way to the field.

"In the red corner we have Chad Miles and Chris Slone!" The boys stood with domineering stances, seeming quite vain about their battling situation. That was, until they saw their opponents.

"And in the blue corner we have Xena Verboom and Roxy Monroe!" The bluette and purplenette duo took their places, the latter grinning like a mad woman. Holly and Nicky cheered loudly from the audience.

"Eh, it's them girlies that stole our map!" The boy named Chad exclaimed, the one with the muscles, biker-look and bellowing voice. "You're gonna get it for that!"

"Yeah, nobody gets away with messing with the most powerful team here," Chris, the other, punkish one, stated.

"We'll see about that!" Xena hollered over. "We're going to win this, right Roxy?" Her partner nodded, mostly to make the girl happy so she wouldn't go off on another rant of the importance of confidence and winning. Apparently, it wasn't a very pretty sight when she lost.

"Alright, trainers, choose your pokemon. Begin!"

"Take them down!" Both males called. Chad's pokemon was a massive steel snake-like pokemon named steelix. Its body was made up of rock-like sections, harder than diamond, some of which had massive rock spikes coming out of them. It also had fierce red eyes, making it look even more intimidating.

Chris' pokemon was a machamp. It was an extremely muscled pokemon with a grayish body, red eyes and a frog-like mouth with and tan ridges atop its head. It had four strong arms and two legs with two toes each, and wore a legless, black girdle with a golden belt.

"Here we go!" Xena and Roxy called out. Xena's trusty houndoom howled in front of her, and empoleon, the large penguin, for Roxy.

"Steelix, make them feel your strength! Use iron tail!" Chad called while flexing his biceps.

"Dynamic punch, machamp!"

The large snake lifted its heavy, stony tail as it glowed white and threw it the oversized penguin. Machamp ran towards the black canine, its fist thrown back and charging with concentrated energy.

"Feugo, hit it with your flamethrower, max power!" Houndoom gave its incoming opponent a malicious smile, causing the pokemon to falter in its attack. He tossed his head back and blasted machamp with an enormous flame. The muscled pokemon blinked several times as though it didn't comprehend what happened and fell over, black haze simmering from its cindered gray skin.

"Amazing, Chris' machamp was completely KO'd by Xena's houndoom!" Nurse Joy announced from her little station floating above the ring.

It was Roxy's turn to call out her attacks. "Empoleon, defend yourself with steel wing and then use hydro pump." Crossing its shining flippers in an X shape, the penguin held off the iron tail enough to avoid being injured and skidded back. A ball of water formed in its mouth and shot directly into steelix's face. The giant pokemon roared as it fell back slightly.

Chad, looking red in anger, yelled, "Take that punk out, steelix! Use hyper beam!"

"Flamethrower, once more." Since flamethrower took less time to charge than hyper beam, Xena's houndoom attacked first. The steel pokemon fell hard.

"And that's it! Moving on to the next round is Xena and Roxy, congrats!"

"We won!" Xena punched her fist in the air victoriously.

The boys gaped. "W-we lost? How is that possible? Our pokemon are the strongest here."

The battle's continued. More and more teams were eliminated. Some of the battles were getting longer, and of course more difficult. Regardless of how long the trainers watching were sitting, they were still on the edge of their seats through the raging battles.

"Hey look, you're cousin is up against Gary and Dark." Roxy remarked, pointing to the four trainers entering the field.

Xena looked up from her jar of peanut butter, spoon still sticking out of her mouth. "Oh, go Paul! Woah! You can do it, Paul! And…what's his partner's name again?"

"Justin I think. He looked so shy before but now that he's in a battle he actually looks pretty confident."

"He does, doesn't he…?"

Justin and Paul had a team of cloyster and magmar. Cloyster was a water/ice type pokemon with a spiky shell, six of which were long and conical, resembling turrets, used to protect its soft insides from foes. It had an inner, gray-colored layer inside its purple shell. Its "head" and face resembled a black pearl, and there was a jutting, horn-like white spike above its "head". When an attack came its way, it closed up its shell to create a strong defence, thus making it a tough opponent to defeat.

Magmar was playing most of the offense in the battle. Magmar was a fire pokemon that had a red body with a yellow flame design on it, and a yellow tail that also had a flame on it. It had yellow thighs, black legs and red feet with two toes each, and its arms were covered in red, rigid scales with red hands each having five fingers. A row of red spikes ran down its back. There were two lumps on its forehead with a flame on top of each one, and a yellow beak.

On Gary and Dark's side stood the great fire canine, arcanine, and the electric lion, luxray.

Arcanine was a giant dog with its head covered in a cream-colored hair, except for the region around its eyes and ears, which was orange. Its body was a combination of the same orange fur with black stripes and completely black fur on its belly. It also had patches of cream-colored fur on its chest, legs and tail, resembling smoke. Its paws each had three toes and a round, pink pawpad underneath.

Luxray was a more feline pokemon, highly resembling a fully-grown lion. It had three, yellow rings on the backs of its legs, similar to Luxio (its pre-evolution) and had red eyes. Luxray had a spiky black mane that covered its head down to its legs. Its back legs were black and blue and it had a black tail with a yellow star-like shape on the tip.

"Luxray, use thunder bolt again!" Dark commanded. The feline charged electricity and shot it at cloyster.

Justin countered, "Cloyster, protect now." The pokemon clamped its rock hard shells shut, glossing over with a protective barrier. The attack bounced off of it.

Paul was up next. "Magmar, use rock tomb, on luxray."

"Arcanine, cover luxray! Use extreme speed, now!" The dog disappeared from their vision and rammed into magmar to stop it from summoning the attack. It kept going and tackled it again and again as it flew through the air.

A bright white light washed over magmar, causing arcanine to skid back to its original side to see what was happening.

"Oh my, that was some lovely teamwork from arcanine, but it appears now that magmar is evolving. Will it be able to match the new pokemon's strength?" Nurse Joy spoke through her microphone.

Magmar grew larger, becoming completely visible as the transformation finished. Its legs were similar to magmar's except that magmortar had pink thighs and its legs were smaller in proportion to its body than magmar's. Instead of a beak and two flame-like horns it had as a magmar, magmortar had pink lips and one singular flame on its head. Its other notable features were the two rows of pink spikes running down its back, red and yellow flame stripes on its body and a tail that was entirely covered in flames.

Xena groaned, sinking into her seat. "Roxy, this is so boring! When do we get to battle again?" She had her spoon scooping more of the PB from the large jar, her golden eye peeking in the container. Every second they weren't battling, she would pull it out of her backpack and devour more of it.

"Are you kidding? This is the best part!" Roxy exclaimed, stuffing a chocolate bar down her throat and washing it down with a blue-colored, sugar sufficient energy drink. "But the semifinals are up next, so we're probably in the next round."

Holly looked disgusted with the group. "Do you have any idea how bad that is for you? All of you?" They stared blankly with the girl, and then laughed at her as they continued eating their junk food. Holly huffed, popping an orange carrot stick into her mouth with a loud crunch. "Fine, but you'll be the ones to blame when you get fat and die at an early age.

"Geeze, Dude, you need to chill." Nicky held a large, crinkling bag under her partner's nose. "Have a cheezie."

"No thanks!" She gagged, turning away.

The semifinals came and went. Xena and Roxy had ended up against their own roommates, ending with the former as the winners. It was time for the final match. The lights had lowered dramatically in the stadium and the lights shone solely on the field. The four trainers were Roxy and Xena, of course, and a scowling Dark with his smiling partner, Gary. All four trainers summoned their pokemon to the field.

On Gary's side roared a blue tortoise-looking pokemon called blastoise, with a tough, brown shell and two powerful, steel cannons jutting out from the top of its shell. Blastoise had a blue body, its small head topped with two small, triangular ears and brown eyes. Its arms, legs and tail were short and stubby, but strong looking.

Poochyena – the small, navy furred puppy – was Dark's choice. The fur on its face and legs were slightly darker than the rest of its body. Its eyes had yellow scleras and red irises, and it had a red nose on the end of its snout.

Roxy and Xena threw out their pokemon, two of the eeveelutions appearing: leafeon and espeon.

Espeon was a lavender colored, cat-looking pokemon with two large ears with navy insides and long tufts of fur underneath. A ruby gem sat in the middle of its head above its large, almond-shaped, violet-colored eyes with white irises. Its tail was long and slim with a small fork at the end.

Xena slightly twitched at her partner's choice, before shouting. "Now, let's go!"


"Roxy, I'm bored!" Complained the purplenette, on her back and hanging over the side of her bed. She sighed for the hundredth time, playing with her lavender hair that she had freed from her elastic, so it now spilled over the edge of her bed like a waterfall. Her usually sparkling eyes were miserably dull as she moped. The pale orbs followed her pokemon, the baby in her group named Kaze, as she still brooded about her loss of the final tag team battle.

Kaze was a riolu – a small, bipedal, dog-like, blue and black creature. It was currently leaping from one top bunk to the other, giggling as it bounced. It landed on the bluette's shoulder every once and a while, giving her a smile and what could only be described as vibes of happiness.

Misdreavus and Roxy were seated at the desk with a notepad opened. Roxy jotted something every once in a while before she got frustrated and scribbled it out desperately with a heavy, bold line. It was at these times the little child pokemon popped over in attempts to cheer her up. Roxy also heaved a resentful sigh. "I know. You told me that twenty-four times already."

"Well, we should go do something. Why did we even get the day off today?"

It was a week after they had lost the tag team battles. Xena was in a pretty crappy mood for the first couple of days, but they continued quite well through many activities and events that keep them preoccupied. But today, Schurmann had declared there would be nothing planned for the entire day and to use the free time wisely. They could do whatever they wanted for the whole day. Many of the girls had quickly decided to make it a beach day and soak up the rays. Roxy and Xena were not fond of the idea at all. Roxy had "business" to attend to, leaving just a brooding Xena.

"He did say to use it wisely, so it's probably to give a chance to train, possibly for the tag-team contest that he had mentioned." Roxy deduced automatically. She recorded something on the paper, muttering, "If that's the case, then where would it be…?"

There was movement behind her, along with Xena's voice. "Hey, Kaze, what do you have there?" Roxy briefly turned her head apathetically. Her teal orbs widened. On her bed sat the cute, little riolu surrounded with the contents of her backpack and the black Soul Salvation device in its paws. It curiously sniffed it, tapping one of the buttons. It bleeped softly.

"What do you think your doing, silly?" Roxy laughed, gently taking the mechanism away. She was going to turn it off before unnecessary questions were asked, but the screen blinked at her. Smirking shrewdly, she said, "Actually, Xena, I know what we're going to do today."


Xena flattened her back against the wall of the Grand Hall, peeking around the corner, then behind her before rolling out of the spot, landing on one knee in front of the door. She held her hands together with her index fingers pointing like a gun. Glancing back and forth once again, she tried to pull the doors open. They didn't budge. "This is Xena to Roxy, over. The main door won't open…maybe it's a trap! Abort mission, I repeat, abort mission!" She screamed into a walkie-talkie.

Walking calmly around the corner, the bluette shook her head dismally. She nudged Xena out of the way and gave a small push, the doors giving in to the pressure. "You're supposed to push them, not pull them."

"Oh yeah," Xena laughed, rubbing her neck. "I was just testing you to make sure you were paying attention. Onward!" She called, entering the building.

The Grand Hall was utterly deserted. Not a soul was in sight. The only sound was the beeping of Roxy's tiny device as she wandered around the room, holding it up to various objects like flower vases, paintings, etc. The beeping picked up as she neared a portrait of Gregory Schurmann himself. She grinned evilly. "Gotcha."

"Hey, Roxy? What exactly are we doing anyway? You just said we were going on a top secret mission." Xena finally questioned, seeing her partner prodding at a hanging picture. The bluette had spared her the details, only that she needed the older girl to stand guard. Given her bored silly state, she had no thoughts of objecting or investigating farther.

With a grunt, Roxy tugged the portrait off the wall and set it aside. Underneath it laid a code-locked, heavy metal door. "Well," Roxy panted, "I think Schurmann is hiding something, and that there's something fishy going down on this island. And I intend to figure out what that is. This secret door is the beginning to confirming my suspicions."

"But who's going to find us here? Everybody's outside."

"Ah, but I've seen guards lurking around in the shadows of this island. I'm willing to bet we'll run into some down there if we're not careful." Roxy held her device to the number lock system and pressed a button called code breaker. Different digits flashed across the screen until it finally decided on an eight-digit number. "Six-two-seven-one-three-zero-nine." She said, pushing the button down as she spoke it. The doors parted in the middle, granting them access to the hallway within.

"Wow. Where'd you get that thing? I want one!" Exclaimed Xena, earning a hush from the bluette. "Sorry," she whispered.

"It's fine. But we can't risk getting caught. Please just stay close and…don't touch anything," She answered, tip toeing down the declining hallway. She was expecting there to be a security camera somewhere, but Gregory must have been confident that not a soul would be able to find his little hideout. She began walking more confidently, her riding boots silently clopping along. Her misdreavus visualized through the wall, coming to rest on her shoulder. "See anything, Missy?" The ghost pokemon shook its head as a no, to which the trainer replied "good".

"So, what exactly does that thing do, anyway?" Xena whispered.

"Well, it does lots of things, but right now I'm using it to find hidden doors, cameras, microphones, stuff like that. I'm going to find where Mr. Schurmann keeps all of his information to see if I can get some dirt on him." She stopped abruptly in her tracks, facing Xena and starting straight in her eyes. "But you have to promise not to tell anybody about this. Not a single person. If you can't handle this than you should go back now and forget this ever happened. So, what are you gonna do?

Xena stared, somewhat shocked for a moment before smirking diabolically. "You sound evil. I like it. Let's do this!" She cheered, getting slapped over the back of the head for the outburst. "Sorry."

Roxy was sure they were underground by then. They passed very few rooms before they got to the one (misdreavus checked each room before they entered) that Roxy was looking for. Luckily, they hadn't encountered any guards yet. The bluette connected her device to crack the lock once again, then turned to Xena before she entered.

"Okay, I'm going in to find out what I can as fast as I can. I need you," she placed her hands on Xena's shoulders for the air of importance, "to make sure none of the guards, or even worse, Schurmann, walks in on me while I'm in there. Keep out of sight and warn me via talkie if someone's coming. Got it?"

"Yup, nobody will get by me," Xena stated.

"Good," Roxy sighed. Xena stood there, staring at her, and she stared right back. "Well, go!" She shooed the girl. The purplenette jumped, saluted, and then took off. After she was gone, Roxy slipped into the room, first her hand with the device's machine finder, then the rest of her.

The room was a tad on the shabby side. Okay, maybe more than a tad. Nothing in it really matched and it certainly looked lived in. There was a rolling chair seated in front of a mahogany desk holding a remarkably old version of a laptop. The walls were painted a dingy gray/blue with an ugly, shag carpet. Chip bags and papers laid discarded over the floor and the desk, and it smelled like compost. It wasn't a very likable room to say the least.

Roxy clicked on a small desk lamp and went to the chair to sit. She felt like she was sucked down by quicksand it was so low, so she stuck with leaning one knee on it instead. She booted up the ancient machine, hearing a frightening clunking of the hard drive as it trembled to life. No passwords tried to stop her; it went immediately to the display window. She was surprised the dinosaur actually did anything at all. Placing her hand on the mouse pad, she clicked open the documents on his computer. There were about a hundred documents she had to scroll through, only a couple catching her eye. The first was called The Society, which was just a jumbled mess in Roxy's teal eyes. She assumed that it was confidential information, since it was shielded with layers upon layers of encryption to keep prying eyes out. She kept it in the back of her mind as she continued her search. The second was she was just about to open when…

"Xena to Roxy, the target has been spotted, I repeat, the target has been spotted, over," came the crackling voice of her watch woman over the walkie-talkie.

Slightly panicking, Roxy scrambled to unclip the talkie from her belt. "Xena, what target? You're supposed to warn me if somebody's coming. Xena-"

Apparently Xena had forgotten to release her hold on the talk button, as Roxy heard another raspy voice. "Hey, you aren't supposed to be down here!"

SMACK!

"Xena…? Xena, are you okay? What's happening?" Roxy demanded in a hushed tone. She was hurriedly attaching a flash drive she had in her backpack to the USB plug and transferring the documents and anything that looked of possible importance to it, cursing at the slow moving blue bar of progress.

There was a bit of ruffling from the other side as Xena's finger was removed from the talk button. Roxy panicked even more and pounded her fist against the desk, immediately recoiling as her knuckle hit a rotten apple core. She was so occupied that she didn't notice somebody come in until a hand clamped down on her shoulder.

"Good God, you scared me." She hissed, placing a hand over her swiftly pounding heart.

Pulling the black cap from her head, the mess of purple hair fell out. "That's General Xena Ver-BOOM to you, soldier!" She saluted, dragging the huge sunglasses covering her eyes to the end to her nose, her wicked golden orbs looking wild. "And I'm going in." With that, she strutted out the door like some kind of corporal or something.

At first, Roxy laughed. But then realizing she just left the insane girl loose in a place where they were trying to remain inconspicuous, she frowned and sighed. "Good help is really hard to find these days." She decided it was best to find the older girl before she found a way to blow up the whole building.

"Missy, search all the rooms and report to me if you find her." The obedient ghost nodded and disappeared. The girl now disregarded any form of stealth, so she sprinted down the hallways. There were actually quite a few paths breaking off the deeper in she ran. Misdreavus hadn't returned to her, not having found her partner either. She finally began her journey back to the entrance, presuming Xena had left already.

"Hey, you. Halt." A man in black shouted as he rounded a corner, spotting the girl.

'Damn it' Roxy mentally cursed. She felt her arms being held together by another pair of hands and the clanging of two metals clashing together. Handcuffs. 'This is just great.' She struggled against the person, but it didn't help at all.

"It's all good, I've got this one." Stated a person behind Roxy.


"Good lord, Xena. You really scared those guys good. And me too!" Roxy laughed, staring at the female's handiwork. The two guards were silently withering on the floor after being zapped multiple times and being assaulted with a wooden club that she couldn't figure out how came to be in their possession. Without a single thought more about them, they had their arms locked together, walking joyfully out in the sunny rays of the afternoon. Misdreavus giggled, floating around their heads. She was the one to find the purplenette and brought her back to Roxy before the two men could hurt her.

"I know, but that was so much fun!" Xena yelled, pumping her fist in the air. "Its crazy. You're like this secret agent or something."

"Hehe, yeah. Let's go get you into your regular clothes before we're spotted again."


Gary and Paul sat in Paul's dorm room, Gary sitting with his back to the side of the lower bunk, legs sprawled in front of him, and Paul resting his palms on the frame while staring out the window.

"I can't believe we haven't found her yet," Paul abnormally, but solemnly said. He crossed his arms, searching the crystal clear sky as if the one they searched for would fall from the heavens if he looked long enough. Oddly for once, Gary didn't reply. As he looked over, the brunettes face was distant and reflective. He had been like that for a while; it made Paul annoyed that he wasn't a part of what the boy knew that he didn't. "Hey, I'm talking to you, Gare-bear," He snarled. That seemed to snap him out of his trance.

"What'd you say, emo kid?" He shot back. Standing up, he jerked the door open, saying, "I'm going for a walk," and shook the entire room as he slammed the door behind him. He passed the weirdly dressed Xena and her blue-haired friend that always seemed to disappear whenever Xena skipped over to talk to her cousin and make fun of his partner. He soon got lost in his thoughts and just kept walking, going wherever his feet led him.


Roxy needed a quiet place to think. She had borrowed Kite, Xena's flygon, once again to enable her to contact Dementio. After a short, but quite productive conversation and a much smoother landing, Roxy relaxed by the overhanging cliffs in between the beach and the mountain with the dragon enjoying the gusty weather. As dusk came and the horizon was highlighted with a golden orange, she returned Kite and started back for supper, on foot.

She was close to the outskirts of the forest when she felt a menacing shiver crawl up her spine. She wasn't sure why, until a hand clamped over her mouth and dragged her behind the nearest tree. They were covered from the view of any other passers and on the bottom half of a steep hill, so nobody else saw the event going on.

"Have people really never heard of tapping one's shoulder to get one's attention these days?" Roxy ranted at the kidnapper as their hand detached from her lips. She furiously fought against the hands trying to keep her still.

"We need to talk," The person stated calmly.

"Okay, fine, talk, but why does it have to be behind a tree?"

She could feel the grin playing on their lips as they leaned in close to her ear, and said quite clearly, "I know who you really are…" They paused for a while for dramatic effect, and even though the blue-haired girl kept her brave face, her heart rate picked up just a little bit as the word she didn't want to hear spilled out.

"Alex."

Operation Save and Possible Rescue of Alex Summers: Now in effect.


Did you catch the Phineas and Ferb quote? Yes, that's right, I happen to think Phineas and Ferb rock. And there's a Gibbs slap in there too. And my bad if you have no idea what I'm talking about.

Well, I am quite sorry for my short rant at the beginning. How about you tell me how your week has been? Who knows, maybe it'll make me feel better about mine. Well, leave a review and I shall commence the writing of the chapter I'm so excited for :D Tah-tah!