Chapter Ten
It was the fifth day. Though Seven looked all day yesterday, not once did she ever see a space that wasn't teeming with white masks peering out of every corner. They multiplied overnight. At first, she thought she was paranoid, seeing tricks of her own devising, but the few times she dared to venture into those shadows, she saw those faces were all too real.
And now, with three days dwindling away, half of the people walking the streets bore white masks.
It only took three blocks of white-masked crowds for Seven to realize fighting was no longer an option. The only option was to steal their pokéballs without drawing attention to herself.
During her first attempt, she forgot all about the thumbprint locks. She walked up to an unmasked woman and gave a pokéball on her belt a quick tug. In the fraction of a second she had between her fingers slipping off of the pokéball's smooth surface and the woman turning to glare at her, Seven crouched, turned invisible, rolled through a space in the herd of pedestrians, reappeared right under the noses of five people, and came up, as if she had stopped to tie her shoes. The woman's wrath was redirected to the nearest target while Seven slipped into an alley, shivering and wiping sweat from her brow.
It took fifteen minutes of deep breathing and reminding herself the consequences of failure to tiptoe out of the alley. During that time, she came up with a plan. Her eyes darted up and down the street, hunting for unmasked faces and sagging belts laden with pokéballs. After ten minutes of searching, she found the perfect mark. A corpulent, sweating man lumbered up a street, sucking a lollipop and listening to music with oversized headphones. His long, curly black hair was matted down by the headphones, and a few stray locks swished in front of his eyes. The man didn't bother to brush them aside, nor did he move an inch for pedestrians approaching from the opposite direction.
Seven followed closely behind him for half an hour, staring intently at his hands. For the duration of that time, she was thwarted by the man's habit of keeping his hands in his pockets, but then he reached up to pluck the chewed stick, all that remained of his lollipop, from his lips and toss it on the street. With a flick of his fingers, his thumbprint was exposed to the sunlight, and Seven etched every line of it onto her own finger.
Armed with what she needed, Seven darted down an alley, quickly cut back onto the street ahead of the man, and walked towards him. As she passed, her hand snaked to his belt and plucked a pokéball. The man ambled on, oblivious to the subtle weight lifted from his hips, and Seven walked away, tucking her prize in a pocket.
She dared not steal another, not now, with the first mistake fresh in her mind. Instead, she retreated to the safe house, where the ball collector waited for her.
"Finally got your second one? Time's running out, rookie." He placed it on the table and said, "Not a bad score this time, but sadly, it still only counts as one."
"What is it?" Seven asked.
The man blinked and stared at her like an owl. "You didn't see it?"
"I just grabbed and ran."
The man gave a knowing smile. "Had to rush, eh? Yeah, the white masks are getting out of hand."
The machine whirred and clicked. The man picked up the pokéball and tossed it in the air. "That Marcus guy gave a huge speech yesterday morning, calling out the police and claiming that they're the ones reducing crime now. Then he invited everyone to join in on the white mask party, and next thing you know, the street's crawling with them. I'd wager everyone will be wearing white by the end of the week."
Seven frowned. "That makes it a lot harder."
The man laughed at her. "Harder? It's easy as pie now! All it takes is a white mask, and you're invisible. I'd buy one if I were you, they're five bucks for the cheap ones."
Seven didn't have a dime on her, but her powers could make a mask indistinguishable from one plucked from the shelves. And so, the next day, she roamed about the streets in complete anonymity, guarded by the image of a white mask and a billowing brown cloak, much like the truncheon-wielding white-masked thugs lurking in the alleys favored.
People in the streets gave her wide berth on the sixth day, except for a few white-masks that came close for a courteous greeting. From each of these, Seven plucked a single pokéball on their belts and grinned at the thought of stealing from those she once feared. Her take that day amounted to three Pokémon, one of which made the uniformed man at the safe house raise his eyebrows high.
On the seventh day, Seven abandoned the cloak in favor of a less menacing appearance. Almost everyone in the streets wore masks now, and the few whose faces were exposed to sunlight made nervous glances about themselves as they walked. Those with masks walked taller, and smiles lit their faces behind the slit of the masks. They spoke among themselves without a care and made toasts over cups of coffee to an era without crime.
Like a shadow, Seven crept behind them, mimicking their every move. By noon, she had stolen the last six she needed. She turned towards the safe house, but then, with a wide, feral grin, she asked herself why she should stop. Through mile after mile of streets, she wafted between pedestrians like a chilling breeze, scooping up pokéballs like crackling brown leaves and stuffing them in the huge, deep pockets of her leather coat.
It was almost sunset when she returned to the safe-house. Her pockets bulged and thumped against her thighs with every step. She had to turn sideways to fit through the door, and she jammed her hands on top of each pocket to hold her prizes inside.
"You sure took your time," the man mused. "Six in one day is quite a challenge, so I don't blame you if you came up short."
Seven took off her coat and up-ended it over the table. A cascade of pokeballs poured out, thumping on the table like hail and bouncing onto the floor. The man stared, dumbfounded, as the pokéballs covered the floor of the tiny room.
"Holy shit," he said breathlessly. "How the hell did you get all these?"
Seven smiled and picked up an armful of pokéballs, setting them on the table like a carton of eggs. "Trade secret."
The man's brow furrowed for a moment, and then a chuckle left his lips. "Ah, you must be a hacker. Better enjoy it while it lasts, it won't take more than a week for a new firewall to block you."
It took over an hour to sort out all the pokéballs. Her score had ranged from lowly Pidgey and Meowth to rare gems like Vuplix and Cloyster.
"Giovanni's going to be pleased," the man said, holding out his hand. "Welcome to Team Rocket, brother."
"Well, this is a disaster," Officer Peter said as he leafed through a tall pile of missing Pokémon reports on his desk. Bruno craned his neck and glanced at the topmost paper, reporting the disappearance of an Ivysaur. "At least fifty Pokémon were reported missing, and all of them had their chips removed. Nothing found at the last known location reported by the GPS signals, and with all those masks, eyewitnesses are useless."
Bruno wrote a question and passed it to Peter. "It's a hacker, from the sounds of it," the officer said, answering the question. "Must be in response to that speech." Peter sighed, slumped back in his chair, and took a long swallow of lukewarm coffee from a dented paper cup. "Well, nothing we can do about it now. Let's go home and leave this to the software techs."
Bruno gave an inquisitive bark. Peter chuckled and ruffled his hair.
"Alright, we'll stop for donuts on the way back."
"Well, this is a disaster," Admin Colson said as he sipped tea from a porcelain cup. "Just about everyone's going around with white masks and harassing anyone who looks remotely suspicious. They even assaulted a few of Fisher's men."
Giovanni unwrapped a few briquettes of charcoal, dropping the ashen cloth wrapping in a wastebasket, and dropped the charcoal into the holes on his Torkoal's back. White, odorless smog hissed from the cracks in its shell, and a wave of heat rose around the Pokémon. A thick black tea kettle, which rested on the flat top of its shell, gave a shrill whistle as steam burst from its spout. Off to the side, in a ceramic bowl and underneath a linen cloth, were fresh peach slices and candied pineapple.
"Disaster?" Giovanni asked. Then he chuckled, a laugh full of gentle mirth, and yet laden with enough malice to make the Torkoal tuck its head into its shell. "This is perfect. The White Knights are more vulnerable than ever with the sudden flux of wannabes and copycats."
"That may be true for now," Colson said, pressing buttons in his uniform and bringing up a holographic image of statistical data on Giovanni's desk, graphs with blue streaks darting through them and red arrows pointing to alarming figures, "But they're assimilating the newcomers into their ranks with incredible haste. Within a week or two, there'll be nowhere to hide."
"That's why we're going to strike now." Giovanni picked up the kettle with a hand-tailored oven mitt, embroidered with the Rocket R, and poured himself a cup of strong black tea. "You have the intel on their main base, right?"
With a flick of his fingers, Colson brought up a blueprint of a large warehouse on Giovanni's desk. The interior was heavily renovated, with steel-reinforced walls and cameras lining every hallway. "Yes sir, but it won't be easy, even for us. The cramped space means we can only send in a small team, and it's likely they've made changes to the facility in the last few days. They will be expecting us."
Giovanni reached into the ceramic bowl and took out a peach slice. He wiggled it in front of the Torkoal's head, coaxing it out of its shell. The Torkoal crept out, tentatively reached for the peach slice, and took it from Giovanni's fingers. It chewed methodically and stared cautiously at him.
"But we have something they could never expect."
Admin Colson's eyes narrowed. "Are you sure that's wise?"
Giovanni lifted up a metal bin that had been sitting next to his chair. Colson's eyes widened when it, and the sixty pokéballs it held, were set in front of him.
"That was Subject Seven's take for today," he said. "It has proven quite resourceful, wouldn't you say?"
Admin Colson nodded and lowered his head. "I'll make the necessary arrangements."
"Good. Also, send for Seven." Giovanni picked up a piece of pineapple, rolled it between his fingers, and ate it. Then he cleaned off every last granule of sugar with a generous dollop of hand sanitizer. "I would like to congratulate it and give it the orders myself."
Changelog: 8/19/18 - just some writing tweaks, fixing things I don't like in the prose