Now the fun really gets started and the Arc finally starts to reach its conclusion. But not before several fights and a few more familiar faces. Team Rocket won't know what hit them, unless they pay close attention to this Episode.

Comments wanted as usual. And a nice big, slightly late, happy birthday to Dark Magician Girl Aeris. Who is otherwise known as ToF's resident fangirl. I thought of sending Mew over with a card, but he'd probably cause trouble or blow something up, probably both.

Episode Ninety-Six: Crossfire

It collapsed to the ground, which was to be expected considering the fact that I was now holding a detached head. I glared at it before lobbing it into a dustbin, just in case. (What? I wasn't going to hang onto it. That thing scared me, more so than a detached head that looked like someone else would have done.)

"Fuck, that hurt," I heard Scarlet groan, which caused me to glance back and lower my guard. A big mistake on my part, one that could have cost my life had my helmet not been strong enough to withstand a RoboMe punch to the head. It did leave me with a fairly nasty ringing noise though.

"But not as much as that would have done," I heard Scarlet mutter, over the ringing in my ears, "youch."

"You're not helping," I said, turning back to the decapitated robot, "now, where were we?"

"I was commencing with terminating you and the other Charmander," it replied, the voice coming from the inside of its neck.

"By Mew, that is desturbing," I muttered, "maybe you oughta get that injury there looked at."

"Negetive, still at seventy percent fighting power."

I had to duck under another punch and lashed out with my own fist, it bounced strait of the chest armour of the robot.

"That bloody hurt," I muttered, backing off and clutching my bruised hand.

"You are not the only one with armour," the android said. If it had a head, it would have been smirking at me.

"True, but I'm not the one with a gaping hole in my throat."

I dived foward and plunged my paw into said gaping hole. Even though it was a robot, I still felt a little sick at doing so. But I managed to retain the contents of my stomach as I grabbed hold of several wires and pulled as hard as my puny limbs could manage.

Unfortunatly, wires crossed and I ended up getting a heck of a lot of pain as electisity flowed down my arm and through my body. RoboMe didn't seemed to be affected and gave me one nasty uppercut, knocking me flying. I skidded on my arse for several meters, stopping up against a wall.

The throat plating of my helmet had been partially dented and was restricting my breathing. I clutched the straps, trying to undo the buckles blindly. Eventually I got so desperate for air that I just ripped the damn thing off and threw it aside, glaring at the robot.

Untill I noticed that the chest plate of the android had swung open, showing two missiles. Which were pointed in my diection.

"This is going to hurt," I muttered as they launched themselves towards me, from close range. A blast of water knocked one away from me, and it crashed into the dustbin that the android's head was in.

Now you are all thinking 'yay, Squirt had come back to save the day.' Well you were wrong, the blast came from the direction of the Center instead of the Harbour so it couldn't have been him. Instead, it was the other water type that I knew by name.

"Vapor? What the hell are you doing here, in sunlight?" I gawped as the Vaporeon blasted the other missile clean out of the sky.

"Moron sent the medicine before the trouble here kicked off, so I'm perfectly healthy again. So I'm your backup," Vapor laughed, stopping when RoboMe turned and fired a third missile at him.

I shot that one down with a fireball, before the both of us turned on the RoboMe and fired our attacks from both sides. The android was caught in the crossfire, vanishing in the cloud of steam. We both halted our attacks simultaniously and watched as the android collapsed once more, twitching.

"I buggered up the electronics, you fried the wiring," Vapor called across the street to me, "so it can't recover from that."

"Better make sure," I replied, launching a fireball strait down the things neck and into its chest cavity. I must have hit something, because the robot was cloaked in a huge explosion and blown to bits.

I tured to check on Scarlet, but she had vanished.

"Looks like I scared of your girlfriend," Vapor muttered as he plodded up, tail waving behind him, "sorry."

"What the hell is a girlfriend?" I asked, having never heard the phrase before.

"Never mind. Now, where are the rest of this Team Rocket that I've been hearing so much about?"

"Towards the Harbour, this way."

We traveled the short journey in reletive silence, the only noise coming from the wind and Vapor's tail hitting stuff as he walked by.

"So, how've you been?" He asked, trying to make conversation. I refused to be drawn in.

"Fine considering that I've nearly been killed three times, today. First by a dragon, secondly by one of the robots and back there."

"You're uninjured though, thanks to that nice armour. It's a bit dented but I'm pretty sure that it'd be easy to repair."

We both stopped at the sounds of shouting from up ahead, before dashing through the Harbour 's gate. I spotted Squirt, crouching behind a piece of rubble and popping out to blast water jets at the Rockets, who were climbing onto a huge steel floating thing, before diving back behind cover as the Rocket's Pokémon returned fire, with actuall fire.

"Looks like Team Rocket is bugging out on a cruise ship. Not the smartest move, considering who is going to be coming after them," Vapor smirked as he bounded foward, blasting a Rocket off of the walkway with a water blast.

"Save some for me," I cried as I joined in with gusto. Scout divebombed the Rocket's Pokémon, keeping their attacks away from us as they tried to shoot him down.

I crouched behind a metal crate, launching fireballs wildly. There were no others around, so it didn't exactly matter where I aimed my attacks. But the Rocket's managed to make it onto the ship, giving them the high ground. I couldn't hit them without leaving my shelter, so I ran across the Harbour while throwing fireballs around.

Many Pokémon began shooting at me, seeing as I was an 'easy target' but I zigzagged all over the place and refused to slow down enough to allow them a direct shot. Squirt and Vapor began to pick off those Pokémon that were near the ship's railings, taking some of the pressure off of me as I headed towards the gangplank.

A large amount of Rocket Pokémon were waiting for me, many of them bulky physical fighters. As I approached, they all began to move towards me. They froze as a metal spiked object thudded into the wood in front of them, a piece of rope attached to the back of it.

I turned my gaze to see where the rope was coming from and saw a strange sight, Cubone sliding down the rope with his bone club above his head and connected to the rope as some sort of winch. He let go near the end and dropped to the floor, landing on his feet and piling into the Rocket Pokémon, lashing out with his club and knocking many of his foes into the water.

I decided to stay back a little, I didn't want to end up taking a dip myself. I managed to blast a Machop that had managed to sneak up on Cubone, gaining a quick thank you before we both got stuck in again. Another Machop dashed towards me, while I was busy grappling a third, getting knocked off by a swarm of yellow stars.

I threw the Machop I was battling over the edge and into the sea, as I spotted a Staryu spin through the air and knock several Rocket's over the ship's edge. I glanced towards the shore and spotted the Cerulean Gym leader standing there, along with Vermillions. Then, the Pewter City one showed up and the Onix that had managed to beat me a long time ago appeared, looking as nasty as ever.

"Cubone!" I yelled out, "we better get off of this thing, the party is about to get nasty."

"Righto Flame," Cubone called and we began to fight our way back down the gangplank, Squirt and Vapor still keeping our chasers busy with water while Scout forced those ahead of us to keep their heads down.