Pokemon Tales: Red Chapter 11: Greed.

After taking a couple minutes to come to his senses, Red got to a sofa and plopped down before looking at the note given to him by the nurse. He was worried if he it was something he did that caused Blue to leave but managed to get through his fear and started reading. The note read as follows "Hi, Red. It's me, Blue. But you already know this from the nurse. I..."

In that place and some other ones there were words that were crossed out. Although some of them still were readable, Red decided to omit them to get a clear message of what Blue wanted to tell him.

He continued reading the note "I know it's rude of me to do it this way but I just couldn't gather up the courage to say this to your face. Maybe I'm just being silly. What do you think? Maybe it wouldn't matter to you. But I can't pretend that it doesn't bother me. It's not your fault. I want to say that it isn't my fault either but since I was the one that saw this as an issue, I guess I'm at fault here."

The boy took a while to think about what the girl could have meant but still wasn't clear on what kind of message Blue was trying to get across, so he continued reading.

"Did you ever think about what would happen if we haven't met? I never would eat your cooking. I would get up late because you wouldn't be there to wake me up. On the other hand, you would get constantly lost. You would make even more rash decisions. We both have our flaws and in some crazy way, the life put the two of us together like it knew that we would compliment each other and together behave like one competent person. I can't have that. I like spending time with you, but my goal is to become a Pokemon Master. I could reach that with your help. But that wouldn't be fair. I wouldn't feel worthy of it if I knew that it wasn't by my own strength that I did it. There are some other things. If we are to fight in the league, I don't want to see all of your Pokemon and their tricks and for you to see mine, because that would make the fight too boring. I guess? And... Team Rocket. Although I helped you against them that one time, I can't afford to lose my dream by getting tangled up with criminals. That's all I had to say, I think. I hope you don't get this note the wrong way. I don't want to travel with you anymore but I had a great time with you and I really want to see you again as many times as possible."

The last couple of words were completely crossed out to the point of being covered by a black stripe.

Red felt a tear that was about to fall out of his right eye so he put a finger up to it, so that it wouldn't run down his face. He smiled, happy that he and Blue still remained good friends, but then he slowly got up, crumpled the note and, after reaching upwards with both of his arms, yelled out "Blueeeee! You won't get rid of me that easily! The next time we meet I'm gonna make you travel with me again! Till then, I wish you good luuuuuck!"

Blue, who was on Route 5, on her way to Vermillion City, felt shivers run through her entire buddy. Shocked by this, she grabbed her chest to calm herself down. She looked back towards Cerulean City which had almost disappeared behind the horizon, as if she was hoping that she would see Red coming after her to stop her from going through with this decision. But he wasn't there, so she continued walking forward.

"Um... Could you be quieter? You are disturbing other guest." the nurse said to Red.

After seeing that everybody in Pokemon Center was looking at him, his face turned Red and he sat down before saying a quiet "Sorry."

. . .

A couple days later, the Team Rocket admins gathered again in the same room as always. Since he wasn't on any mission it was a given that Alex arrived before anyone else.

Peter often was late to their meetings. When Alex asked him once for the reason, the long-haired man explained that it was hard to move around with his cape because, if he was too fast, he would trip.

On the other hand, Angie was always on time. She wouldn't want to waste the time she could use for other duties by sitting and waiting for a transmission.

But that day was certainly a special one. Realizing the creation of Codename M2 was the goal of their organization for the longest time. When Angie entered the room, she did her best to hide her feelings as always, but Alex still noticed that the corners of her mouth were rising by themselves into a smile that terrified him, since it was so unusual to see her with one. But it was easy to understand that of the three of them she was the one most looking forward to this day. After all, she was a member of Team Rocket since her childhood, whereas Alex and Peter joined only a couple years ago. Peter arrived just as the screen lit up.

"Welcome everybody." said the same scientist they saw 3 days ago "I see that you all can't contain your excitement."

Alex looked at the others with a doubtful look. Even though Peter cared about this project atleast as much as him, he didn't show any signs of it. He even covered his mouth to stop the yawn coming from his mouth. This irritated Alex to the point that he decided to keep his eyes glued to the screen.

"The wait is over. As promised, we managed to finish working on Codename M2 on time. It took us many years but finally we have arrived at this point. But it's not my place to talk about it. I will let Doctor Humane talk you through it, since he was in charge of the project."

"Good day, admins of Team Rocket." a voice could be heard from somewhere offscreen.

It seemed like the communication device was placed in a specific place and they didn't want to move it because it could end up not being placed back in the same exact way it was at that time.

"I'm sorry that you can't see me right now but I'm in the control room that operates this whole place. What you can see instead is a metal hatch placed in the floor. If I press the right buttons and switches, the hatch will open and the container with M2 will rise up to the surface."

"Excuse me." very slowly said Peter.

"Yes?" answered Doctor Humane.

"You are about to show us the thing we all want to see, but what about our boss? If he was watching it, the screen would be split and we would be able to see him, right?"

Alex was shocked that Peter was the one to point out such a fact, seeing how normally his attention span lasted about half a second. On the other hand, Angie slapped both of her cheeks, ashamed that she wasn't the one to notice it.

"Don't worry." Doctor Humane calmed them down "Actually, our work on M2 has been finished since 2 days ago but we wanted to keep it under wraps so the boss could come here and inspect what we achieved by himself. He saw it yesterday. But beside him and the scientists who worked on the project, you will be the first ones to see what it looks like."

"Oh... Then go ahead." said Peter.

"Alright. Here goes."

After a couple quiet sounds, which were probably Doctor Humane operating the machinery, the hatch began to open and a stream of cold air began escaping from inside. The container in which M2 resided was a tube which was over 2 meters high. It contained various electronics on top and bottom and was covered by ice in some places. The inside couldn't be seen because the cold caused the glass to become foggy.

The scientist from before returned with a winter coat and gloves on his body and used his hands to clean the front of the container, finally revealing what was inside. Alex and Angie both stood up with excited faces. Peter couldn't be bothered but his eyes which were usually half closed due to him being sleepy, were now fully open as he looked on with admiration for the being that stood in front of them. I was a tall being with a tail and two horns. They couldn't tell what color it was because of the green fluid it was sleeping inside.

"Project M2" Doctor Humane began speaking again "or how I like to call him, "Mewtwo" is as you know an attempt of copying the unique Pokemon known as Mew, in order to create a perfect being. A lot of our work was taken up by trying to create it from nothing, until we managed to get a sample of Mew's DNA. Even then, it took a couple years before we realized a way to deal with the instable nature of its body. It turned out that the thing we were missing was in us all along. Mewtwo is a combination of the DNA of three beings; Mew, myself and our boss. We went through a limited test yesterday and checked its brainwaves, finding out that they are more similar to human ones than those found in Pokemon. We want this Pokemon to walk among us as an equal and hope to convince him to our cause of uniting the world under the rule of Team Rocket. If we will be able to go into the stage of mass production, a small group of Mewtwo will be enough to stop any armed conflict or help people during natural disasters. I have to say, I have never been so proud as during these last couple..."

His speech was interrupted by a loud sound of something being smashed. Flashes of light appeared from somewhere offscreen.

"What the hell are you doing?!" the voice of Doctor Humane could be heard.

"We won't allow Team Rocket to control the world! Without this thing you won't be a threat! Our darkness will envelop Kanto and you can't do nothing about..." an unknown voice started shouting somewhere but went quiet after a punching sound.

"What happened?!" Alex yelled.

"It was a member of Darkness Gang!" explained Doctor Humane "He disguised as one of my assistants and used a wrench to smash the machinery I was using to contain Mewtwo! I'll try to do something before..."

"Look!" Peter stood up, causing his hood to fall off, as he pointed towards the face of the artificial Pokemon.

"Oh no. No, no, no, no!" despair could be heard in Doctor Humane's words.

Mewtwo opened its eyes.

"What... What is it gonna do?" Angie asked with a cracking voice.

They all stood there trembling with uneasiness, only being able to imagine what the people on the other side of the screen felt like.

"It's... It's speaking." said Doctor Humane.

"What? I don't hear anything." Alex grabbed onto his ears as if he wanted to make sure that there was nothing wrong with them.

"It's using telepathy..." continued the Doctor "...and it's not happy that it's trapped... Wait! You got it wrong! You aren't trapped!"

The only things the admins could see was a split second flash of explosion. The sound couldn't reach them because the communication machine of the other party was obliterated in an instant. Their screen turned into a fuzzy mess of pixels and they stared at it for the next couple seconds, their brains not being capable of understanding what happened.

"Oh no! Did it break out?!" Alex yelled "Are they fine?! We have to do something!"

"I... I..." Peter couldn't find any right words.

"Calm down!" Angie ordered them, even though she herself was covered by sweat originating from anxiety "First things first! We have to call the boss! I'll do it! Meanwhile, Alex!"

"Yes?!"

"Run over to the intercom room and be ready to relay the information to the whole base in case it's needed!"

"Roger!" he quickly saluted before running out the door.

"And you, Peter!"

"What is it?"

"Go to the hangar in case the boss orders us to send a party there, since this base is closer than the one in Saffron!"

"Got it!" he answered before pulling up his cape, which was supposed to allow him easier movement.

Angie began using an input device located on the whole to connect with the boss. After a short while the screen turned on. Before Angie could turn around to see his face, she already heard his hard, cold voice saying "Yes? What is it?"

. . .

While Team Rocket were dealing with their problem, Red encountered a completely different conundrum on his way to Vermilion City. He stood there watching a rather poor excuse for a battle, as a wild Meowth was putting all his strength into trying to pull a out an Oddish which has planted itself into the middle of the path the boy was travelling on.

The trainer squatted down to watch the situation up-close, while the cat Pokemon was too preoccupied with what it was doing to notice the new company. Eevee was out of his pokeball and also couldn't take his eyes away from what was happening. It looked to him like some kind of game, and when the Meowth's paws finally slipped and he fell on the ground, the dog ran up and decided to give a try by pulling on Oddish's leaves with its teeth. He was successful, but the weight of the grass Pokemon caused them both to fall on the cat. When Meowth's and Oddish's eyes met, the both of them quickly got up and assumed fighting stances.

"Oh boy. Eevee, can you try to stop them?"

The dog ran between them and started barking at both sides of the conflict. The Pokemon waited for him to stop and they both gave some kind of answers. But they kept interrupting each other and getting even more agitated, which finally led to them starting a fight, despite Eevee being in the middle of it. The dog managed to jump to safety and ran over to its trainer where it frantically tried to relay the situation to him.

"I... You know that I can't understand what you're saying, right?" Red asked with a worried expression "Maybe you can show me instead?"

Eevee thought about it for a bit and finally came up with an idea of how to convey the message. He pointed to one of Red's pokeballs, so the trainer proceeded to release Charmander who was apparently needed in this presentation.

The dog said something to the lizard who nodded in response. Then, Eevee pointed again, this time to Red's bag. The trainer took out one of the berries they were supposed to eat for lunch and seeing what the Pokemon wanted him to do, he placed it next to a bush on the side of the road, which in his understanding was supposed to imitate that the berry was in fact growing on said bush. Everything was set in place for the presentation.

The Pokemon began their cute, amusing play with Charmander pretending that he was a wild Oddish. He was holding up two long leaves he found to indicate that he was playing the role of the grass Pokemon. He walked around for a while, pretending to search for something. Finally, he walked over to the bush where the berry was laying and picked it up with a triumphant shout. Then, he started looking around, as if he wanted to check that no one saw what he was doing.

After that, he dug a small hole and placed the berry inside and walked over to a patch of grass where he laid down and closed his eyes. He moved his tail in a slow arc, indicating the passage of time and setting of the sun, until the flame was hidden behind a tree, seemingly telling Red that it was night.

Then, Eevee who to Red's understanding was imitating the Meowth by making a catlike face, walked onto the scene and also acted like he was searching for berries. But to his disappointment, he couldn't find any on the bushes or trees. He was about to give up, but he stumbled onto the hole in which the berry, found earlier by Charmander/Oddish, was hidden. He didn't know why the berry would be in a hole but he didn't care since he needed food to survive. He took the berry to his lair and ate half of it, after which he left the rest for the morning and also went to sleep.

When Charmander/Oddish woke up and found out that the food he was hoping to eat for breakfast disappeared, he followed the footprints left by the thief and followed them to his berry which was already half eaten. He wanted to give the sleeping Eevee/Meowth a pummeling, but he was too hungry. He decided to eat what was left of the berry before attacking the thief. But the sounds of chomping, woke up the sleeping one. They started fighting and when Oddish was badly scratched he decided to regain some of his strength by planting itself in the ground and using some kind of healing move. That was at least what Red got out of that explanation.

"Okay. I think I understand." he said and turned his head towards the fight that was taking place behind him.

Both of the Pokemon were almost out of strength and they movements have gotten slower.

"Charmander. You're up."

Answering the command, the lizard ran in between the fighters and used his tail to knock both of them down to the ground. They didn't have enough energy to get up but were still arguing verbally.

"Okay, guys. Enough is enough!" the boy yelled "It isn't worth it to fight over a misunderstanding. If you promise to forgive each other, I will give each of you a berry and you can go on your way. How about that?"

The Pokemon gave it some though and both said something to which Charmander nodded his head. The trainer understood and reached into his bag to give them Oran berries. Both of the got 1 berry and began eating it. After regaining their strength, they looked at Red with hopeful eyes.

"First you have to say that you're sorry to the other Pokemon."

They turned face to face and said something with happy faces, after which Meowth shook one of Oddish's leaves like a hand. After seeing that, Red gave both of them some more regular berries. Oddish immediately began eating another one, while Meowth was just looking at the ones he got. He sometimes glanced to what the other one was doing. Finally, he open his mouth and somehow managed to fit all his berries inside and then jumped over to Oddish and used his paws to steal 2 other berries before quickly running away.

"Aaand... There he's gone. I guess it's weird to expect a wild Pokemon to learn a lesson in sharing. Well, it was worth a try."

He stood up and turned around to pick up his bag, before returning Charmander to his pokeball.

"We wasted enough time. We'll never catch up to Blue if we dilly-dally."

Red and Eevee were about to be on their way when the trainer felt something tugging on his leg. He looked down and saw that the Oddish still hasn't left.

"I'm sorry. I just can't go giving out all my berries or we'll have nothing to eat. Unless... you wanna come along?"

The Oddish stood there for some time. The boy thought that the Pokemon was going over the proposition, but then Eevee walked closer to Oddish and looked up to say something to his trainer. The teenager crouched and saw that the grass Pokemon somehow managed to fall asleep while standing.

"I guess he was still tired... Aren't sleeping Pokemon easier to catch?"

Red put one of his empty pokeballs up to Oddish's forehead and the Pokemon went in without a problem, with the sphere immediately giving out the sound that signified the capture.

"Hmm... That was kinda uneventful."


That was a joke. These last words, I mean. Since the chapter didn't really have any real fighting but a lot of stuff still happened. Blue left Red, Mewtwo finally appeared and escaped at the same time, Red caught Oddish. Yeah, a lot of stuff.

Since each part was equally important, I had a little trouble coming up with the name of the chapter. The way I came up with it was by going off the phrase "Strongest Pokemon in The World" which I think will be a chapter name down the line. Because of that, I remembered the character of Rudol von Stroheim from Battle Tendency, the second part of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. I saw that he was based on the real life person, Erich von Stroheim who worked in the movie industry. The wikipedia article mentioned a movie called "Greed" as seemingly his best work. The guy, by the way, looks really scary. When I thought of "Greed" I realized that to some extent it could apply to all the parts of this story. Red is greedy in that he wants Blue by his side, no matter her reasons for leaving him. Team Rocket are greedy in that they want to rule the world. You can't really get greedier than that. And Meowth is greedy in the way he wanted all the berries he could get instead of just the one he got from Red's good will.

In the original version, the whole Mewtwo part wasn't there and the berry part was supposed to feature groups of Oddish and Meowth instead of just single Pokemon.

Also, Darkness Gang! They weren't in the original plans for any chapter, but since then I came up with 2 stories that would need villains other than Team Rocket so I decided to make a secondary evil organization. They won't be a part of the main conflict but they will pop up quite soon to cause some trouble so I went and introduced them here.

Also, I hope that nobody takes Blue's letter the wrong way. It's not like some kind of feminist move or something to have her state that she wants to be worthy of winning the Pokemon League. She was sure of her goal from the beginning of her journey and after travelling with Red for some time, she started to feel like she was getting too comfortable just being with him, even though she still got her badges just fine. It's not like an inferiority complex or anything. All of the things she thinks about herself, she thinks about Red. So she's doing this for both of them, thinking that if they go their own way, they will have a better chance to get stronger. The Team Rocket stuff still applies, but she's still seeing Red as her friend and while she would not willingly go out to search for criminal activities, she would help him if he had any trouble. I don't know if this explanation makes a lot of sense. I tried. Don't hate me, lol.

Next chapter, Red arrives in Vermilion. Also, a fateful encounter between 2 characters. After that, there will be one more chapter(I think), before we get into what I would call the Special Chapter. But maybe I'll write about it next time. Last thing is my problem with titles. The last chapter title was so long that I had a problem and had to shorten Chapter to Chapt(?!) but that seems ugly so from now on I will do it like in this one, In case there are any more long titles. But I won't go back to change all the previous one, since it could skew the statistics. EDIT: I did go back and change it so this past probably makes sense to anyone who reads it after the change.

Red. Team: Eevee, Charmander, Pikachu, Oddish.

Badges: 2

Green. Team: Ivysaur, ?, Jigglypuff, ?.

Badges: 2

Blue. Team: Bellsprout, Squirtle, Zubat.

Badges: 2

Alex. Team: Ditto, ?, ?, ?.

Angie. Team: ?, ?.

Peter. Team: ?, ?, ?.