"This is really fun! So what are we going to do next? Continue to spy on them, charge right into the place and raze it down? Oh oh, can I see you bomb them with your hydreigon? Pleeeease?"
"We wait for a little longer. I'm sure that there are a few more who have not yet arrived," I replied to Amelia's question as I ticked off my list on which individuals I had spotted entering their new secret hideout and which had not made an appearance. This list was made from my observations of this hideout in the past week and I'm sure that the people listed in this list were more or less the full catalogue of members that will be visiting the hideout tonight at around this hour. The information that I gathered thus far tells me that tonight, Team Plasma will be holding another secret gathering and there is no better time than now to catch them all in the act.
After letting my cousins know what I was originally planning to do, they had all unanimously decided that we should indulge in some cousin bonding time by doing some of what they would call "Plasma Cleansing". Out of the four of them, only Leticia has an official trainer licence and had competed in a Pokemon League, which made sense in retrospect since she's obviously a lot more skilled than the rest. From what I learnt, she's also a genius at synthesising chemical compounds and her expertise made her a very competent pharmacist until she decided to switch industries. Now, she's dabbling in the cosmetics industry as a perfumer and apparently, the perfume company which she founded is doing very well.
Her younger brother, Lexus, has a breeder licence although he's not a pokemon breeder. He's a trainee chef who is aspiring to be a masterchef just like Siebold of Kalos. Mikhail and Amelia are students, with Mikhail studying law and Amelia expressing an interest in business and finance. According to Leticia, not every Dandolos will choose to become a trainer, but that does not mean that such members of our family are pushovers due to our family's long history with pokemon. According to her, even the non-trainers in our family can put up a good fight that many top tier trainers will struggle to do.
"So this is what you do all the time? Man, so boring," Lexus complained from where we were huddled and hiding on the roof of a nearby building with zoroark hiding us from view with his illusions. Amelia seemed very enraptured by zoroark and was unable to stop her fingers from combing through zoroark's sleek fur. Zoroark simply seemed delighted at the attention he was receiving.
"Usually stuff like this is mostly done by uncle, Asher, or Let, but doing this once in a while is a nice change of pace," Mikhail let out a soft laugh with his simisage which was sitting beside him and munching on a berry. "By your estimate, how long more do we have to wait?"
"Maybe half an hour more, maybe five minutes more, it really depends, but I don't think we will have to wait for too long," I answered before remembering something. I dug out a flashdrive from my pocket and tossed it at Leticia, who easily caught it.
"Oh, a present for me already?"
"I disguised myself as one of Plasmas' henchmen and met one of Team Plasma's major sponsors at an underground auction house. From the looks of it, Team Plasma is, or at least was, heavily dependent on him for financial support. We were all required to wear masks at that auction so I have no clue who he is, but I had secretly recorded the entire meeting. He trusted the security of that place enough to not use a voice modulator to disguise his voice, so my porygon-z and I tried our luck to see if we could match his voice to someone we can find on the internet but we found no matches so far. Maybe you can use this to figure something out that I couldn't. Thing is, he laid it out very clearly that he wants you gone, so be careful."
"That explains the increased attacks on my person recently, as if someone was getting desperate," Leticia hummed thoughtfully as she pocketed the flashdrive. She doesn't seem too bothered that there is someone out there who wants her head on a pike.
"Why don't you just off that fool right there and then?" Lexus yawned.
"Are you dumb? That place was so heavily guarded that even I would have difficulty making my escape if I did something like that without a plan. Besides, I had another objective that took priority over the assassination of that man, so I couldn't risk it."
"What objective?"
"A little girl I bought off from the auction. She possesses the same ability as Nicholas Harlow and Team Plasma wants her. Hiding her from them is my priority because hell knows what kind of shit they could stir if they ever caught her."
That certainly surprised them.
"Come again?" Lexus sat up immediately and leaned his ear closer in my direction. "I think you said something about a little girl having the-"
"Your ears are working just fine. Your brain, maybe not."
"Hey!"
"If Team Plasma gets their hands on someone like her, that will be something to worry about," Leticia agreed. "You don't mind placing her under our care from now on, will you?"
"That might be the safest option. After all, I cannot always be there for her while trying to take down the Plasmas," I conceded.
"You should have just come to us sooner. Speaking of which, why didn't you come and find us when you arrived at Unova?"
"To be honest, I'm not too sure myself. Maybe I'm just too used to working alone," I confessed, also not understanding why I had never once thought of reuniting with my family even when I had a vague idea on where to find them. Sometimes I don't even understand my own thoughts.
"You don't need to do so for any longer, we are here for you now," Leticia said with a small smile.
"We should totally have a sleepover," Amelia declared with her arms spread wide open.
"Hell no. The last time we did that I couldn't catch a wink because you kept kicking my face in your sleep," Lexus grumbled, earning him a slap on his arm from an embarrassed Amelia. I decided to save Lexus from Amelia's ire when I spotted a familiar looking vehicle driving up to the secret hideout.
"Oh look, that should be the last one."
"We charge right in?" Lexus whispered excitedly and his excitement was mirrored by Amelia. I lightly knocked both the top of their heads with my fist for their stupidity.
"Don't be stupid. If you make a huge din the police will be on us faster than we could get anything out of their mouths."
"Dude, we are the Dandolos, we just have to say that we are conducting business on behalf of the League and they will just turn a blind eye and let us do whatever we need to do."
"While I agree that charging right in is a stupid thing to do, Lex also has a point. Our family has some degree of authorisation to interfere and mobilise the League's forces if we are doing work on behalf of the League," Leticia informed me. "If the police aren't a problem, what will you do?"
"Take my time to get them to spill everything they know and to search the entire place for more information. If they murdered anyone recently then they pay with their lives."
"Oooh, so you are the dark hero that upholds justice when the law fails!" Amelia spoke excitedly.
"No, I'm no hero, just another murderer."
"I think here's what we can do," Leticia cut in, bringing our attention back to her. "Mikhail, you drop a call to whoever's in charge of Undella Police Force and make sure they don't interfere, and also to be ready to clean up the place after we are done. The rest of us will just go in and scare them silly so that it's easier for Jayce to do his work. Sounds good?"
"Fine by me. I never really like all the crazy things that you guys seem to love anyway, this is enough excitement for tonight," Mikhail agreed as he stood up to take his leave. "Well, see you guys later. Don't do anything too crazy."
"I want to do the scaring," Amelia immediately volunteered after Mikhail disappeared from view. I pondered over her request for a few seconds before handing spiritomb's odd keystone to her.
"Use spiritomb, he's way scarier than your musharna or gothitelle. If they still don't want to speak, get spiritomb to have them spill everything with Hypnosis."
"Coool."
This girl definitely has a few screws loose in that head of hers, and she's my cousin.
An outstretched palm entered my line of sight. I turned, finding the owner of the palm to be Lexus.
"What?"
"I don't get anything?"
"You have an incineroar and a pangoro."
"I want to try handling another dark type I never handled before. We can do a temporary trade, I use one of yours, you use one of mine."
I sighed.
"Which one do you want?"
"Hydreigon," Lexus immediately replied and when he realised I wasn't budging, quickly added. "If I said pretty please?"
"You aren't ready to handle him," I disagreed before handing over another pokeball, "but you should be at least capable of handling drapion. No need for trade, just return her to me once this is all over."
"Aw shucks. Thanks anyway," Lexus immediately accepted the offer with a grin on his face and suddenly, indulging him doesn't seem like a bright idea.
Another outstretched palm entered my vision.
"You too?"
"I will be soooo sad if you leave me out, and when I'm sad, nobody is going to have a good time," Leticia cheerily replied with that deceptively sweet voice of hers while flipping her butterfree knife with her free hand, not so subtly reminding me what she was capable of with it.
"Fine. Which one?"
"Mind lending me ninetales? Never seen a beauty like her before."
"You want to?" I asked my starter who was lying lazily on the floor beside me. Ninetales let out a large yawn as she stood up and slowly trotted over to Leticia's side.
"Can we just charge in? Like, for real? Please?" Lexus asked once more, still a little too eager to create wanton destruction. I'm starting to get sick of him asking that same question every five minutes ever since we started our stakeout and so, I decided to just agree, if only to shut him up.
"Whatever, just don't accidentally kill those bastards before we get anything useful out of them."
Thirty minutes later, I am almost convinced that the art of information gathering, intimidation, and torture is something that all Dandolos are inherently born with. That might explain why I was so suited to the role of the Rocket's Exterminator and how I survived that long in that hellhole. Maybe that bastard Kain was really onto something when he decided to kidnap children from prominent families.
"Jayce, Jayce, look! Look at what I found out!"
Amelia's excitement and cheerful personality was in stark contrast to our surroundings. She ran up to me with a notebook in hand which contained everything she jotted down based on what she managed to make her victims spill. I'm not too sure how I should react in such a situation, so I opted to just pat her on the head for a job well done while quickly reading through what she just found out.
"Good job," I praised Amelia as I neatly tore out that page of vital information and pocketed it. She's a natural at playing mind games. Nobody would have suspected that a sweet little girl like her is fully capable of milking everything out of her victims with nothing but mere words. Hell, spiritomb wasn't even needed for her to scare her victims.
Lexus returned at about the same time and handed over to me a slip of paper which he used to messily note down everything he extracted from his victims as well.
"I don't think those guys there know anything useful, but just in case you need it."
I glanced back at the pile of bodies at the back. Lexus' victims are still alive, but most of their limbs were twisted in all sorts of angles that shouldn't be humanly possible in the first place. He's the type to get what he wants from his enemies through physical harm, which fits his brash and straightforward personality.
"I still have trouble believing that this is the first time for the both of you. You guys are too good at it."
"Oh?" An evil looking grin appeared on Lexus' face. "How did your first time go?"
"Back then I didn't have Hypnosis to fall back on, so I started out from physical torture," I recounted the days where I first started out as a grunt and was tasked by my superiors to get what they needed through any means necessary. "It started out by plucking their fingernails, one by one, then I tried chopping off their fingers, then maybe practising my tattooing skills on their bodies with a rusty knife. Then I graduated to using more sophisticated methods like waterboarding, then as I grew older I realised playing mind games was more efficient because doing so means that there is usually not much of a mess to clean up afterwards."
"Amazing."
"No, it's not," I chided Amelia, who merely stuck her tongue out at me in defiance. I'm starting to get a little worried about the type of education that my cousins receive if they found the art of torture to be something amazing.
The sounds of muffled screams interrupted our conversation. It came from another room, the room where Leticia was and where she was taking her own sweet time to get what she needed from her victims. The screams have been coming out of the room for quite a while now, before turning into pitiful sobs, then maybe we might hear muffled voices begging for mercy for a short moment, then silence entirely, and not necessarily in that particular order.
"Sis had always been good with that kind of stuff," Lexus stated as he shuddered a little when another horrifying scream suddenly pierced the air, "but she's far from the scariest. I've never seen it for myself before, but she always did say that Asher was better than her in this."
"I'm starting to be convinced that this is a family thing."
"You only just realised that now? This is literally why Unovans are so scared of us," Lexus scoffed as he made himself comfortable from where he was sitting on drapion's back, who was idly sharpening her claws against a nearby wall while waiting for everyone to be done with their respective work.
"I was gone for twenty-two years. Pardon me if I'm not up to date with what is considered normal for our family."
Another loud scream cut through the air. By this point we had all learnt how to ignore it entirely.
"Now I'm certain that she is using this chance to test her new poisons. It's one of those sick hobbies of hers, finding excuses to use the chance to test her poisons on the scums that our family captures in our work."
"But Leticia always made them talk, even uncle said so. He says she is his favourite because interrogations are always easier with Leticia around and she doesn't always use poisons," Amelia piped up.
"Look, Amelia, I don't know how, but she recently got her hands on some poison extracted from salazzles. That thing's illegal in Unova and you know how crazy she is for these kinds of things. There's no way she's passing up this chance to test her new poisons, take it from someone who lived to tell the tale."
"Sounds interesting. Do elaborate," I gestured for Lexus to continue with slight amusement lacing my voice. My cousins are… interesting, in a morbid way.
"There's this one time when I was about… seven or eight, I think, when I accidentally did something to make her really really mad. I think I accidentally tore her favourite plushie or something but that's not the point. You know what she did? Just before I went to bed that night she somehow tied me up with fucking ariados thread that hell knows where she got it from, somehow evaded the detection of everyone in the house and brought me outside, then dropped me into a pit of scolipedes for an entire night. One, entire, nest, of those creepy crawly things and those bugs are very sensitive to movement. Just one sudden jerk might trigger them to stab you with those poisonous barbs and I was so damn fucking scared. I was only seven or eight, okay? So I lay there in that nest, unable to do anything as those creepy things crawled all over my face, body, arms and legs the entire night and too scared to move even one single finger. Sis dragged me out of there before the sun rose the next morning. She chose to do it before our parents woke up so that they would never suspect what she did and pretended that nothing happened. Even after I told them what sis did, they never believed me because if Leticia did that to you, how are you still fine? You will be dead a long time ago. And I couldn't answer that because it's true that I shouldn't be alive."
"That's all?" I asked.
"What do you mean that's all?! It's a nest of scolipedes! Then when I confronted her about just how dangerous that was, did you know what she said?" Lexus' voice rose an octave higher to imitate Leticia's. "Oh, you were safe the entire time! I spiked your dinner with my newest drug last night that secretes pheromones to make scolipedes disinterested in you! Thanks for helping me to test that out, by the way! Like, what the fuck?"
"I think you deserved it. If you tore my favourite plushie I would be mad at you too," Amelia said seriously with her hands on her hips and her face fixed into a disapproving frown.
"Yes, that is my fault but scolipedes, Amelia, scolipedes. Till now I still think that she added a venipede into her team right after that incident just to fuck with me."
"You deduced that correctly, Lex. How proud I am of you, little bro."
Lexus' face paled with immediate effect as he slowly turned around, spotting his older sister smiling sweetly at him as the scolipede beside her audibly clicked its mandibles a little louder than necessary. Ninetales bounded over to me from Leticia's side and playfully nudges me with her head, obviously in a good mood.
"Looks like you had fun."
Ninetales gave a soft yip of agreement.
"W-We done, r-right? L-Let's just g-go-"
"Done? I don't think so. After all, somebody was badmouthing me while my back was turned," Leticia crossed her arms in front of her chest, her eyes curving into a smile and I could visibly see Lexus breaking out into a cold sweat. It made me wonder about the extent of their strange sibling dynamics because while I can see that both of them obviously care for the other an awful lot, if Lexus' words about what Leticia did were true…
"Wouldn't you know who that somebody might be, Lex?"
"Leticia can be really scary, but that is only for outsiders or when Lex did something really stupid. Usually, Leticia is really really nice to us," Amelia whispered into my ear but I am sure that everyone had picked up on her words.
From how the edge of Leticia's lips are curving ever so slightly into a smile, Amelia's words might have just saved Lexus' life. Leticia does look like the type to hold a grudge and retribution from her are probably anything but pleasant judging from the screams of her victims earlier.
"Before that, Lexus was telling me how he is volunteering to clean this entire place up by himself, so we can make a move first," I spoke up, deciding that I might as well play the role of the good samaritan and help shield Lexus from his sister's wrath. Lexus nodded furiously when he realised that this might be the only way for him to continue to stay in the world of the living.
Leticia eyed me with unconcealed amusement before looking back at her brother.
"You heard our dear cousin, little brother, I expect you to do a thorough job. Clear?"
"C-Clear."
"In that case, remember to meet up with Mikhail before leaving Undella. See you guys back at Lacunosa," Leticia waved her trembling brother goodbye as she turned around to walk out of the trashed hideout with unhurried steps, graceful and dignified. I took back drapion's pokeball from Lexus and followed Leticia as Amelia began to talk non-stop about how cool and fun this whole ordeal was.
"Do you have anything to pick up before going back to Lacunosa with us?" Leticia asked the moment we made our exit and I immediately thought of someone.
"About that…"
"We are leaving?"
"Yes, we are," I patiently replied to Iris' question as I packed whatever little belongings we have in this small apartment that we have been living in till now. Thanks to my cousins' help, I managed to finish everything before midnight and fetched Iris back from Martha's place. I did inform Martha that we will be leaving and that this might be the last time we will see each other again. Martha was a little sad at seeing us go but gave us her best wishes regardless.
"I heard from Leticia that she tracked you down to this area, but I never knew you were living in… such a place," Amelia spoke quietly as she looked around the small little apartment. She had probably never seen what slums were like before.
Iris looked a little sad at the thought of leaving this place and everyone which she had gotten to know in the short time we were here. She was sitting on Leticia's lap, who was helping to comb Iris' messy and bushy hair. The little girl had endeared herself to Leticia in almost no time at all.
"Will there be dragons?"
I paused in my actions upon hearing Iris' question and looked at Leticia, Leticia gave me a very subtle shake of her head.
"Hydreigon will be there," I replied as I made one last round in checking the place, ensuring that we had packed everything we had here.
"Drei? Or a new hydreigon? Can I call the new hydreigon Gon?" Iris pressed on with her questions using the nickname she gave my hydreigon. Hydreigon seemed to like the nickname Iris had given him but he never responds to it unless Iris is the one calling him as such. At the very least, he never answered me when I tried calling him Drei.
"Why not call him Hy?" Leticia asked in curiosity.
"Drei sounds nicer," Iris declared like it is the most obvious thing, "and Drei says that he prefers the name Drei, so he's called Drei. And um, who are you?"
"I am Leticia, she is Amelia. We are Jayce's family," Leticia patiently explained, knowing from my explanations prior to coming over to my place that Iris was found as a feral child and is thus lagging behind in certain areas as compared to peers her age, especially when it comes to social customs and norms.
"Oh, as in pack?"
"Pack?"
"Pack," Iris nodded, "like dragon pack."
"If you put it that way, then yes, we are part of his pack," Leticia affirmed. "He's going back home with us and so are you."
"My home is in the mountains, but I don't know where it is. I just know that there is a lot of haxorus," Iris said with a slightly wistful voice. "Then suddenly I got caught by some weird people and I never saw the mountains again. They… like to beat me a lot. It was scary."
"How long ago was that?" Leticia asked. Iris just shook her head.
"Don't know, never count, but Jayce found me and things become nice again. I still miss the haxorus pack though."
"Haxorus only congregates in several places in Unova, at least based on what little I know about their species. It shouldn't be too hard to find that mountain you are talking about," I replied, knowing that this will cheer Iris up, "but you will have to wait for a while, we are busy at the moment."
"Really? Okay, I can wait!" Iris bounced happily, eliciting a laugh from Leticia. "Oh, oh, can we invite the haxorus to your home too? Then I can see them everyday!"
"I think they prefer their home in the mountains, but you can try asking them when you see them next time."
"An entire pack of haxorus at home…" Amelia muttered with a slight shiver in her voice, just loud enough for me to hear.
"We are done here. Shall we go?" I asked after double checking that I had packed everything that needed to be packed and slung the bag containing our possessions across my right shoulder. Iris ran up to me to hold my hand, eager to see what our new home will be like.
"Are there any new dragons there?"
Dammit, and here I thought she had forgotten about that question.
"Hydreigon will be there."
"I don't mean Drei, I mean new dragons."
"I don't know, we can find out when we reach there."
"Can we catch one if there's no new dragons?"
"Depends. If the place is large enough for a dragon, it might be possible."
"Can we catch a druddigon?"
"Only if it wants to come along."
"So we can?" Iris asked excitedly as she began to bounce on her feet. "We can? We can? We can?"
"What kind of dragons do you not want anyway?"
"I like all kinds of dragons! All of them! And then I will bring them to fight the bad guys, bad guys that beat me up that time, and then nobody will be beaten by the bad guys again!"
"A wonderful goal to have."
"I know! Drei says that you do that all the time too! He said that you always leave me with Martha so that you can go out at night to beat the bad guys!"
I stopped in my tracks and stared at Iris.
"How did you know that?"
Iris immediately covered her mouth with her hands, realising that she had just slipped up. She's not supposed to know what I am doing every night after I left her in Martha's capable hands.
"What did hydreigon say to you?"
"Uhm… That… The reason why you always go out to work at night is because… There are bad guys that want to beat me up and… You need to beat the bad guys that want to hurt me but you don't want to let me know… He told me to keep it a secret..." Iris guiltily avoided my stare and decidedly looked anywhere but into my eyes.
I let out a resigned sigh.
Right, she is able to talk to and understand dragons, but I wasn't expecting for hydreigon to actually be sane enough to hold a proper conversation and divulge so much to her. I kept her in the dark precisely because she is too young to know about such things.
Of all times for hydreigon to be coherent, it has to be now.
"She really can talk to dragons. I thought those stories about Champion Harlow's abilities were just… a folk legend," Amelia gasped.
"Hydreigon's right, keep this a secret, especially about how you can talk to dragons. Nobody else must know," I patted Iris on the head, deciding that it was too much to expect her to fully understand just how dangerous her plight is but at the very least, I want to drive home the point to her that there are some things which she can never divulge to anybody else.
"I'm not in trouble…?"
"No, but you will be if you breathe a word about this to anybody else, so promise me to keep this a secret between us," I reassured her and held up my pinky finger which she interlocked with hers.
"Nobody will know." Iris promised solemnly, or as solemn as a child can be anyway. Satisfied at what I saw, I continued our walk as she skipped along beside me with Leticia and Amelia following behind.
I need to have a long talk with hydreigon after this about what can and cannot be said to Iris. A long, long talk.
Name: Jayce Dandolos
Age: 22
Pokemon Team:
1. Ninetales, female
2. Exeggutor, male
3. Weavile, male
4. Honchkrow, female
5. Umbreon, male
6. Hydreigon, male
7. Drapion, female
8. Zoroark, male
9. Bisharp, male
10. Shiftry, male
11. Porygon-Z, (Nosy), genderless
12. Greninja, male
13. Spiritomb, male
