Ash sorted through his Pokéballs. "Okay, we're going to have to move fast, she knows something is up and probably knows we're here… but the good news is, a lot of her gear is supposed to keep her either hidden or give her the advantage in a surprise attack, and Riolu and I can see them through the cloak. Dexter, is there anything you can tell us to get past that?"
I have some data, Dexter replied. Based on available information it only has one petrification cannon on the underside, and there's an entrance there. I can scramble it, for a bit, but that'll alert them to my attack and from then on I'll need physical contact.
"We need to get on board to save our friends, and the Pokémon J stole, so let's do that," Ash decided.
He checked in his backpack again, finding only the Gracidea, then pushed it behind a bush and double-checked everything was clipped to his outfit. "Charizard!"
"I heard most of it," Charizard replied. "Sounds like trouble."
"Yeah," Ash confirmed. "Pidgeot, if you can, get us onboard – Charizard, you cover us, then fight that Salamence if she uses it."
Pidgeot crouched to let Ash climb on more easily, and Ash glanced at Shaymin. "Stay out of trouble, okay?"
Then the two Flying-types took off at once, with a surge of wind that rippled the lake surface.
"What kind of monster are you?" Misty demanded, both hands on the bars. "You take Pokémon for no other reason than to sell them for profit? I never thought I'd be saying this, but even Team Rocket wants Pokémon for more reasons than just how much money they're worth!"
J chuckled. "Well, so much for hospitality… I thought you'd be interested to know that your Pokémon are going to be worth a lot of money for me."
She glanced up. "Guards. Make sure they cause no trouble."
J's goons saluted, taking up posts by the entrance to the brig as J left, and Misty groaned before turning around and sinking to the floor.
"I can't believe we got caught like that," she said, looking at Brock. "Any ideas?"
"No, but I think I know who has one by now," Brock replied.
Misty brightened. "Oh, yeah, good point…"
"Ma'am," one of the bridge crew said. "We've spotted the Pidgeot from before taking off, they're accompanied by a Charizard!"
He punched up both images on the main screen. "As suspected, there's a trainer with them."
J smirked. "Open fire."
The gunnery officer tapped at his controls, then swore. "Damn! Sir, the ventral gun isn't firing!"
Hunter J's head snapped around. "What?"
"It's acting like I'm not giving it instructions," the gunner defended himself. "And – cameras show the trainer has boarded!"
Pidgeot and Charizard's takeoff images vanished from the screen, replaced by a ship schematic and two views of the outside – both with targeting carets. "Enemy flyers are outside petrification gun range, enemy trainer is in cargo three!"
Hunter J sighed, because this kind of thing was tiresome. "Release Salamence to handle the enemy Charizard, focus guns on the bird once that's done. Give me all hands."
"All hands," the communication officer reported.
"Stand by to repel boarders," J said. "Find and neutralize a young male trainer wearing blue clothes, a cape, gloves, and a very silly hat."
Something about his appearance was vaguely familiar, from somewhere, but J wasn't sure where and shrugged it off. "Immobilize any invading Pokémon."
She slashed her hand to cut the broadcast.
"The guns are working again, ma'am," one of her officers reported. "It was some kind of virus. I shut down anything that's not cameras from the outside."
The ship rocked, and one of the camera feeds went fuzzy and distorted.
"Now this is a real chance to cut loose!" Charizard roared. "Big target, maximum fire power!"
He exhaled a Flamethrower, feeding more energy into it to give it the momentum it needed, and it splashed against a half-there shimmer in the air before exploding. Then he whirled up a Fire Spin, which battered the side of the ship with greater force, but had to break it off a moment later as laser bolts came sleeting out of one of the gun batteries.
Charizard dropped, trading speed for height to get out of the targeting zone, and the guns retargeted from him to Pidgeot as a dark shape dropped free from the cloaked air battleship.
For her part, Pidgeot dealt with the laser fire by accelerating and jinking hard right. Laser fire flashed around behind her, then a salvo of missiles came in and she slapped them with a massive wing-of-air before summoning a Tailwind and accelerating even harder. The guns were starting to box her in, so she swerved abruptly towards the cloaked ship and zipped around underneath it.
She couldn't stay there for long, the petrification gun would get her, but she was moving far too fast for it to hit her in the moments it was in line of sight. She pulled up as soon as she was past the shimmer and climbed high, more than three times as high as the ship in moments and outside the area the guns could fire.
Then she got to work. This was going to require buildup.
Down below, Charizard found himself confronted by an aggressive attack from a Salamence with fangs sheathed in lightning.
Dodging away and curling around in an up-and-back diagonal turn, Charizard slammed a Flare Blitz into Salamence's Dragon Rush, and the two attacks blew away all the nearby wisps of cloud but did nothing to the combatants.
"Why are you helping her?" Charizard demanded, grappling with Salamence and trying to pin his wings, but Salamence wasn't making it easy and his wings were as strong as Charizard's were.
"Because it's my duty," Salamence retorted, then took the opportunity of Charizard's arm being nearby and bit down with a Thunder Fang. Electricity crackled over Charizard's orange scales, and the Fire-type snarled.
Pikachu was stronger, and Charizard trained with Pikachu.
Deciding this wasn't working, Charizard got both legs into place and shoved off. That broke contact between the two of them, and he strafed Salamence with a crackling jet of Dragonbreath which drove the Dragon-type back.
Unfortunately for Charizard, that also got him far enough from Salamence that the guns on the battleship could open up. Three laser bolts lashed against his wing, and he growled deep in his throat.
"How can it be your duty?" Charizard demanded, flying in closer all over again to avoid taking more turret hits, and the guns fell silent once more. Salamence didn't, though, firing out a Hyper Beam, and Charizard's quick Dragon Rage only weakened the attack – which still scored a line along Charizard's flank.
"I served her faithfully, since birth," Salamence replied, shaking off the fatigue of the Hyper Beam. "That is all there is to it."
Charizard lunged again.
On board the air battleship, Ash and his Pokémon moved at a run.
Ash wasn't sure where they were going, except that he'd probably know it when he saw it, but they had to keep moving so that they could avoid being focused on by the whole crew at once. Pikachu was riding Ash's shoulder, firing out Thunder Wave attacks at any humans or Pokémon they saw, while Riolu ran ahead opening doors with Force Palm and Dexter floated alongside Ash to give a running update.
They've encrypted the radio, I'm not getting anything useful, Dexter reported. I have the ship schematics, though, main cargo is – second left!
Riolu skidded to a halt in front of the indicated door, focused for a moment, then jumped and slammed a Force Palm into the upper quadrant of the door. The top hinge splintered and gave way, rocking the door open, and Ash knocked the main body of the door aside with his shoulder as he charged through.
It was an amazing sight.
There were dozens of Pokémon, perhaps hundreds, all in crackling force field cages and frozen like statues by some fantastic technology.
"This is not bringing back good memories," Riolu admitted, shuddering.
Ash crouched down next to Riolu, doing his best to ground the Fighting-type simply by his presence. "Dexter, anything?"
Dexter hovered over to a console, and interfaced with it.
This console doesn't have the option to reverse it, he stated. However, there is a guide for the users involving what not to do, and one of those things is that the force cages overloading can disrupt the stasis field.
"Right," Pikachu said, firmly, and his cheeks flared up. "Give me a minute, guys. I'll handle this."
He rose into the air slightly, electricity pouring out of his cheeks, and formed three rings of electrical energy before rotating them.
As he did, he did his best to keep things straight.
He didn't want to hit Ash, or Riolu, or Dexter, but he did want to hit a lot of other things… and that was hard, but he could do it.
There were so many Pokémon counting on him. His friends were counting on him.
His Light Ball was there, but he wasn't using it for the increasingly convoluted, wound-up knot of electromagnetic tension he was keeping hold of. Instead, he was going to use it for something else entirely… a very, very carefully aimed Shock Wave.
Almost all of Pikachu's attention was on those two divergent parts of what he was doing. He was only vaguely aware of the fighting going on around him, as Dexter hit a Raticate with Tri Attack, as Riolu kicked a Purugly into the air before slamming an Aura Sphere into them, as Ash tripped someone with Sir Aaron's Staff before they could point a weapon at him.
Then Pikachu was ready.
"Hit the deck!" he warned, and summoned the power from his Light Ball. That went down, bouncing off the floor and upwards, defining a cone shape which missed all three of his teammates and everyone else strewn over the floor.
Then he snapped one of the cords on his Volt Crash.
The backlash blew him almost to the ceiling, but the main force of the explosion spread out in an electromagnetic sphere that hit everything in the room except for what was underneath his prepared Shock Wave-primed shield.
Every single cage in the room overloaded at once.
Hunter J clenched her fist hard enough to cramp it.
A year's work destroyed in a moment, and by a Pikachu of all things.
Then the cameras in the room cut out, and she probably should have been impressed they'd kept working that long but she wasn't in the mood to be charitable.
"All ship order," she instructed. "Lethal force authorized. Full lock down. I want the Pokémon recaptured, now."
She checked her belt for her remaining Pokéballs, then stalked towards the bridge door.
This was now personal… and just as she left the bridge, the ship shuddered again.
"Cloaking field down!" one of the officers reported. "Looks like the earlier damage."
"All weapons ready," she retorted. "Computer control, we're going to need the manpower inside to do this. Flood the main Pokémon hold with knockout gas."
"Brock and Misty are that way," Ash said. "With the other prisoners, I guess. It's not far, I think… uh…"
He wobbled slightly, then slumped forwards, and Riolu looked around in shock.
"Ash!" he called, then blinked a few times, and forced himself to concentrate. A blue glow lit up around his body, and just in time, as all the other Pokémon in the hold had either fallen over already or did a moment later.
Ash and his team had been fully occupied trying to explain to the captured Pokémon what was going on. Some of them like Brock and Misty's teams had only been out for a short while, maybe an hour or two at most, but there were Pokémon there who'd been defeated and captured a year and more ago and they'd been in stasis since then.
And now Hunter J had knocked them all out at once with gas, and Riolu's airslip technique had stopped him from getting a knockout dose but he only had so much air supply. Filtering out sand or rain was one thing, but filtering out gas was something else entirely.
Were there any Pokémon that could help? No Leafeon… Dexter's digital form had turned out to be as vulnerable as any other… Shaymin maybe could have helped, but they'd left her back on the ground rather than take her into danger, and right now it really would have been helpful to have her along…
Trying to think, Riolu fought off a yawn, then noticed one of the Pokémon who'd been unfrozen. An Altaria!
He vaulted over a sleeping Ponyta, skidded to a halt in front of the Altaria, and for lack of a better option hit them with an open-palmed slap.
The Altaria jerked, eyes blinking open. "Hey! What was that...for…"
"Altaria, please use Uproar!" Riolu asked. "I really hope you know it! And Defog if you can!"
That was enough to let the Altaria focus, and he emitted a high, piercing shriek. It echoed through the room, and Altaria pulsed out a wave of clear air that let Riolu gratefully drop and refresh his airslip.
Not finished with that, the Altaria then wove in a single jarring note of Perish Song that made the whole room tremble, smashing the hidden emitters, and a second Defog pulsed out a moment later.
"Thank you!" Riolu said. "That was a close one-"
The ship heaved, like it was a sailing ship that had just encountered a storm.
Pidgeot had seen the cloaking effect fail from her position far in the distance, and she was more than ready to exploit it.
She'd spent the last five minutes whirling up a tornado high in the atmosphere, building it up through a combination of direct circling motion and establishing the temperature gradient that could feed it, and she spent it whirling towards the airship at high speed – then flipped and flew past it, accelerating and accelerating so she'd get there first.
Once she was fast enough, Pidgeot did three successive left aileron rolls, establishing a Razor Wind, then dropped back just far enough to be outside the interference zone and did three right aileron rolls to set up a second Razor Wind.
And a third. A fourth. Fifth. Sixth.
She may have flown to Sinnoh and back today, but – like Charizard said – it was an opportunity to really let loose.
Finally, with a six-stacked drill of razor winds about to hit, and the tornado behind it, Pidgeot flared her wings and dropped out of the airstream.
Charizard had been fighting that Salamence for as long as she'd been setting up, and it looked like her doughty teammate was flagging.
But she had just the solution.
To the crew left on the bridge, it was like being hit by a natural disaster
First a blur of tan-cream-red-yellow shot past, smashing into the battling Salamence with a huge Brave Bird attack and slamming him into the ground. The blur itself didn't follow Salamence all the way in, instead pulling out at the last second and resolving into a Pidgeot which began circling.
Then, before the bridge crew could prioritize their guns on the now-slower and tired Pidgeot, something invisible hit the front of the ship hard enough to knock it sliding backwards through the air, making the whole ship's structure shake with some kind of horrible grinding resonance and throwing off splinters of armour before it finally destabilized.
Next, a tornado came down from overhead and smashed into the top of the ship, driving them into the ground and tearing apart some of the port main battery.
Then, finally, that Charizard who'd suddenly been freed from fighting Salamence came swooping up – past the section of the ship where the guns weren't working any more – and grabbed on with his claws, alternating between Flamethrower attacks and Dragon Claw moves to try and break through the compromised portion of the armour.
"Dexter, how long are we going to be in the air?" Ash called, staggering, then managed to steady himself. "And do you have the quickest route to the prison area?"
I have it, Dexter confirmed. I give this ship about ten minutes, if that.
"Right, let's-" Ash began, then spotted a blur of movement and threw himself backwards to dodge. A Poison Sting attack whistled just past him, about where it would have taken his eye out, and air whooshed out of Ash's lungs as he hit the ground.
"Well, well, well… it seems there's a pest on board my ship. Pity, really, since otherwise the pest might have lived."
Hunter J strode into the room, utterly unconcerned by the Pokémon filling the hold. "They can be in a cave, or in the water… out in the wild… but no pests are allowed inside. So, what will it be? Die standing, or on the ground like a pest?"
Ash got to his feet, and spared a glance at his Pokémon.
"Guys, you're tired," he said. "Dexter, Riolu, Pikachu, get these Pokémon to their trainers and off the ship."
He took his last two active Pokémon, still in their Pokéballs, and his gaze flicked back to J, then to her Drapion and Ariados. "I'll handle her."
Dexter hesitated, then hovered out of the room towards the brig.
"Look after yourself, Ash," Pikachu implored, looking back as he and the other Pokémon followed.
"You know me," Ash replied. "Last chance to back down, J."
J's arm snapped up and she fired her petrification cannon, and Ash threw both Pokéballs as he ducked forwards into a roll. That got him most of the way to Hunter J herself, and as Ash rose again he swiped out at her arm with his palm and knocked the cannon off her wrist.
To either side of them, Ivysaur picked up Drapion before throwing him into the wall and Squirtle fired a Water Gun to knock Ariados back, but neither of J's Pokémon was out of the fight yet and J was doing something with her goggles. Then she kicked out, and Ash ducked and blocked, except J seemed to have known exactly what he was about to do and the kick turned to be a feint.
Instead she punched with her left hand, which hit Ash's blocking arm and jarred it painfully, then retreated when Ash tried to punish her.
It was weird. Ash was in good condition, he knew that, and he'd been sparring against Riolu and Pikachu since the Fighting-type had joined his team, but it was like J knew everything he was trying to do almost as soon as he did.
Ash guessed maybe it was something to do with the goggles, but as they fought back and forth at the same time as their Pokémon he was the one taking the occasional hit or bruise or scratch. J was avoiding everything he did.
It wasn't like Ash wanted to beat up on an easy target, that would be morally wrong, but it'd have been nice to not fight someone with the advantage-
J's next blow hit Ash in the elbow, knocking him aside a step and leaving his side exposed. He responded as best he could, while J's follow-up was a snap-kick aimed at his neck, and one that would have broken it had he not managed to get a Protect in the way.
She froze for a moment in shock at the sudden green shimmer that had interrupted her killing blow, and Ash rammed his elbow into her side.
Something gave.
J staggered back, clutching her ribs with one hand. "You, but… right. Drapion, Ariados, we're leaving! The client never mentioned an Aura adept in Kanto."
Both Poison-types spat out a shower of sludgy gunk in unison, Drapion knocking Ivysaur physically backwards and Ariados forcing Squirtle to take cover. Then, with a hissing barrier of poison between them and Ash, they and their trainer retreated at a run.
A series of explosions rocked the ship, and Ash stumbled before Ivysaur caught him. "Thanks – that can't be good! Come on, guys, we'd better get to Brock and Misty!"
Squirtle went first, sliding ahead on his belly, and Ash and Ivysaur followed behind. They'd only just got out into the corridor though when another explosion went off, and a voice came over on the speakers.
Self Destruct sequence initiated. Plasma build up commenced. Venting in five minutes.
Ash said something that made both Ivysaur and Squirtle look at him in shock. "That… she's willing to do that to get rid of us?"
Ash! Dexter added, over the same speakers. I can't stop the buildup. We need to get out of here – save ourselves and the Pokémon, get to the hold to evacuate. It's going to cause a forest fire, but… it's the best we can do. We have to.
Ash punched the wall, which left a dent. "Damn it… is there really nothing we can do?"
He began running, anyway, retracing his steps through the corridors towards where they'd first come in, and Ivysaur and Squirtle followed. "I hate this. I hate that I can't make a difference, can't make everything okay… nothing I can think of would work."
Nobody likes being unable to make things right, Ash.
Ash didn't say anything else. Not as tears glimmered in his eyes… not as all the ex-prisoners evacuated from the hold along with the Pokémon… not as Maurice and Tyl gave him and Pikachu a ride, not as Pidgeot and Charizard, tired but triumphant, took up an escort formation either side.
Not even when he looked back and saw nobody was left on board… but when he did, he saw a light shining off to the south.
Shaymin felt ill.
Just after the trainer had left, she'd taken the Gracidea's blessing, and managed to fly to the toxic city. None of the combatants above, mechanical or Pokémon, had noticed her, and she'd flown around the city twice in a tearing hurry to absorb every last drop of its pollution she could.
She was bloated with the poisons from the air and the water, almost too much even for her to handle, and her flowers were not grey but a pitch black that normally would have made her uncomfortable.
But she could do this. And the boy who'd taken her here, careful and polite and kind, was fighting in the airship…
Narrowing her eyes, she saw a vast gaggle of Pokémon leaving the listing ship to the north and west, shortly after a set of machines had flown off to the south. And at the back was a familiar Pidgeot.
She'd never leave without him, Shaymin knew that much. And he'd never leave anyone else.
The ship was empty.
She inhaled, flying higher to get a good angle.
"Seed… FLARE!"
A massive, glowing spike of green Grass-typed energy punched right through the airship. It did what a tornado had failed to do, what Charizard had failed to do, and it broke the airship's hullframe. The reactor vented out a blast of fire, setting the hulk alight if nothing on the scale it would have been… but there was more that Shaymin had to do.
Seed Flare was a two part thing.
She held the energy fizzing through her body, the other half of what she'd just expended to destroy the airship, and kept it contained. And kept it contained, until the last flaming fragment of the ship had fallen to the ground.
Then she detonated an enormous Grassy Terrain, just as supercharged as the Seed Flare attack itself had been, and the whole area regrew in an instant into a verdant vista of flowers, bushes and small trees.
The effect even reached the city itself, which found itself changed in a day from a dubiously habitable city of pollution into a fragrant and pretty settlement.
Property values almost instantly tripled.
"Ash got to save the day again!" Misty complained, folding her arms. "And we didn't get to do anything! It's not fair!"
Brock tried to hold in a snigger, because Misty was winking at him and making it quite clear that she wasn't serious in the slightest.
Then he looked down. "We should probably get to the ground, I don't think Psyduck can keep us up much longer.
Whoever said ducks were fast level flyers was a hack, if you ask me, Psyduck grumbled.
Meanwhile, to the south, a small flotilla of anti-gravity craft swept on southwards.
J was thinking hard about what had happened.
The Aura adept had been a nasty surprise, especially that he had a Riolu with him, and so had his Pokémon. They'd even beaten Salamence, though it had taken two of them working together… still, Salamence would have to improve before J would feel comfortable fighting the adept again.
And she'd lost the airship, as well as everything on it, which was going to be crippling to her business ventures for the next few years. Even that could be replaced, eventually, but her reputation was going to have taken a big hit.
And she'd have to correct that with a little judicious revenge, once she was ready. His Pokémon attacks wouldn't surprise her again, and her predictive goggles would give her an advantage next time.
"Chief," she said, getting the attention of the lead boat's navigator. "Head south, to the Orange Archipelago. We're going to go and visit my dear brother…"
AN:
So. Hunter J. So far as that scarily competent person is concerned, it is now personal. Ash broke her ship.
Rewrite changes include that Pikachu now did the electro-blast himself.