Chapter 91 – Stuff and nonsense
Bare-chested, barefoot, and dressed in nothing other than a pair of sweat soaked underwear might have made Ash feel exposed and vulnerable at the best of times. Lot in this dark hallway, with only the strange glowing tube for light, it was almost unbearable. The Halberd was unnerving him. The edges of the hallway were hidden in shadow, from which a Team Rocket grunt might emerge. A constant hum and vibrations were filling the air, and it was becoming stifling warm inside.
Which, as Cameron pointed out, "You hear that. We must be getting close to the engine room."
Ash focused his attention on the only other thing on his mind, Koraidon. "So, you're a Pokémon I captured in the future, and you've come back in time to rescue me, now."
"Sort of," Koraidon replied. "Time travel isn't always linear. In fact, spacetime itself isn't always linear. Back in my world, the Zeraora guild sent me, and my rescue team here to bring Necrozma back to its world."
"You're world?" Ash queried shaking his head. This was starting to make less and less sense.
"I live in Ultra Megalopolis! It's a city in ultra-space. Essentially another dimension. You're familiar with Ultra Space and Ultra Wormholes, right? Have we done the Ultra Jungle yet." When Ash gave him a blank look, he added, "I take it that's a no. I keep forgetting, you haven't met me yet. This is all new for you."
"I know what Ultra Wormholes are," Ash grumbled. That wasn't entirely true. He didn't understand Ultra Wormholes at all, despite having seen them and travelled through them. He had never heard of the Ultra Jungle, spacetime or what linear meant in this context. And right now, he didn't care. He certainly didn't want a lesson in astrophysics from this Pokémon. So instead, he asked, "What's the Zeraora Guild."
"They oversee the rescue and exploration teams in Ultra Megalopolis," said Koraidon. "Similar to the Wigglytuff guild in Treasure Town!"
"Where?"
Koraidon pulled a face. "Right, I keep forgetting you haven't been to any of these places yet."
"Wait a ding." Ash had only just noticed the inconsistency in Koraidon's story. He started to feel his heart rate increase as he wondered yet again whether he was being tricked. "You said you were from the distant past. Now you're saying you're from Ultra Space."
"It's compilated," Koraidon replied quickly, without seeing the worried and accusatory look on Ash's face. "I was born in this world thousands of years ago. A time traveller brought me to the future in his time machine. That's going to happen in a few years' time, from a linear point of view. A few years in the future after that, an event causes you and I to travel into the Ultra-Space, and we eventually make our way to Ultra Megalopolis. So really, as it stands now, I'm from the past, the future and an alternate dimension."
Ash's head hurt. He had barely understood a word that Koraidon had said. A voice in his head kept telling him that this was a trick. And yet, as Jimmy had said, Ultra Space was real and time travel was real, albeit limited to one Pokémon, Celebi. The tale was not impossible., however farfetched it sounded.
He tried his best to make sense of it. "So, you're telling me that all this stuff." He tried to remember what Koraidon had said. "Being taken to the future. Meeting me. Ultra-Mega-wherever. That both has happened and is still going to happen."
"Like I said," said Koraidon. "Time isn't always linear. Humans and Pokémon tend to think of time as linear. A series of cause and effect." He dumbed his explanation down further when he saw Ash staring blankly at him again. "What I mean is, you think that everything you do, leads to something else and time progresses in days and hours. But when you add time travel to the mix, things get complicated. You could be born in the future and live out your days in a time before you were even born. So yeah, there are things in my past that are still yet to happen at this point in time. Things that are in your personal future."
That made a little more sense, but still sounded like gibberish. So, he decided to ask something different. "So, what happens to me in the future? Do I become a Pokémon Master? Are Pikachu and I happy?"
Koraidon pulled a face again. "Sorry Ashy, I can't tell you that much about your personal future. It's against the rules."
Of course... "What rules."
"Yours. You and I never seem to meet in a linear order. So, we agreed we wouldn't tell each other about our personal futures. Too much information can be a dangerous thing."
Ash frowned at him. "So, wait. Even if one of us knows something really bad is going to happen to the other in the future, we can't say. What if we could stop something terrible happening."
"It doesn't work that way," said Koraidon. "Knowing about something in the future, doesn't mean it can be changed. Somethings in time are fixed, and often knowing about something makes it certain. One often meets their doom on the road they take to avoid it. So, we learn to live in the moment."
Ash pouted. "You know that seems like a very convenient response. You're from my future but can't tell me anything about it!"
Koraidon sighed. "You still think I'm some kind of trick. You still don't fully trust me. I suppose that's to be expected."
"Okay then," Cameron pipped up all of a sudden. He had been quiet up to that point, allowing Ash to speak to Koraidon uninterrupted. "If you can't tell Ash anything about his future, can you say something unimportant. Something that doesn't affect us personally."
Koraidon turned his head over his shoulder to look at Cameron. "Like what?"
Cameron put his arms behind his head, and looked up at the ceiling, thinking. "I dunno. Do the Go-Rock Quads break up? Does Alder get defeated at the Unova champion."
Koraidon chuckled. "You're clever. Yes, the Go-Rock Quads break up! Tiffany opens a donut shop in Fall City and Clyde goes to jail on a drugs bust."
"Ha." Cameron snorted. "Really. Tiffany running a donut shop!"
"Alder loses the championship," Koraidon continued. "No, I'm not saying who the new champion is, because that does affect your future. Oh, and it's a great donut shop. Ash and I went there once. Wasn't a good idea to bring Snorlax."
"I'll try to remember that" muttered Ash.
"Hey guys," came a voice from behind. "Wait up."
The four of them stopped, as Gladion came sprinting towards them.
"What happened to you," asked Cameron curiously.
"Just where do you think you're going," he demanded, folding his arms. "You've been walking down his corridor for ages."
Ash got the impression that he was trying to look tough.
"We're looking for the engine room," said Cameron. "We told you."
"You think this is going to be as easy as just finding Groudon and setting it free!"
Cameron frowned at him. "Well if you've got a better idea. I mean, what are we supposed to do, rush the flight deck. We've only have Pokémon and they got all of ours under their control. Would kind of be a one-sided fight, don't you think?"
Gladion snorted but didn't have a reply.
"We should be getting close to something," said Jimmy. "Those engine noises are getting louder..."
[Pokémon]
Meanwhile….
Stripped of its armour, armaments and wings, the Halberd would resemble the tiers of a long rectangular wedding cake, with the flight decks, crew quarters, hospital and everything needed to control the vessel, and the hangars, storage, and engine rooms at the bottom. It had been built to transport aircraft, troops, and supplies into combat zones, long distances away in a short space of time, launch and land smaller aircraft, serve as mobile command centre and house all the people who do these things.
It needed to combine the elements of a plane, ship, air force base and a small city. There was one other thing it needed to be as well: a forest. That is, the Halberd needed to be habitable to Pokémon. Though the government had intended it to be built to carry Primids, Pokémon are still an invaluable resource in war, or may need rescuing in the event of a war. It's manufacturers, borrowing a design principal from the Centurion, had constructed a habitation on the second lowest deck.
Standing in the middle of the habitation zone, Meowth could have been back in the Hoenn or Sinnoh regions, chasing the twerps. The thought made him smirk, as examined his prize… He had finally achieved something that he had even dared to imagine in his wildest dreams. He had all (well not quite all, but a lot) of the twerps Pokémon lined up alongside the bank of a small stream, awaiting his command.
He felt giddy, his voice a few octaves higher than usual as he said, "turn to the left."
The line of Pokémon, in one silent, fluid motion, turned to the left, facing away from Meowth and towards the hull of ship.
"And back to the right."
They returned to staring blankly at Meowth, their eyes pupilless and bright red. The sight of it made him laugh so hard, that he nearly dropped what he was holding under his arms. "hehehe…hahahaha….Ahhh." He quickly managed to regain his grip, before setting the items down in the soft dirt beside him.
It was the eggs…The ones that belonged to Charizard and Dragonite. Their respective owners were standing only a few feet away, making no attempt to retrieve them, or prevent Meowth doing whatever he wanted with them. He glanced at each of them for a second, then burst out laughing.
"Ahahahaha…At last. After all these years, you're all finally mine. Hehehe." He sidled up to Pikachu and put his arm around him. Pikachu remained still, like a statue. "Wait til' da boss gets a hold of you," he giggles. He squeezed one of Pikachu's cherry red cheeks between his large feline fingers Again, Pikachu made no response. "He'll be so pleased, I bet I'll finally get a Team Rocket Uniform."
A dreamy expression crossed Meowth's face as he imagined sitting on Giovanni's lap, surrounded by Charizard, Dragonite, Zacian, Axew and Hunter. Closed his eyes as he imaged a set of fingers scratching and rubbing him under his chin. "Dat will show dat stuck Persian, who da real top cat is…."
His fantasy was interrupted by a voice calling out from somewhere above. "Meowth. Have you stored those Pokémon yet. You need to get back up here!" It was Jessie over the Halberd's PA system. She sounded irritable, though that wasn't exactly unusual for Jessie. Meowth sighed and rolled his eyes.
"COMING," he shouted back, though it was pointless. The PA system was not two way. He let go of Pikachu and turned back to face the group again. "Now, you lot make sure to stay here until I need you, right." He laughed at his own joke. "In fact, everybody get to you knees, paws behind heads."
In unison, the Pokémon all sank to their knees, and raised their paws and claws to the back of their heads. Their elbows stuck out in a triangular angle. The sight of it made Meowth laugh even harder. "I could really get used to dis." He picked the eggs up under his arms once again and prepared to set off. Then a better idea crossed his mind. "Oh twerpachoo. Charmie. Could you give me a paw with these!"
[Pokémon]
Five decks above Meowth, the rest of Team Rocket had gathered in the briefing room. Set up almost like a small classroom or lecture theatre, the room was filled with rows of chairs facing a large white projector screen beside a small podium. The intention of the room was for commanders to give missions briefings to soldiers. For Team Rocket, it served as a forum for Gozu to dispense the evil deeds of the organisation to the grunts.
"Right, I'll say this once so everybody's up to speed," Gozu barked. "Team Plasma managed to give us the slip on Poni Island. Necrozma is in their possession. We're tracking the Frigate over the radar system, and we believe it's on course to return to the Unova Region. I'll show you."
He pressed a button on the podium and the lights in the room dimmed. A large map of the ocean, stretching from Alola to Unova appeared on the screen behind him. To dots, representing the Frigate and the Halberd, moved across the screen.
"We're accelerating the Halberd to hyper speed. We're lagging behind the Frigate, but this vessel is faster. We estimate that, on our current course and trajectory, we should intercept them around here, just off the coast of Johto."
Two lines emerged from the dots, intersecting about fifty kilometres to the southeast of Olivine City, where a red X formed.
"We've estimated this as the ideal location to intercept due to its proximity to base. The rest of the plan should be easy to implement after that. Any questions?" When no one put up their hand, causing Gozu to chuckle. "I thought not."
"Well, he didn't mention the laser cannon did he," James whispered to Jessie, leaning across so only she could hear. The two of them, plus Butch and Cassidy, were seated in the front row...With three empty seats left between them.
Gozu glared at James momentarily but said nothing. He continued, "This is the approach. We fire a long range shot from about ten kilometres range to the Plasma Frigate. That's sufficient to stay out of the range of their rear cannons and issue a disabling shot. Once it's disabled, we can retract the aircraft in with the tractor beam and prepare to storm the vessel. Thanks to the Ultra-Remo units, they're Pokémon will fall under our control."
"He's awfully confident," James muttered to Jessie again. "Something always goes wrong for us. Especially when those twerps are involved."
"Do you have something to say James," Gozu grumbled, causing James to nearly jump out of his seat.
"Uhh…No sir," he replied hurriedly.
"Because if you do, would you mind sharing it with the rest of us?"
James went the colour of a Flareon as he suddenly became aware of everyone in the room staring at him. A murmur ran across the room, and some of the other grunts laughed.
"I-I'm sorry," James mumbled. He was struggling to get the words out.
"Then shut it," growled Gozu.
Fortunately for James, he was spared further humiliation by a distraction in the form of Meowth bursting through the doors to the briefing room. Everybody swivelled around in their seats to see who had entered, straining to see the smaller Pokémon over each other's shoulders. Meowth was followed by two Pokémon, Charizard and Ashachu, who waited at the back of the room beside the door. Each had an egg clutched in their arms.
"Sorry I'm late," said Meowth loudly, seemingly oblivious to how everyone was looking at him, or the way Gozu was glaring at him as though he would like nothing more than to snap his neck. "What did I miss." He strolled up to where Jessie and James were sitting and filled one of the seats separating Jessie and James from Butch and Cassidy.
Gozu rounded on them. "Would you two minds telling your pet not to interrupt important briefings. If he wants to be a part of them, he should make an effort to get here on time. The call went out fifteen minutes ago!"
"Meowth," Jessie hissed angrily at the cat, leaning across James to stick her face into his. "I called you up here ten minutes ago."
"Hey, it's a big ship. I got here as fast as I could," Meowth protested.
"Jessie, could you get off me," James winced, pulling a face at the sharp pain in his ribs. "You're elbows sticking into me."
Jessie ignored him as she continued to berate Meowth. "This is the largest assignment we've been trusted with. Don't mess it up for us. When I tell you do something, you do it."
"One final matter I would like to inform you of, before you take your positions," Gozu continued, still glaring at Jessie, James and Meowth. "There are four prisoners aboard the vessel. Trainers who got in the way of the operation in Alola. They're restrained on deck four in the cross-vessel engine shaft, and we've taken their Pokémon from them. I don't want any agent interfering with them, unless authorised by myself or Matori. The Pokémon have been detained in the habitation deck and are under EM Wave control. Same applies to them. That's the briefing. Everybody, take your positions!"