Chapter 10: Sailing Away With Me
We'd barely reached the mouth of the Vermillion Bay when the Rockets struck. There had been far more than I imagined disguised as both passengers and crew.
Currently Brinker was playing defense with Mirror Coats, Mist, and Powder Snow to control the field while I had Cleo swerving in and out of combat with Double Kicks, Bites, and debilitating Toxic to force our foes into retreat.
Already we'd taken out two golbat, three raticate, who knows how many ratatata, and some assorted other standard Rocket fare.
That's when a face I unfortunately recognized, and not from any of the Gen I games or anime, stepped forward.
Well, at least I recognized her mostly, Team GO Rocket Leader Sierra looked closer to my age than the mid-20s she seemed in the AR cell phone game I recognized her from.
Hopefully this meant she didn't have any of the more terrifying team additions of Gardevoir or Gyarados that had given my past incarnation so much trouble.
"Move aside, Grunts. I will handle this one. He's too cute to pass up."
Oh, I was definitely vomiting after this was over.
"Sableye, let's test you out!" And she released her iconic shiny sableye, though thankfully it wasn't a shadow pokemon at all.
Yet. Came unbidden to my thoughts.
"Brinker, continued keeping people off of us, Cleo, return!" My starter wasn't the best choice I had here. Especially tired out.
"Engarde, Artagnan!" A little over the top? Maybe, but what good trainer doesn't have a flair for the dramatic?
My scyther appeared rearing to go, the engarde summon letting him know I was sending him out for a serious battle, not just mere training or fun.
"Scyyythe!" He was grinning like the battle lunatic he was, and for once I had a great outlet for him. We weren't as well coordinated in personality and mind as I was with my other pokemon, which made sense as while he could evolve into types I harmonized well with he wasn't at the moment, but when we both singularly focused on a battle of great importance I could feel the echo of what we will have later on.
"Shadow Claw!" Sierra wasted no time in opening up the fight and her well trained sableye darted quickly into the maneuver, ghostly energies flickering along its right claw.
"Execute the Fast and the Furious!" I called out, a very specific battle plan I had drilled into him in particular.
The claw swiped straight through Artagnan, revealing an after image. A lime-green glowing blade slammed into the sableye immediately sending it skidding along the deck. However, when it got up and glared at the bug pokemon I knew it was glaring at yet another after image.
Artagnan was using Agility, Double Team, Fury Cutter, and the Mist hovering above us from Brinker to chain after image strikes.
Sierra however quickly realized what was going on after merely the second strike.
"Shotgun Power Gem into the Mist!"
I clicked my tongue.
"That's right, the jig is up! Sableye, pelt the silly bug!"
"I think you'll find your DANCE card still rather full!" I have a weakness for quips, sue me.
Suddenly the Mist shot apart, to show Artagnan finishing up the motions of a Swords Dance. And he'd already used Agility quite a few times.
Needless to say it was over quickly.
Two more Fury Cutters and the sableye thumped to the deck, unconscious. Sierra returned the creature, eyes burning with hatred.
"Don't think you're getting off so easily! My next pokemon earns the title of monster easily!"
Except, before she could release it, the entire boat shook after a small explosion.
And a roar. Of a gyarados.
"Uh oh…" I muttered, not necessarily surprised. Everyone else was though.
They panicked. "It's a gyarados! Rockets, grab what you have and retreat back to base!"
I, on the other hand, had plenty of time to bemoan the fact that I found magneton very creepy and had never picked one up. Because this would have been the perfect time to have something capable of using Thunder.
And yet…I still ran off toward the roaring. If we could subdue James's gyarados before it drew in the rest the damage could be minimized and the ship could perhaps limp into port.
I…didn't have great options for fighting a gyarados however.
As I rounded the bend in the stern of the ship and came up upon the rampaging gyarados an idea struck me.
I didn't have to fight it. I just had to calm it.
"Huckleberry let's go!" I called out my quagsire, this was going to be quick…hopefully. "Yawn!"
Huckleberry's mouth opened wide and a loud reverberating yawn echoed forth towards the irate fish-dragon.
There was no way that freshly evolved it knew Outrage or Uproar, it was almost certainly just using a simple Rage and Dragon Rage to cause the disruption.
That said, even after the Yawn hit we needed to stall for a minute or two before it finally took effect.
I sent Brinker back out to lay down Mist and Powder Snow to confuse the beast as it slowly settled down and drifted off to sleep. The Mist was so thick that I unfortunately did not see the red beam of light return the creature to a pokeball, something I would learn to much surprise in the future.
The ship was listing pretty badly to the side, but as far as I could tell I had perhaps saved the day.
The next hour was spent running around and helping the crew keep the ship moving. Ice and mud patched up holes, set planks into place, etc.
Eventually everyone who hadn't immediately jumped ship via teleport or flight was exhausted and the captain made an announcement.
"Due to the tides we can't turn immediately around and must continue partially on, I estimate that at our current speed we'll make Acapulco and Porto Vista in a day. I apologize to all our passengers for suffering from this awful attack."
It went on like that for a bit, putting the blame firmly on Team Rocket, thanking the brave trainers that fought them off, and such.
I found Ash and his friends over towards the front bow of the ship. "Well…that was certainly an adventure." I commented.
"That stupid, Team Rocket!" Ash exclaimed, "I wish I'd had a chance to send them blasting off before James had that magikarp evolve!"
"Yeah that was…unexpected I am sure." Okay, well it was for them, I'd definitely tried to plan around it. In fact, my planning had made the whole endeavor rather anticlimactic.
"Good call with the sleep," Brock commented, "Though I am pretty sure I saw it get recalled so now James has a gyarados, assuming he can get it to listen."
I thought back to James's propensity for pokemon attempting to swallow him out of love, he'd be in an interesting pickle if this one took up that habit.
"Yeah…that feels like a problem for next week's episode."
The three all looked at me as if I had grown a second head, I just raised an eyebrow back at them, "Think back and tell me your journeys so far don't look like a Saturday morning cartoon when it comes to shenanigans."
Brock opened and closed his mouth, Ash's brows furrowed in what was for him deep thought, and Misty just sighed. They knew I was right, even if I was using some odd meta knowledge from my dream-memories.
"So, Isaac!" Ash asked enthusiastically, "Did you find any of the pokemon you were looking for? Where are you going next? Lt. Surge was your only badge you needed with graduating, right?"
I nodded, "Yes, I need to collect a few more pokemon to give me a versatile roster for the Conference, and then I need to train up all those new acquisitions. We've got about seven months left. Which is probably enough time for you to get your badges, but try to move quickly with badges five through seven, Ash. You'll want a lot of time to train if you plan to take on the eighth and final major badge with Giovanni in Viridian."
Ash nodded enthusiastically, "Yeah! You bet'cha! I'll train really hard and a lot of my team are going to be evolved by then, too!"
Pikachu protested slightly at this, "You can stay a pikachu as long as you want, Pikachu!"
The small yellow rodent nodded in response, he wasn't as adamantly against the idea as in the anime due to Surge being far less derisive of him, but he still didn't like the idea at all of rushing it.
"That's great, Ash. After I finish my collection route I should be training at the family ranch between Saffron and Celadon, so come see me there for some sparring and practice before you challenge Sabrina, yeah?"
In this world Sabrina was more like the games thankfully, none of the completely off the wall behavior from the anime or manga to worry about. Of course that did mean Ash was certainly going to be curb stomped if he went in even after heading to Lavender and catching a haunter. He was less likely to give up haunter with Sabrina being different as well, so perhaps Ash would have a much more varied team moving forward. He already had his existing team trusting him far more. Perhaps even Charmander wouldn't act out after it evolved, seeing as Ash had been able to be a more active participant in his growth with my Brick Break Boot Camp.
I handed Brock my contact card and that was that. We headed back to our cabins and about a day later we limped into port, where I needed to catch a ferry out a bit further southwest to check out a certain canyon.
Seven months, I thought to myself as I plotted out potential acquisitions once more, what could I do with seven months? I probably only had time to hit one other regions, two tops. Which meant I probably needed to prioritize. For example, as amazingly powerful as metagross would be overall, I needed things that countered Mewtwo's immense psychic power far more than I needed an attempt to perhaps come close to matching it.
Which meant I almost certainly needed a golurk, a krookodile, or a bisharp. And all three of those were native to not just one region, but one single location, the Desert Resort in Unova.
So unless I was to buy or delegate some acquisitions, something I didn't want to do with some of the more rare and unique pokemon I was aware of, I would be restricted there. The good news, great news even, was that the sealed away giant golurk in the ruins there was very powerful.
It was an absolute pity travel wasn't faster in this world, even with having a pokemon that can fly (something I was about to remedy) inter-regional travel often took days or weeks. The routes between regions were just so dangerous that travel was rarely direct.
Because, if I had the travel time to hit both Unova and Sinnoh, I had every confidence I could have managed to wear down or safely befriend on or more of the mythical pokemon of my elements I was aware of.
Except…yes that might work, I thought as I searched through my bag for a very specific business card.
Samson Oak was heading back to Alola soon, and I might offer to pay a bounty for picking up an interesting item from one of those antique shops for me.