Author's Note: SInce this is the only fic I have with guaranteed updates (though occasionally intermittent if my job gets in the way) would you guys prefer if I put the initial one or two chapters of new ideas in one of those miscellaneous ideas fics the way a lot of other authors do? I never read those for other people so I am unsure about the appeal to my own readers. I have the first chapter of 4 other stories but I'm unsure whether I want to continue them or how they would be received.
Anyways, I think we head to the Conference after this chapter and then we do a few bridge chapters and hit a small time skip. I was going to have this go a little worse for them originally but I decided to give Isaac an uncomplicated win this time, since some of my future plans might feel repetitive if I don't vary up the scale of successes and failures.

Chapter 22: Meowth Among the Pidgey

We crouched behind tree cover as we observed the Team Rocket Warehouse in the middle of Five Island Meadow.

We being myself, the International Police agents Nanu and Koichi (who apparently as a trainee had yet to take his eponymous name from my few visions of his future as Looker), a Ranger named Kerrigan, and the local Officer Jenny.

Elite Four Lorelei was in the surrounding seas ready to catch anyone fleeing by air or water.

And Mewtwo was…somewhere, waiting to teleport in. My kadabra, the Absent One, was part of my team for this excursion as he could communicate over long distances with everyone, including Mewtwo.

Who he referred to as The Apogee. Or The Psychic Who Soars the Highest. Not concerning at all. (I am in fact super concerned about this).

Once we had set up a perimeter with ourselves and our pokemon the plan was for Mewtwo to teleport in, rip the roof off the building, and block teleportation out so we could go in and arrest everyone inside.

Easy peasy, right?

"Target in sight, perimeter being set." I had The Absent One transmit, and my cohort all began to spread out to their target points.

To this end Mr. Darcy sat waiting in my shadow as a bodyguard, Hannibal and Shahrazad were waiting back at the edge of town to take flight, Cleo had already tunneled underneath us here, and I had Artagnan still in his ball waiting for a duel. The heat of the Sevii Islands was not conducive to Alexei or Brinker, and my other pokemon were too inexperienced or in Estella's case I just had to have the kadabra instead for the operation.

We weren't entirely sure if Giovanni was on sight, but we knew a significant number of his remaining admins were. We had intel confirming that Archer, Domino, and a poaching expert named Robert Vicious were present inside. That was enough leadership to have us believe that perhaps Giovanni was holding court in some way.

Mewtwo, however, had stated that he would only aid us outside of the initial cracking of the warehouse if Giovanni himself were present. Essentially, the psychic-type had called dibs.

The rest of my team dispersed to their locations in the ambush. The ranger and Jenny were one pair, Koichi and Nanu were another, and I was left all on my lonesome. I was slightly confused by this, but I was technically a seventeen year old, eight badge trainer, with a direct psychic talk-line to a legendary pokemon so maybe they thought I would be fine. Of course Nanu had told me to only engage if forced to and that they would 'take care of most of the arrests'.

As if.

Nanu was probably the only person in this group with a stronger team than mine. I'd be needed, I was sure of it.

I feel like maybe they were expecting most of them to flee which is why Lorelei, our heavy hitter, was out in the ocean perimeter.

In my opinion the likelihood of fleeing was based on how obviously Mewtwo revealed himself.

"I believe they are using one of your communication devices," Speak of the devil and he would speak to you apparently, "Their minds show Giovanni's face yet I sense not his presence."

I frowned, that was unfortunate, he must have completely gone to ground and was only communicating through digital proxies. He'd be hard to chase down now.

"I understand, you can remove the roof and then fall back to just observe if you so choose."

"As agreed upon," He reminded me, "If they have a strong enough challenge I may step in. Do not be disappointing and allow yourself to be too easily overwhelmed however, or I may leave you to your fate."

Turning to the Absent One I had him transmit to the team that we were ready to begin.

With a blue glow the roof of the warehouse was torn off and flung into the distance, hopefully towards the ocean.

Rocket Grunts came swarming out like bees.

A sandstorm whipped around in the air fifty feet above us as Shahrazad and Hannibal arrived, just in time to block off a large golbat, a charizard, a fearow, and a honchkrow from escaping into the air.

I trusted them to handle that, Hannibal had plenty of practice sparring with Ash's Charizard. And Shahrazad could likely crush the rest. Her mastery of her sonic abilities would neutralize the golbat's own skills and give her the upper hand on the other two in the sandstorm.

As I surveyed the fleeing Rockets I saw the Jenny and ranger corralling dozens of Grunts with their pair of arcanine and other pokemon.

Across the field Nanu was taking on a man I recognized as Proton, an admin we had not known was in attendance, while Koichi was taking on a pair of Rockets that had sent out an espeon and an ariados respectively.

I quickly positioned myself to cut off a mountain of a man wearing a metal mask as he pushed through the chaos with a few flunkies following behind.

"Robert Vicious!" I called out, "You are under arrest by the authority of the Indigo League. Stand down." I pulled Artagnan's Safari Ball out into my hand, ready for him to refuse.

He grinned at me instead, "As if, kid! You're in for a world of hurt! We've still got some tricks left we hadn't shown before!"

I frowned as a pokeball very close in appearance to Mewtwo's black pokeballs appeared in his hand. Then with a sharp twinge in my brain I saw an angry and boosted tyranitar come from a similar ball in my mind.

But luckily for me, it was not a tyranitar that emerged in the present. But a very enraged scizor, with roiling waves of black and purple energy coming off of it.

My breath caught, Shadow Pokemon.

I'd had multiple visions of these, and I worried that that meant at some point, if not stopped now, Team Rocket may infect Ho-oh, Lugia, and even Mewtwo or Celebi with that strange condition.

The other part of me, the part that craved a challenge, took over though, I grinned, knowing that Artagnan was going to love this.

"You have a challenger, Artagnan!" I called out and threw the Safari Ball, releasing my kleavor.

"Kleave!" He cried in challenge as he appeared. His grin in some way matched my own as he eyed his opponent. I could tell as a primal sense of competition enveloped him.

"SWORDS DANCE!" Both I and Vicious called out to our pokemon. They both boosted with incredible talent and grace.

"Set advantage!" I called out a hidden command. This would have Artagnan swing in with a barrage of Stone Axes, with the intent of if he missed setting up small traps of floating shards to hit the opponent with later.

"Metal Claw! Tear it to shreds!"

There definitely was a lot more oomph behind that strike than just the Swords Dance could account for. This Shadow Scizor was boosted beyond safe amounts. Not as much as a mega evolution of course, but the baseline level of this pokemon seemed to be that of a pokemon that had boosted off of the excess energies of Ancient Power twice at least.

Even as Artagnan parried it to the side to bleed most of the momentum off, the glowing silver pincher slammed into the ground with a thump, creating a small impact crater.

No direct hits from that, I thought to myself.

"Afterimage!"

I had to keep Artagnan ahead of this juiced pokemon, and that meant our combination of Agility and Double Team. Two moves often used in conjunction, but rarely ever properly and fully combined. We'd been training hard.

The next Metal Claw went through a flickering image of Artagnan and suddenly the field was full of him. Each one continued on with the momentum he had carried when he left the image behind. Disorienting the opposing scizor significantly.

The scizor was however, still able to defend itself with a well timed use of Iron Defense. Crossing its pincher arms in front to block an on target Stone Axe. Artagnan didn't have any truly super effective moves, so I had him going for neutral same-typed moves.

"Close the trap!" I called out, and with a vicious cackle, Artagnan channeled his rock-type energy into his shards he'd left behind over the repeated exchanges of Stone Axes and Metal Claws.

They all slammed into the scizor at once, sending it staggering backwards. At this point I made a gesture and Mr. Darcy emerged from Vicious's shadow and grabbed his arms.

"Shit…" He didn't struggle past this point. I went over and retrieved the vile pokeball and returned the scizor.

Out of the corner of my eye as I walked over to handcuff him I noticed him slowly sliding some kind of cylinder out of his sleeve. I wasn't having any of that.

"Right hand, wrist." I coldly commanded, Mr. Darcy squeezed with just enough strength to do damage without actually breaking the bone, a crunch was still heard and some kind of remote fell out of his sleeve in pieces.

"Damnit!" He scowled at me now.

"Yeah, I am not a fresh faced trainer letting you all escape on a balloon."

He blinked then leered at me, "Well good luck keeping it in control if you find it."

His voice was dripping enough venom that I was pretty sure he wanted whatever it was to bite my head off when we found it.

Shaking my head I brought him over to where Nanu had wrapped up with Proton and Koichi had Domino in handcuffs as well.

The blonde woman was sitting on the ground pouting. Geez, Team Rocket recruited young, at this point she couldn't be more than two years older than I was. Then again I guess Jessie and James weren't much older than that? I looked over at the other two grunts Koichi had fought, one had weird blue hair and looked to be the same age as Domino and the other had some odd poofy blonde buns sticking out to the side and appeared to be maybe in her mid-twenties. Much more reasonable age to be in organized crime.

I am saying in my head, as a seventeen year old fighting the aforementioned organized crime ring.

I realize this is hypocritical, and with my scientific background I'll acknowledge brain chemistry and plasticity have way more to do with maturity than actual time (in fact certain experiences can cause the brain to freeze in maturity, fascinating topic) I will actively ignore that and try to excuse this as me being more advanced due to my memories, as fragmented and dream-like as they are.

Oh well, it's not like I was dating or anything where there would be an actual moral conundrum to explore, fighting crime was perfectly acceptable in this society at my age. Even if many adults certainly don't prefer it being a necessity.

As we wrapped up the ground troops (only a few grunts had gotten away into the forest and we had a few extra Jennys in town as back up that would handle them as they tried to flee the island) Shahrazard and Hannibal brought the remaining fliers crashing down to the ground in…relatively controlled crashes.

Archer had already been on the ground knocked out alongside his golbat, and the ranger had gotten over to secure him.

The charizard had been handled by Hannibal swimmingly, it was pinned to the ground by one of his massive hind-legs and the owner being paralyzed with a glower. I recognized him as Arlo from one of the dossiers I'd gone over with the League. He was an up and comer, on the short list for an executive promotion we had been willing to wager.

And the one on the honchkrow that was teetering around, apparently having been confused by Shahrazad's sonic attacks, was…familiar.

I sighed as she held out her wrists at my approach.

She flipped her brunette bang out of the way of her eyes and smiled dead at me with her purple lipstick glaringly obvious.

"Ooh, we meet again. And are those for me? Well I suppose it is the second date, handcuffs can be so fun." She winked at me.

"...Sierra." I replied, flatly. She was somewhere between my age and Domino's so that flirting made a twisted kind of sense. Especially with her recognizing me.

"But…what's that new pokemon you have there, sweetie? Did your daddy find a new fossil?"

I froze. She knew my identity as Isaac Beech. That was…bad. Because it meant so did the rest of Team Rocket's higher echelons. She was of a similar fast track position as Arlo.

"No…he's my own discovery. You can read about it in Poke-Nature in a few months. I'll make sure the prison has a copy."

She pouted, it was…more effective than I would have liked to admit, "Can you visit and give it to me in person?"

Not all of my…memory dreams had been pokemon related, as much as I tried to suppress those that weren't. This…distracted me by triggering some memories I didn't necessarily want to bleed through.

I shook my head, "Maybe if you've got reports of good behavior."

"Are you asking me to be a good girl for you?"

Arceus. Damn. This. Woman.

Luckily around this point is when Nanu took pity on me and came over to finish the transfer of custody.