A/N: Hey all, thank you for reading Jenny & Joy! First off, apologies for taking so long to finish the story. I kind of felt like I had spoiled Chapter 3 a little through choosing a fairly cliche choice of villain which was a shot to my confidence, so I stepped away for a while to regain my drive to finish it, as well as revise Chapter 3, which now feels less predictable.
Now, the end result is here: Chapters 4 and 5, both of them serving to conclude the story in what I hope is a satisfying way. It was originally a single chapter, but it was so long that I split it in half to make it easier to read.
I hope you enjoy it all!
-Almighty_Malachi
Joy ran through the warehouse-sized facility, past various tanks containing Pokémon in stasis. She was seeing red and not thinking clearly. All that was going through her mind was the resolution that she had to free them all, no matter what.
"Joy, wait!" Jenny hissed while she quietly tried to catch up to her partner. This was no time to be running into the lion's den blind, especially without a plan, which she was certain Joy did not have.
Just as she was catching up with her, she heard another set of footsteps nearby. Acting quickly, she grabbed Joy and manoeuvred her behind one of the tanks, so they were both out of sight.
Peeking out, Jenny saw a pair of researchers in lab coats walking past, taking notes on the different Pokémon. Just when she feared they might be spotted, she watched them turn a corner and walk in the opposite direction.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Jenny turned her attention back to Joy, who was still struggling to get free. Jenny herself was having to keep her own temper down. She knew exactly why Joy was so determined to go out there, but they needed to think it through first.
"Joy, listen to me." She said in a low voice. "I want to free all of these Pokémon as much as you do, but we need to be cautious with how we proceed. Otherwise, we'll be caught before we can do much to help them."
Joy finally stopped struggling, and so Jenny let go of her. How stupid, Joy thought bitterly, letting my emotions get the better of me like that.
"I'm… sorry. I wasn't thinking, I didn't even know what I was going to do."
Jenny placed a hand on Joy's shoulder encouragingly. "That's what plans are for, and I'd say we still have time to make one before it's too late."
Joy closed her eyes, took a deep breath through her nose, exhaled, and opened her eyes looking much calmer.
"Okay. You're right. What should we try?"
Jenny thought about this; truth be told she didn't have much of a better idea of what they could do.
"These pods are probably opened through the control panels in front of them, but it would take too long to release them one at a time, and we'd end up getting caught." Jenny mused. "What we need is to see if there's some sort of "release all" switch in this place. If this many Pokémon got free all at once, their kidnappers would be overwhelmed."
"Would they have such a thing?" Joy wondered. "Doesn't seem like a lab like this would want to free them, especially in any large quantity."
"Good point."
Joy looked around their immediate vicinity, trying to better understand how these stasis tanks worked. Then, she spotted something that gave her a eureka moment.
"I think these tanks might be all sealed with electromagnets." She whispered.
Jenny did not quite follow at first. "Meaning?"
"Meaning that they most likely require a constant source of electricity to stay closed." Joy said with more clarity, an idea already forming in her head. "If we stop the power coming into this room, then they should all open at once!"
Jenny was beginning to piece together what Jenny was getting at and was becoming just as excited, even adding onto it with her own suggestions. "Joy, you just might be a genius! I'll bet this place has its own off-grid generator, so if we shut that down, they'll be home free!"
Joy nodded in agreement. All of a sudden, things didn't seem so dire.
The only issue was finding the generator in the first place, and in somewhere as big as this, it would not be easy.
…
The pair carefully navigated through the warehouse-sized room filled from ceiling to floor with stasis tanks. Every so often a guard or researcher would pass by so they would need to hide themselves as best they could to avoid being seen. Slowly but surely, they scanned the outer walls, looking for anything that looked like a power source.
Eventually, they arrived at a pair of double doors with a sign labelled "MAIN GENERATOR ROOM", which was almost certainly what they were looking for. Going inside, they saw another decently sized room in which a large fuel-powered generator sat in the middle, whirring loudly from the spinning parts inside.
"Looks like this is it." Jenny said as she looked the generator over. "Onyx would probably be able take this whole thing down in one fell swoop."
"Wait." Joy responded quickly, taking out a Pokéball. "Let me try something a little less violent."
Throwing it, a Chansey burst forth from the ball, landing between them.
"Okay, Chansey." Joy said, pointing at one of the grates on the side of the generator. "Use Icy Wind."
As the Chansey walked up to the generator, Jenny looked over at it in surprise.
"I didn't know your Chansey knew Icy Wind."
Joy shrugged. "She knows a great many things. It comes with being a Nurse, you know how to give your Pokémon a wider variety of moves than most."
As the Chansey moved its arms from side to side, a visible frosty mist formed in the air which was drawn into an air vent on one side of the generator. Almost immediately, the moving parts in the generator began to make a loud clanging sound, before they suddenly slowed down and stopped entirely, the supercooled air causing them to freeze in place.
A few seconds after the generator had stopped, all the power in the facility went dead, the lights shutting off and leaving everything in darkness. Already the two could hear crashing from the main warehouse as stasis tanks burst open from a lack of power and Pokémon were freed from their confines, their loud cries echoing through the massive space.
Before they could begin celebrating, however, the lights suddenly kicked back on, and as they went back out into the warehouse they saw that the majority of stasis tanks still had power and so were still locked. An alarm started to blare all around them.
"There must have been a backup generator somewhere!" Jenny yelled over the din as she heard a group of footsteps come running from the opposite end of the facility towards the generator room. Thinking quickly, she and Joy quickly hid themselves in a far corner behind some heavy machinery so they were not spotted, Joy hastily calling back Chansey as well.
As they watched from their hiding spot, they saw guards pour into the room to inspect the generator, the mysterious agent named Ms. River slowly walking behind them. Once they had opened a hatch on one side to look, one of them went up to the agent to report their findings.
"The whole thing's frozen solid!" The guard said in amazement. "It's like it just arrived fresh out of a glacier!"
"If I had to guess, a coolant pipe ruptured." Said another guard. "Would explain how it happened so cleanly."
"No." said Ms. River suddenly. "I do not think this was an accident. No amount of coolant could freeze internals moving at such high speed. This was the work of an Ice Pokémon."
The first guard looked shock. "Then do you mean this was sabotage?"
"I am certain of it."
She turned to the guards. "Put the facility on lockdown and ensure no one gets in or leaves. If we have a saboteur, make sure they are caught. Make sure that you also recapture the Pokémon that have escaped from their chambers. I do not intend to lose my employer's investment so easily."
At this, she walked out of the room, most of the guards filing out after her. One remained behind to sweep the room for any intruders. Just as he was alone and his back was turned, Jenny snuck out from her hiding place, came up behind him, and punched him hard in the back of the head, knocking him out immediately.
"Jenny!" Joy whispered in shock.
Jenny was unrepentant as she claimed the guard's PokéBalls for her own use. "We can't afford to get tied up in any battles. We need to find who's responsible for this and bring them down."
With that, she crept out of the generator room. Despite her own trepidations, Joy followed behind. Wasn't like she would be any safer if she stayed, after all.
…
If the guards had thought they would be able to control the escaped Pokémon and recapture them, they had another thing coming. The Pokémon had quickly regained consciousness and were now out to get revenge on the ones who had put them there, chief among them being the Charizard that had led the pair to this facility in the first place. She was acting as the ringleader, directing the other Pokémon to both defending themselves against the guards, and destroying any stasis chambers that were still intact to free more of them.
Despite the best efforts of the guards and their own Pokémon, they were soon overwhelmed and had to fall back, making further engagements from a greater distance. This gave Jenny and Joy the perfect opening to slip through the facility undetected. Seeing as all the entrances were either guarded or sealed with massive doors, they would have to find the ringleader of this whole affair and force them to let them all free.
As they crept along, keeping out of the way of the rebelling Pokémon, they saw another set of doors a ways down from the generator room with the sign "LABORATORIES" visible above them. They suddenly opened to reveal Ms. River striding out and down a corridor, disappearing from sight. She seemed annoyed, probably at the less than exemplary results her guards were turning out in controlling the situation. Figuring that was the way to go, Jenny and Joy went over and headed inside.
The room beyond, full of scientific equipment, was empty aside from a single figure hunched over a workstation. It was the lead scientist they had seen before, who had called himself Professor Edward Vilsy Ence. Without even turning around, the scientist spoke when he heard the door open and then close.
"Considering the security detail has its hands full right now, I presume you're the purported saboteur whom Ms. River warned me about just now."
"You could say that." Jenny said with a smirk, noticing that the scientist was seemingly defenceless and so they had the upper hand. "So, are you working alone, or are there more of you butchers that we should know about?"
Professor Ence turned around to face them, his face lighting up with mirth as he took in their faces. "Well, I'll be… this is an amusing sight indeed. A beat cop and a bubble-gum nurse, both entirely unremarkable, and these are the two who are attempting to disrupt my enterprise?"
Joy gritted her teeth in anger at the comment, her loathing of the man in front of her growing with each passing minute.
"To answer your question," Professor Ence continued, "I do normally have a team of scientists under my jurisdiction, but they've been sent to their quarters due to the lockdown. I, however, could not be torn away from my research. Not when I am this close to victory. And I am still assured of my victory, regardless of what you have managed to do thus far."
Suddenly, Joy yelled at him, speaking louder and angrier than Jenny had heard from her up to that point. "Cut the irrelevant rambling! I do not care what research that you have been doing or why you have been doing it, what I care about is that these Pokémon are freed from their prison! I will see to it that you and your friends in Team Rocket will not get away with what you have done!"
Instead of replying directly, Professor Ence simply chuckled quietly.
"Team Rocket? Is that really the limits of your imagination?" The scientist began to pace slowly from one side of the room to the other. "You clearly misunderstand. My employers are like nothing your lowly region has ever faced. With what I have achieved, they will soon sweep over this world with a force you could not comprehend. And I shall personally see to it now that you will not prevent that day."
"How?" Jenny said derisively. "As far as I can see it's two of us and only one of you. And you don't exactly look to be in the peak of health."
Professor Ence laughed again, this time a little louder. "You really do not understand the power I have tapped into, do you?"
He turned back to his workstation "It is a shame that I will not be able to test this out on volunteers first as I had planned, but there's no time like the present." Suddenly he whirled back around sharply, holding up a syringe filled with an orange liquid. "Do you wish to know what I now hold in my hand?! Let me give you a demonstration! Prepare to be amazed!"
With that, he injected the compound into his left arm, throwing the syringe to the side, and almost immediately doubled over in pain, which did not look like he had been expecting it. At first both Jenny and Joy thought he had poisoned himself as he squirmed in agony on the ground, before Joy noticed something that chilled her to her core.
"His… his skin's turning orange!" She gasped in horror.
Indeed, his previously human skin was starting to take on a scaly texture, tinted a bright orange hue, before the rest of his body began to mutate rapidly. His hands transformed into three-fingered claws, and his lab coat burst apart as two large wings and an orange tail burst out from underneath. He was growing larger too, soon dwarfing both women as lab equipment was knocked around from the sudden growth.
Eventually the transformation seemed to finalise, and what slowly began to get to its feet in front of the petrified pair was most definitely not human, at least not anymore. It was some unholy amalgamation of a human and a Charizard, leaving its body distorted and elongated so it didn't quite fit in either category. Worst of all, its face was only partially converted; messy grey hair covering its deformed muzzle which was filled with razor sharp teeth.
Jenny spoke nervously. "Um… you alright there?"
The Charizard/Human hybrid growled menacingly, before letting out a loud animalistic roar. It was clear now that there was little left of the Professor behind its eyes. All that was looking back at them was cold-blooded instinct.
Joy and Jenny didn't even utter a word before breaking off in a sprint back out the door, the hybrid making chase close behind.
It wasn't going to let them leave.
…
Jenny and Joy ran through the facility in terror from the monster, hearing it stomp against the concrete ground behind them. It smashed its way through various stasis pods through its rampage, invertedly releasing more Pokémon from their slumber. Shoots of flame burst out from its maw as it tried to reach them, but its aim was poor enough from inexperience that they were able to avoid getting cooked.
The two weren't the only ones fleeing from it either; whatever guards were still battling the rebelling Pokémon immediately ran at the sight of it, and even the freed Pokémon scattered to avoid being trampled underfoot.
"Quick, the main entrance!" Jenny yelled to Joy as they ran, but they were stopped in their tracks when they got to where the door had been. The way out was now sealed by a heavy metal barrier, entirely impenetrable.
This was Ms. River's doing. She had given the order to put the facility on lockdown before…
Before they could properly digest this, another loud roar from behind them sent them sprinting away to find another exit, but almost every door that they found was similarly sealed to prevent escape. The place really was locked down tight, and there was no way for them to get out and away from the monster that was giving chase.
They ran for what felt like eons throughout the warehouse-sized space, the hybrid never giving up its chase the entire time. Just when it looked like they would collapse from overexertion, Jenny spotted something that might just be their salvation. Keeping up the pace and looping around the room once more to get back to where they had been, she pulled Joy underneath an upturned stasis chamber just as they managed to get around a corner fast enough to get out of the monster's line of sight.
The human/Charizard hybrid stopped nearby their hiding spot, sniffed around, and began to skulk around looking to see where they had gone.
"It's going to find us; we don't have much time." Jenny whispered before turning to Joy. "Joy, listen to me. There's an unsealed door on the wall immediately to our right that says, "MAIN OBSERVATION AREA". I saw it when we were running through this area not long before. If there's some way to end this lockdown, it will most likely be in there. I need you to go in and find it so you and all of the Pokémon trapped in here can escape."
Joy nodded, before suddenly stopping. "Wait… what will you do?"
Jenny took a deep breath to steel herself, before reaching into her pocket and pulling out a PokéBall, which she pressed into Joy's hands. "You're going to need a diversion if you want to get past this thing." With that she got out from her hiding place, ran out into the open and screamed in the direction of this monster.
"HEY, YOU OVERGROWN FREAK! YOU WANT SOMETHING TO MUNCH ON?! COME LOOK AT ALL OF THIS!"
The hybrid roared as it stomped towards Jenny, who immediately began running in the opposite direction of where Joy was hiding.
"JENNY!" Joy yelled out desperately.
"JOY, FIND THE KILLSWITCH, GO!" Jenny yelled back as she and the hybrid ran around a corner and out of sight, leaving Joy all alone.
Tears streaming down her face, Joy slowly got up from underneath the stasis chamber and walked over to where Jenny had directed. Sure enough, there was an open door there, just as she said.
Trying to dry her eyes, Joy strode over to the door, determination returning to her. She didn't want to think about what would happen if that awful hybrid caught up to Jenny, but if worst came to worst…
She would make sure her death was not in vain.
…
Jenny ran as fast as her legs could take her. Although the brief amount of energy she had gotten back from hiding meant she was able to move quickly, it was soon running out as her breaths became hoarse and her body began to scream at her to stop. But the roaring of the monster behind her kept her from doing so.
She could not give up yet. She just had to keep going long enough for Joy to find cover. Just a little bit longer…
The brief distraction of her thoughts proved to be enough for her to lose track of the floor in front of her, and she tripped over a pile of rubble and collapsed to the floor, badly spraining her leg in the process.
Trying to get up but racked with pain, Jenny saw the mutated monstrosity approach her, its teeth bared. She started to back away, but it did little good as it drew in air, a deep flame in its jaw building up to land a final blow.
But before it could, a roar sounded out from outside her field of view, and a blur of orange flew in and knocked the hybrid to the floor. It was the Charizard, the one whose DNA had been used to create the monstrosity. Undeterred by the presence of this mutated replica of its own form, she had been following it through this place and had now finally cornered it so she may do battle with it and establish her dominance as the original.
As Jenny used the distraction as an opportunity to scurry away to a safe place, the hybrid growled at the Charizard, incensed that she had cost it the prey it had been chasing. The two began circling each other, a flurry of flames already erupting from their mouths as they prepared to do battle. Then, the hybrid lunged at Charizard, and the fight began in earnest.
Jenny could not believe her eyes, but the fight that began to unfold before her left her spellbound. She had never seen anything quite like it before, and fully believed it was something she would probably never get to see again.
All she could do was hope and pray that the original Charizard would emerge victorious.
