Chapter 11: Undercover

"Come on, faster! Your target's getting away!"

My legs burned as I willed them to keep going, despite every corner of my brain telling me not to. Firestorm sprinted alongside me, a look of fierce determination on his face—no clue where he'd gotten it from. Rudy, Darren, and their starters raced along with us, Wartortle's cloudlike tail streaming behind him and Ivysaur taking big bounding leaps to catch up. Meanwhile Karen's Houndoom was so confident we couldn't catch it that it was practically running circles around us. Firestorm clenched his teeth in frustration and breathed out a blast of red-hot flares, but none of them came even close to hitting the dark-type.

Karen smacked a hand to her forehead. "Disable the target first, then go for the knockout, is that really so hard?!"

I locked eyes with Darren and it was obvious we were both thinking the same thing—he had the best Pokémon out of any of us for disabling.

"Sleep Powder!" he called out, and Ivysaur leaped forward into position, releasing a cloud of blue powder from his flower bud. But the black firedog was way too quick and dodged it easily.

And then it hit me. I felt like an idiot for not realizing sooner.

"Firestorm, use Scary Face!"

The Charmeleon twisted his face into a horrifying grimace, meeting Houndoom's eye and making the dark-type flinch, its movements growing sluggish. Ivysaur took that moment to rush in close and let out another burst of Sleep Powder, and this time the firedog got a face full of the stuff. Its eyelids drooped, and it stumbled once before toppling over, sound asleep.

"Alright, now!" Rudy yelled, and Wartortle's eyes widened, realizing it was time to make his move. The turtle planted his feet firmly and took a deep breath, spitting out a ring-shaped pulse of water at high speed… which flew clear over the prone form of the sleeping Houndoom.

"How could you miss a sleeping target?! What the hell is wrong with you?" Karen shouted, fixing him with an intense glare. Wartortle froze with a devastated look on his face before staring at the ground and not saying anything.

Our officer muttered incoherently to herself while striding over to her Pokémon, pulling out a bottle of blue liquid and spraying the firedog all over. At once, its eyes snapped open and it jumped to its feet with a manic expression, ready to resume the training.

"You've been discovered, make a getaway!" Karen announced with a smirk.

Oh crap, I hated this part. We immediately spun around and took off running towards the opposite end of the training field. Houndoom would be on us in seconds, we had to put as much distance between it and—

I almost tripped over myself as a pulsing shock wave of black energy shot past me, no more than two feet to my right! The attack was obviously intended to miss, but the sight of it passing so close still sent my heart jumping into my throat. We were supposed to get used to being in the line of fire—why did it still catch me off guard every time? I had to act now if we were gonna pull this off—a getaway never meant just escaping in this kind of drill.

"Firestorm, Smokescreen!" I shouted. Firestorm spun around while running and spewed out a thick cloud of black smoke behind us, hiding our pursuer from view. We only had a few seconds to act now. Rudy and Darren raced in opposite directions to take a stand on the left and right sides of the smoky area. Firestorm and I stood our ground at the front. Any second now…

Houndoom burst through the smoke cloud and our Pokémon all acted at once! Firestorm breathed out a shimmering ball of blue dragon fire, Wartortle spat another ring of water, and Ivysaur rushed forward and struck the firedog headlong in a full-body Take Down. The dark-type was thrown backward from the force of all three attacks catching it off guard, and when the smoke cleared, it was lying on its side, unconscious.

Karen raised her eyebrows, like she hadn't expected to be impressed. "Not bad."

I hated to admit it, but I was actually learning. And Stalker had probably been counting on that. Her lessons were similar to the things he'd been teaching us, just more… in your face. I didn't even want to think about what enduring her training would have been like without the prior experience from Stalker.

"I suppose that was passable at the end there, so we'll call it early…"

Rudy pumped his fist in the air a little too soon, but I knew by now that she had something else in store for us.

"…On your training," she finished. "My unit brought back some new assets from a mission. They'll need someone to catalog everything, won't they? Sounds like grunt work to me."

'Assets.' That was code for they'd stolen some Pokémon and needed someone to scan and sort the Pokéballs depending on whether they'd be sold or trained and loaned to other Rockets. Not hard, just tedious and time consuming, especially considering it was nearing dinnertime and food was starting to become the only thing I could think about.

Almost as if she'd read my mind, Karen handed me a tablet and said, "Better get started if you wanna eat anytime soon."

Everything hurt. My feet dragged against the tile floor as I stumbled into the mess hall, Rudy and Darren not far behind. We swiped our IDs one at a time at the front counter, unlocking the fridge and allowing us to grab one of the cheap, pre-packaged lunch boxes available for grunts. I was pretty sure the cost of meals here just went on a tab that would eventually get taken from payments for successful missions… that is, if we were normal Rockets intent on doing any missions. Apparently it was pretty common for new recruits to rack up a sizable debt during their training, and we were told not to worry about it.

It was just a simple boxed lunch of meat, vegetables, and rice, but after the training we'd just endured, it was like a feast. All three of us wolfed down our meals like they were nothing.

"So far I think the best part about being a Rocket is the way-too-long hours and always getting yelled at," Darren said in between bites of food.

I snorted into my bowl. "No, I think the best part is getting stuck with all the jobs that no one else wants."

"Well I don't know what's wrong with you two, because I hate those parts," Rudy grumbled.

I didn't bother pointing out to him that we were being sarcastic. He didn't care.

"It would be kinda nice if we could get through a lesson without someone's Pokémon getting chewed out," I said, knowing full well that "someone" in this case almost always meant "Rudy." "She was really laying it on thick with Wartortle this time. Is he gonna be alright?"

"Ah, you don't gotta worry about him, he's tough," Rudy said, waving a hand dismissively. "Well… as tough as a water-type can be, anyway."

I rolled my eyes. More backhanded ways of saying he'd have preferred having Charmander as a starter. He only had himself to blame for not getting one. And it was more than a little ridiculous that he hadn't been able to shut up about Ebony getting yelled at yesterday but barely acknowledged the same thing happening to Wartortle today. Then again, when our Pokémon weren't completely exhausted, it was obvious that they were getting stronger. The training was working, no matter how much we didn't like it.

At that moment, all three of our communicators buzzed with a text message alert. I pulled mine out and read, "Grunt quarters 7 is free. We'll meet in 15 mins." It was from Ray.

"Looks like we're finally having that meeting." He'd sent out another text to every rebel earlier that same day telling us to expect it. It was a bit exciting, knowing that everyone on the Rebellion was currently in a Rocket base and ready to start gathering information. And at the very least, it was something to focus on other than how much training sucked. The rest of the meal didn't involve any more complaining.

It was late enough in the evening that we were all done with our tasks for the day, but early enough that most of the other grunts were still at dinner. Perfect time to get all the rebels from all the bases in on one chat.

We were huddled together in one of the grunt quarters, all twelve of us. Group 1 (Ray, Mai, and Sasha) had obviously been the first ones sent to this base, and Group 5 (Zoe, Alec, and Liam) had gone next. Then it had been me, Rudy, and Darren, and finally Group 16 (Reed, Wes, and Kris) a few days later. Mai stood guard at the door, her dark eyes scanning the hallway outside so no one could walk in on us without warning. Meanwhile, Ray and Sasha worked on getting a group call set up with the rebels at the other bases.

I was sitting on one of the many double bunks that filled the cramped space, Rudy and Darren alongside me. Across from us sat the members of Group 5. Zoe, a tall, pale girl with short brown hair and amber eyes, had volunteered to take notes, and was already scribbling furiously despite the fact that the meeting hadn't even started yet. Liam had been trying to coax a conversation out of his teammate Alec, a short, chubby kid with curly red hair who I hadn't really seen much of until now. Couldn't really tell if they were a boy or a girl either. They were hunched over a book and every so often flashed a half-hearted smile at Liam, in that reluctant "I really don't want to talk but don't know how to say no" kind of way.

Reed and Kris were both hanging upside down off the top bunk nearest me, excitedly swapping battling tips. Their partner Wes, a short, quiet boy with dark skin and tightly braided hair, was busy brushing his Vulpix's fur and occasionally shot an incredulous glance at his teammates' antics.

"I think we got it," Sasha announced, holding up her communicator. "We started a three-way video call. My R-com is linked to the Viridian groups, and Ray's is linked to Saffron."

"Awesome! Can you guys hear us?" Reed called out.

"Sure can," one of the Viridian rebels replied, waving to us from the tiny screen.

"Sweet, I wanna be in the video call," Kris said, rushing to climb down from the top bunk and nearly falling on Wes in the process.

"Not if I get there first!" Reed called after her, immediately falling straight to the floor with a loud thud.

"Can everyone be quieter?!" Mai hissed, eyeing the outside hallway suspiciously. "We don't want everyone in the base hearing us, do we?" Zoe snickered a bit at the commotion but then stopped when she saw the look on Mai's face.

"So how are things going in Viridian?" Sasha asked the group chat.

"Really tough," one of them replied. "I swear everyone here is on the combat unit, and they're constantly jumping in to make our training tougher—like our officer wasn't doing a good enough job of that already."

"What, really, you guys get to battle?" one of the rebels in Saffron asked. "We haven't gotten to battle at all since we got here, and I'm pretty sure the other three groups in Saffron haven't either."

Another kid chimed in, "It's all like… lectures on how to get goods and Pokémon for Team Rocket and, like… profit analysis crap." That got a solid round of laughter from almost everyone in the room. Sure, I hadn't been too fond of the training so far, but at least it was preferable to that.

"I wandered into a meeting on how to get businessmen to do what you want," a third Saffron rebel added. "It was… uh… interesting?" Her teammates started snickering.

"You know it's not that great, getting to train here," Reed spoke up in a too-loud voice. "It's crazy hard—makes Stalker's training seem like cake."

"Considering you couldn't even finish Stalker's most recent training, how are you still alive?" a Viridian rebel asked.

Reed's face fell. "Ha ha, real funny."

"Come on, guys, seriously?" Mai groaned exasperatedly. "We don't have forever in here, we've gotta keep this short."

Sasha chuckled a bit. "Gotta admit she's right. Anyone heard anything about the mission?"

An awkward silence fell over the group, and everyone glanced around to see if anyone else had been successful.

Ray shrugged. "I didn't expect anyone to have found anything yet." About half the rebels let out a sigh of relief. It was kind of funny to see the reactions everyone normally reserved for Stalker being projected onto Ray now that his group was in charge and Stalker wasn't around. It wasn't hard to see why though—he had the same cool and collected air and intense expressions.\

"At least it seems like we all got set up on the team without too much trouble," Liam offered, and there was a murmur of agreement from everyone.

"We should focus on figuring out which of us have officers assigned to the mission," Zoe added. "Then we know who to target for info. If you find out your officer isn't on the mission, then just ask around. Play the noob card, like you just wanna know what's going on with the higher-ups."

That sounded doable. Granted, Karen wasn't the most approachable Rocket around, but the idea of hunting for rumors amongst the other grunts didn't seem too bad.

"I'll send out a mass text when it's time for the next meeting like this," Ray said. "Hopefully by then we'll have something to work with."

Sasha nodded. "Sounds good to me—everyone else got that?"

"Yup!"

It was the middle of a training session. Karen had just shown us some tips for quickly ganging up on and incapacitating a target, and now we'd gotten a rare moment to rest and catch our breath. I just had to take advantage of it and try getting some info on the Legendary mission. It was the only opportunity to come up all day.

"So, we heard there was a huge combat unit mission coming up?" I said, trying my hardest to make it sound as casual as possible. Maybe a bit too hard. Dangit.

"Yeah? What about it?" Karen asked dully. Good, she hadn't noticed.

"What kind of mission is it?"

She scoffed. "That's not exactly the kind of thing they tell those of us who aren't assigned to it."

"You're not?" Rudy blurted out.

Her eyes twitched. "No. Even though I'm more than qualified, some people don't seem to think I should go anywhere on this team."

I clenched my teeth. If there was one thing we didn't need, it was Karen going on another one of her rants on how the higher-ups were determined to see her fail.

Darren jumped in with, "But you've heard rumors about it… right?"

Karen laughed. "Oh man, take it from me, kid, the kinds of rumors you'll hear around the base are nuts. And what's it to you? It's not like you'll be on the combat unit any time soon. It takes years to qualify."

Well that was some shut down. Was there any way to ask what she knew without it seeming totally suspicious? Nothing was coming to me. I locked eyes with Rudy and Darren, but from their expressions, it seemed they were just as clueless as I was.

"Well don't just stand there," Karen said, giving us an impatient look. "Let's run through that drill one more time."

Every conversation with Karen ended the same way. There was absolutely no way we were going to get any information out of her, and I could only hope that the rest of the rebels didn't have such disagreeable officers. Either way, it meant that grunts were our best bet.

Rudy, Darren and I were sitting in the mess hall during an ordinary lunch, watching the other Rockets. The problem was that none of us actually wanted to go first. We'd been sitting here staring for fifteen minutes, and it was starting to get a bit ridiculous.

"So we should probably try actually talking to people," I finally spoke up.

"Do we have to? They're Rockets," Rudy whispered.

I put a hand to my forehead. "You were all excited about it yesterday. What happened?"

"Well… I was, but then I thought about it."

"That's gotta be a first."

I winced from a sudden punch to the arm. Yep, couldn't say I was surprised; I kind of deserved that one.

"You should do it, anyway. You're the oldest," Rudy said simply. Darren nodded in a "that makes sense" kind of way.

I groaned. "Fine, I was gonna do it anyway."

At least it was easy to identify who was a grunt based on the uniform—black pants and shirt with gray boots. I scanned the crowd for any nearby grunts who were eating alone, and caught sight of one two tables down and across from us. Alright, now was as good a time as any. I got up from our table and wandered over, trying my best not to look completely awkward.

"Hey, uh… I'm new here," I said, sitting down alongside the grunt.

"'Sup?" she replied, not looking up from her lunch.

I paused for several seconds, not really sure how to proceed. "So, uh… is it cool if I ask you some things about how stuff goes around here? My officer's not too talkative." Not entirely true. Karen was plenty talkative—just not about anything we wanted to know.

"Sure. Fire away," she said, finally looking up.

Alright, had her attention. Now I just had to think of what questions to ask. I hadn't really thought that far ahead. The first thing that entered my mind was, "How long does it take before newbies can get assigned to actual missions?"

The Rocket paused thoughtfully. "I didn't go on my first mission 'til I'd been here for two months. And even then, it was just a simple heist."

"What kind of missions have you done since then?"

She shrugged. "All sorts. Bigger heists, catching rare Pokémon, added muscle during business negotiations—I actually got to rough up a few guys on my last job, that was fun."

It was… really weird hearing someone talk about Team Rocket activity so nonchalantly. Still, I kind of needed to expect that by now. Time to push the topic further.

"Do you know what kind of missions the higher-ups go on?"

"Depends on what department," she replied through a mouthful of food.

"The combat unit, of course."

Her face split into a grin. "You've heard the rumors, haven't you? About the combat unit planning a big mission soon?"

I nodded. "No one seems to know anything about it. Is it really that big of a secret?"

"Well yeah. Course, word gets out anyway. You shoulda seen the base two months ago."

Two months ago… I had a feeling I already knew what she was talking about, but I couldn't let that on. "I take it there was a big mission then?"

She lowered her voice. "Hell yeah, the combat unit was gonna catch Entei."

I widened my eyes to put on the look of shock that she'd be expecting. But I almost didn't have to fake it at all—the memory still burned just as brightly as the day I saw the attack unfolding right in front of me.

"I know, right?" she said upon seeing my expression. "That was my reaction when I first heard. Sucks that those Johto assholes got to it first."

I let out an exasperated sigh. "Okay, what's the deal with the Johto force? Is there some kind of rivalry going on?"

The Rocket groaned and put a hand to her forehead. "Buncha crap went down last year—Johto force came out of it way better off, and they never let us forget it."

Well that was… interesting. But none of this would help us on our mission—and we already knew the Johto force had Entei.

"Anyway, my break's over, good luck with your training." She grabbed her empty lunch tray and gave a small wave before walking off.

Well… that hadn't gone terribly… but it hadn't exactly paid off either. Might as well try again with someone else. I glanced around the crowd once more, searching for another conversation target. Eventually my eyes fell on a grunt who looked to be staring off into space. He seemed as good an option as any.

I wandered over, trying to look as casual as possible before sitting down and going, "Hey."

"Shh!" He pointed forcefully at the TV in one of the upper corners of the room.

I blinked, a bit taken aback. The TV was muted and had captions on, since it would've been too hard to hear it in such a busy area anyway.

"There's… no volume," I said, confused as to why he wanted quiet when there was nothing to hear. The Rocket ignored me, staring intently at a pair of trainers on the screen. I shot a helpless glance back at Rudy and Darren, who just kind of gave a clueless shrug.

I turned back to the TV, where a Nidoking and a Blastoise were locked in combat, each of them shoving against the other, trying to get an opening for a move. Blastoise threw its weight around in an attempt to get Nidoking on the ground so it could aim the water cannons on its back, but the armored, rabbit-like beast refused to budge. Both fighters were panting hard with exhaustion, but eventually Nidoking pulled back enough to fire a sudden bolt of lightning from the horn on its head, and the opposing water-type collapsed.

The screen cut away from the trainers and switched to a pair of excitable commentators, and that's when the Rocket came out of his trance and realized that I was still there.

"The hell do you want? The semifinals started today; I'm not missing a second," he said.

I blinked. "The semifinals of what?"

"…The Indigo League?" he said, staring at me like I was super dense.

I barely had time to react before being shoved aside by Rudy rushing over and yelling, "That's going on now?!"

The Rocket laughed. "Second week of August—when else would it be?"

Rudy grabbed my shirt sleeve frantically. "How did we forget?"

"I… we've been busy?" I managed in response, glancing back up at the TV, where slow-mo replays of key moments in the match were being displayed.

"I know Connie is the favorite to win this year," the Rocket continued, "but I'm a fan of Derek. I've got a lot of money riding on him," he said, laughing a bit nervously.

I tilted my head. "Do they take bets on the League here, or…?"

He laughed. "Are you kidding? Team Rocket makes a killing on bets during tournament season."

Darren tapped my shoulder and pointed at Rudy, who was now staring at the screen with a level of wide-eyed enthusiasm that didn't seem possible, even for him. I had to stifle a laugh. Guess we wouldn't be getting anything done now.

The rest of the afternoon was spent watching the semifinals. I had to admit, it was a nice change of pace, not to mention it had been ages since I'd watched any League battles (having missed them last year due to sulking in my room most of the summer.) Still, it didn't exactly help us get any closer to our goal. During the intermissions, we tried chatting with a couple other grunts also watching the matches, but didn't have much success.

Oh well. At least this was only the first day of trying.

It was frustrating. Two weeks at the base and we barely had anything to go off. Two weeks of intense training, Karen dodging all our questions, and random grunts not knowing anything we didn't already know.

"Not looking forward to being the only ones who didn't find anything," I muttered as Rudy, Darren, and I walked down the hallway to the grunt quarters for our upcoming meeting.

"I don't think we'll be the only ones. There might be one or two other failures," Darren said matter-of-factly.

"Yep. That definitely makes everything better," I said, groaning. I don't know what I'd been expecting, really. That Karen would just cheerfully tell us everything she knew, and also that she'd get assigned to the mission and ask us to come along? I knew that was ridiculous, but I still had imagined we'd be slightly more useful on our first mission.

"I guess we could have been caught—that's one way things could be worse," Darren added, shrugging.

I couldn't argue with that. And with my luck, I wouldn't have been surprised.

We arrived at the door to the grunt quarters and opened it to see the familiar sight of the other three groups of Cerulean rebels scattered across the bunks.

"Good to see ya!" Zoe called out brightly, waving to us from across the room. "We're just getting the call started, so hurry on over."

Mai shut the door behind us and took up her usual guard post. The three of us sat down across from Ray and Sasha, who were busy with their communicators. We didn't have to wait long before hearing the voices of the Viridian and Saffron rebels coming from the speakers. From my vantage point, I could see several kids huddled together to be in view of the cameras.

"Everyone ready?" Ray asked. Upon hearing or seeing confirmation from all the rebels, he went on, "Alright, we'll start. Since our last meeting, my group found out that our officer was actually being considered for a spot on the mission."

"Unfortunately…" Sasha continued, "that means he's super paranoid about messing up his chances and wouldn't spill any details."

Out of everyone in the room, the members of Group 5 were the only ones who didn't look disappointed. They glanced back and forth at each other for a bit before Zoe stood up and announced, "Well I've already told some of you, but our group's officer is confirmed to be on the Legendary mission."

"No way!" several rebels cried.

"Not only that," Liam added, "but whatever their target is, they've been following it for a while. He wouldn't say what it was. But he said there's actually a small team out there that's been chasing it down for the past week. We think the full attack is gonna happen pretty soon."

All eyes were staring at Group 5 in admiration. And here I'd gone and thought we'd be screwed, but this was already a promising lead. Zoe sat back down, beaming.

Sasha nodded. "That's a good start. Anyone got anything on how the mission's gonna go down?"

One of the Viridian rebels spoke up. "Our officer talked to another Rocket about their electric Pokémon being borrowed for testing their attacks against some new tech that had to be ready before a big mission."

Sasha's eyes widened. "Whoa, really? That's huge. That narrows it down a ton, right?"

"Who knows the most about Legendaries out of us?" Ray asked, surveying the room.

"Alec does," Liam said firmly, giving his teammate a light nudge with his elbow. Alec glanced up at him with an anxious look, but Liam just gave a reassuring nod.

"Right, so, uh… the only electric Legendaries that live anywhere near us are Zapdos and Raikou," Alec said slowly. "Zapdos is… well, it's thought to roost in Kanto, although it's been spotted flying over a couple other regions. Raikou constantly roams across Johto, but it's also been spotted in Kanto sometimes."

Zapdos or Raikou… Either one would be a huge boost to their forces. But out of the two, my brain kept latching onto Zapdos. Team Rocket must have encountered it before—where else did they get the DNA to make a Zapdos-Pikachu hybrid?

"They've gone after Zapdos once before," I said slowly. "They might be trying to catch it for real this time."

"Wait what?!" Reed exclaimed, gaping at me. "How do you know that?"

"Jade used to have a totally awesome Zapdos-Pikachu hybrid!" Rudy exclaimed, jumping in front of me.

Reed snorted. "That's the dumbest thing I ever heard."

"It's the truth!" Rudy shot back. "How else do you think we escaped from that Rocket jet?"

"I never thought that story actually happened. Not the way you tell it, anyway," Mai said, adding an eye roll for good measure.

"Actually… I have a picture of him," Darren said all of a sudden.

We all turned to stare at him at once. Seriously? He'd gotten Chibi's picture? On the S.S. Anne?

"I thought he looked cool," Darren said, shrugging. "You don't see a Pikachu like that every day… well, I guess you did, when he was with you. I didn't know he was part Zapdos." He grabbed his Pokégear and tapped a few buttons before holding it out to the rest of us. Sure enough, there was Chibi, standing on the boarding platform. The photo was blurry, but you could definitely make out the pointed head feathers and the intense, bird-like eyes.

Liam paused thoughtfully. "Well, okay… so if that's true, then Zapdos is probably what they're after."

"Hey everyone, sorry we're late!" a voice from the chat suddenly announced. "I kept messing up at training and our group got held overtime."

"No worries," Zoe said brightly, "we just figured out that Zapdos is probably the target."

"Zapdos? Why Zapdos?" the rebel asked. "Hasn't it been spotted flying over a lot of different regions? It doesn't seem like the easiest Pokémon to find."

Kris snorted. "And Raikou would be easier to track?"

"Why are we so sure it's an electric Legendary?"

One of the other Viridian rebels shot back with, "You weren't here so you didn't hear the reason!"

And with that, the entire chat broke out into squabbling, most of it between the various groups of Viridian rebels, although Reed and Kris weren't helping things much on our end either.

"Actually, I know another reason it's probably electric!" a voice called out suddenly, forcing everyone to pause. It had come from one of the Saffron rebels.

"No offense, but are there even any Rockets on the mission in Saffron?" Kris asked. "They don't exactly keep the combat unit stationed there. I'm not even sure why Stalker sent anyone there."

With an exasperated groan, Mai stormed away from her watch post and growled, "Kris, for once in your life can you be quiet?"

Kris froze, looking like she'd been slapped. Reed seemed to be using every ounce of willpower he had not to burst out laughing. For several seconds no one said anything, and Ray just kept his face buried in his palms.

"Uh, we're good here now, you can keep going," Zoe told the Saffron group.

"Oh. Right, so… in one of the 'cost effectiveness' presentations, they had a thing on using Pokémon energy. I guess electric Pokémon's power is the easiest to absorb and use… that makes sense, right? And if we know they're testing electric attacks on new tech, that prob'ly means they wanna use it on the easiest target before going for other types of Legendaries."

There was a moment of silence as everyone paused to consider the new info.

"They didn't exactly have the easiest time with Entei," I added. "It would have escaped altogether if the Johto force hadn't intervened."

Everyone stared at the floor. The story of Entei's capture was common knowledge amongst the Rebellion by now. The memory of it only served as a reminder of how we couldn't afford to mess this up, otherwise the Rockets would have two Legendaries at their disposal.

"How did they catch Entei anyway?" a small voice asked. I looked up to see Alec glancing around at their teammates dejectedly. "It's a Legendary. Pokéballs don't… shouldn't work on them."

"Oh, um… I think I know how," a voice piped up from the R-com. "There was some kind of budget meeting on that. Did you guys know that Team Rocket owns the Silph Company?"

"What?!" several voices exclaimed at once. The biggest brand name in trainer tech belonged to the Rockets? What?

"I know, right? And they've been dumping tons of money into mass-producing Master Balls."

A chill suddenly fell over me. Master Ball. It'd been a long time since I'd heard that term.

"Oh. Guess that explains it," one of the other kids replied blankly.

Pretty much everyone had heard the controversy—that Silph Co. had invented a Pokéball that could catch any Pokémon without fail. There'd been a ton of protests from Pokémon rights groups saying that it totally invalidated the training pact—it was practically the only thing our teachers felt like talking about for a few weeks way back when. Then Master Balls were banned in most stores, and they made it so you couldn't even get one without a special license, so most of the chatter died down. Still, even now, it felt more like a myth than a thing that could really exist.

Zoe glanced around at all of the glum faces in the room and smiled weakly. "C'mon, enough pouting—how do we stop them?"

"Obviously the Viridian rebels sabotage the new tech."

Someone in the chat snorted. "How do you expect us to do that?"

"We don't even know where it is," another added.

"You just find someone who looks like a scientist and follow them back to—"

"Okay, stop just… throwing out random suggestions," Ray said, putting a hand to his forehead. "We need a solid plan."

Sasha crossed her arms. "Ray, I don't actually think we should be making too many plans 'til we see how the mission is really gonna down. We need to know what we're up against first. Blind strategies are useless."

Ray frowned. "I like being prepared. And right now, we don't even know where it is."

"Why don't we just have someone follow 'em?"

Not the voice I had expected to hear. Everyone whirled around to see where it had come from, and eventually all eyes fell on Wes.

He glanced around sheepishly. "Well, we know at least one guy on the mission, right? Why doesn't the group assigned to him just… tail him to the mission site, let us know where it is and what it's like? And then while the Rockets are still getting set up, the rest of us head over and stop 'em?"

Everyone paused to consider the suggestion.

"Well…" Liam said slowly, "that'd be me, Zoe and Alec. Anyone else?"

"Our officer's on the mission," a Viridian rebel replied.

"Good. Whoever gets there first, use your GPS app to get the location and send it to me. I'll text it to everyone else after that," Ray said.

"How do the rest of us get there once we know where it is?" another Viridian rebel asked.

"Same way we got here," Zoe replied. "We might not have access to Stalker's Pokémon, but I think between all of us we have enough fliers and teleporters to pull it off."

Sasha nodded. "So long as it's not like… clear across Kanto, my Kadabra should be able teleport everyone in Cerulean one at a time." A couple Viridian and Saffron rebels voiced their agreement and their various methods for getting there.

"So it sounds like we have a plan," Ray said, looking satisfied.

We had a plan. This was really happening. It had felt like we were just a bunch of random kids in over our head, and now we actually had a concrete plan for stopping Team Rocket from catching a Legendary. It was unreal.

Darren nodded. "See? Told you we weren't going to singlehandedly ruin everything."

I couldn't help laughing. "I guess not."