5/10/2017

Veilstone City

8:00am

I’ve only been to Veilstone a few times before. Most of them were to help with the aftermath of the Team Galactic case.

Now standing in front of their old warehouse fills me with some type of nostalgia. I didn’t get to do too much before I arrested one of the Admins, but it was still a bit interesting to see the place that changed Sinnoh for better or for worse.

Cyrus, the leader of Team Galactic. According to the reports he wanted to recreate the world to get rid of strife and hostility. Apparently he got close to it too. It got to a point where even the champion of the region Cynthia, had to step in. During their confrontation Cyrus was successful in capturing both Dialga and Palkia, an unbelievable feat for just a man. He was only stopped by the interference of Giratina who dragged him into its world. If there weren't eye witnesses and some recorded footage, the incident would seem completely fabricated.

I wonder, what would it have been like if I was taught by you?

I’m pulled out of my thoughts by a tap on my shoulder. It’s Taion. To the left of him is a knocked out Rocket member. He's back from scouting out the entrance and connecting rooms that were displayed on archived blueprints of the building.

“Other than him they didn't have anyone patrolling the main entrance. The floor is practically empty.”

Taion is a bit of an interesting character. He was given to me by the chief since Inteleons are practically made for information gathering and taking out targets from a distance. He hasn’t been a part of my team for very long, even still he seems completely loyal to me, which kind of freaks me out.

I give him a thumbs up and inspect the incapacitated guard. I don't think I've ever seen him before. His ID doesn’t have too much on it and judging by his uniform alone I can tell he’s a low ranking member. I guess it will do. I pocket his ID and take parts of his uniform that are easy to throw on.

Doing a run down of the stuff I currently have on me, a key stone for Blitz if things get that bad, three radio’s just in case, an empty usb my six shooter, currently loaded with 5 live rounds and one blank, 18 live reserve shots and three blanks, a small camera, and finally the supplies Ashley got yesterday.

Speaking of, I look up to find Ashley talking to Taion. She usually stretches before these types of jobs so I released her from her pokeball while Taion was scouting. She’s still pretty pissed off at me from yesterday. On the bright side she doesn’t seem like she wants to actively harm me anymore, but she doesn't seem like wants to be near me right now either. Feeling guilty sucks, and it’s not like I made an effort to talk to her after that. She doesn't usually stay mad for too long. I could just buy her another can of protein after this mission, maybe then she’ll let bygones be bygones… probably.

While milling over what the best course of action is to remedy yesterday's incident, I hear footsteps approaching from the left.

I turn to see a young man standing just a few steps away from me. His appearance takes me off guard due to how unusual it looked. He had completely white hair and shining sky blue eyes. He wore a white dress shirt with contrasting black overalls. Wrapped around his neck hung a red scarf that went down to the cut off between his shirt and pants. He looks younger than me, but only slightly.

“Hi mister. What are you doing?”

As I collect myself I notice that both Ashley and Taion have now shifted their focus to the newcomer.

This guy doesn't look like he’s a part of Rocket, so it should be fine to go with the protocol response. I take out my ID and show it to him.

“Alvis Volpe, current lead detective, I’m with the Sinnoh police department. I'm sorry, I don’t think I can really tell you what I’m doing.”

I barely hear Ashely mumbling.

“More like lead defective.”

I chose to ignore that and focus back on the person in front of me.

“I could ask you the same thing. This is private property, you shouldn't be here.”

The boy smiles.

“Well sir, someone in there has something that was mine-” As he explains he points to the Galactic warehouse. “If you find it, can you give it back to me?”

“Okay… Sure. What did they take?”

“You’ll know when you see it.”

I reach in my pocket for a notebook and flip to a blank page.

“Okay then… Can I get your name?”

But when I look up he’s gone. There was no sound of him leaving or trace that he was there. He just disappeared. Creepy.

I look over to Taion and Ashley who were once again having their own conversation, already have lost all interest in the kid. Well I guess I possibly found the other person in the recordings. He doesn't seem to be associated with Rocket other than whatever they took from him.

I'll deal with him later, right now getting as much information in my 24 hours is the top priority. I recall Ashley much to her disappointment and order Taion to follow me while camouflaged. I put on the Rocket uniform which feels like a size too big and enter the building.

Tiaon was right when he said that it was empty here. Not only was there a lack of people, but also the furniture that was placed all over the first few rooms the last time I was here. Really, the only thing of note was the hum of the fluorescent lights that were scattered throughout the building. I check my phone and realize that there is no signal inside the building. Figures, probably have something stopping any type of communication to the outside somewhere here. Both using the radios and calling into the station are off the table until that gets taken care of.

I make my way to the second floor and as soon as I finish climbing the stairs I see a few Team Rocket grunts chatting. Like with the last guy, I don’t recognize these two, in fact they look pretty young. For an organization whose leader abandoned them years ago, it's surprising how they are getting new recruits.

The two spot me, stopping me before I can pass.

“Hey, it's not time to rotate yet. Get back down there.”

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I can hear the uneasiness in his voice. Since he’s new it probably won't take too much to convince him to drop it.

“Nothing is going to happen, no one ever goes near the building much less in it. If you're so worried, go and watch the entrance yourself, I'm getting something to eat.”

The grunt shrugged and went back to his conversation. Something, something an air confidence gets you anywhere I guess.

The first thing I should do is get a few pictures of the people here, next is to find any source of information whether it be a computer they have here or just by word of mouth, finally I should probably shut down whatevers interrupting the signal here. Since I don’t really have an idea of what it looks like at the moment the easiest way to go about this seems to be shutting down all the technology in here, so definitely save that for last.

I spent a couple of minutes walking up and down the halls, both listening to conversations going on between grunts and pokemon, and trying to find something that looked like it was the cause of the lack of signal.

After searching a few of the rooms I found a green glowing platform surrounded by wires. One of the 18 teleporters in the building. The blueprints I have describe them as a two way linked transportation system. Apparently if I were to take this one now it would send me to a hallway on the third floor. Now even though each teleporter can only be linked to one other one at a time, they are all connected by the same system.

I take a few steps away from the teleporter and send out Tora. As soon as the Porygon-Z is released it starts to look around the room while buzzing violently.

From what I heard, Porygon-Z were created by an experiment to use Porygon 2 to enter other dimensions through the use of computers. It backfired and started to corrupt the Porygon 2 making them stronger, but deforming them. After that further experiments were banned. Some rogue scientists were pretty persistent, and were able to capture one of the Porygon-Z without the government noticing.

They once again tried to make this one cable of universal travel, repeatedly failing, but giving the Porygon-Z more capabilities and deformities. It was only after a particularly explosive attempt that alerted the Sinnoh government to what they were doing, sending me and a few others in to deal with it. On the official statement, the Porygon-Z was lost in the explosion, but you know what they say, finders keepers.

“Hey buddy” I wave to Tora to get their attention. “Can you do something for me?”

Although I'm able to understand when pokemon speak, Tora has been through so many deformities and corruptions that nothing they say is legible. It's kinda sad, but they don't seem to mind it too much. Communicating with them is a bit of a struggle since I mostly have to go off of the noises they make mixed in with the spasms.

“I need you to connect this,-” I point at the teleporter, “to this one.” I point to one of the teleporters on the fourth floor. “Got it?”

Tora takes a few seconds to look at the picture then at the teleporter. There are a few seconds where they rapidly turn to look back and forth. Then they make a beeping noise and their arm? Leg? Appendage things start spinning around their body. I guess that's a yes then.

Tora makes their way to the teleporter and their form dissolves into it. The device stalls and stops glowing, but then immediately turns back on, now glowing a light blue. I step onto the teleporter as it begins to light up. There's a flash of light and I find myself in a different room. I check the hallway and sure enough I'm on the fourth floor. A few seconds later Taion also comes through. The teleporter shuts off and Tora reforms beside the current entrance. While not too great of a conversation buddy, Tora makes a pretty good sentient virus.

I recall Tora and continue my exploration.

The hallway only had one other door and once through it, I realized that I found myself in this mess hall. To my surprise there aren't too many people here. Just a few grunts. Specific rankings seem to range, but the majority seem to be low.

I walk up to a group and sit down. None of them seem to take any particular interest in the rando who just sat down beside them. Most of them seem occupied by their current meal.

“Hey. Sorry, I've been watching the first floor for a while, why are there so few people here?”

One grunt responds without looking up.

“Everyone's in the auditorium, execs are explaining the plan for our next mission.”

“That bad, ay?”

“Yep.”

Rockets losing the support of their basic grunts now, that's great.

I get up to leave before one of them stops me. Putting his hand on my arm.

“Hay, why haven't I seen you here before.”

There is a shift in the air and I can tell that Taion is ready to shoot the guy.

Before he can do anything I clear my throat and begin talking to the grunts.

“ Well I think I've seen you around in passing, and you've probably seen me too. I don’t talk a lot so I tend to forget most faces in the sea of people here so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the same for you. ”

They just roll their eyes and let me go, continuing to eat whatever this place serves.

I use the map to make my way to the auditorium room, which is back on the second floor.

The hallways are completely empty and there don't seem to be any cameras around.

“Why are you like this?” I ask the air beside me.

“Like what?”

“You act like I'm Arceus or something, cut it out, it's weird.”

“Well master, I-”

“Please don't call me that.”

“Sir-”

“It's just Alvis”

“Alvis sir, believe it or not, you are not actually my original trainer.”

“Yea I could have guest that from the fact that you were given to me by someone else.”

“My original trainer was a very elegant man, we were partners in the Galar Police Department. He raised me ever since I was a Sobble who couldn't defend itself.”

“So what made you come here? Did you get sick of the bad weather there or something?”

“He died.”

This makes me pause for a second. Fuck, that was sudden. I have no idea why he's bringing this up now.

“Oh, sorry for you-”

“It was during a robbery. We were the first ones on to reach the scene of the crime and come in contact with the suspects. There were hostages and my partner-”

Taion pauses for a second.

My partner was a really kind man who wanted to help others and for that he got a bullet to the heart for it.”

I didn’t really ask for his life story, but it would be pretty rude to interrupt, so I don’t say anything.

“I hated myself ever since, I wished I could have done something, anything to prevent that from happening, but I had to just accept that there wasn't and he was gone. It pains to think about how protecting him was my one job and I failed him. Then watching as his death was just treated as a statistic on a report. ”

Ah, that’s all too true. I’ve known a few officers who have died during a few missions. Although everyone mourns at first and they do get some special funeral service, nothing really happens after that. Someone takes their place and life goes on. It doesn’t really feel like they left any mark on the world like many hope.

“I was really about to give up, but then I was transferred over here and was given to you. While you're not my old partner by any stretch of the imagination and you can be a bit unsavory at times, you're still my trainer. Everyone has their own struggles and I can see that you're trying.”

I look down at the floor.

“So I'll stick with you until the day I die”

‘You're still my trainer. Everyone has their own struggles and I can see that you're trying.’ Those words stick in my head.

There's a moment of silence between us.

“Thanks Taion.”

We eventually make it to the auditorium and before entering I hold out the small camera I have. The Inteleon takes it and I watch as he turns invisible, the camera being blocked by his back, cape thing.

The auditorium is almost completely dark as there are some admins going over some type of plan. I order Taion to stand out of the way while I take an empty seat next to another grunt. I recognize the executives running the show as Proton, Petrel, Ariana, and Archer, although there was another one off to the side who I once again couldn’t recognise. They were wearing a similar uniform to most of the grunts, expert they wore a white mask around their face. They should be at least higher ranking than most of the grunts here since she was standing alongside the executives, albeit not doing anything for their presentation.

The executives rambled on for minutes, each talking about some really dumb plans that they came up with. All of them don’t have the slimmest chance of actually working. There was one to have the grunts distract the elite four while the executives took out Cynthia. Fat chance, last time all four of them got taken out by one of Lance's pokemon alone. Another one involved the recapture of their one Mew science experiment that killed the scientist working on it. Finally another attempt to recall Giovanni using a different radio tower.

It honestly pisses me off how these people are considered leaders of something. I had to work my ass off in order to get where I am and these clowns are just standing here spouting garbage. I can't fathom how this organization still functions.

Although this cemented that Team Rocket right now was nowhere near more dangerous than the shit on my shoe and this was a big waste of time, something kept bothering me. Throughout the entirety of the event, the white masked person didn't say anything, they didn’t even move, but I had the slightest feeling they knew I was looking at them, and they were looking at me.

As soon as their shit show ends, I get up to leave making my way to the door.

THUMP

Something impaled the door I was a few inches from. I turn to look back at the stage to see a Decidueye next to the masked person.

All eyes start to rapidly switch from the masked person to me.

This new exec may be a big problem.

Knowing how fast Decidueye can fire off arrows, I draw my revolver on the masked person before they can order it to attack again.

This isn't really an ideal situation for me, although I have Taion still cloaked in the corner and a gun pointed to their most competent member, I am still severely outnumbered and the first shot in my gun is a blank.

The stand still lasts a few seconds, which feels like an eternity. Then Petrel tries to fumble for a pokeball. I turn my gun to him and fire off the blank, making him flinch and he drops the ball. As soon as the shot goes off the Decidueye moves to knock another arrow. At that moment the pokeball hits the floor and out comes a Macargo. The immediate and drastic change in temperature caused by the lava slug catches the archer by surprise which leads to him misfiring. And once again hitting the door next to me.

While the members on stage are dealing with the lava slug and the grunts in the audience are panicking to figure out what to do, I pull out my key stone and toss out one pokeball.

There was a huge flash of light as a Metagross in mega form charged forward.