Lukas was sweating cold. This can’t be-… Alright… Worse case scenario is that thing is a legit pokeball with something inside.

His situation definitely couldn't be worse. In front of him, a man wearing a full costume of a Team Rocket member and a pokeball belt, which he really didn't want to know if they were real or not.

His mind was racing thinking about the possibilities. If I'm actually in the world of pokemon... If I run this guy Pokemon will catch me eventually and even if I surrender I… I don’t even know what they might do to me. Think Lukas! Think!.. With his mind in a complete mess trying to have an idea on what to do, Lukas has an idea.

Since it’s his only option other than being captured, he speaks up."I am a client, can’t you see?” He says as he feels a pressure slowly starting to grow on his chest. “I didn’t get in right away because I… Heard your little chat, I didn’t want to be rude and interrupt such an important meeting.”

The Rocket grunt raises an eyebrow and stays silent for a few seconds until he gets his hand off the pokeball belt and says. “Alright… Could you wait here for a moment?” Then without waiting for a reply, he turns to the warehouse and screams. “Hey! Boss! We have a… Weird client here.”

The sound of footsteps gradually gets higher, coming from the inside, another Team Rocket grunt steps out of the warehouse. He seems confused at first looking at me from head to toe for a few seconds and says. “Damn… Iggy said that there could be some weird dudes but holy shit, what the hell are you wearing.”

"I uh… Took extra care on the disguise thing you see…" Lukas replies, there was no other good explanation for his cartoonish villain costume. "Didn't want to get recognized and I had to add some style to it."

The "Boss" looks at him for a few seconds and lets out a long sight."Alright, I'll ignore this for now. Rob, check him." He nods and quickly approaches Lukas, messing around his costume and even looking under his top hat.

"He's clean." He says after finishing, doing a quick thumbs up to his Boss.

"Okay, now follow me, I have some questions for you" He says as he turns towards the warehouse door, but before entering, he says. "Hey Rob, keep watch around, remember what's at stake."

Lukas lowers his hands and himself to grab the walking cane and follows the Rocket Grunt inside. The warehouse seemed bigger on the inside, a truck was parked in front of the garage door with some wooden boxes around it while the rest of this first room was just wooden boxes piled on top of each other in a random pattern.

“So, how’s Iggy doing on the other side?” The Rocket Grunt asks while walking towards a door on the other side of the room.

“He’s… In a very complicated situation.” Said Lukas trying to buy time to think of a good lie while following him.

He looks back at him while placing his hand on the door handle. He raises an eyebrow. ”International Police?”

“Yes, most of his team got caught in the process, but he managed to escape.” Lukas starts spinning the walking cane trying to calm his nerves and continues. “I… Waited for the dust to settle a little bit so I could come here.”

The Grunt stares at me for a few seconds and opens the door. Inside the new room, boxes lined up in several rows, but also, something that makes Lukas eyes widen, metal cages with Pokemon. Vulpix and Growlithes stuffed inside crowded cages, one even had a tied Arcanine with some visible injuries inside one of the larger cages.

Both start walking through them, with some pokemon letting out light growls while others cower in fear. “This place is… Pretty impressive to say the least.” Say Lukas while spinning the walking cane on his hands, trying to hide his reaction to the pokemon. He was really in the world of Pokemon, which excites him a little bit, but for now he tries to focus on not arousing suspicion towards himself.

“Oh these? They aren’t ‘the main dish’. After we built the warehouse we found out that there was a group of Growlithes and Vulpix in the area, and as you might know fire types are a pain in the ass to find, so we took advantage of that.”

Lukas opened his mouth to ask what “the main dish” was, but stopped and thought for a few seconds, reformulating his phrase. “I heard a lot about your ‘main dish’, is it really that… Special?”

"Yes, but we are not planning to make a deal using it yet." He says looking back at Lukas.

"Is it some sort of rare pokemon?" Lukas asks, trying to be as vague as possible.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"Maybe it’s the only one of its kind as far as we know.” He replies as both finally reach the other side of the room, there was a small open area with fewer boxes and a wooden table with some cups and a metal suitcase. There were two other doors, probably to other rooms with more boxes and another one to a bathroom just on the wall opposite to him.“Could you wait here for a second?”

Lukas replies with a simple nod and sits on the table, while staring at the metal suitcase. The “Boss” headed towards some random boxes, looking for something. After a few seconds of staring at the suitcase, Lukas turns his attention to the “Boss”, just to see him taking a rope out of the box.

He firmly holds his cane, while pretending he didn’t look at him. Is this guy going to tie me to this chair?... Though Lukas, hoping that wasn’t the case.

Suddenly, a thump can be heard. Both Lukas and the Boss looked at the door they came from. Footsteps could be heard outside.

“You stay right where you are, I’m going to see what the hell is happening.” and with quick steps, he disappeared between the rows of boxes and cages.

--------------------------------------------

“WE CAN’T DELAY THIS ANY LONGER!” Screamed the International Police officer. “IF WE DON’T DO THIS NOW, THEY MIGHT BE GONE TOMORROW!”

A couple hundred meters away from the Warehouse, a small outpost was created to conduct the whole operation. For most part of its short existence, it kept around fifteen people, both Rangers and IP's, to spy on the Warehouse but now, about eighty people were there, waiting for command to break that Warehouse to bits. But there was a small issue.

“I understand your concerns Anthony, but this might be extremely dangerous. This guy went through our psychic blockade of the region without a trace and the Porygon's just started looking for him on the database.” Said Murdock, the commander of this whole operation and of the Rocket Hunters.

A few years ago after the champion Ethan disappeared on Mt. Silver, the League had to deal a second time with the embarrassment that was their campaign against Team Rocket, with another goddamn kid doing the job the League was supposed to do.

In an effort to fix this, with the help of the International Police to crack down on any remains of the Team Rocket. Although officially being disbanded years ago, many groups in the Indigo region with many veterans of the old team started to appear, so a special division was created, known as the Rocket Hunters.

Murdock recalls the gold era of his division as Anthony slams the plastic table and grinds his teeth. Then he let out a long sigh and looked Murdock in the eyes. “Look ‘Dock… People are scared, in the past few months we did several crackdowns like this one, but they don’t stop showing their faces. Someone is behind this and I think that man might have the answers that those Grunts don’t have.”

“You might be right, but I don’t want to be the one responsible this assault mission into a suicide one. I don’t want to take risks.” Then Murdock grabs some of the random papers on the plastic table and says.”Now leave me alone, I have some work to do.”

Anthony stares at him for a few seconds and then leaves the tent. Murdock lets out a long sigh and starts messing with some paperwork.

Suddenly his phone rings, not his personal one, the one that was handed over to him by the International Police. Which was odd, since he already called them over five minutes ago to explain about the crackdown delay and it usually takes over an hour for someone to call back with new orders.

He picks up the phone and says. “Damn Colin that was goddamn fast, so what’s the news?”

“This is not Colin.” Says an unknown voice on the other side.”Just to make sure, am I talking with Murdock Ford?”

Murdock tenses up and looks around himself to make sure no one is around. “Alright, who the hell are you? And how did you got my number? If you don’t identify yourself and state why you called me I’m going to report this shit to the higher ups, because oh boy this is illegal as hell.”

The voice stays silent for a few seconds, and right before Murdock loses his patience and disconnects the call, the voice answers.”I am Fritz Silph, the current president of Silph co., and I have the League and the International Police permission to make this call.”

--------------------------------------------

The sounds get louder, until an explosion can be heard, and also what sounds like a roar. Lukas gets up, almost falling from his chair and starts looking at his options. Alright, I’m fucking dead now. If it's the League that is here, I might be arrested, if it's some thugs I might get killed for being with the Team Rocket, and if the grunts win this I get beaten by them for bringing whoever the fuck is fighting them. He approaches one of the doors in the room, locked. He checks the other and it’s also locked.

Then he finally turns to the bathroom door. He lets out a sigh and heads towards it.

The bathroom door was open and it led to a generic bathroom with several stalls, but on the other side of it, was just the thing he needed, the bathroom window. Of course, he wasn’t able to reach it so he went back to the other room to get a chair. But when he’s about to get the chair, at the corner of his eye, he notices the suitcase.

He stares at it for a few seconds and picks it up. He opens it easily since the lock was already open and inside, a pokeball. Suddenly the ground lightly shakes, bringing Lukas back to reality.

He quickly closes the suitcase and grabs the chair, running towards the bathroom with both on his hands. In a few seconds, he places the chair under the window, throws the suitcase outside and crawls out of it.

Finally outside he grabs the suitcase and prepares to run, but upon hearing footsteps, he freezes and gets closer to the warehouse wall.

Some thumps can be heard when finally the sound of wood crackling echoes as several more footsteps are probably entering the warehouse.

When he finally can no longer hear them, Lukas does the only thing he can at this moment.

He runs. He runs deep into the forest without looking back as the likely League forces storm the Warehouse.