[Have to Ketchum All x Traveler Omake] Don't Rock the Boat
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Life was a tumultuous experience.
My first and now my current life seemed to always hit me with new surprises. Both good and bad. It was my mistake to indulge in playing along with one of Hoopa’s games. That little trickster sure loved to play surprises on you when you’d least expect it.
The ability to shift through so many emotions in a single instance has got to be one of the amazing things about being a living being. I had gone from frustrated, annoyed, and baffled to livid, cold, and numb upon realizing where I was and more specifically, whom I came across. I was at sea on a cruise ship. The uncomfortable churning of my stomach confirmed it as the rocking waves below the ship were beginning to rock fiercely.
The room seemed like your standard cruise ship suite. It had a bed, a bathroom, standard television, a familiar red hat with a green logo, and a grown man dressed in black slamming the face of a familiar kid into the room’s wall. The big old “R” on the man’s chest was the last thing I needed to see before finally moving to act.
The fucker beating the shit out of MY brother was stunned by my sudden appearance. I didn’t hesitate to throw my all in punching his fucking jaw. Usually, the hit itself would have disoriented your average guy back home in my dimension and knock them flat into the wall, usually leaving a body shaped crevice. But no, fortunately for me, my hit knocked all the teeth from one side of the bastard’s jaw out.
I did not care for his screams of agony nor for the screeching and roars of the other pokémon in the cabin. Too loud. I reared back my foot and wildly swung against the jerk’s jaw, heel first. Whatever remained of his teeth had flown across the room as their lower jawbone had sickeningly broken out of place and sagged in an awkward angle.
Their breathing gurgled with the mixture of his own blown and saliva building up in his throat. It would be such a cruel way to go, drowning in his own effluvia. However, I was in no mood to give him an easy out. Gently placing their back against the cabin’s wall, I adjusted their head downwards to expel the build up of fluids in their neck to ensure that he kept breathing before violently pushing their head back. Their body was slumped and unmoving like a puppet with its strings cut.
I didn’t need them conscious for what I needed next.
“Jiren.” I opened a cracked and frail pokéball to reveal one of my trusted Psychic pokémon.
“Already on it.” His telepathic words brushed against my mind. He was one of the limited few who I have ever given full permission to do so. “Tend to him.” He didn’t need to say a word, I rushed over to unconscious and prone form of my little bro-.
The sounds of multiple pokémon dropping to the floor in unconsciousness reached my ears. In askance, I turned to Jiren, who was still scouring and extracting information from the unconscious mind of the Team Rocket Grunt.
“That Nidorino intended to wash you with Poison Sting then skewer you with his horn when you started approaching Ash.” Ah, I see, so these were this reality’s Ash’s pokémon. A Nidorino (Male), Pidgeotto, and a Horesea. I looked at the belt strapped with pokéballs on the ground near us and counted one more pokéball amongst the rest of them.
A solid team, and one so readily quick to defend them against a stranger. It relieved me to know that this Ash had such dependable friends.
“It both amazes and terrifies me that you’d still find a way to praise your brother and his pokémon even when they’re so close to killing you…” I ignored the snarky crack from my friend to really take in just how hurt my brother (it doesn’t if he’s from a different dimension from me!) was. A broken nose, a black eyes, and a mild concussion.
...Team Rocket…
I was fortunate to avoid having my own Ash deal with this, but to see it happen here with him this close to possibly dying it…
…It…
[“Attention, my dear friends. Excuse me for interrupting this wonderful evening that is being shared between you and your loved ones. Allow me to introduce myself as Rocket Executive Pierce. To all those who are currently resisting the magnanimous mission that my fellow ilk are on by gathering your pokémon and valuable, please…please…desist. This all for a worthwhile cause, and any more resistance will be faced with death.”]
I grimaced as the grating voice of a man who loved to hear himself talk blared out over the ship’s intercoms. Executive Pierce? Never heard of that guy before nor is he even a thing where I’m from. Still, if he was gloating through the ship’s intercom, then that meant he was currently on the ship, no?
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I looked to Jiren, who seemed to be finished with invading the Rocket Member’s mind. He looked at me then up to the intercoms. “Would you like to hear of what plans they have now or after?” The psychic type’s eyes glowed with a powerful blue light. Already shifting through the masses of people, searching for that one person amongst the rabble.
Cracking my fist, I allowed myself to burn and projected my aura through my arm. “After.”
“Honestly, your patience does fall apart whenever your brother’s hurt. Fine. Take all of that anger out on them, but I’m sure that this dimension’s “me” along with the infestation of Rockets on this ship require our immediate attention. Make it fast.”
“I make no promises.” I released Asch. My starter took one look at my fallen brother, the unconscious pokémon, and lastly the broken Rocket Grunt lying against the wall. A single nod was all it took to know that he was on board. My best friend through and through.
“Do not condone this, Asch. Otherwise, you’ll only prolong this…” Jiren tiredly groaned as he regarded I, his trainer and Asch, his friend and rival. “Now allow me to pluck the unfortunate soul that’s part of the root cause of this mess.”
Jiren vanished in a flash.
[“Ah, I almost forgot to mention. To all my men and…I guess the rest of you…lot. I suggest your hurry up and find the nearest dinghey, or railing to toss yourself overboard. This ship will be-!”] Pierce’s voice was cut off mid-sentence over the intercom. One second, he was monologuing, the next, the cries of a few concerned Rocket Grunts in a daze were screaming for their boss. Their cries over the intercom screeched for any Grunts to search for him.
Too bad for them that their precious little Executive was now in Ash’s cabin, flabbergasted, and lacking a belt of pokéballs to defend himself with. It was his own folly to stick around and terrorize the people of the ship instead of getting the fuck out of dodge while he still could. Jiren’s range was massive, you’d have to flee to another region just to escape it.
“You-! What just happened!? Where am I-!” My fist broke his nose upon the first hit, and I punched with the arm that just absolutely burned. The man screeched and fell to the ground, clutching their steaming indistinguishable excuse of a nose. “AAAAH! I-It burns! Hot! Hot! AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”
“Bitch Ass Motherfucker…” I grunted and held out a hand to catch a fresh new belt with a few pokéballs clipped to them.
“Here. Finish your business with the one that almost suffocated Ash with a Muk, then focus up on clearing the Grunts. I’ve gathered all I needed from the Grunt and the Executive; I will now go to intercept this reality’s Mewtwo.” Excuse me, but fucking what? “Have fun.”
…
…
…
I just stared at the thing rolling around, scratching, and nursing the severe third-degree burns on his face. Any form of mercy flew out the window, after Jiren dropped that bomb on me. Now I wanted to give this bastard a piece of his own medicine.
But first…
“Asch, we’re to clear this entire bitch out.” I fell back to my old life’s vernacular as I tensely commanded my Starter. “We’re going to wipe out every piece of Rocket shit from this entire ship, try and make sure every innocent and their loved ones make it off to see another day, and enjoy ourselves this brief reprieve on a boat before Hoopa picks us up.”
I pointed upwards. “Our goal is quite simple. Reach the top deck and keep this bitch ass alive until them.” I pointed at Pierce. My heart warmed as my imagination ran wild with my current greatest desire. “Once we reached the top, I’m going to give Tempest his newest chew toy!”
XXX
It was like looking at a distorted mirror.
‘So this is the path that I could have followed had I ignorantly followed Giovanni’s teachings.’ Jiren hated to admit it (especially in front of Luke), but he’s glad for the opportunity afforded from facing the boy to break free of that restrictive hell.
Now how to best approach this?
Jiren didn’t particularly care about the humans on the boat. Sure, there were a sparse few exceptions that he truly cared about, but his hatred for humanity still persisted to this day. No amount of peace afforded from his new life would ever make him forgive them for his and his sister’s tragic circumstances.
But Luke was distressed at the sight of his brother (no matter the dimension, Jiren knew that Luke would always rush in to save any version of Ash). He liked Luke.
Ash, no matter if it’s a different version of him, was hurt and nearly died. Jiren liked Ash, and couldn’t look Delia nor Huey in the eye had he failed to protect even one Ash that was right in front of him.
Plus, there were pokémon on board. Sure, the ones brainwashed and tortured to fight for Team Rocket deserved to be put out of their misery, but the innocent souls getting snatched away from their trainers, and unaware of what was even happening.
He could not allow for the sinking of the St. Anne.
He refused.
And so, as he watched his counterpart single-mindedly charge their psychic energies to use an awfully enhanced form of Psycho Cut to split the ship in two, Jiren took one long sip of tea. Ah, yes, Lavender, truly a splendid blend. He regarded his unassuming armor-plated counterpart, who has yet to notice that he had slyly teleported behind them, with a bored gaze and focused his mind on one of the bothersome black helicopters sporting Team Rocket’s “R” logo with an Executive on board.
As Jiren took one last sip of his tea, he smacked his lips, and calmly grunted. “You know, it’s leaving a bad taste in my mouth watching myself attempt to commit mass homicide.”
“W-Wha-!?” The cold, metallic voice of his counterpart gasped in abject shock at his appearance but never got to fully finish or commit to their attack. The oncoming helicopter that Jiren had been concentrating on was psychically thrown at the armored Mewtwo.
It was a brutal and terrible death for the unfortunate few in that vehicle, but Jiren couldn’t find it in himself to care for criminals, thieves, and murderers. The ensuring explosion may have done a bit of damage to his counterpart, but all it did besides waste those human lives was throw his other self out of balance and infuriate him.
This will probably be an annoying battle, but still…
Jiren took one long swig of his tea and coldly looked down upon his downed counterpart. “So I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to stop.” At least it was a better alternative than having his friends die on a sinking ship.