Nina pulled up her hoodie and put on her sunglasses. She looked shady as heck but what can a girl do? The entirety of the past week had just been her being jerked around one way or another.

When she wasn’t practicing for Beverly’s performance or working on her vocals, she’d be under the whims of one of the Cerulean Sisters, modeling for various products or attending different social events.

She desperately needed a break but couldn’t exactly stay at home where they could easily find her. So Beverly suggested going incognito and roaming around outside, except…

“Nins, look! Those earrings are so cuuute. Let’s go check them out!”

The older girl had the subtlety of a Gyarados, loudly calling out to her and dragging her to every single stall that caught her fancy. Luckily, they hadn’t been recognized just yet, which was good.

Nina sighed, thinking that she should’ve just gone to the library today instead.

“Slow down, Bev. I don’t have the energy to keep up today. And please stop yelling out my name.” Nina said, for what felt like the umpteenth time today.

“Oh relax~” assured the energetic girl. “You don’t have that ugly jacket with you today. Aside from Espy on your shoulder, you look just like any other girl.”

Nina groaned. “Yeah, but you’re not. You still look like Beverly Mizuhana, the ‘Ice is just frozen Water innit?’ girl.” In fact, Beverly just wore her regular outfit and slapped on a pair of gaudy star shaped sunglasses.

“Urgh… Don’t remind me. Why is it that everyone thinks you’re like a super cute mascot but treats me like I’m some insane meme queen?” Beverly whined.

“Being a mascot is NOT fun.” Nina hates being fawned on by middle aged ladies in all those stupid social events that the sisters kept dragging her to, saying that it’s all important networking and stuff. But networking for what?! They ran a Gym, not some political fundraiser.

Beverly pouted. “Better to have kids come up to you with Growlithe eyes asking for signatures than to have them point and laugh at you.”

Nina pulled her friend in for a hug while gently caressing the girl’s hair in assurance. “It’ll be fine. The Pokenet has a short memory, once you become more accomplished as a Gym Trainer, people’ll look at you differently. You recently started a Pokegram account right?”

Beverly nodded. “Yeap, Daphne is guiding me through it. I barely have one tenth of her followers but it’s going up…” Then, her eyes lit up as if she had a bright idea. “I should start posting shorts of our practice! Steal some of your clout!” Beverly let out a sinister laugh, like she was some sort of supervillain with an ingenious plan.

Nina sighed. Beverly had already been posting pictures of them together on occasion anyway, what’s a bit more. In fact, Nina was flabbergasted that Beverly didn’t figure this out sooner since any posts the wannabe Pokegram model made with Nina in it were sure to get an uptick in likes and engagement.

“Eevee, vee ee!”

Nina looked towards where Espy was pointing and saw a little girl around five or six years of age crying by the side of the street, likely having lost sight of her parents. But just as Nina was about to approach and check on her, a city council volunteer in a blue vest bent down and began consoling the girl.

The man in the vest looked normal enough, if not for the fact that Espy was pawing Nina in distress at the sight of him.

Nina frowned and dragged Beverly to the side of a stall where they could observe without being seen.

“What’s going on?” Beverly asked, bewildered, only for Nina to place a finger on her lips to shush her.

“Keep it down, that guy in the vest might be a Team Rocket member.” Nina explained.

Beverly was about to burst out in confusion, but Nina covered the girl’s mouth to muffle her voice.

Seeing that the man held onto the lost girl’s hand to lead her somewhere, Nina took out her Pokedex and set it to automatically ping her location. The signal will go towards all her loved ones, so that they would know where to find her if something were to happen.

“Come on, let’s go and follow them.” Nina was desperately hoping that the volunteer would just take the girl to a lost and found shelter to keep up appearances, but based on Espy’s response, she doubted that would be the case. It was likely that the empathic Eevee picked up negative emotions from the guy.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Based on one of Sabrina’s books that Nina read, Dark Types could shield a mind from being read and detected. But emotions showed up on a person like colored auras, something that most lesser criminals were not usually aware of. Which was why skilled interrogators could extract information just by asking the right questions and judging their subject’s emotional response like a lie detector.

Only full Psychics could completely mask a person. But then again, those were highly regulated and not the sort of Pokemon that two bit thugs were able to easily acquire. Facial expressions and body language were also viable tells, so no real method of obfuscation was full proof.

They casually followed along, pretending like tourists that just happened to be going the same way. Eventually reaching an unassuming alleyway where the suspected Rocket goon pounced, restraining the child and knocking her out with some unknown gas.

Nina had to hold Beverly back from rushing in to save her. “What are you doing, Nins! That girl is in trouble!” The older girl whispered aggressively.

However, Nina just shook her head and asked her impulsive friend to calm down. “These guys have been here for a while, which means she isn’t the first victim, and they probably have a base somewhere. If we go in now, we risk startling the Ekans. Best we play it safe and follow along for just a bit longer.”

“What about the girl?!” Beverly exclaimed, unconvinced.

“We’ll make sure to rescue her. I promise you,” assured Nina as she sent a text message out to her Uncle Ali about everything they saw. “... I’m going to tail them to find out where the kidnapper is going. Please don’t barge in until I give the okay or if I don’t update you in fifteen minutes.” She hit the send button and peeked back out into the alleyway.

“Alright Bev, let’s go.” Nina continued, when they saw that the kidnapping thug had turned a corner.

***

“So what now?”

The two girls followed the thug until he entered into a dilapidated building of sorts that was left half way abandoned in its development, quite a rare sight in Cerulean City where real estate usually gets snatched up fairly quickly.

Nina checked her Pokenet connectivity. “Good, there’s no jammers in place.” On second thought, it made no sense for them to have jammers in a busy city like this. A massive blackspot showing up in the network was sure to draw attention.

The girl sent a message to her Uncle Ali with their coordinates. “Please come in quietly from a distance to avoid startling the bad guys.” She wrote.

“Now, we wait for backup…” Nina replied, after she was done with all her set up.

After about twenty minutes or so, an Officer Jenny came up to them from behind the corner they were hiding in. “You two must be Miss Jones and Miss Mizuhana?” She asked.

“Yeap, is my uncle not able to make it?” Nina asked in return.

The officer, who introduced herself as Lieutenant Seiigi Jenny, shook her head. “Unfortunately, Interpol has no jurisdiction, so we’ll be taking over the case. Can you tell me what you've seen so far.”

Nina told her story, starting from Espy’s detection of the suspicious people in vests during their return home, to their latest encounter with the kidnapper. “Unfortunately we’re a little too far for Espy to pick up anything of detail, but she’s getting bad vibes from the place, so it’s probably filled with a fair number of Dark Types.” She added in the end.

Lieutenant Jenny nodded in approval. “Very good, it’s rare to find Pokemon Trainers with any semblance of patience these days. Usually they’d have jumped the bastard and scared away the rest by now.”

“But what about the girl?!” Beverly exclaimed.

The Jenny sighed. “Case in point. The girl won’t be harmed, otherwise they wouldn’t have gone through so much trouble to kidnap her. Your friend is right, there’s a chance that there might be other victims, would you be willing to sacrifice the rest just to satisfy your passing hero complex?”

Beverly looked down dejectedly at the admonishment and Nina pulled her in for a hug to assuage her. “You’re not wrong in wanting to help, Bev. Just gotta have a bit of patience like Lieutenant Jenny said.” She then turned towards the gruff police officer. “So what now? Are you guys going to storm the place?”

The blue haired woman shook her head in frustration. “Unfortunately, no. The building is listed as private property. We can’t go in without a warrant. And since we don’t know if the owner is complicit, we can’t exactly reach out to them either.”

Nina frowned at the inane bureaucracy. “There might be lives at risk! The two of us are active Gym Trainers, surely our statements must have some weight right?”

“It does,” echoed Lieutenant Jenny. “However, we’ll still need to wait on a warrant. Which will take a couple of hours at least. But no worries…” The police officer gave the two girls a hard look. “We do have a plan, but it’ll require both your cooperation. And frankly, neither I nor Inspector Jones are particularly enthusiastic about endangering the safety of two children, Gym Trainer or not.”

“We’ll do it. Whatever it takes!” Beverly blurted, with zero hesitation. But Nina held her by the shoulder and caressed the girl’s back to calm her down.

“Before we agree to anything, I’d like to know the specifics of this ‘plan’ you mentioned.” Nina chimed.

The Jenny nodded in approval. “It’s quite simple actually. We need a just cause to barge in without permission, so if two rogue trainers were to ‘break in’ and ‘assault’ the occupants. We’d be justified in entering to ‘arrest’ the offenders. Naturally, if we ‘coincidentally’ find evidence of wrongdoing inside the building, then we’d have no choice but to arrest everyone for an investigation.”

Nina’s frown deepened. “Wouldn’t this look bad on our record? You’re basically using us as sacrificial Mareeps for the sake of expediency.”

Lieutenant Jenny chuckled and waved at Nina’s concerns. “On the contrary, if we manage to bust a kidnapping ring, potentially being run by the terrorist organization known as Team Rocket, we’ll not only waive your charges, but even reward you for the heroic act.

“How else did you think Red busted the Rocket Game Center by himself all those years ago? He caused the commotion and took out most of the executives, but the police were the ones who had to go in and mop things up at the end.”

Nina nodded in understanding. “Bev, which of your Pokemon did you bring with you today?”

The older girl grinned. “All of them. My full conference team.” And naturally, Nina had Nairy and Espy with her.

“Alright, here’s the plan. I want you to fly up to the rooftop of that building with Sora while I charge in from the front. Do not bring Ryu out for this. We don’t want to risk bringing the whole place down and harming the hostages.”

Beverly responded with a grave but hesitant nod. “Are you sure? I don’t mind lending Sora to you and charging the front instead.” She offered, but Nina shook her head in denial.

“No, knowing these villain types, their toughest executives are probably at the top of the building looking down on everyone. I doubt I have the firepower to stall them from escaping, let alone take them down.”

Surprisingly, Lieutenant Jenny nodded in agreement. “Yeah, Miss Jones is right. These lowlives can be very cliche a lot of the time.”

“Which is why I’ll take the front where all the grunts are at. Nairy should be more than enough to take on their abused and malnourished Pokemon.” Nina continued. “How long will it take for backup to arrive?” She asked the Jenny.

“I’ll personally jump in right away after you guys enter the premises. The rest of the squad have already surrounded the area, but it might still take another five to ten minutes to close the net.” The woman replied.

“Good. Bev, send me a message once you’re in position. And I’ll start us off with a bang.”

And after some last minute preparations, the two vigilantes moved out to commence the operation.