“Mutsu!” Ryan cried, marching stiffly forwards in his business suit – he was wearing a whole ensemble, complete with starched shirt and vibrant tie. Maybe Moony will start calling him Suit, hah. “I’d like a word!”
Right on cue. I’m going to enjoy this. Inside, Hoshi grinned – but outwardly, he put on a frown. “Ryan. What do you want?”
The blond’s expression was set – not exactly a grimace, but he definitely wasn’t happy. “I’ve gotten some startling news from my peers in Viridian. Tell me…” His dandelion eyes flashed, easily ten times as vibrant as his platinum curls. “You haven’t been promoted, have you? Surely not.”
As he soaked in his underling’s haughty tones, Hoshi did not reach for his Pokéballs, though he was incredibly aware of them. Casca’s hand gripped his own, firm and soft. Bastard. ‘Surely not before me,’ that’s what you mean.
“I have. I’m a Senior Grunt. I was since the first day.” He finally let his smile show. “Which means I’m your boss. You got a problem with that, Sapo?”
The man’s teeth grit further. “Why?” he asked. “What have you done to deserve such a swift rise?”
Well shit, he’s actually pissed. Hoshi had been expecting the man to come at him out of injured pride, but there was actual offense in his words. “Eh,” he grunted. Might as well tell the truth; the instructors won’t keep it to themselves if he goes crying to them. His smile gained a hint of cynicism. “Political shit. I’ve got a connection with Surge, and I’m guessing that Jessie and James don’t want someone they can’t control in the driver’s seat, either. Looks like those vaunted family connections ended up biting you in the ass.” His chin raised. “Bad luck.”
Ryan stood for a moment, fuming – literally, fury almost visibly wafting from his pores. “Hoshi Mutsu,” he said, cold tones contrasting the fire in his eyes. “Though I acknowledge you have little to no hand in this, I cannot allow it to stand. My honour is at stake – I will not be surpassed by a mere pawn.”
Hoshi’s grin disappeared. Pawn, huh? And what do you think you are, the damn king? His hand left Casca’s warmth to point a thumb over his shoulder. “Battle court’s that way. You wanna settle this right now?”
Ryan continued to stand. He was shorter, and what hints Hoshi could see of his physique pointed towards an average, if not leisurely amount of muscle. His hands were smooth and unmarked, both the front and back, knuckles and palms without blemish; this man had never thrown a punch in his life.
But nonetheless, he still felt dangerous.
Is he planning to release his bagon right here, right now? Hoshi’s other hand longed to drop his suitcase and drift towards his belt, where Guts and Crow were hanging, their balls expanded so that they could rest properly. In active mode, they should be able to hear what’s happening and break out if they sense a fight. His own expression tightened as the silence stretched on. Will they? I’ve been working with them after work, but is a week’s worth of half-assed training enough for them to defend me unordered?
“No,” Ryan finally said. “It would prove nothing. I need to be seen to beat you.” He turned, speaking over his shoulder, the blooming red colouring his skin transmuting back to superior haughtiness. “We’ll do this after the lesson. Meet me in front of the school, Mutsu, if you’re a man.”
He walked away, and Hoshi allowed him to go, his mouth a thin line. “Prick,” he shot into the silence after the last hint of blue fabric had disappeared around the corner.
“Big time,” Casca agreed. “‘If you’re a man’? Dude thinks he’s a samurai or something.”
Hah. “Well, he is from Viridian.” Slowly, Hoshi’s expression smoothed back to neutral. “Let’s see how he deals with a ninja.”
----------------------------------------
They ended up deciding to go to the cafeteria after all, if only for a drink – though Hoshi added a slight detour; he felt increasingly awkward walking around in his raincoat, so the two of them stopped by the changing rooms so he could don his uniform.
Unlike the first time he had stepped in, the room was occupied. A couple of older guys were grousing at each other, apparently not giving a single shit they were completely naked, while further in Hoshi could hear the showers being used.
I guess some people decided to go for an early morning swim – actually, that doesn’t sound half bad. He wasn’t much of a swimmer – Vermilion Bay tended to be ice cold, too much to consider even in the summer heat, even assuming you were willing to brave the typhoon-level waves – but lounging by the poolside sure beat the crap out of anything he could do at home. Yeah, that sounds nice. Does Casca own a bikini?
He pulled off his waterproof gear, leaving himself in boxers and a thin wifebeater, before pulling out his Rocket clothes. Time hadn’t decreased the gaudiness of the big red R, but it was almost starting to grow on him. I can kind of get it – dressed like this, who’s going to remember my face? It wasn’t all that different from Fuchsia’s traditional ninja dress; eye-catching, so that if you were seen, people would see the uniform, rather than you.
Not that I actually know what I’m talking about… A few of Dad’s old stories isn’t nearly enough to consider myself a member of the clan.
Not wanting to be in the presence of the naked old men any longer than necessary, he dressed himself swiftly. A momentary glance to check his appearance in the mirror, then he was out.
To find that Casca was nowhere to be seen.
Huh? He drowned the reflexive impulse to call for her; they weren’t stuck in the woods, the hallway was plainly empty. I wasn’t in there long at all, so she can’t have gone far- shit, what if Ryan followed us? If his backing off had been a bluff-
“Yo, check it out,” came a voice from his side, and Hoshi felt instant relief. He turned, to see Casca emerging from the woman’s changing room – and indeed, she had changed.
“You have one of those too?”
For some reason he had never considered it – which was silly, in hindsight; she was a Rocket Grunt, so why wouldn’t she have a uniform?
“Yup,” she replied. I have to admit, she pulls it off better than Puce or Nerine. Actually, her uniform was slightly different; rather than simple black, it was closer to green, and the thigh high boots clung to her legs more tightly. “I usually just leave the thing here – ninety-nine percent of the time I’m undercover, so there’s no point having it with me.” She spun in a circle, arms outstretched. “So?”
“You fill it out way better than anyone else I’ve seen,” he said with a grin, offering his arm. I wonder what she’d look like in Jessie’s little spandex number… “Shall we?”
She took the offer with a grin of her own. “Oh wow. Who’s the samurai now, huh?”
They started down the hall – and to Hoshi’s satisfaction, a passing janitor-or-whatever saw the stripes on his uniform and actually made way. That’s… more gratifying than I’d want to admit out loud. He walked with his girl on his arm, and for the first time it didn’t feel like he was just a kid playing dress-up.
“Hah. Turns out it’s better to play both.”
----------------------------------------
They were, somehow, the first people to show up – a fact that made Hoshi wary. I thought Ryan would be here before us, brown-nosing. That begs the question… if he isn’t snuggling up with the instructors, who is he meeting with? The thought that he was simply off fuming somewhere wasn’t worth thinking about; out of all the other grunts, Ryan seemed the only one with an actual work ethic.
Save for Nerine… maybe. She’s a great trainer, but the drugs don’t inspire confidence.
“You sure we have the right room?” he asked, receiving a nod.
“Yup. Just sit down; the instructors will show up when it’s,” she gestured flamboyantly, “dramatically appropriate.”
He nodded back, and they took two seats in the front.
Arcus, this really is just a classroom. A fancy classroom, but if you swapped the hardwood out for linoleum and downsized the desks, it would slot right into his memories of elementary school. “So we just wait, then?” Maybe it would have been better to squeeze in a little more training, after all; we’re a half-hour before the scheduled time.
“I guess? You know…” Her lips quirked. “You look damn good in that uniform. We could always-”
Hoshi’s rising anticipation at where the conversation was headed took an immediate nosedive as the door slammed open, cracking against the wall hard enough it was miraculous it didn’t leave a dent.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
A strong-jawed face poked in. “Oops. I really need to stop doing that…”
After having met her parents, Hoshi couldn’t not see her father in Puce’s body – and not just in physique, but in facial structure; she had the same squared-off, cinder block look, only slightly softened by her mother’s rounder features. Or maybe it’s all her dad, and she’s just what he would look like as a woman. And twenty years younger. The only thing she definitely took from her mother was her green hair, which he had seen during the visit to her house, currently hidden beneath her cap.
She shuffled into the room awkwardly and closed the door with careful motions, before turning to face them. “Oh, hey Hoshi. And… uh…”
“Casca, honey,” Casca reminded.
“Casca, thank you.” She dropped into a nearby seat, visibly relieved. “I’m glad you’re here. I wasn’t expecting to find the right room this early – usually, I’m really late…”
Hoshi shared a glance with his girlfriend. He leaned in and whispered, “How many classrooms like this are there?”
“Probably a lot?” she replied. “But I’ve only ever used, like, two since I got here; this one for normal lessons, and another for the recruiter track. Not counting the gym or labs or stuff.”
He straightened up. Well, that’s… unfortunate. The Electric Academy was built more like a hedge maze than a school, yeah, but to not be able to find the same room over and over again? He turned back to Puce.
“You know, they give out maps. I got one from-” what the fuck was his name? “From Nak, in the room we all met originally.”
She made a sad sound deep in her chest. “I know. I’ve got like twenty of them at home – I just keep forgetting to bring one back, and…” Another guttural sound as she rubbed at her face. Arcus fuck. Note to self: never let her hold anything mission-critical, unless I want it left in her sock drawer or some shit.
“Hey girl,” Casca chimed in. “You could always keep a spare one here in a locker. That’s what I do.”
Puce peeked out from between her fingers. “Do people not steal things? The other girls were always taking my gym uniform and… uh, that’s not important.”
Casca shook her head. “I’ve never had trouble with it.” She flashed a half-smile. “Honour among thieves, I guess.”
The gleam in the huge woman’s eyes was so hopeful, Hoshi had to turn away. Is she a fucking kid? I swear, everyone in this building – except me and Casca – is nuts. He spent a moment staring at the empty whiteboard before recollection struck.
“Oh hey, it’s actually good you got here early,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you the other day, but your parents stuck to us like glue.”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “Mom and Dad are really clingy. What did you want to talk about?”
“One sec…” Hoshi hoisted his briefcase up onto his desk and unlatched it. “Here we are. Look at these – Casca got us the floorplans, schedules, lists of employees, everything we need.”
He passed over the loose stack of eclectically-sized papers, watching as Puce went through them. “…Wow, there’s a lot here. So are we…” She looked uncomfortable. “All set to go, then?”
He waved her off. “Not even close. I want us trained up – I mean this in the least degrading way possible, but you and M- and Kenny sucked ass with your Pokémon. Plus, I want an actual strategy; we need to plan for if we get caught, if only the infiltrator gets caught, if plugging the thing in sets off some sort of alarm… Basically, we need to work out a whole bunch of shit.”
Puce’s discomfort was growing by the second, so he softened his voice. “But don’t worry about it too much – we’ll meet up after, uh, school, and discuss things as a group. I need to get Ryan in line, first.”
That only seemed to make her more confused. “Mr. Sampo? Is there… I mean, do you and him have some sort of problem?”
He raised a brow, tracing a line down from his shoulder to stomach, following one of the yellow marks that his uniform had, and hers didn’t.
Silence. After an increasingly drawn-out moment, Casca helped her by just stating the answer outright. “Hoshi is a Senior Grunt, honey. He’s in charge. Ryan… Well, he has a chip on his shoulder.” She smiled. “But it’ll all sort itself out once my man stomps him.”
“Stomping, you say?” sounded out a voice from the front of the room, and Hoshi jolted. Arcus’s fucking balls-
Standing in front of the whiteboard was James, his half-cape-thing immaculately white. There isn’t- there isn’t anywhere to hide! The desk is too small, and… His eyes went up to the ceiling, but no conspicuously discoloured patch or seam stood out from the solid-looking construction. Maybe a trapdoor behind the desk? Or-
“Why didn’t you say so sooner?” continued a deeper, more feminine voice from right behind him. Despite half expecting it, Hoshi jolted a second time before turning to get an eyeful of Jessie’s latex-covered bust as she leaned towards him, her hands resting on the back of his chair. The door didn’t- I’d have noticed it opening! How?! Are they ninjas? “We love a good crushing, especially when it’s an unruly underling!”
“A close second to annoying schoolkids, just edging out our lovely blue-clad ladies in law enforcement!” James picked back up.
A polite cough from Casca signaled him to raise his eyes to his boss’s face. “Uh..!” Don’t get scared by the fucking cat, Hoshi. At least salvage a scrap of dignity. “That’s- uh, feel free to watch?” Great comeback. Thank’s, brain.
“A generous offer!” Jessie pushed off from his chair, spinning around in a pirouette to join hands with James, who continued the motion. The dance move continued towards the desk, where they slid themselves up in a move that had to be practised, ending up sitting half-across each side like they were posing for a photo shoot.
“But we have other work to do, so we’ll have to get a rain check!” continued James, not missing a beat.
Then a feline head poked up from behind the desk, perfectly framed by their casually resting limbs. “Meow.”
…Ah, I see that the persian has more than one hat. Of course it does. Today it was wearing a pitch black bowler, and as it and the instructors rearranged themselves, Hoshi saw it was wearing a different suit as well – a loose yellow zoot, which seemed incongruous to his eyes. Doesn’t the zoot usually go with a fedora? Maybe I’m just caught up in movie stereotypes again…
With Meowth the persian lounging on the desk, James seated behind it, and Jessie in front of the whiteboard, the Senior Executives continued.
“Since we’ve been informed that Mr. Kaneth is going to be running late…” began Jessie.
“We’ve decided to start the class early, seeing as you’re all here!”
“Meow.”
The room was silent for a moment, before Puce tentatively raised her hand. “I think that maybe… Mr. Sampo and Miss Rose aren’t here yet..?”
James gestured her way. “An astute observation! However…”
“If you look behind you, you’ll see we’ve actually timed it perfectly!” Jessie made the same motion, the lines of their arms happening to intersect perfectly at the back of the room, right where the door was.
Hoshi and his fellow grunts looked back at the door as another silence dragged on. Eventually Puce raised her hand again. “Are-”
The door opened, and it may as well have smashed as loudly as Puce’s entrance had for how much of an impact it had on the ‘class.’ Ryan walked in, a beat passing before he noticed the strange air – and the fact that everyone was staring at him.
“What? Do I have something on my face?” His suit had been replaced by the standard uniform, and Hoshi teasingly drew a finger down the yellow line a second time – and unlike Puce, Ryan instantly understood the implication, his face colouring as Nerine came in behind him, raising her head for a second to take in the strange looks.
Then she shrugged it off, stepping past the older man to find a seat.
“Oh my!” came James’s voice, and Hoshi turned forward to see him scrutinising a stopwatch. “Only four seconds off! Is that a new record?”
“Meow.”
“Fiddlesticks.”
----------------------------------------
While the classroom might have reminded him of an elementary school, the actual lesson was far from basic.
Oh, it sounded basic – when Jessie wrote TYPE INTERACTIONS - ATTACKING AND DEFENDING along the top of the whiteboard, Hoshi sighed internally. What kind of aspiring trainer didn’t have the various types memorised before their age required a second digit? I mean, I’d struggle to write it out, but give me a combo and I’ll tell you what’s good or bad against it in a second.
But as the next hour unfolded, he realised that the duo wasn’t giving some kiddy lesson about flying being immune to ground – no, this was serious shit.
Jessie drew an arrow across the elements of her diagram with a flourish. “As you can see, missing a Fissure is far from the end of the move’s use!”
“A well-placed Earthquake or Magnitude-”
“Or heck, another Fissure!”
“-Can cause it to widen, potentially trapping an enemy that evaded the first wave!”
“Or you can use a water move to create a moat…”
“And you wouldn’t believe how many Pokémon will go the long way around water, no matter how shallow!”
“Meow.”
Hoshi’s pen moved furiously. Arcus’s holy halo, this is good. This was the sort of lesson he’d have to pay for, if he wanted it from anywhere else. And that was just the interactions a single ground type move had – they had already gone over any number of strategies he’d never seen before.
I already knew you could bypass electric immunity by getting them wet, but I had no idea it also made them more vulnerable to poison. That had never come up in any of the matches in Surge’s Gym. Is this common knowledge among trainers? I’ve hardly heard any of this stuff before…
And it was obvious they weren’t just parroting data gathered by other Rockets – they sprinkled in enough anecdotes and little stories that they had to have personal experience with most of it. How long have they been Rockets? Scratch that, how long have they been trainers? They don’t even look forty…
Is that another trick, or did they somehow pack ten pounds of Pokémon adventure into a five pound bag, so to speak?
And it turned out that Hoshi’s question would be answered – all he had to do was ask. During a lull in the dialogue, his curiosity became overwhelming, and he raised his hand.
Jessie immediately pointed. “You there, in the front!”
He cleared his throat. “Sorry for interrupting, but… You have so many stories, it’s,” hard to believe, “Amazing. Where did you learn all this?”
The two shared a look. “Well,” James started. “We have been speaking for a while…”
“Yes, you’ve been such good little students!”
“So I suppose we can take some time out of battle tactics and switch to history!”