“Hey!” Red yelled, stepping out of his tent. “Stay away from our bags!”

He wasted no time sending out Mankey, as he already had experience with his things being stolen, and he wasn’t going to let it happen again. The Team Rocket grunt froze in his tracks, and muttered something under his breath, pulling a pokéball out of his pocket- out of which came a Golbat.

“Hand me your pokéballs, and we can settle this without a fight,” the grunt said, staring at him. “You don’t want to get hurt, do you?”

“I’m not going to do that,” he said, glaring at the grunt. Even if he was averse to conflict, he wasn’t going to willingly give up his main line of defense.

“Hmph. Then we’re going to have to do this the hard way.” The grunt’s mouth curled into an evil grin. “Golbat! Use Agility!”

A pink light surrounded the bat-like pokémon, and it flitted around a little bit, before moving closer to Mankey.

“Quick, before it can get an attack in! Use-”

Before he could even finish his sentence, Golbat lunged in, its teeth sinking into Mankey’s flesh as it injected poison into its veins. The primeape flinched, and backed away quickly, its guard up.

‘Well,’ Red thought to himself. ‘That’s going to be a problem.’ He could see the poison already beginning to affect Mankey- it was shuddering every few seconds as it took a small amounts of damage from it.

With a start, he realized that the Zubat had already moved in for its next attack- he immediately called out “Scratch!” in an attempt to at least get a hit in- the battle was moving so fast that there wasn’t really a break in the action, and a chance for him to strategize. He watched as Mankey jumped up to reach the Zubat’s level, and the two exchanged blows. Mankey managed to block its opponent’s strike, but wasn’t able to push back with his own offense, causing Red to grow even more concerned.

In a desperate attempt to regain purchase, he called for Mankey to use Mud-Slap- then groaned as he remembered that ground type moves were practically useless against airborne pokémon. Unsurprisingly, the stream of brown sludge had no effect on Zubat, and he was left wide open for yet another attack.

“Focus Energy!”

“Use Fury Swipes!”

“Seismic Toss?”

“Uh, what does Covet do again…?”

No matter how many attacks Red tried, nothing worked. To make things worse, once he finally started to run out of ideas, he realized that the grunt had been playing the long game- the poison had whittled Mankey’s health down to almost nothing. Less than a half a minute, and the battle would be over.

‘I’m done for. The bat stays airborne, just out of reach, and keeps making opportune attacks like that… I’ve good as lost now. Nothing left to do except-’

Before he could finish his train of thought, however, the fight was suddenly cut off, as Phoenix and Ritchie emerged from their tents, yawning.

“What the hell’s going on?”

“Uh… Red? Who’s this?”

The grunt swore under his breath, and began backing away. “I didn’t know there were more of you brats. This ain’t worth it anymore.”

“Wait a moment? You’re part of Team Rocket!”

“No shit, Ritchie.”

“That’s a bad word-”

“And I’m tired, get over it.”

“But-”

“Can we focus on the matter at hand?!” Red yelled, pointing at the grunt, who had recalled Zubat. “This guy was trying to steal our stuff. It’s a good thing I was awake, or he would have gotten away with it, too.”

“Let’s just move our stuff inside, and go back to bed,” Phoenix said, rubbing her eyes. “I need to sleep.”

“What are we gonna do about him, though?”

The grunt snorted. “You’re not going to do anything about me. I’m gonna leave while I still can. See ya.” And with that, he began running away from them, moving as fast as he could on the moss-covered cave floor. He nearly slipped, but quickly recovered, and rushed down a passageway out of the room.

“Hey!” Ritchie shouted. “You can’t run from a trainer battle!”

“Team Rocket doesn’t seem to care about those sort of rules, Ritchie. I thought you already knew that?”

Ritchie sighed. “I don’t know anymore. Why can’t people just make sense?”

“Ritchie,” Phoenix said, “the world is complex place.”

Red sighed in defeat- had those two not shown up to scare the grunt away, he would have lost the battle. It was his first defeat since his fight in Professor Oak’s lab, and it was a rather sobering one. How had he been able to deal with Samuel, and the grunt in the museum, and even Brock, and then lose to a common mook here? Was he outclassed, or just really tired? He recalled Mankey, and let out a long, exhausted sigh.

“Well,” he said, interrupting his companions. “Before we all go back to sleep, I need to discuss something with you guys. Don’t worry, it won’t take long,” he added, as the two trainers glanced at him. “I have a little idea that I want to try out.”

Phoenix consistently managed to surprise Red- every time he thought he knew her, she did something completely unexpected. This time, it was sneaking up on, punching, and subsequently knocking out three Team Rocket grunts.

He had assumed that she was just going to use a bomb or something- admittedly, this was much more impressive, if a bit scary.

“These should fit us…” she said, dumping a pile of Team Rocket uniforms on the ground. “Just barely, though. And I still think this is a stupid plan.”

“It’s better than no plan, Phoenix. I think it’s good that Red is being proactive!”

“You really the embodiment of ‘wide-eyed idealist’, aren’t you?”

“I- what?”

“Never mind. Let’s get these clothes on before someone sees us.”

The three of them began to change their outfits, stuffing jackets and coats into their bags and replacing them with ‘iconic’ Team Rocket sweaters. Red felt a bit icky wearing it; partially out of his feelings for the group whom it belonged to, but mostly because it smelled like poop… for some reason. He decided not to think about it too much, before he got sick.

“So,” he said, clapping his hands together. “We’ve been over this, right? We pretend we’re Team Rocket grunts, try to gather information, keep an eye out for Pineco, so on so forth. If anyone asks who we are, I’m John, Ritchie’s Noland, and Phoenix is Sarah. Got it?”

“Why can’t I be John? I want to be John.”

“Those are… oddly specific names,” Phoenix remarked.

“Ritchie, you can’t be John, I’m John. You’re Noland, remember?”

“But- I- uh…”

“You know what, fine. If someone starts asking too many questions, we can just make an excuse and leave, okay?”

“But I liked the name idea! Why can’t we just do that, and switch the names?”

Red groaned. “Why do I even bother,” he muttered.

“I don’t think anyone is going to believe we’re Team Rocket grunts, anyway,” Phoenix pointed out. “You’re both ten-year-olds, one of you isn’t even five feet tall, and in case you forgot, child labor is illegal.”

“I’m sure it will work out,” Ritchie said, shrugging. “It’s worth a try, at least.”

She sighed. “Am I the only sane person here?”

“I beg to differ on that,” Red interjected. “I’m pretty sure I’m the sane one. You enjoy blowing things up and scaring people.”

“Shut up,” Phoenix grumbled.

After a lengthy discussion, the three of them decided to split up, in order to cover more ground. Red was a bit uncertain at the prospect of being all alone, surrounded by enemies, but he supposed it wouldn’t make a massive difference either way; besides, he was the one who had the idea in the first place, and he couldn’t go back on it now.

It didn’t take long for him to find a branch of the cave that seemed to be a sort of base-of-operations for Team Rocket; there were many more grunts patrolling the hallways here, most of which he tried his best to avoid. He didn’t want to admit it, but Phoenix was right- this was a rather stupid idea.

As he wandered the winding tunnels, he chanced upon a small room, that, unlike most of the spaces in here, was very clearly carved out of the cave walls, and lined with ornate decorations that had long since faded, covered with fairy lights and graffiti. Interesting as it was, he didn’t linger for long, however, as he noticed a couple of grunts lounging around, talking about… some sort of experiment?

Wait- that seemed vaguely important.

Red carefully picked his way back towards the entrance, and tried his best to hide in the shadows of the opening. He stayed as still as possible, straining his ears as he caught snippets of the conversation inside of the room.

“...yeah, I heard… old fart’s working on it- what… name? Blair, Dwayne, Bane…”

“Shut up, already.”

“Fine, fine. Anyways, it’s got… Mew… not sure, but it’s… fighting machine, kind of. Like genetic engineering.”

‘Genetic engineering?!’ Red thought, shocked. ‘That was outlawed over fifteen years ago!’ After the catastrophic effects that man-made pokémon, such as Magnemite and Ditto, had wrought upon Kanto’s ecosystem, it was heavily outlawed in that region, along with a few others.

Red was growing more nervous by the second- he was picking up sensitive information, the kind that would easily make him a marked man. He was about to turn away, while he still could, when a loud booming sound interrupted him; one that was, from what he could tell, very close by.

Alarmed, he spun around and began heading towards the noise, the grunts in the cave seemingly in hot pursuit, judging by the footsteps he could hear behind him. As he ran through the twists and turns of the cave, he saw more and more grunts join him, and by the time he finally reached the large cavern that the sound appeared to have come from, he was surrounded by a mass of black sweaters.

He could barely see anything, nor hear, for that matter, as the din began to overwhelm him- just when he thought he had his headache under control, it had begun to flare up again. Before it could get too bad, however, an authoritative voice cut through the clamor. Straining to see over the heads of the grunts, he caught sight of a man with cyan-colored hair and an impressive uniform- designating him as a person of importance.

“Please,” he shouted, “cool yourselves! It was only a stray Pineco- I’m not sure why you all came running.”

Red stiffened. Unless there were natural Pineco in Mt. Moon- no, that wasn’t possible, Pineco were native to Johto. And thank god for that, too, or finding Phoenix’s would have been nigh impossible. But then, if this was her Pineco, he couldn’t let Team Rocket take it. Crud.

“Go on, scram! My unit will take care of this, there’s no need to hang around.”

He stood there for a few moments, unable to move out of indecisiveness. Obviously he would need to take it back from them, but he also couldn’t just run up and challenge the guy in front of at least a hundred people, if not more- that was practically suicide! He began to panic as the crowd dispersed, and remained locked in place.

‘Oh no oh no oh no they’re going to see me-’

“And you over there- the pint-sized brat! You really thought you could fool us with your shitty disguise?”

Red immediately felt the eyes of everyone still in the room resting on him, and he went pale. The grunts that remained subtly shifted to form a circle around him, effectively trapping him where he stood, and he began to feel very, very small.

“Um… not really?” was the best he could come up with.

The man laughed a little, then stared back down at him. “You have balls of steel to come here, brat. Or you’re foolish- either way, I owe you a little bit of respect. As such, how about we have a battle?”

“Oh, but of course,” he added, “introductions. Where are my manners? I’m Proton- one of Team Rocket’s three admins.”

Red gulped. He didn’t like where this was going- one of Team Rocket’s admins was challenging him to a battle?!

“If you win this battle, somehow, you can take this pinecone and leave. If I win, however, you’ll hand over all of your pokemon to us, and, well… You can still leave, but you’ll be taking the hard way out. Surely even a child like you is smart enough to know what that means.”

Grimacing, he considered Proton’s proposal. While he saw this as nothing but a bad idea, was there really another way out? If he said no, Proton would just sic the grunts on him, and it would be game over. As it stood right now, there was a twenty-adult-men-to-one-prepubescent-child ratio; not one that was likely to go in his favor.

“Well? What’s going through that little head of yours? Are you going to fight with honor, or run away like a coward?”

Red begrudgingly nodded, and stepped forward slowly. “One on one?” he asked.

Proton shook his head, a manic fire lighting in his eyes as he unhooked one of the six pokéballs attached to his belt. “Full team battle.”

“But I only have two pokémon!”

He smirked. “Exactly.”

‘Oh no.’