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12:45 PM

We were lucky. I wasn’t sure if we would have been able to take on Team Rocket if they were going all out, and used all of their Pokémon at the same time. I mean, Pikachu definitely could have, but he wasn’t at full strength at the time, and the rest of our Pokémon were at the highest, maybe level seven.

Once we all reached the lab and explained the situation to Rowan, he agreed to take care of Pikachu and tend to his injuries until Ash arrived. That being said, Ash also hadn’t appeared yet, which didn’t help reduce my stress.

In the anime, Dawn found Pikachu and took her to a Pokémon Centre north of Sandgem Town at the same time Ash met Rowan, so they ended up meeting halfway.

That was clearly not the case here.

I was sitting down clutching Elaine in an embrace in an attempt to calm down, and Elaine being able to sense the emotions of others, was of course concerned. She was rubbing my face which tickled a bit, due to her hands being so small.

“What are we going to do, Jack?” Lucas suddenly asked.

I looked up to see him sitting next to me, similarly consulting his Turtwig for comfort. “What do you mean?”

“Well… how do you even know that this Ash person is going to be here? There’s no sign of him.”

“The same reason I thought we should have taken Piplup here when Dawn found him. A Pokémon professor is the first person you ask about local Pokémon and anything odd relating to that. Since, you know, their work is about researching Pokémon.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Lucas stroked his hand along Turtwig’s shell. “But how do you know that this Pikachu belongs to this Ash person?”

Because that’s what happened in the anime. “It was an educated guess. I saw the cuts and bruises that he had, and I thought that he must be a really strong Pokémon to take that kind of a beating. Ash Ketchum is the only Trainer with a really strong Pikachu that I could think of.”

Luckily, when I wasn’t too stressed, I was able to think of plausible reasons as to why I have the knowledge I really shouldn’t fairly quickly. The Savant perk on the sheet the elven man gave me an enhanced mind, though a faster brain is something I’d have to get used to in order to properly use.

The Pikachu in question had their nose pressed against a window, waiting impatiently for his Trainer. After a while, he would jump off of the windowsill and then move to a different window. His energetic demeanor no doubt regained from the Professor’s aides tending to his wounds earlier.

“Are you okay, Lucas?” I asked.

“Huh? Oh, yeah. I think so.”

“You think so?”

“Well, that was the first time I ever met a criminal. I didn’t know what was going to happen.”

“Hey, I might be a bundle of anxiety sometimes, but I promised your mother that I would do my best to take care of the two of you, and I’m going to do my best to keep my word.”

“Thank you, Jack.”

“Thank you as well.”

“Um, why are you thanking me?”

“Cause you helped me de-stress a bit.”

“Oh, well… Glad I could help.”

Then without warning, we heard a yell from one of the windows.

“Pikapi!” It was Pikachu, who had darted off a window sill and ran towards the front door.

Lucas and I glanced outside to see three figures approaching the lab.

“What’s going on?” I heard Dawn ask from behind us as we stood at the window.

“Ash is here,” I answered, and then moved to open the door for Pikachu, who bolted out towards the figure in the centre, a tan boy who looked to be in his early teens.

“Pikachu!” the boy called, before all of a sudden Pikachu was carried off of the ground by a large mechanical hand, and pulled out of sight into the treeline.

“No! Give back Pikachu!” He shouted. All too aware of what just happened.

“Ahahaha!” a shrill voice shouted.

“All we had to do is wait for the twerps to show up then Pikachu would come out of hiding,” a suave voice explained.

“Now to show those twerpazoids our new motto!” exclaimed a gravelly voice.

“What are you talking about!?” The boy yelled.

The twins and I took our Pokémon and ran out check what the hell happened.

“Listen is that a twerp I hear?”

“He’s shrieking to me, loud and clear.”

“On the wind,” Jessie appeared from the bushes.

“Past the stars,” so did James.

“In your ear!” and Meowth.

“Bring chaos at a breakneck pace!”

“Dashing hope, putting fear in its place!”

“A rose by any other name is just as sweet!”

“When everything’s worse, our work is complete!”

A loud thud reverberated across the laboratory grounds as a six-armed mechanical figure followed Team Rocket out of the brush.

“Jessie!”

“James!”

“Meowth, that’s a name!”

They all swiftly climbed up the three-story mech and into the cockpit at the top of the bipedal monstrosity.

“Putting the do-gooders in their place,”

“We’re Team Rocket,”

“And we’re in your face!”

“Wobbuffet!” exclaimed a blue punching bag looking creature with a large mouth while they saluted.

“Mime, mi mime!” A small pink humanoid Pokémon with dark blue hair repeated the same actions as the Wobbuffet.

“Team Rocket?!” The three initial arrivers stated in unison, contempt burning under their voices.

After a quick closer look at the new strangers, I identified the three of them immediately. The boy was, in fact, Ash Ketchum, with permanent marks on his cheeks that sort of looked like backward ‘z’s. He was taller than Dawn or Lucas and he wore a red hat and a blue shirt. Behind him were two others. A man who looked to be the same age as me, maybe older, he had dark skin, brown spiky hair, and eyes so thin you could barely see them. This was Brock, the Pewter City Gym Leader in the Kanto region who specialised in Rock-Type Pokémon, and longtime traveling companion to Ash. The other was a girl with ginger hair tied into a short side-ponytail who was about as old as Ash. She was carrying a small blue, round rabbit Pokémon with no arms, and a large ball attached to the end of its thin zigzagging tail. She was Misty, another Kanto Gym Leader, this time of Cerulean City, and who used Water-Type Pokémon.

Wait, why is Misty here? Isn’t she supposed to still be in Kanto? In the anime, Misty left the main cast of characters when the show had a soft reboot when Ash went to the Hoenn region. From then on, she only appeared in an episode or two here or there.

“Pikachu, use Thunderbolt!” Ash called, which turned my attention to the real threat in front of us, the giant machine holding Pikachu.

Held firm within the grasp of one of its six snake-like arms, Pikachu discharged, to no visible effect.

The trio of ne’er-do-wells merely laughed. “Insulation is paramount in protecting us from Pikachu’s Poké power!” James explained.

“And nothing dat he can dish out ain’t gonna dent our dynamic devil!” Meowth gloated.

“Then how about this?!” Ash reached for Pokéball clasped to his belt. “Starly, I choose you!” He threw a Pokéball which summoned a Starly of his own. “Use Wing Attack!” Ash’s Starly dive-bombed the massive mech, aiming for the arm holding Pikachu, but its other five arms easily swatted Starly away. However, neither it nor Ash backed down. Starly continued to attempt to weave past all of the arms, dodging back out when things got too close for comfort and then trying again.

“Stupid bird,” Jessie cursed, “go away and ruin someone else’s day!”

“Lucas,” I exclaimed, “get your Starly to do the same thing. One of them should be able to get through.”

“Uhh… okay!” Lucas hesitated, then fiercely threw his Pokéball skyward. “Starly, save Pikachu with Quick Attack!”

As the second Starly entered the fray, there was a yelp from where Ash and his friends were.

“No Ash, wait!” Misty shouted as Ash had made a mad dash towards the mech.

One of the mech’s arms shot out at Ash, but he jumped and dodged out of the way, with that jump he hit a tree trunk and jumped up even higher by pushing off of it. Holy f***! It must have been almost a ten-metre jump in all. No human from home could have pulled a stunt like that. Can… Can I do that?! I mean, I took Physical Fitness, “almost as strong as Captain America” and everything. Ash grabbed onto the mechs top left arm, the one that was holding Pikachu.

“Hold on Pikachu, I’m coming!” He yelled as he tried to keep balance on the writhing arm.

“Hey guys,” Meowth said, “we got a twerp stowaway!”

Jessie commanded, “then shake him off!”

The arm began to writhe even more wildly than before, it was like a skipping rope that couldn’t decide if it wanted to go clockwise or anti-clockwise.

Somehow despite that, Ash managed to climb all the way to the hand of the machine and attempted to pry it open.

As Team Rocket’s attention was mostly on Ash, one of the Starly managed to get a good hit on the arm holding Pikachu, which seemed to lock up as exposed wires fountained out of the impact zone.

“Brutish bird-brains!” James exclaimed.

Meowth stated ominously, “I’ll show you to mess wit our machine!” before suddenly, one of the arms penetrated the main body of the machine.

“Uh, Meowth? What did you do?” Jessie asked forebodingly.

Then there was an explosion as Team Rocket was sent to orbit.

“We’re blasting off again!”

The explosion encompassed Ash and Pikachu, they were nowhere in sight. Even the Starly above couldn’t see anything underneath the collapsing rubble.

“Ash!” Brock called.

“Are you okay?!” Misty asked the pile of broken machinery, panic-stricken.

All we could hear was deafening quiet. It lasted for what seemed to be hours, and it was only drowned out by the pungent smell of smoke and gas.

Then to all of our relief, Ash emerged from the wreckage embracing Pikachu.

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