Pokemon: Johto Theory -- Chapter II

Chapter II

Fate

“Well! Good morning Jacob, nice of you to join us,” greeted Elm, standing in the kitchen with a pan in his hand. Around the table between the kitchen and the fire place area sat a woman with bright eyes, long brown hair and a fair complexion and a boy almost in his teens with the same bright eyes and brown hair but it barely peeked out of the bright blue hat resting on his head, “You can sit at the table if you wish. Breakfast will be served soon. By the way, this is my wife, Selina,” Elm stated, indicating the woman before pointing at the boy, “and my son, Timothy.”

“Uh…hi, nice to meet you,” Jacob replied somewhat awkwardly and sleepily before taking a seat at the table.

“I was just telling them that we had a visitor, that you came all the way here yesterday to start your Pokémon journey! Oh what a fun day this is going to be!”

“Yeah, I’m excited to start it off,” he replied, this time happily.

“Well, breakfast is ready!” Elm burst out, pulling the pan off the stove and placing the contents in a bowl then on the table, before sitting down, “Here you go!”

Breakfast was delicious, a perfect meal to start the day. The conversation never dwindled, Jacob answering questions coming from all the other three, Elm about what he’s planning to do, Selina about how nice Venuex City was and Timothy asking about what it was like to have run all day to arrive here.

Halfway through the meal the Professor spoke up with a chuckle, “Well this sure is strange, isn’t it? I’m home for breakfast instead of in the lab, researching!” he laughed, and then his wife looked at him with a face of gratitude mixed with a slight bit of anger.

Soon enough, they were done eating and Elm got the dishes off the table and put them in the sink. He and Jacob went off, outside and downstairs to the lab. As Elm turned on the lights, Jacob’s jaw dropped; the lab looked exactly the opposite of what he expected. It didn’t look boring at all, there were cool looking machines all around, a pile of pokéballs was lying in the corner. And although the room was really stuffed, it felt very empty.

“Okay Jacob, so I trust you’ve got your Trainer License with you?” asked Professor Elm, “because if you don’t, I can’t give you a starter.”

“Of course, I carry it with me every day. I’ll get it out,” Jacob said as he reached for the shoe on his right foot, pulling it off and grabbing a single card out of it.

Professor Elm then said, “Guess you’re ready for this then, let me just look for a Pokémon I can entrust to your care,” Professor Elm walked over to the pile of pokéballs and started sifting through them. He then asked Jacob, “So, which pokémon were you hoping to get?”

Jacob began to mention that he was hoping to get a Cyndaquil, a small mouse Pokémon with a green and yellow pelt and flames often flickering out of its back, but he was interrupted by Elm telling him that the only Pokémon he could offer for Jacob was a Hoothoot, a small brown owl Pokémon with wide red eyes, arrow shaped eyebrows that stood above its head and that always stood on one foot.

Since it was his only choice, though not a terrible disappointment; Jacob accepted the Hoothoot and graciously thanked the professor. He was in the process of walking out of walking out of the room to leave the lab when Elm grabbed his shoulder and pulled him over to a door in the back of the room.

As he was pulled through the door, he heard a raucous sound and saw the doors close. Before Elm let go, he turned around and looked at the Professor, confused, but then followed him through more sets of automatic doors. As they walked through, he heard the doors close and make noises that perhaps meant they were locking. As soon as Elm stopped walking forward, Jacob felt like his weight decreased, it seemed as if they were falling, but he guessed within a second that they were in an elevator.

And in that second, Professor Elm had him turn him around, proving how right his guess was; in front of them there was a large room that had clearly been carved out of the earth, as they kept moving down, he noticed that it looked fairly new, as though it had been done quite recently.

“This is Johto’s underground police agency,” said Professor Elm, adjusting his glasses, “it was dug underneath my lab a few months after the big event in the Whirl Islands, which surely you know about. It was constructed for the sole purpose of tracking down members of Team Rocket.”

Jacob just stared, taking in the sight. He had never seen anything like it before. It was a wide room full of desks and computers with many small, closed offices around the sides. In the center of the room stood a huge database type computer, which took up a large portion of the room. There were a lot of other people in the room, sitting at computer desks, carrying papers around or pushing buttons on the database, all working towards a common cause.

“I pulled you down here because you are clearly a strong-willed adolescent, I mean, you ran across the entire region in one day, so you’ve obviously got a hell of a lot of willpower,” Professor Elm said as they exited the elevator and started walking around the huge computer to an office in the back, “and we need someone like you to help us combat Team Rocket so there’s no chance they can return to wreak more havoc.” 

“Sounds like fun,” Jacob said as soon as Elm was done, “when can I start?”

“I thought you might take a little more convincing than that, but this is much better! We’ll have you start very soon,” Elm replied with a gracious smile.

Looking around himself and taking in the sights, Jacob saw a lot of things going on and a whole lot of people around that he wanted to call agents, but he still asked, “Who else are you working with?” a little confusion marked on his face.

“Why, Professor Oak of course, my former teacher. He and I work together here since our regions are so close to each other.”

Jacob pondered this with a slight smile on his face as they walked out of the elevator and over to an office across the room. Elm told Jacob to wait, before he strolled inside the office and talked to someone in the room as Jacob waited. He assumed the other man was the great Professor Oak. He was a fairly tall man, just a bit taller than Elm, with styled graying hair and an aged face, though it had aged well, and he wore a lab coat that seemed to suit him perfectly, as though he were made for it.

“New blood, huh?” a man asked, startling Jacob, “You’re the first trainer that’s been down here in a while.”

He turned around to see a tall, bearded man dressed in a fancy suit. The man extended his hand toward Jacob in a welcoming gesture, “The name’s Agent Carter, I’m what you might call the first officer, since Oak and Elm are the bosses.”

“Jacob,” he said, extending his hand towards the man and shaking his hand with a tight grasp, “It’s nice to meet you sir.”

“Hey, just call me Carter. I don’t know much about you, but I think you and I might get along just fine. You might want to turn your attention to the Professors though, kid. I’ll catch you later, I’m sure,” and he began to walk away.

Elm shuffled out of the office, followed by the other man, conversing with him. Then he looked towards Jacob and yelled, “Agent Carter! You might want to stick around,” then looked at Jacob and informed him, “Jacob, this is Professor Oak.”

“So, you’re Jacob?” asked Professor Oak, “How nice it is to meet you.”

Jacob first replied “Yes,” then after a minute he stated, “It’s nice to meet you too. I often listen to your Radio show. It’s my favorite one from Goldenrod.”

“They still air that? It must be re-runs from ages ago. I stopped recording for that thing at least 10 years ago,” Professor Oak stated, seeming amazed, “anyways, as Elm has probably told you already, this base has been searching for Team Rocket for about 19 years.”

“You wanted me around, Professor?” Agent Carter interrupted, silently walking up behind them.

“Yes, we’d like you to be around for Jacob’s orientation and we have a special task for you to carry out after we’ve sent him off,” Elm stated, nodding at the agent, who nodded back, crossing his arms.

“Anyway, the reason behind this operation, to find Team Rocket, is to make certain they all rot behind bars for what they did 20 years ago,” Oak told Jacob.

“Professors Birch and Rowan are also working together in Hoenn to find Team Rocket,” mentioned Elm.

“Yes, we’ve got the professors of Hoenn and Sinnoh working together in Hoenn just as we are here. It’s a large operation,” stated Oak.

“Anyways, enough explaining, let’s get you what you’re going to need for your Journey, Jacob,” said Professor Elm.

The two Professors led Jacob and Agent Carter into the office where a table sat, covered in gear and devices, there were some pokéballs, a PokéDex, PokéGear, a few potions, a Pokétch that looked a tad different than other ones he had seen, some running shoes and a backpack.

“These are all for your journey,” Professor Oak said, “the Pokétch has been tampered with to be like PokéGear and is for video calls to and from us along with other people you may want to contact and it can do the usual things a Pokétch can, it makes it easier for calling. Of course, you also get a PokéGear in case of other situations, for instance, if you need a map. The pokéballs are for catching Pokémon as you might expect, then the PokéDex, well, that’s just for fun, something a trainer should have, to know what Pokémon you’ve found.”

“And this,” started Professor Elm, “is a steel pipe,” pulling a gadget out of a pocket of the backpack, “just in case you get in a sticky situation. There are a lot of other gadgets in here for your journey, but these are most important.”

Jacob grabbed the pack and raked through it, and spotting everything he thought he’d need for his journey and more, he exclaimed, “Whoa! You’ve really got this all planned out!”

“Yes, we’ve been waiting a while for a new trainer to come here,” The two professors said in unison.

“They really have,” Agent Carter muttered under his breath.

Jacob grabbed the loose things off the table and put them in separate pockets of his pack, placing different types of items in different pockets, slipped the Pokétch on his wrist, slid his feet into the running shoes, threw his old ones in the garbage, and swung the pack on his back.

He looked at the professors and before he could say a word, they led him and the agent out of the office then back to the elevator. The four of them entered the elevator but as soon as it began to rise, they heard this terrible grinding sound, as if someone were running a jackhammer across the wall.

Halfway up and through the glass of the elevator, they saw a large black digger drill come out of the right wall, throwing large blocks of cement flying in every direction. Agent Carter yelled and lunged out of the way as a block flew through the glass in front of him and Jacob watched as a couple blocks smashed the huge computer and several others flew through the offices below. Cries of agony came from the room as the cement hit agents and the drill crushed others.

At the top of the drill, above a huge red engraving of the letter R, a hatch opened. A blue-haired man climbed out of the drill and started speaking through a megaphone. To Jacob’s right, Elm moved forward and pressed a button, stopping the elevator, so the four of them could watch the commotion from what seemed like a safe distance.

“To surrender is the best thing you can do right now, because if you don’t, you will be killed,” the man calmly spoke, his voice echoing off the walls of the room, but the tone of his voice did not match the anger his complexion expressed.

Many of the surviving agents below threw their hands up in surrender, but those who did not sent out their pokémon to attack the drill. The blue-haired man waved his hand behind him and two doors on the drill opened; about a dozen clean-shaven men wearing the same red R on black, like the drill, walked out with assault rifles and shot the pokémon down to the ground.

The grunts then turned their guns on the attacking agents, and fired upon them. The several that survived the initial rounds of ammo rolled themselves to cover and brandished their own weapons, returning fire on the enemies, taking out a few, but they were almost immediately replaced by more.

A few grunts noticed the four people in the elevator and fired on them, but luckily, they were all able to back out of harm’s way and the grunts ceased fire, hopefully assuming that they’d been killed. At that, Elm hurriedly crawled forward and restarted the elevator.

As soon as they were at the top, they all dashed outside and Elm ran into the house above the lab, rushing to get his wife and son while Agent Carter, Jacob and Oak nervously waited outside.

While Elm was inside, the house shook and rumbled in such a way that it seemed to be an earthquake, it felt as though the house might collapse, and Elm assumed it would. He dashed around gathering non-breakable belongings, throwing them out the door and over the stair railing. Other items like pictures in frames he grabbed and brought outside, his wife and son safely at his heels, arms full as well.

As Elm rejoined the agent, Jacob and the Professor, they all realized the pokémon were still in the lab and ran inside to gather the pokéballs. They each grabbed an armful, Oak got the last of them and chucked the pokéballs out the door just as the house fell.

Not two seconds after the house fell, Professor Elm’s Pokétch started ringing, and Professor Birch’s bearded face appeared on the screen, his hair a mess and his face flushed with worry. Jacob only knew who it was from seeing the man on the TV.

Birch sounded stressed as he spoke. “We were just attacked by Team Rocket. Rowan didn’t make it; he was shot and killed by a grunt.”

Professor Elm answered, sounding just as stressed, “We were also attacked.  My home fell just after we got the pokémon out. My wife, son and the new trainer that arrived last night are safe too. Oak wasn’t so lucky; he was inside when the house fell.”

Professor Birch sighed, “Well, I guess it’s good that your family’s alright, but don’t you agree that it’s strange for them to finally reappear after all these years and attack both agencies?”

“It is pretty strange,” began Professor Elm, “but it’s especially odd that Team Rocket attacked us at the same time, don’t you think?”

Birch interrupted, asking Elm if he’d ever heard of a Pokémon shrouded in darkness, but Elm said he hadn’t and continued.

“How about we meet at Hoenn’s Elite 4 building?” asked Professor Elm.