Disclaimer: I don't own Pokemon (unfortunately). Rated G.
Mischief
The Kanto sunset cast the autumn sky in orange and purple hues as another excruciatingly long day at Lavender Radio Tower came to an end. If they lost any more profits from cleaning up these accidents, the director thought, the board would be clamoring for his head. He couldn’t blame them, of course, with the economy in the state it was.
Another employee had tripped on a mop the janitor was certain he’d put away. Unlike the incident a week ago involving her coworker, this employee had managed to avoid any broken bones – the mop wasn’t near the stairs this time – but she gave the director her two weeks' notice an hour later. The elevator became stuck between floors for the third time that month about two hours after that, despite having been declared to be in perfect order by the last seven repairmen to have inspected it.
The director locked the door behind him and shook his pounding head. He could not shake the feeling that he was being watched, his overtaxed mind convinced the board was making a record of his slightest mistake to justify blaming him for the continued problems.
“I can feel the pressure mounting!” the spiky one howled excitedly. “It won’t be long until those humans leave our home forever!”
“Are you sure?” asked the round one, its voice a mix of hope and skepticism.
“I can taste it!” said Spiky. “I sensed how despondent that human felt when it left.” It pressed the back of a disembodied hand against its forehead in mock distress.
“I’m not sure. It’s taking too long. We’ve been at this since we were expelled and they haven’t budged once.” The way the round one’s voice hung in the air suggested it had something else to add.
“What is it?” asked Spiky.
“I think we should step up our efforts. If the humans are already on the brink, then one big push might be enough to break them for good. Smaller efforts might build their resistance.”
“Got something in mind?”
Round was silent for a moment, floating up and down as it considered the best way to explain its idea.
“The humans are feeding something in our home for some reason. You’ve noticed that, right?”
“Yeah, with electricity,” said the spiky one.
“Well, remember when we cut off the feeding lines a while back and everything went dark inside? That seemed to annoy all the humans there rather than the one or two at a time we’ve messed with through other means.”
“I see. But they got it working again not long after,” Spiky pointed out.
Round rolled up and down in the air to indicate agreement. “But we only attacked the food lines. If we find where the food is coming from, we can attack that and starve out whatever the humans are feeding in our home.” Spiky raised an eyebrow, suddenly attentive.
“You know how to get to the source?”
“Maybe,” said Round. “No, yes. I mean, yes, I know how to track it.”
Spiky grinned widely and howled to summon the others. Dark blackish purple forms rose through the ground to surround the pair, eyes glowing, mouths grinning. They were going to strike at the humans in force tonight.
Round’s plan was a solid one. They simply needed to follow the food lines back to where the electricity seemed the strongest. A number of other lines branched out as they traveled – apparently the humans were feeding a number of different things in other places – but Spiky trusted Round’s sense of direction to lead them to the right spot. It was always more sensitive to the fluctuations in the electricity than Spiky.
The group, which consisted of both round and spiky dark purple creatures, passed under the large mountain and crossed a river before arriving at a squat building that hummed with electricity. The place could have put a zapdos to shame, Spiky mused. A scout passed through the thick walls to discover a large metal creature humming in the middle of a brightly lit room. The only humans around were caught up in observing blinking lights around the humming behemoth, and they were few in number.
After the scout – a smaller round one with an unusual bluish tinge to its smoke – recounted its findings to the others, Spiky and Round immediately got to work on a plan of attack.
“We’ll knock the humans out first, since the beast feeding everything seems to be asleep,” started Round.
“And then we’ll put that sorry hunk of metal on trial for its crimes.” Spiky rubbed its hands together.
“And then we’ll have our home back!” cried a number of voices in the crowd.
“Sssh! We don’t want to give ourselves away,” hissed Round.
Within moments the small army of purple gas descended upon the humans, the round creatures surrounding each human’s head with their bodies at the same moment to ensure none could warn the others. They released their victims as soon as they stopped struggling – their target was much bigger and wasting energy suffocating the humans any longer than needed to incapacitate them might lead to a lack of power against their true opponent. Had their numbers been larger, they might have tried this tactic directly against their home’s invaders, but alas, this was the best they could manage for now.
The metal beast still hummed, unperturbed by the attack on its human servants. Other than its constant vibrating, it was motionless. Round paused.
“Do you suppose it’s asleep?” it asked its evolved ally.
Spiky reached out its right hand as far as it dared to prod the giant. It withdrew the detached limb immediately as electricity leapt from the monster’s form to its finger. Wincing from the shock, Spiky rubbed its numb right hand with its unharmed left.
“Well,” said Spiky after a moment, “it didn’t really register my presence. I think it’s resting. It just has natural defenses. Like that mareep I tried to eat a few nights ago that zapped me in its sleep so I had to find something else to eat. Shame. It looked tasty. Not so much with this thing, though. Metal things are hard to digest.” Spiky looked up from its injured hand to notice that Round had stopped paying attention around the time it learned that their foe was still unaware of their presence and was already formulating a method of getting around the static it emitted.
“The humans seemed to be keeping it happy with those blinking markers on the walls, so let’s meddle with those.” Round ignored Spiky’s scowl. Well, at least one of them thought contemplating whether this creature was edible was a worthy pursuit.
Round, in the loudest voice it could manage, called the others to attention. One of the more bored ones sheepishly returned to the crowd after Spiky’s glare convinced it to drop its plans of practicing possessing one of the unconscious humans.
“Tonight,” said Spiky after Round finished giving instructions, “we teach this creature to stop feeding whatever those humans are feeding in our home and come morning those usurpers will have no choice but to leave!”
A cheer rose from the purple hoard and they quickly dispersed to their assigned duties. They slipped into the blinking displays on the walls and released pulses of gas and darkness and ghostly energies to disrupt the flow of whatever the humans used to please the giant sleeper in the middle. They poked and prodded the raised buttons and flipped the positions of switches. They attempted to cast confusing and hypnotic rays at the beast itself to ensure it would remain dormant, but were unable to tell whether these actions had any effect or if their metal opponent would have just slumbered through it regardless.
The beast in the middle soon rumbled and groaned. Small fires erupted from the wall panels to be extinguished by odd foam that sprayed out from some automatic human device. The humans began to stir one after another, only to have the round ghosts reapply hypnosis to each in turn. The battle continued on, the spiky ones’ shadowy claws and energy balls striking the beast itself now. The army fought the beast well into the night.
Dawn was nearing. They were exhausted from their work, a few of their number suffering from electric discharge, but their foe was silent and the building dark. To Spiky’s surprise, it was Round who began laughing first – an almost silent chuckle which grew rapidly into a wild cackle. A chorus of similar sounds erupted from the others until they were too tired to continue, and then one at a time they followed the path they came from back to their home. No matter how far they went, they would always be able to feel their tower’s pulse guiding them back. That feeling, that somehow cold warmth that tickled from inside out, was why they had done this tonight and why they knew they would return home triumphant in the end.
Round and Spiky were the last to leave.
“So, you suppose it tastes any good under the metal shell?” Spiky wondered aloud.
“Nah,” said Round. “I looked inside it after we stilled it and the defenses wore down. It’s weird – it’s like there’s nothing alive in it at all other than the pulses it released before we defeated it.”
“These humans work with some bizarre company indeed,” said Spiky. It rested its hands behind its head while it tried to puzzle out just what the beast was. After a few moments it became bored of that and began prodding one of the unconscious humans instead.
“Hey, stop that,” said Round. “There’s only the two of us now. There’d be trouble if you woke them up.”
“All right,” Spiky agreed, although it sort of liked the sound of the word trouble. It had a nice ring to it. “Let’s go home.”
“So the security system is bye-bye a go-go?” a man in a black uniform mused aloud. He stood on a flat rock overlooking the Kanto Power Plant. After awakening to find the plant had been vandalized, the manager and employees had worked night and day to restore electricity to most of the region. Their own security alarms and cameras – many of which seemed to have exploded from the inside – were a lower priority in comparison to pokémon centers, hospitals, and the still disabled transportation system, and that was just the opportunity the man needed.
“Lucky the day is for me.” He smiled. Yes, he would be able to cripple the plant alone. If vandals had been able to cause as much trouble for the region as they had, surely a Rocket could repeat the process to even greater ends. He would impress the executives in Johto and Team Rocket would be feared once more.
Mischief
The Kanto sunset cast the autumn sky in orange and purple hues as another excruciatingly long day at Lavender Radio Tower came to an end. If they lost any more profits from cleaning up these accidents, the director thought, the board would be clamoring for his head. He couldn’t blame them, of course, with the economy in the state it was.
Another employee had tripped on a mop the janitor was certain he’d put away. Unlike the incident a week ago involving her coworker, this employee had managed to avoid any broken bones – the mop wasn’t near the stairs this time – but she gave the director her two weeks' notice an hour later. The elevator became stuck between floors for the third time that month about two hours after that, despite having been declared to be in perfect order by the last seven repairmen to have inspected it.
The director locked the door behind him and shook his pounding head. He could not shake the feeling that he was being watched, his overtaxed mind convinced the board was making a record of his slightest mistake to justify blaming him for the continued problems.
***
“I can feel the pressure mounting!” the spiky one howled excitedly. “It won’t be long until those humans leave our home forever!”
“Are you sure?” asked the round one, its voice a mix of hope and skepticism.
“I can taste it!” said Spiky. “I sensed how despondent that human felt when it left.” It pressed the back of a disembodied hand against its forehead in mock distress.
“I’m not sure. It’s taking too long. We’ve been at this since we were expelled and they haven’t budged once.” The way the round one’s voice hung in the air suggested it had something else to add.
“What is it?” asked Spiky.
“I think we should step up our efforts. If the humans are already on the brink, then one big push might be enough to break them for good. Smaller efforts might build their resistance.”
“Got something in mind?”
Round was silent for a moment, floating up and down as it considered the best way to explain its idea.
“The humans are feeding something in our home for some reason. You’ve noticed that, right?”
“Yeah, with electricity,” said the spiky one.
“Well, remember when we cut off the feeding lines a while back and everything went dark inside? That seemed to annoy all the humans there rather than the one or two at a time we’ve messed with through other means.”
“I see. But they got it working again not long after,” Spiky pointed out.
Round rolled up and down in the air to indicate agreement. “But we only attacked the food lines. If we find where the food is coming from, we can attack that and starve out whatever the humans are feeding in our home.” Spiky raised an eyebrow, suddenly attentive.
“You know how to get to the source?”
“Maybe,” said Round. “No, yes. I mean, yes, I know how to track it.”
Spiky grinned widely and howled to summon the others. Dark blackish purple forms rose through the ground to surround the pair, eyes glowing, mouths grinning. They were going to strike at the humans in force tonight.
***
Round’s plan was a solid one. They simply needed to follow the food lines back to where the electricity seemed the strongest. A number of other lines branched out as they traveled – apparently the humans were feeding a number of different things in other places – but Spiky trusted Round’s sense of direction to lead them to the right spot. It was always more sensitive to the fluctuations in the electricity than Spiky.
The group, which consisted of both round and spiky dark purple creatures, passed under the large mountain and crossed a river before arriving at a squat building that hummed with electricity. The place could have put a zapdos to shame, Spiky mused. A scout passed through the thick walls to discover a large metal creature humming in the middle of a brightly lit room. The only humans around were caught up in observing blinking lights around the humming behemoth, and they were few in number.
After the scout – a smaller round one with an unusual bluish tinge to its smoke – recounted its findings to the others, Spiky and Round immediately got to work on a plan of attack.
“We’ll knock the humans out first, since the beast feeding everything seems to be asleep,” started Round.
“And then we’ll put that sorry hunk of metal on trial for its crimes.” Spiky rubbed its hands together.
“And then we’ll have our home back!” cried a number of voices in the crowd.
“Sssh! We don’t want to give ourselves away,” hissed Round.
***
Within moments the small army of purple gas descended upon the humans, the round creatures surrounding each human’s head with their bodies at the same moment to ensure none could warn the others. They released their victims as soon as they stopped struggling – their target was much bigger and wasting energy suffocating the humans any longer than needed to incapacitate them might lead to a lack of power against their true opponent. Had their numbers been larger, they might have tried this tactic directly against their home’s invaders, but alas, this was the best they could manage for now.
The metal beast still hummed, unperturbed by the attack on its human servants. Other than its constant vibrating, it was motionless. Round paused.
“Do you suppose it’s asleep?” it asked its evolved ally.
Spiky reached out its right hand as far as it dared to prod the giant. It withdrew the detached limb immediately as electricity leapt from the monster’s form to its finger. Wincing from the shock, Spiky rubbed its numb right hand with its unharmed left.
“Well,” said Spiky after a moment, “it didn’t really register my presence. I think it’s resting. It just has natural defenses. Like that mareep I tried to eat a few nights ago that zapped me in its sleep so I had to find something else to eat. Shame. It looked tasty. Not so much with this thing, though. Metal things are hard to digest.” Spiky looked up from its injured hand to notice that Round had stopped paying attention around the time it learned that their foe was still unaware of their presence and was already formulating a method of getting around the static it emitted.
“The humans seemed to be keeping it happy with those blinking markers on the walls, so let’s meddle with those.” Round ignored Spiky’s scowl. Well, at least one of them thought contemplating whether this creature was edible was a worthy pursuit.
Round, in the loudest voice it could manage, called the others to attention. One of the more bored ones sheepishly returned to the crowd after Spiky’s glare convinced it to drop its plans of practicing possessing one of the unconscious humans.
“Tonight,” said Spiky after Round finished giving instructions, “we teach this creature to stop feeding whatever those humans are feeding in our home and come morning those usurpers will have no choice but to leave!”
A cheer rose from the purple hoard and they quickly dispersed to their assigned duties. They slipped into the blinking displays on the walls and released pulses of gas and darkness and ghostly energies to disrupt the flow of whatever the humans used to please the giant sleeper in the middle. They poked and prodded the raised buttons and flipped the positions of switches. They attempted to cast confusing and hypnotic rays at the beast itself to ensure it would remain dormant, but were unable to tell whether these actions had any effect or if their metal opponent would have just slumbered through it regardless.
The beast in the middle soon rumbled and groaned. Small fires erupted from the wall panels to be extinguished by odd foam that sprayed out from some automatic human device. The humans began to stir one after another, only to have the round ghosts reapply hypnosis to each in turn. The battle continued on, the spiky ones’ shadowy claws and energy balls striking the beast itself now. The army fought the beast well into the night.
***
Dawn was nearing. They were exhausted from their work, a few of their number suffering from electric discharge, but their foe was silent and the building dark. To Spiky’s surprise, it was Round who began laughing first – an almost silent chuckle which grew rapidly into a wild cackle. A chorus of similar sounds erupted from the others until they were too tired to continue, and then one at a time they followed the path they came from back to their home. No matter how far they went, they would always be able to feel their tower’s pulse guiding them back. That feeling, that somehow cold warmth that tickled from inside out, was why they had done this tonight and why they knew they would return home triumphant in the end.
Round and Spiky were the last to leave.
“So, you suppose it tastes any good under the metal shell?” Spiky wondered aloud.
“Nah,” said Round. “I looked inside it after we stilled it and the defenses wore down. It’s weird – it’s like there’s nothing alive in it at all other than the pulses it released before we defeated it.”
“These humans work with some bizarre company indeed,” said Spiky. It rested its hands behind its head while it tried to puzzle out just what the beast was. After a few moments it became bored of that and began prodding one of the unconscious humans instead.
“Hey, stop that,” said Round. “There’s only the two of us now. There’d be trouble if you woke them up.”
“All right,” Spiky agreed, although it sort of liked the sound of the word trouble. It had a nice ring to it. “Let’s go home.”
***
“So the security system is bye-bye a go-go?” a man in a black uniform mused aloud. He stood on a flat rock overlooking the Kanto Power Plant. After awakening to find the plant had been vandalized, the manager and employees had worked night and day to restore electricity to most of the region. Their own security alarms and cameras – many of which seemed to have exploded from the inside – were a lower priority in comparison to pokémon centers, hospitals, and the still disabled transportation system, and that was just the opportunity the man needed.
“Lucky the day is for me.” He smiled. Yes, he would be able to cripple the plant alone. If vandals had been able to cause as much trouble for the region as they had, surely a Rocket could repeat the process to even greater ends. He would impress the executives in Johto and Team Rocket would be feared once more.
I wrote this story because of something unusual I noticed while replaying Soul Silver. When the player reaches Goldenrod for the first time, the train cannot be used. The excuse given by the game is because the train hasn’t come in yet – something the player later learns is attributed to the loss of power that is supposed to be generated at the Power Plant in Kanto. If the player visits Cerulean City before visiting the plant, however, an NPC states that a suspicious figure (the last remaining Rocket grunt) was talking about going there “recently”. Now, I don’t know how quickly some people play the game, but the idea that something you first learn about when you have five or six badges left to obtain and a League to beat before you get to that point to this one is still “recent” seems a little off to me. So that got me thinking: what if the Rocket grunt did steal the part recently, but something else had knocked out the power before that? And what other than the Magnet Train was affected by the power outage? That’s right – the graveyard-turned-Radio Tower in Lavender.
Well, after that disturbing journey into how my mind works, I guess I’ll clarify that Round is a Gastly and Spiky is a Haunter. This story is a tale of what happens between points in the game. As for what happens after the player restores power to the Radio Tower . . . well, maybe I’ll write a follow-up in another story. This is all I have on this idea for now, though.
Well, after that disturbing journey into how my mind works, I guess I’ll clarify that Round is a Gastly and Spiky is a Haunter. This story is a tale of what happens between points in the game. As for what happens after the player restores power to the Radio Tower . . . well, maybe I’ll write a follow-up in another story. This is all I have on this idea for now, though.
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