Pokémon 1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Water.

It filled her vision and pressed its existence into every millimeter of her body, like a coiling Arbok intent on squeezing the very life out of her. And it was not the comforting naturalness of salty sea water or fresh lake water, but the distinctly artificial taste of chlorinated pool water. That was what filled her mouth, flowed into her nostrils, and eventually found its way into her lungs.

It tasted like fear. When had water begun to taste this way?

A burst of irregularly shaped bubbles issued from her mouth as she was forced at last to expel what air was left in her lungs. Desperately, she struggled harder to free her hands and feet from the ropes that bound then together, the jerky movements of her body creating waves of resistance that rippled through the pool. She was better than this. She was a great swimmer, and she would not suffer the indignity drowning in her own pool. She kicked out in fury, using every ounce of her strength to twist and writhe against the wetness enveloping her in its suffocating embrace.

But the water did not relent, and neither did the hand that seized her hair by its side ponytail and forced her head to stay under the surface. Its grip on her hair was inescapable, and every jerky move she made tore several strands of hair from its roots, lighting her scalp on fire. She looked upward and saw the shadowy figure through the agitated surface of the pool above her. She could just make out a wavering outline of a red R emblazoned on the chest of the man's uniform. She squinted harder at her attacker, but the image was blurred by the choppy waves from her own struggle. A head full of spiky hair... an iron grip... a familiar face?

Her thoughts began to grow foggy from the lack of oxygen. Dimly she was aware that her thrashing was becoming weaker, that she was losing the battle.

If he could only... have some air...

He?

Who was he?

Ash Ketchum sat up in his bed with a sudden gasp, gulping down giant breaths of air like he had been sprinting away from a horde of stampeding Tauros. His chest heaved violently as he tried to suck in as much oxygen as possible, and he could feel the droplets of sweat clinging to his face. The wet sensation reminded him too much of the water in the dream. He wrenched the edge of the sheets up to his face and violently wiped the perspiration away.

His own hurried breathing was the only sound in the otherwise silent bedroom. He buried his face in his hands, and tried to steady his intake of air. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Slowly, his breath steadied, his mind eased, and he took in his actual surroundings. His bed stood in the middle of spacious room. A plasma TV occupied one wall, while a trophy case housing numerous trophies and medals from years of tournament victories lined another. The largest trophy of all stood precisely in the center of the display. It bore the label "LEAGUE CHAMPION."

He expelled an oversized lungful of air. He was not underwater at the Cerulean Gym, but in his own apartment on Indigo Plateau.

He was also, as it happened, not a 16-year-old girl, and he certainly was not Misty, who had been drowned five years ago by a Team Rocket assassin in her own pool.

"Pikapi?"

Pikachu had been stirred by Ash's noisy awakening, and the electric pokemon hopped somewhat tiredly onto Ash's lap, staring in some concern at his master's face.

"It's alright Pikachu," Ash said, in as steady a voice as he could manage. He reached out a hand to pat his best friend on the head. "It was just another nightmare."

"Chu..." Pikachu replied sadly, his ears drooping a little. Pikapi was always having nightmares.

"Don't worry, I've had enough of these nightly guilt trips too, Pikachu," Ash said, clenching his fists so tightly that he felt the painful pressure of his fingernails digging into his palms. "I am so _sick_ of week after week of sitting around and not doing anything. I don't care what the League High Council says about my duties as Champion. I'm going to see Lance right now, and we're going to _make _him let us out of this pointless routine and into the fight against Team Rocket."

Ash threw the covers off of himself with a bit more violence than was strictly necessary. His feet hit the ground with a hard thump. He took a step forward, not even pausing to think about dressing in something more suitable than his pajamas before barging into Lance the Dragon Master's office, but Pikachu's small paws latched onto his ankle, pulling him back.

"What Pikachu?"

Pikachu gestured at the alarm clock on Ash's night stand. It read 4 AM.

With a look that said in no uncertain terms that he had no desire to wait outside Lance's office for five hours before the man showed up, Pikachu crossed his paws over his chest and glared at Ash.

"All right, but I can't get back to sleep now," Ash said. "I'm going to head to the training ground. Are you coming?"

In answer, Pikachu hopped back onto his own miniature bed next to Ash's, and pulled the covers over his little yellow body.

"Ok well, guess I'll meet you when I'm done then."

Grabbing a quick change of suitable clothes and his pokeballs from his apartment, Ash practically sprinted the entire way through the Indigo Plateau complex to the state of the art battle training facility.

Skidding to a halt in front of the key bad, he waited his access code into the door and waited impatiently while the smooth metal doors glided open.

"Welcome back to the virtual battle simulation facility, Master Ketchum," the computerized voice said.

"Thanks," Ash replied pointlessly, knowing that the computer wouldn't acknowledge his response anyway.

The control panel flashed up with the settings for the battle simulation. League scientists had developed the virtual reality apparatus not only to realistically mimic the sights and sounds of a pokemon battle, but also to unleash real pokemon attacks by tapping into vast stores of elemental power.

But the primary objective of the simulation room was not to prepare trainers for winning recreational pokemon battles, it was to prepare League operatives for battling Rockets. In addition to several standard Rocket Grunt simulations at various level of difficulties, the computer contained a complete set of all the League's known data on real, high-ranking Rocket agents, their pokemon, and their battle strategies.

The red text on the top of the screen prompted, "Please select your opponent."

Bypassing the options for battling multiple standard Rocket Grunts at once, Ash scrolled through the list of top Rocket agents until he came to the very bottom. The last two entries entries bore the rank "Rocket Commander" and a flashing red warning icon next to their names.

"Warning: Access Restricted. These simulations have high likelihood for serious injury or death if attempted with under-leveled pokemon."

Without hesitation, Ash selected the first of the two names: "Rocket Commander Gary Oak."

Maybe he was being a bit stubborn and illogical, always choosing Gary on the simulator. When they were younger, Gary had been Ash's most hated rival. Then there was that period of rapprochement in their early teenage years, when both boys had come to respect the other and a genuine friendship had grown between them.

Or so Ash had thought.

It was this period of friendship that made Gary's decision to join Team Rocket not just a reinstatement of a rivalry, but a betrayal. To make matters worse, Ash learned about Gary's allegiance to Team Rocket only a few months after Misty was murdered by a Rocket. Suddenly everything in Ash's life seemed to line up. The League were sworn enemies of Team Rocket. His childhood dream to become League Champion was now not only an ambition, but a means to complete his two new goals: take revenge for his murdered friend and crush his oldest rival.

That Gary. Just thinking about him roused a fiery hatred within Ash. He always stood in the way of everything Ash had ever wanted, a perpetual rival. Ever since the first time they had fished the same old empty pokeball out of the lake as children.

Now here it was, more than a decade later, and Ash and Gary's rivalry was still very much alive, except now the stakes where higher, and the lives of Kanto's citizens hung in the balance.

Or, they would have, if Ash was ever allowed to leave League headquarters and fight Team Rocket face to face.

With a frustrated growl, Ash watched the progress bar on the screen as the simulation finished loading, and entered an empty virtual battle chamber. At this hour none of the simulation rooms were being used, so he picked the largest one he could find.

The virtually generated Gary already standing on the other end of the room was slightly taller than Ash. He leaned casually against the back wall, hands in the pockets of his Rocket Commander uniform. His spiky brown hair was still arranged in the same style it had been when they were kids, and he wore the same overconfident smirk that Ash had seen a million times. How could the computer know the details of his hair style and facial expressions? For a moment, Ash amused himself by imagining a love-stricken League spy mooning along after Gary, sketching his mannerisms and writing unnecessarily detailed descriptions of his appearance.

Hologram-Gary pulled a pokeball out of his back pocket and enlarged it in his hand, snapping Ash out of his musings. The computer simulation did not speak, but Ash could almost hear his old rival in his head.

"Ready to lose again, Ashy-boy?" sounded like something Gary might say if they ever met in person again. "You think when I beat you this time, you'll finally go away for good? I'm not counting on it. The odds are certainly not in my favor."

Spurred by his own imaginary goading, Ash wrenched a pokeball from his belt with incredible speed. Simultaneously, he and Gary threw their balls forward. With a familiar click, and two flashes of light, the battle began.

* * *

"Six months!"

Ash brought his fist down onto the table in a fit of frustration. The resultant bang rattled a few pens sitting on Lance's desk, and a the small ceramic figurine of a dragonite jumped precariously several millimeters into the air. Lance himself, however, did not move a muscle.

"Six months and all I've done is sit around at public appearances, attend fundraisers and listen in on boring meetings. I thought as League Champion I would... I dunno, do _something_!"

Ash gesticulated wildly with both his arms for further emphasis on this last word, nearly knocking Pikachu from its perch on his shoulder. His pokemon shot him an annoyed glare, but seemed to think the better of giving him a nasty shock.

In contrast to the agitated young man who had leapt to a standing position in his anger, Lance the Dragon Master sat almost entirely motionless, regarding Ash across steepled fingers with a look of calm interest. He waited patiently until he was quite sure that Ash was finished, then responded in a mild and soothing tone.

"The League does not bend to the will of one trainer, Ash, no matter how powerful he may be," Lance explained. "I don't have the authority to amend your situation alone."

"I need to be out there!" Ash insisted, now pointing emphatically behind Lance at the panoramic view that the floor to ceiling windows of the Dragon Master's office afforded them. Lance did not turn to look in the direction that Ash pointed. He had contemplated the view from his own office for long enough to know the intimate details view from its windows. From the edge of Indigo Plateau, a vast expanse of the Kanto landscape laid out under the mid-morning sun, fading gradually into a hazy and indistinct horizon line in the distance.

"You know that I cannot authorize that, Ash," the older man said gently. His steadily maintained composure seemed to calm Ash very slightly. Ash sank back into his seat, but the determinedly argumentative tone did not leave his voice. He leaned forward and spoke very quickly, desperate to make Lance understand.

"Look, when I started my journey, I wanted to be a Pokemon Master and Champion of the League because it had always been my dream as a kid. After Team Rocket started to rise as a serious threat five years ago, I trained harder than ever to become Champion because I thought it put me in the best position to fight back."

Ash sighed dejectedly. "Now it's been six months since I attained that goal, only to find that it's nothing but a meaningless title. I sit in on meetings, but I have no say in the strategies. I have to put in appearances at fundraisers, photo shoots, and fucking autograph signings, while every day people are dying in the fight against Team Rocket. Everything the League insists that I do is so useless! If being Champion means being the strongest trainer in Kanto, then why am I not out there fighting to keep people safe?"

"You are the crux of the League's image and its people's morale, Ash," Lance told him calmly. "The League feels obligated to keep you as safe as possible. They believe that you are of more use as a source of inspiration and an example than you are as a foot soldier. That is the motivation for these 'useless' tasks they are setting for you."

"Well I don't want to be their little mascot!" Ash yelled. "I wanted to become Champion to fight! I--"

He cut himself off abruptly and scowled as a sudden thought occurred to him.

"'They'?" Ash asked. "You're the leader of the Elite Four. What do you mean by 'they'?"

Lance merely smiled. He said nothing.

"Are you saying you don't agree with them?"

Still, the Dragon Master did not respond. A few seconds passed in very pregnant silence. Ash stared at Lance in disbelief, and Lance met his gaze squarely with an amused look and a knowing smile.

Finally, it was Lance who broke the silence, speaking very slowly, and very carefully.

"I am saying nothing of the sort, Ash my boy. I am only reiterating the prevailing opinion of the high-ranking officials in the League."

Ash seemed to deflate with disappointment. His gaze dropped into his lap, and Pikachu moved his small paw to pat his trainer's head comfortingly.

"However," Lance said. "I do happen to know, just in case you were interested, that a group of League trainers are investigating heavy Rocket activity near Cerulean City."

Ash looked up. He could not believe it. Was Lance really suggesting what he thought he was suggesting? Ash tried to search the other man's face for confirmation, but Lance was no longer meeting his eyes. Instead, the red-haired man was picking idly at an imaginary speck of lint on the hem of his cape.

"It's a pretty time-intensive investigation they're conducting out there," Lance continued in the casual tone of someone discussing the weather. "They'll be stationed out there for quite a while. More than enough time for someone traveling by foot to make it out there from Indigo Plateau. You know, if someone were to try to make that sort of journey."

Ash's face lit up like he was using a Flash attack. Pikachu jumped onto his head with an excited "Pika!"

"Thank you so much, Lance!" exclaimed Ash. "You will definitely not regret this!"

Lance smiled benignly back at him, and Ash was halfway to the door before he heard Lance speak up again.

"Wait."

Ash froze with his hand on the doorknob.

"Don't forget the official League fundraiser in Viridian City on Saturday. The League expects you to put in an appearance."

Rolling his eyes, Ash opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. "Don't worry, I'll be there," he called over his back. "But I'll be taking a break from public appearances after that."

"Of course," Lance replied. "I'll be sure to inform the High Council of your decision, but..." He rustled the paper on his desk purposefully. "It might just happen to slip my mind until after you leave from Viridian."

A grin plastered itself on Ash's face as he bolted from Lance's office. He was so intent on hopping the next train to Viridian City right at that moment, that he ran face first into another person.

THUMP!!

A flurry of papers flew upwards into the air settling in a cloud of white leaflets around Ash.

"Owwww," he complained rubbing his head.

"Pika PiKACHU," Pikachu scolded. Ash assumed this meant that he only had himself to blame.

"Hello to you too, Ash," said the man he had run into. Ash looked up and smiled at the familiar face.

"Hey Tracey! Sorry about that..."

Tracey gave a short laugh, pulled himself from the floor, and started the process of gathering up his sketches from the floor around them. "Don't worry about it. Still the same old Ash, huh? Always in a rush."

"Oh I have good reason to be this time," Ash said, grinning wolfishly.

"Sale at the nearest restaurant?" Tracey asked.

"I resent that," Ash said.

Unfortunately for Ash, his stomach chose this moment to give an ill-timed and extremely loud growl.

"Uh, although I guess I wouldn't say no to a bite to eat," said Ash, feeling a little embarrassed.

"I was actually going to have a late breakfast myself, want to join me?" asked Tracey.

"Definitely!"

After helping Tracey gather up his latest sketches, Ash and Pikachu followed their friend to a restaurant not far from Lance's office.

At midmorning, the breakfast rush had cleared out of their chosen restaurant, but it was still too early for the many League employees in the Indigo Plateau complex to start enjoying a lunch break yet. Only a few patrons remained in the restaurant, finishing the last of their meals. Ash and Tracey settled into a table near a window.

"You seem to be in a good mood, Ash," Tracey remarked as he scanned the menu.

"I'm glad I ran into you," Ash said, still smiling. "I'm going on a journey, Tracey!"

Tracey nearly fell out of his chair.

"What?! I thought you were tied down in League engagements here and in Viridian for the foreseeable future," Tracey said. "Isn't that kind of your job as League Champion?"

"I'm rewriting the job description," said Ash casually, leaning back confidently in in his chair and reaching behind his head with both hands.

"Uh-huh," Tracey said suspiciously. "And how exactly are you doing that?"

"Pikachu and I are going to travel to Cerulean City and join the League task force investigating the Rockets there," Ash answered.

"WHAT?!"

"Yeah, don't tell any of the League High Council."

Tracey gaped at Ash in silence.

"Can I take your order?" asked a pretty young waitress. As Ash looked up, she recognized him and a blush crept into her cheeks.

"An omelette with the works for me, I had a pretty intense training session this morning," said Ash, full of confidence and bravado. "And an order of the breakfast pokemon food special for Pikachu."

He nudged Pikachu, who closed his eyes and said "Pikachu!" happily. Ash smirked inwardly to himself. Pikachu's cuteness was a surefire way to pick up girls.

The waitress blushed a deeper shade of crimson and let out a little giggle.

"And for you sir?" she asked, turning to Tracey.

He was still gaping at Ash, open-mouthed.

"Uh, Tracey, she's waiting for your order," Ash said, waving his hand in Tracey's face.

"I'm not hungry," said Tracey finally.

"But you said--"

"I know what I said, and now I'm not hungry anymore," snapped Tracey in a very un-Tracey-like way. He shoved the menu back into the hands of the very confused waitress. She walked away muttering something about rude customers.

"Aw, what'd you have to do that for, Tracey?" asked Ash. "She was cute."

"Don't change the subject, Ash," said a very annoyed looking Tracey. "What do you mean you're going to go fight Team Rocket? You know the League would never allow that."

"Yeah, that's why no one's going to know until I'm gone," Ash said easily. "Don't worry, it was Lance that suggested I go anyway."

"Really?" Tracey's raised eyebrow suggested that he thought Lance hadn't approved of this late breakfast, let alone a journey across Kanto.

"I'm serious. That's what he said to me in his office."

"Ash, this vendetta you have against Team Rocket, it's really not healthy to make the fight personal."

The smile that had seemed so permanent a second before disappeared from Ash's face.

"They made the fight personal five years ago, Tracey," he said darkly.

Tracey gave a small sigh. "I miss her too, Ash, but don't let it cloud your judgment. The work that you do here for the League may seem frivolous, but it's essential for political reasons. I'm just saying. You have a good life here. I've seen you these last couple of months, and you seem to be enjoying yourself. You've got it all, girls, glory, and a more than generous salary. Why give it all up on a kamikaze mission? Bringing down Team Rocket won't bring back the people they've murdered."

"I know that," Ash muttered quietly. "I am happy here. This is what I've wanted since I was a little kid, League Champion, but what I _need_ is to be out there. No one else should have to die like she did, and no one else should have to lose someone like I did either."

There was a slight pause.

"You've grown up a lot, Ash," Tracey said, a vague note of pride in his voice.

"Thanks, Tracey."

A few more seconds of silence passed between the two of them.

"And I can tell you've grown up by reading the tabloid reports on your exploits, you dirty womanizer," joked Tracey, a mischievous grin settling itself onto his face.

"Heeey," said Ash, holding his hands up in surrender, a small, cocky smile returning to his own expression. "I can't help it if the ladies love me. I'm not ten years old any more, and there are perks to being the League Champion after all. No need to let any of them get too demanding though, I can have another one as quickly and surely as Pikachu can bring down a Magikarp."

Their waitress chose that moment to return with Ash and Pikachu's food. She slammed the plates down on the table unnecessarily hard and this time muttered something about egotistic men as she left.

"Of course, no one can win them all," Ash admitted.

Tracey laughed as Ash picked up his fork and proceeded to inhale all the food on his plate.

* * *

As the closest city to the League stronghold at Indigo Plateau, Viridian City was easily and safely accessible by train even with the threat of Team Rocket looming over the rest of Kanto.

On the platform for the express train to Viridian, Ash was struggling to navigate the churning throng of people trying to embark and disembark. He pulled his baseball cap down over his eyes. Sometimes he hated the public recognition that came with being the League Champion. He would really prefer not to be swarmed with autograph and photograph requests when he was already running late.

"Last call!" the conductor shouted over the disconcerted chatter of the surrounding crowd.

Ash pushed the surrounding bodies a little harder. Unfortunately for him, so did a business woman wielding a briefcase behind him. As she rushed by, her briefcase slammed into his backpack.

With a muffled "Pi-ka-CHU!" Ash received an all too familiar electric shock.

"Pikachu!" he hissed in annoyance over his shoulder, hoping that his voice would travel into the open zipper at the top of his backpack.

Ash tried his best to ignore Pikachu's mutinous mutterings as he boarded the train. When he had slid safely into a window seat, he placed his backpack on his lap and unzipped the biggest compartment. He was greeted with a very annoyed looking electric rodent.

"Sorry buddy, but you're too easily recognizable," Ash said.

Pikachu crossed his paws over his chest and pointed out that he looked exactly like all other Pikachus. If either of them were recognizable, it was Ash.

Rolling his eyes, Ash pushed his backpack under the seat in front of him. "Look, at least the train looks pretty empty. You can have your own seat."

Although he grumbled something about this being poor compensation, Pikachu leapt off Ash's lap toward the aisle seat next to them.

"Pi?"

Pikachu's stopped falling mid-leap, his paws several inches above the fabric of the seat. A pair of hands had snatched him out of the air.

"I believe this is my seat," said a dark haired girl who dropped with an unceremonious thump into the empty seat next to Ash, holding Pikachu out in front of her.

"Chuuu," Pikachu growled unhappily. His cheeks crackled with electricity.

Recognizing this warning sign, Ash grabbed Pikachu back from the girl. Unfortunately for him, Pikachu chose the moment he was safely back in Ash's arms to discharge.

"Aaah!"

"Pika... chu," Pikachu said apologetically, rubbing the back of his head.

"Ash Ketchum?" the girl asked.

Still frazzled by the electric current that had run through his body seconds before, Ash nodded automatically.

"Funny, I expected the League Champion to be a bit more imposing," she remarked. The insult snapped Ash out of his dazed state.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he demanded, turning to face the girl directly.

She was a few inches shorter than him, slim and dressed modestly in a dark shirt with gray cargo pants. Her black hair was arranged into a single long braid, but wisps of it flew out rebelliously, as if discontented with this attempt to restrain it. Gray eyes peered unblinkingly out from behind thick, dark lashes. To Ash, they looked stone cold and carefully devoid of emotion. He had the impression that they were intentionally closed off from him, as though this girl had some great secret about her, that no one was allowed to know. He stared a little harder at her face. She was pretty... and was there something very familiar about her?

"I have been sent by Lance the Dragon Master for your protection, should you meet any danger on your journey." Her voice cut through his thoughts with its business-like tone. Ash groaned inwardly. He should have known that Lance would not allow him to just merrily skip his way out of League obligations so easily.

The girl discreetly produced a League identification card and the official seal of the Dragon Master and passed them over for Ash to examine. He looked down at the documents in his hands. The ID card looked exactly the same as his own official League ID. There was a picture of the girl, but where the name should have been, there was only the word "CLASSIFIED."

"For the purposes of this assignment, you may address me as Agent Mina," she said, as though sensing his unasked question. "I am an agent from the League's Secret Operations Division specializing in stealth and personal security."

"I've never heard of a Secret Operations Division," he mused absently.

"Yeah, that would be the point of the 'Secret' part," said Mina, her matter-of-fact tone sliding easily into sarcasm.

"I'm the League Champion," Ash protested, feeling his annoyance rising. Who did this girl think she was anyway? "I think I would know about the existence of an entire division."

"You'd think so, wouldn't you," she said in mock agreement.

"Look, I really don't need protection, especially not from a scrawny little girl."

Her eyes lit with intensity, and she looked like it was causing her significant mental effort to restrain herself from hitting him. Her lips were pressed into a thin line, and her clenched fist was drawing out some rather intimidating lines of muscle definition on her bare arms. Ash could almost see the internal battle, her desire to maintain a cool professional detachment battling against her desire to smash his head in.

As far as he was concerned, the several moments of tense silence punctuated only by the steady clickety-clack of train wheels on tracks meant that she had lost the argument. Ha. Score one for him.

When she spoke again, it seemed as though her professionalism had won the battle over her temper. In a smooth and unnaturally even tone, she said, "Nevertheless, it's now my job to protect you. My mission was assigned by Master Lance, so you don't have the authority to dismiss me."

"Are you saying I'm stuck with you?" asked Ash.

"Yes."

"Lovely."

He made a mental note to go to the bathroom five minutes before they arrived in Viridian and slip off the train before she noticed his absence.

* * *

She watched the landscape outside her window scroll slowly to a stop as the train pulled into Viridian station. Ash's ploy to lose her was laughably transparent. He had taken his backpack and Pikachu with him when he left for the bathroom, hardly necessary objects for a man to relieve his bladder.

Still, his absence afforded her with the opportunity to put in a call without being overheard, so she had only graced his departure with a curt nod.

Viridian City was the end of the line, so all she had to do was wait patiently as her fellow passengers filed down the aisle and out of the train, slipping into a confined space between compartments when the coach was quite empty. She checked quickly for potential eavesdroppers. Finding none, she keyed in a number onto the communicator strapped to her wrist.

"Rocket Commander Oak," a deep voice on the other end of the line answered.

"It's me," she said. "I've made contact."

"Excellent, how is he?"

"Annoyed with me and attempting to run away."

"So just like old times, huh?"

Her emotionless exterior cracked with a small smile. "I guess some things never change," she allowed.

"Make sure you keep close tabs on his political leanings. It's vital that we get a good handle on what his opinions are," the man on her communicator ordered.

"Agreed."

"Tread carefully. Remember that this mission is the culmination of all our years worth of infiltration."

"I'm aware."

"Don't reveal any unnecessary information until we're sure of his position."

"Got it."

"And Misty?"

"Yes?"

"Watch your emotions. I know that he means a lot to you."

"_Meant _a lot to me," she corrected. "Five years apart is a surefire way to get rid of a little crush."

"Whatever you say," the man on the other end replied. "Just be careful."

"Thanks. Bye Gary."

* * *

Disclaimer: Anything that sounds familiar, I don't own.

AN: How come Ash always gets to be the badass one? I think Misty deserves a chance :) This is my first pokemon fanfic. I'd love to hear feedback and constructive criticism in the form of a review!


	2. Chapter 2

For Your Protection

Chapter 2

With his cap pulled as low as possible over his eyes, Ash turned a corner on his way out of Viridian train station. He was rewarded with a view of a large poster of himself, which covered the entire wall of the next hallway.

Just lovely. This was really helping him stay inconspicuous, standing next to a picture of himself big enough to put his snorlax to shame.

He tried to pull his hat over his eyes even lower, obscuring his view straight ahead and confining him to navigation by watching people's feet. He shuffled forward, keeping his head down and trying not to bump into anyone. It was very tough work walking like this.

Muffled chatter from his backpack broke his concentration.

"I don't care if she smelled nice, Pikachu," he hissed over his shoulder, rolling his eyes. Pikachu was so easily taken in by pretty girls. "I don't need her tagging along all the way to Cerulean City. Like I need her protection. Ha. What a joke. I am League Champion you know. I can protect myself."

"League Champion?"

Uh-oh.

"Oh my GOSH!" squealed a feminine voice directly into his left ear. Ash winced.

"The Champion!" called another voice.

Faces were popping into his field of vision now, as people leaned to to catch a glimpse of what he looked like under the baseball cap, trying to identify him.

"It IS him!" someone yelled excitedly. "It's THE Ash Ketchum!"

"Ooooh, look Cindy, it's Ash Ketchum! He's so CUTE in person!"

"Ash Ketchum, the League Champion?!"

Chatter was spreading like wildfire in the crowd forming around him. In desperation, Ash raised his head slightly, looking for an escape route. This turned out to be a mistake, however, as not only did he fail to spot a way out, but sight of his face drew even more excited shouts of recognition from the crowd around him. The situation was starting to get out of hand. He was starting to panic, wondering how he was ever going to get out of the train station before Mina caught up to him, when a very unhappy voice hissed into his ear.

"This doesn't look like the men's room to me, Master Ketchum."

A vice-like grip landed on his right wrist. He heard the sound of a pokeball opening, and suddenly his vision turned pitch-black as a pokemon's smoke screen attack filled the room.

Dragged by his arm through darkness, when Ash's vision finally cleared, he was standing in bright sunlight on the streets of Viridian City, carefully concealed from view by the fortuitous presence of several dumpsters directly in front of him. His captor released her grip on his wrist and glared at him.

"Cute trick," Agent Mina said shortly.

"Would've been cuter if I had managed to get away from you," Ash shot back.

She didn't dignify this with a response, seeming content to stand there with her arms crossed as he brushed soot from the smokescreen off his face and clothes. He saw that her face was covered with black soot as well, but she made no move to clear it off.

"Aren't you going to wipe off your face?" he asked.

"Why? My appearance is irrelevant, and I have no need for my face to be seen right now. In fact, the fewer people see my face, the better. We're going to have to go undercover once we leave Viridian City."

No need for her face to be seen? What was wrong with this girl? Pikachu hopped out of the open top of Ash's backpack, letting out a happy "Chaa!" at the bright light and fresh air, immediately followed by a long drawn out "Chuuuuuu..." of dissatisfaction after taking a breath and discovering that the air was not as fresh.

"How long are you going to force me to stay behind these dumpsters?" Ash grumbled, echoing his pokemon's dissatisfaction.

"As long as it takes for the people in the train station to stop searching the immediate vicinity for where you disappeared to," she replied. She was now standing on her tiptoes, peering out out surreptitiously over the tops of the dumpsters toward the entrance of the train station. He couldn't help but be impressed at her nonchalance. It was stinking from where he was. He could only imagine how disgusting the trash smelled at the open top of the dumpster. He supposed that League-employed bodyguards got special training in enduring putrid stenches.

Ash sat down in defeat, leaning uncomfortably against the dirty metal side of the dumpster. Pikachu hopped out of his backpack and toward Mina's feet. With nothing better to do, Ash watched as his pokemon sniffed suspiciously and Mina's boots.

"How do I know Lance sent you?" he mumbled mutinously. "You could have forged those identification credentials."

"Call him yourself," she said without turning around to look at him.

He reached into his pocket for his pokedex and punched in Lance's private line. He wasn't going to take her word for it.

"This is Lance."

"Hey Lance, it's Ash. I made it to Viridian, but I got a question for you."

"Ah, Ash. Good to hear from you, my boy. What's on your mind?"

"Did you send a bodyguard after me, Lance?" asked Ash bluntly.

"Of course. Once you leave the strictly League controlled areas, you'll have a much easier journey if you have a trained bodyguard for your protection. She will also be making regular reports to me."

"Reports?"

"I can't be in contact with you once you leave Viridian, Ash. Otherwise I'd be obligated to disclose your location to the rest of the Council. This way I can know that you're safe without having to bring you back."

"I suppose..."

"Don't worry, Ash. I assigned you one of our best field agents. She's the picture of professionalism, and her success rating is through the roof. You're in good hands."

Ash glanced over at Mina. Her soot-blackened face poking out over a metal crate full of pokemon droppings and old fruit peelings. She looked uncannily like Oscar the Grouch.

"Uh huh," Ash said disbelievingly into his pokedex.

"The staff here has booked a suite for you at Viridian Grand for tonight. Don't forget, you have that League fundraiser tomorrow night. We've already paid a fortune to reserve your spot on the guest list."

"Oh yeah," Ash said unenthusiastically.

"Good luck with everything!" Lance said, evidently not noticing Ash's displeasure. The line clicked dead.

Ash closed the pokedex and slipped it back into his pocket. Pikachu seemed to have finished his inspection of Mina's boot and found nothing interesting, because he had now jumped up to the edge of the dumpster. He clung to the edge with one paw and pinched his nose with the other. His ears twitched downwards every once in a while as he scoured the dumpster carefully.

"Pi Pikachu!" With a shout of delight Pikachu relinquished his own hold on his nose and reached one small arm into the dumpster, waving it frantically and straining toward something that he couldn't quite reach but unwilling to jump into the trash.

Mina too had noticed Pikachu's efforts. Without hesitation, she vaulted over the side of the dumpster and landed feet first into the trash. Retrieving the object of Pikachu's desire, she pushed herself out of the waist-high garbage and clambered somewhat less gracefully back over the side and onto the side walk. She offered the half-used bottle of ketchup to Pikachu. The outside was covered in a layer of grime, but the cap was still securely screwed onto the top, preserving the red substance inside the bottle.

Pikachu exclaimed happily and accepted the bottle immediately. Ash pulled a face in disgust.

"She may check out, but don't let her bribe you with used ketchup, Pikachu," Ash warned.

Pikachu only happily slurped ketchup from the bottle, pretending not to have heard Ash.

"So the Viridian Grand," she said, choosing to ignore his comment. "This area is safe. Let's get going. Keep your hat pulled low."

As if he needed her to tell him that. She was so bossy.

He carefully walked in front of Mina the entire way to the hotel. She still smelled like garbage, and it was uncomfortable to walk in her wake.

When they arrived in the lobby, he strode resolutely to the front desk without sparing her a backward glance. There were three receptionists working at the desk and no other guests in line. Ash chose the pretty blonde girl in the middle.

"Hi, Ash Ketchum, checking in," he said with a winning grin.

Her face flushed bright red, and she dropped the pen she was holding with a clatter. Impressively, she took only half a second to recover, flipping her hand through her long blonde hair easily. So, she had lots of confidence. Excellent, he liked that.

"Yes sir, I believe we have the presidential suite reserved for you," she said smoothly. She clacked away on the keyboard for a few moments. "How many keys would you like?"

"Two," Mina answered for him, approaching the counter and resting her elbows on the smooth marble surface.

The receptionist stared blankly at her. Mina's face was still splotched with black. Ash wished desperately that he could melt into the floor.

"Yes, the is..." he cleared his throat unnecessarily to buy some thinking time, "...my sister."

"Oh," the receptionist said, the smile returning to her face. "Of course, Mr. Ketchum."

She slid two card keys across the counter toward him. He purposely grazed her fingers as he accepted them.

"Thank you so much for choosing the Viridian Grand, Mr. Ketchum. I think the staff will send up a bottle of something special for your patronage, complimentary of course," the receptionist said.

"I appreciate that," he said.

"And feel free to call down to the front desk if you need... anything," she said with a flirtatious wink.

Girls were just so easy. He opened his mouth to ask her when she got off work, but was interrupted by a bony elbow shoved into his side.

"Come on, _bro_," Mina said forcefully as Ash winced in pain. "I need to get upstairs and freshen up."

Her hand gripped his wrist, and he found himself once again being dragged away, this time in the direction of the elevator.

Once the elevator doors had closed safely in front of him, he rounded on her furiously.

"What the hell was that about? Do you really need to interfere with everyone I interact with?" he yelled.

"I advise you against romantic engagements on this journey, Master Ketchum," she intoned evenly. Her eyes had gotten that odd, closed-off look in them again, like she was trying to hide something from him. "Seduction is the easiest way to achieve a clean and anonymous assassination."

His jaw dropped. "Assassination? How could you possibly know that?"

"I was trained as an assassin. That's what qualifies me to do this job. I know how the enemy thinks, so I know how to anticipate threats. Seduction is page one of the assassin's playbook."

"That reception girl was not going to assassinate me!" Ash protested.

"Like you could possibly know that."

"Wait, you're an assassin?"

"Bit slow, aren't you? Yes, as I already explained. I _was _an assassin."

He was momentarily taken aback. Stuck in an elevator with a trained killer who loved to insult him every chance she got. This was just great, Ash thought to himself. Maybe he shouldn't have ever left Indigo Plateau after all. He took in her haphazard appearance, all wrinkly dark clothes and soot-stained face. She certainly didn't look like she could strangle him with her bare hands, but if Pikachu was any indication, size was no guarantee of power. He cocked his head to the side, recovering from the momentary intimidation, and let a smug smile settle on his face.

"Then how do you explain your sad lack of ability to execute 'page one of the assassin's playbook' then?" he asked smugly. "You don't even bother to keep your face clean, you smell worse than a gloom with indigestion, and you dress like a tomboy who was tied to a Rapidash and dragged through a muddy ditch."

Her eyes flashed in anger. "Not that it's any of your business, Master Ketchum," she spat out his name like it was a dirty word. "But being a pretty girl is just another asset. It's a tool that I only use as necessary. And I'll have you know that I've completed a number of missions since I joined the League, and my success rate, in both missions that involve seduction and those that do not, is nearly perfect."

That shut Ash up. Since when did the League hire trained killers to eliminate their enemies?

"Who did you kill?" he asked with morbid curiosity.

"That's classified," she said shortly

The elevator doors slid open on their floor, and Mina strode confidently out into the richly elaborate hallway. She looked like a magikarp out of water amidst the ornate decorations and the plush carpet. He followed behind her obediently as she led the way to the room. He noted that she didn't even glance in the direction of her reflection in a gold-framed mirror as she passed it.

Her very existence was a conundrum. How little did he know about the organization that he had striven to join all these years, to find out that they were employers of trained killers? What other kinds of criminal activity were they involved in?

His brow furrowed as the electronic whirr-click of the card key being inserted into the lock on the door. Mina dropped her bag onto the sofa with a thump, apparently unimpressed by the grandeur of the room.

"I'll take the couch in the outer room," she said, "but I'm going to take a shower first."

"And what if I want to take a shower?" Ash asked.

She fixed him with a murderous glare, made somewhat more terrifying when he considered that she probably could murder him if she wanted to.

"Then I will be forced threaten you with one of the 18 concealed weapons I have on my person." She paused as though considering something. "Three of which I keep on in the shower, so don't get any ideas."

Ash gave up, holding his hands up in surrender. She disappeared behind the door to the bathroom, slamming it shut behind her. He walked into the bedroom and flopped down onto the king-sized bed.

He missed the days when he traveled with a certain redhead. At least her concealed mallet could only cause a minor concussion at worst. He suspected that whatever weapons Mina kept hidden on her person were likely to cause much more permanent damage.

* * *

Ash had successfully shut himself into the bedroom for the night, probably in an effort to avoid her. It was now nearly ten in the morning, and Misty thought he was starting to act like a citizen of a besieged city, trying to wait out the surrounding army. Like that would ever work with her. She knew for a fact that she was ten times more stubborn than he was.

She picked up the phone and placed an order of breakfast for herself from room service. After a moment's hesitation, she sighed and dialed the number again, adding an order for Ash too. If she knew him at all, she knew that his appetite would only let him hold out for another half hour. Tops.

As predicted, when the knock on the door came twenty minutes later, a food-deprived Ash bolted from the bedroom and sped toward the cart of the food with incredible speed, almost knocking over the hotel staff member that had brought it.

"Good morning to you too," Misty said, rolling her eyes as Ash snatched the cover off a plateful of food and didn't even bother to take it off the cart before shoving the first forkful into his mouth. Typical Ash.

Misty tipped the slightly traumatized hotel staffer and carried the other tray of breakfast to the safety of the coffee table before Ash could inhale her food as well. She was just about to start eating with a telltale click of a pokeball opening sounded from her belt.

Oh crap, she thought.

"Golduck!" shouted the blue pokemon who had just emerged happily, evidently attracted by the smell of food. She wished that at some point over the years she had managed to train the damn thing to stay in its ball.

Ash glared at the Golduck.

"What?" Misty asked, her heartbeat picking up. Please God don't let him recognize it, the only pokemon she had managed to smuggle out of her gym without notice five years ago.

"Psychic pokemon are banned by the League," he said darkly. "Everyone knows that they're tools of Team Rocket. Their allegiance is always with that damn Rocket Commander Sabrina and her psychic influence."

She rolled her eyes. Oh was that all? He was so by the book when it came to League policies. Definitely not a good thing.

"Golducks are not psychic type pokemon. Check your pokedex, Mister Pokemon Master," she said sarcastically.

"They learn psychic attacks," he argued.

"Yeah, and agility is a psychic-type attack too. Maybe your Pikachu should be banned."

"Piiika!" Pikachu protested.

"That's what I thought," Misty said smugly.

Ash continued to glower at her Golduck as though it were personally offensive to him. Misty studiously ignored him as she finished her breakfast, feeding her Golduck several mouthfuls in the process. When she was done, she returned Golduck to his pokeball, and he mercifully obeyed.

"I understand that you have a fundraiser that you are obligated to attend tonight," said Misty once she had cleared away her spot at the table.

Ash offered only an affirmative grunt in response. He flopped down on the sofa and flipped on the TV. She noticed that he bypassed the news channels as he clicked the remote, settling instead for a replay of a Pokemon battle. He turned the volume up in what she assumed was a preemptive attempt to drown out her voice should she wish to talk to him.

She felt a stab of annoyance followed immediately by the dull, painful throb of jealousy. In his League baseball cap, with Pikachu at his side, Ash had hardly changed at all in the years they had spent apart. Still overly excited by food, still more concerned with pokemon battles than he was with world events, and still picking immature fights with her. She felt like she had lost her innocence over the last five years, and he was the same idealistically heroic boy she had fished out of a river over a decade ago, rushing off the fight Team Rocket for the simple reason that they were "evil."

The world was a bit darker these days, but Ash Ketchum's star shone as brightly as ever.

In the magazines, the TV interviews, the public appearances, Ash always appeared to be so happy. In her most honest moments, Misty admitted to herself that she hoped, very selfishly, that this was all an act, that the revolving door of girls was just a rumor, that he secretly doubted the League's motivations, that the events of the last few years had given him a darker side.

It was a horrible thing to wish on someone, really.

Had she really expected him to just mope over her for years on end? For her murder to change him into a more bitter person? For him to stop acting like a typical 21-year-old guy around girls? It wasn't like they had really been involved before. Not officially.

Misty picked up the newspaper that had been delivered to their door in the morning. She settled onto an armchair and tried to block out the blaring voice of the television announcer as she read.

Suddenly, a hand crushed down the corner of her open newspaper.

"You're blocking my view, Mina," Ash said. He had leaned forward in his seat to push her paper out of the way, turning down the volume in the process so that she could hear his complaint clearly.

"So scoot one space over," she said, rolling her eyes. "You have the whole couch."

"Pikachu is sitting there."

"Pikachu doesn't take up an entire seat, Ash."

"In the interest of keeping it professional, I'd really prefer it if you would address me as Master Ketchum."

"Excuse me, Master Ketchum?"

"Yes?"

"What should my throwing knives address you as? They're just dying to know."

"You don't have the balls to throw knives at me. You're supposed to be protecting me."

"I don't have balls at all."

"Ha! Could've fooled me."

"What's that supposed to mean?!"

"PIKA-CHUUUUU!!!!"

Pikachu's thunderbolt attack hit them both. They were then treated to a long lecture by the attacking pokemon. Misty was out of practice interpreting Pikachu-ese, but she caught snatches like "constant bickering," "don't make me up the voltage," and, curiously enough, "like Misty all over again."

"She started it," Ash complained, rubbing a sore spot on his neck. He returned his attention to the TV.

Misty sighed and sank somewhat painfully back into her seat. Pikachu was right. It looked like her new relationship with Ash was starting off exactly as it had the first time she met him. It was going to be a long journey.

* * *

"You should have put on a dress," Ash said.

They were standing outside the ballroom where the League fundraiser was being held. Mina was dressed in her usual cargo pants and dark shirt. Her face was mercifully clean, but she still looked out of place next to the glittering evening gowns and the smart tuxedos milling around them.

"I'm not a guest at the event," she said. "I'm just working security. There's no reason to dress up."

Ash adjusted the bow tie on his own tux. "Suit yourself," he said. "But don't say I didn't warn you."

He strode confidently up to the entrance. The doorman gave him a polite nod of recognition.

"Good evening, Mr. Ketchum," the doorman said. His eyes then fell on Mina standing behind Ash.

"I'm sorry, miss. The event is for those on the invite list and their guests only," the doorman informed her, his polite veneer hardly masking his disdain for her ill-fitted clothes and unkempt hair.

"I am here for the personal protection of Mr. Ketchum," Mina snarled. "Step aside and let me do my job." She took a menacing step toward the doorman and added in a satirical imitation of his polite manners: "please."

"I assure you that our security is extremely adequate, miss," said the doorman, not missing a beat. "Now if you will please step aside so that the other guests may enter."

"Looks like I'll be just fine in here," Ash grinned brightly at her as he brushed through the doorway. "Why don't you just wait with the car, Mina? I'll see you at the end of the night!"

Ash usually hated these fundraisers with their obligatory formalwear and pointless mingling, but at this very moment, fancy food and girls in dresses were a whole lot more appealing than standing out on the street with his overprotective bodyguard. With a goofy grin on his face, he gave her an ironic little wave and slipped past the doorman into the building, leaving Mina standing alone on the sidewalk outside, arms crossed and looking murderous.

"No romantic entanglements!" she shouted after him.

"Nothing you can do about it!" he called back, disappearing into the crowded room.

Congratulating himself on this convenient extrication of himself from Mina's hawk-like gaze, Ash decided to drift inconspicuously toward the bar. It had taken a few months' worth of practice, but he had mastered the art of avoiding empty conversation at these events. The bar was always a good place to start. By sitting at the bar, he could politely keep his back turned on the majority of the room and minimize potential eye contact. Drinks and food were also a plus.

Successfully making it to his destination without seeing anyone he knew, he slid carefully into a bar stool next to a stunningly pretty red-headed woman. He was about to open a conversation and maybe buy her a drink when a plate of hors d'ouvres floated by, carried by a tuxedoed caterer.

"Excuse me," he said, tapping the caterer on the shoulder. The girl could wait until he was done eating. He swept as many hors d'ouvres as he could fit onto a small plate before giving the caterer a thankful nod.

Ash popped one into his mouth. He wasn't quite sure what it was, but food was food. He chewed contently. It actually tasted pretty good. He hoped there was no garlic in it. Pretty girls were seldom impressed by garlic breath. Ash held the plate at eye level, scrutinizing the food as closely as possible, turning it slowly in his hands.

There were few things in the world that could distract Ash Ketchum's attention from a plateful of delicious food, but what walked through the door at that moment was certainly one of them.

He saw in his peripheral vision, a woman step elegantly into the room. She had one hand clasped around the arm of a man who was clearly a little stunned at his good fortune to be escorting such a lady to the event. Waist-length, glossy black hair was piled artistically into little swirls on the top of her head before cascading downward in a jet-black waterfall. She was clad in a dress of midnight-blue satin which hung in flowing drapes from her slender frame. The dress's deeply plunging neckline was attracting the attention of several other men in the crowd.

But mostly, Ash was captivated by her face. The heavily dark eye make-up, the deep red shade of her lips stood out dramatically from her pale complexion. Something about her features struck an odd note in him, like a peculiar mixture of intense attraction and comfortable familiarity.

As he watched, plate of food forgotten in his hand, she bade a polite farewell to her companion, and slid smoothly across the floor, walking in his direction. They locked eyes. He gave a weak sort of half smile, unable to muster his usual cocky grin. She smiled back. It was radiant, beautiful smile that seemed to light up her face. A stray thought floated unbidden into his mind. Misty's smile. She had Misty's smile.

He jerked himself out of his mental stupor when he realized what he had just thought. What the hell was he thinking? Misty was dead, and staring and strange girls was certainly not going to bring her back.

"Hi."

The girl was standing in front of him, smile still in place on her face.

"Hi," he said back, momentarily at a loss for words.

"Would you like to dance?" she asked a little shyly.

He nodded, placing the plate of food onto the bar, and taking the hand that she offered. There was something comforting about holding her hand. Something that reminded him of old times, when Team Rocket was a joke and pokemon were the only concern in his life.

Before he knew it, her free hand was at the back of his neck, his own hand found her waist, and they had joined the throng of dancing couples whirling around the dance floor. He was grateful that he didn't have to let go of his grasp on her hand as they danced.

She was way too close, really. Platonic dancing took place at nearly arms length, and he was all too aware of the mere inches that separated them. She was tall in heels, but not quite his height. Nearly cheek to cheek, his heartbeat quickened, and he breathed in deeply. Vaguely, he remembered what Pikachu had said earlier that day about Mina smelling nice. He supposed this girl smelled nice too.

"Let's go outside for a bit," she whispered when the song ended.

"Yeah," he said, in a breathy voice that he couldn't quite believe belonged to him. What was wrong with him? He cleared his throat in what he hoped was a manly way. "Yeah, sounds good."

They found the door to the balcony locked. Ash frowned and pointed this out, but the girl said, "Leave that to me."

She pulled a bobby pin from the elaborate design in her hair and jiggled it into the lock. Ash noticed that her tongue stuck out a little from the corner of her mouth as she worked. He found it adorable.

Moments later, cool night air on the balcony soothed his nerves and his pounding heart. He was still clinging to her hand like a lifeline. She led them over to the edge by the ornate stone railing and let an slightly awkward silence settle between them.

"Nice night," Ash said, in an attempt to fill the lapse.

"Just beautiful," she agreed. "But a bit chilly."

She gave a shiver and leaned closer to him. He let his arms find their way around her. She fit naturally into his arms, and he thought he felt her body visibly relax as she pressed herself softly against his chest.

She raised her face upward slightly. By the dim light of the moon and stars, he couldn't help but notice the way her deep red lips stood out against her pale complexion.

He leaned down closer. He felt her shifting toward him as well, going up on her toes to close the distance between their faces. His eyes fluttered shut. She was intoxicating.

If he could only taste her for a second... just a small... little...

Suddenly he felt the pressure of something circular being pressed to his chest, followed by a distinct click.

His eyes flew open. He looked down to see a small, sleek pistol being pressed quite insistently into his chest, the safety off.

The girl was wearing a rather wicked smile on her face.

"And that's why we don't participate in romantic entanglements while on important missions," she said smugly. "Told you it was page one in the playbook."

MINA?!

He gaped at her, dumbstruck and dropped his arms from her side as though she were a sandslash. He hadn't recognized her in the heavy make up and elegant dress, but now that he looked closely, he could tell it was in fact her.

She flipped the pistol in her hand a few times, blew imaginary smoke from the barrel for flourish, and lifted up the hem of her dress to return it to a leg strap on her thigh.

"What the hell, are you doing?" he sputtered. "How the hell did you get in here?"

"Don't flip out. I just told some guy a story about stepping out and not being allowed back in because my name was crossed off, and would he please bring me in as his guest? It would only take a second."

"I can't believe you. What the hell are you thinking pulling guns on people? I should call Officer Jenny and have you arrested."

She snorted with derision. "Don't bother. Not only do I have high enough League security clearance to make it perfectly legal for me to pull out a gun wherever I like, but I'll overpower any Officer Jenny before faster than your Pikachu's quick attack."

He glared at her. "Didn't Lance send you here to protect me? Bet he'd be happy to know you're threatening me with guns."

"I _am_ protecting you. I'm teaching you that picking up girls is a bad idea on this journey," she explained, as though this were perfectly reasonable and not crazy person logic.

"Apparently, only if that girl is you!" Ash shot back. "And don't worry, that's a mistake I certainly will not make again."

"Oh please, you were all over me," she said with a smug smile. "You're a sucker for the dress and the make up and the dancing. No need to be ashamed, most men are."

But a thought had occurred to him as she said this, and he voiced it out loud. "How did you get dressed and ready so quickly anyway?" he asked suspiciously. "I left you outside in the parking lot not five minutes before you walked into that room, and you certainly weren't wearing an evening gown."

"Oh, a girl has her ways," she said with a dismissive wave of her hand.

"So how'd a tomboy like you manage it?"

She glared at him, and he saw again in her eyes a struggle between fury and control. This time, fury won out.

"I saw you eyeing that girl at the bar as I was coming in! I warned you multiple times about this, and you obviously weren't going to listen to me, so I had to show you instead. I'm just trying to teach you a valuable lesson, and in case you didn't notice, Mister Pokemon Master, you were falling for it hook, line and sinker!" she yelled.

"Don't play cool and professional killer with me!" he shouted, raising his own voice. "You were leaning into it. You couldn't wait to get a little closer could you? Couldn't make me like you in your frumpy little boy outfit earlier, so you had to go doll yourself up in this jumped-up slut dress to get my attention. Pretty pathetic if you ask me."

"Oh, now I'm the slut! I've read about your little womanizing exploits in the magazines. Date 'em and dump 'em that's Ash Ketchum. If anyone's the slut, it's you!"

"Been reading all you could about me haven't you? You're even more desperate than I thought."

She let out a yell of frustration, turned on her heel and stormed back into the well-lit room, slamming the door behind her.

Ha, I win, he thought to himself with grim satisfaction. He waited a few seconds to make absolutely sure that she was far enough away, then made to follow her back into the room. Maybe he was finally rid of her.

His hand turned the doorknob. It didn't budge. Dread crept into his mind. She could _not _have done this to him, not after everything else she had pulled tonight. He jiggled it harder, but it still did not move.

She had locked him outside. That spiteful harlot.

* * *

Misty tossed back the remains of her latest glass of whiskey and slammed the tumbler onto the bar with a bit more force than was strictly necessary. The man sitting next to her gave her a frightened stare, obviously terrified of a seemingly delicate young woman guzzling whiskey and slamming tables. She ignored him.

It was just ridiculous how he could still get a rise out of her after all these years. She had been the picture of professionalism and efficiency on her missions in the past. It had been essential to rising in the ranks of League operatives. Now a single day with Ash, and she wanted to claw his eyes out.

Although if he had no eyes, maybe he would stop hitting on random girls.

She wondered if he had managed to get someone to let him in from the balcony yet. Somehow it gave her satisfaction to visualize him making a fool of himself banging on the glass door until someone came along and let him in.

Misty was close, very close to walking away from this mission, from letting things just unfold as they may.

"Another one," she grunted at the bartender.

"I apologize, but I think you've had enough, miss," the bartender said cautiously, taking her empty glass away from her.

She glared at him, but he merely stared calmly back at her. Apparently bartenders were immune to assassin death glares.

"Whatever," Misty mumbled. She rose from her chair quite steadily and made her way toward the ladies room. She was only a little tipsy, but she wasn't in the mood to argue with the bartender that her tolerance was high enough to take another five more drinks no problem. She needed to be alone. She hated fancy events like this. She needed quiet and sensible clothes, and she needed to think.

Mostly, she needed to call Gary.

She located a reasonably secure small nook in the hallway around the corner from the ladies room. She pulled her communicator watch from the strap on her leg and punched in the frequency.

"Rocket Commander Oak," said Gary's familiar voice.

"Hi Gary," she said. She hated the unsteadiness in her voice.

"Misty," he said, business-like tone falling away immediately. "What's happened? What's wrong with you?"

"I can't do it. He's impossible. He won't listen to me about security. He goes around picking up girls like it's nothing. He's insulting, and he is just the most insufferable--"

"Have you been drinking?"

How could he tell? "No," she lied.

"I can tell when you're lying to me, Misty."

"Psychic skills from years of Rocket training?"

"Intuition and years of knowing you."

"Well if you know me so well, you should have known that I can't do this."

He sighed audibly into the communicator. "Is Ash still a numb skull?"

"We've been watching him for years, and you still phrase that as a question? I want out."

"Misty, listen to me. I know you're upset. I knew he would make you upset, and that this would be hard for you, but you have to remember that he is at the center of everything that is going on. Everything that we've been doing for the last five years comes down to this. It is essential that you stay with him. Someone at the League wants him out of the way when this fight takes a turn for the worse, and believe me, the situation is about to get a whole lot worse."

She heaved a deep sigh, trying to calm her nerves. Gary's words were helping.

"I need you to pull it together. Me and you, we both need you this. And Ash, he needs you too, Misty. He just doesn't know it yet. I'm sorry to put so much pressure on you, but it needs to be done. For all of us."

"You're right," she admitted quietly.

"I'm always right," he replied. She could almost hear him smirking.

She smiled shakily.

"Thanks Gary, you always know what to say to me," said Misty.

"Just watch yourself, Misty. Any progress to report?" he asked.

"He buys mindlessly into the League popular opinion. Hates anything to do with Team Rocket."

"Nothing helpful for us then."

"It would appear not. He's also arrogant, insulting, disrespectful--"

"Yeah, yeah," Gary interrupted. "Make sure you call me if anything comes up."

"Ok."

"Bye."

She got to her feet with only a little less grace than usual. She was pleased to see that she was walking quite steadily, and she felt much calmer now. In a manner of speaking, anyway. It had been so long since she had seen Ash last. They had both grown up so much in that time, but he could still make her furious with the slightest well-phrased insult.

Misty forced the thought out of her mind and settled herself to brave the main ballroom again. The situation was completely manageable. She would just avoid Ash, and keep an eye on him from afar.

This was the easy part, really, all glitzy parties and bright lighting. Gary was right. They would be in heading into more dangerous territory, and Ash would need her protection. The worst was still yet to come.

----------------

Author's Note: So I wanted to get a lot further in this chapter... ideally Ash and Misty would be leaving Viridian by the end, but apparently I got a little carried away and it ran a bit long. Sorry for the wait. For the sake of plot consistency, and to give myself a bit of a buffer for changing my mind, I'm trying this new thing where I have the next chapter written before I post the present one. Good thing too because I had to tweak a couple of things in this chapter after I had written the next one. Thanks to everyone who has reviewed so far. I'm actually really nervous that this chapter isn't exactly up to snuff with people's expectations, but as always, feel free to hit me with any constructive criticism!


	3. Chapter 3

For Your Protection

Chapter 3

It took a full thirty minutes of insistent pounding on the door and frantic jiggling of the door knob for Ash to catch the attention of another guest who happened to be walking by the locked door. When he finally managed the stumble inside, he muttered a quick thank you to his savior with as much dignity as he could muster and decided to make the rounds at the event that he had been intending to make in the first place. He figured it was the easiest away to avoid another confrontation with Mina.

He hadn't seen her when he had done a quick scan of the room with his eyes earlier, but that didn't mean she wasn't lurking in the corners, spying on him from out of sight with her ninja assassin skills.

Ok, so he wasn't sure she was a ninja, but she was downright sneaky, and he wouldn't put it past her to be lurking in some dark corner, spying on him.

"Ash," greeted a friendly male voice behind him. Ash turned to come face to face with Bruno, the fighting master.

Well, a more accurate description would be that he came face to chest with Bruno. The other man was almost two feet taller than him.

"Hello Bruno," said Ash genially enough. "What brings you to Viridian? I thought I was the only official called out from Indigo Plateau to attend this function."

"It was a spur of the moment decision," Bruno explained. "I wanted the change of scenery for the night. I daresay you appreciate the chance to escape the Plateau as well?"

Ash grinned at this. "It's rare that I get a chance to leave Indigo Plateau, even if it is just to come to Viridian."

"I fear that the other areas of Kanto are becoming more and more dangerous," Bruno said seriously. "Even areas as close to the center of League power as Pewter and Pallet are beginning to feel the pressure of the struggle against Team Rocket."

"Hard to believe in a ridiculous ballroom like this," Ash muttered, unable to keep the note of bitterness out of his voice. The moment the words left his mouth, he realized that he probably shouldn't have said that in front of one of the Elite Four. Especially one that could crush him with a twitch of his pinkie toe. Ash looked up at Bruno with some trepidation.

"I too long to taste the glory of the battlefield," said Bruno with an understanding smile. "But occasionally, we better serve our cause by commanding from the sidelines. This is the plight of the modern general."

Ooook... Ash thought. He didn't quite get where Bruno was coming from, but it sure beat getting crushed to a pulp by the giant boulder of a man, so he gave what he hoped was an agreeable smile and nodded.

"Ashy!" this time the voice that came from behind him was notably female, and when he turned to see who had approached him, he had to look down instead of up to see who had called his name. He was looking into the beaming face of a brunette socialite, a beautiful woman who oozed sex appeal, clutching the arm of a well-to-do businessman Ash didn't recognize.

"Excuse me, Master Ash," Bruno said politely enough as he moved away, although Ash could read clearly on his face that the master of fighting was in no mood to deal with socialites.

"Hello Giselle," said Ash, offering her a smile. She always looked stunning, and tonight was no exception.

"You look good, Ashy," she said, raising an appraising eyebrow at him as her eyes swept up and down his body. He felt like he was being put through an x-ray. An extremely lewd x-ray. Her date did not look pleased by this inspection.

"As do you," he offered. She shifted herself so that she stood a little closer to him. Under normal circumstances he would have appreciated the motion. In fact, he had already left social events with Giselle several times. She had grown even more beautiful than she was when he had first met her as a kid at Pokemon Tech, and she had no qualms with a casual hookup here and there, especially with the reigning Pokemon Champion.

"Would you be a dear and get me another drink?" Giselle asked her companion, smiling sweetly at him. "I'm just going to catch up with my old friend Ash here for a minute."

Her date scowled, but complied. The second he was gone, Giselle turned her full attention toward Ash.

"What do you say we have a little fun after the party tonight, Ashy," she leaned up to whisper in his ear so that no one around them could hear her. "It'll be just like old times. Well... not just like old times. We can make it a bit more exciting this time around."

Normally this suggestion would have made his night. Tonight, he was remembering another girl leaning in close to him and the insistent pressure of a gun barrel to his chest.

An intense wave of discomfort seized him. He pulled away so rapidly that she almost fell backward, having rested her hands against his arms for support as she had reached up to whisper in his ear.

"Yeah, no thanks, Giselle," he said. "Maybe some other time."

And he hurried away leaving her looking mortally offended and, he thought, a bit pathetic. Despite her expensive dress, her undeniable beauty, somehow she looked in that moment like she had nothing.

He pushed the thought out of his head. He had more pressing concerns right now. Like what the hell was wrong with him and why he was turning down the advances of women he had always found desirable.

It was that stupid Mina's fault. She knew her little seduction act would cause him to react this way, would make him paranoid against other girls' advances.

He was angry enough to hit her if he knew where she was, despite that his mother had always taught him not to hit girls. He was a little angry that she had made him give up a night with Giselle, more angry that her little stunt had actually worked.

Mostly though, he hated that she was probably right.

Unable to stomach the party any longer, he made a beeline for the door and burst into the cool night air. Calling the car would take too long, and the Viridian Grand was maybe a mile away. He figured he would just walk, maybe clear his mind a bit.

He kicked a soda can that happened to be on the sidewalk with a well-polished dress shoe. Several drops of grape soda and what he suspected was the beginnings of a mold colony sprayed onto his shoes and his pant legs.

This was just not his night.

Ash gulped down a deep calming breath. Tomorrow. He would set off for Cerulean tomorrow. No more useless League events. No more pretending there wasn't a war going on in the outside world.

He closed his eyes briefly and took another breath. He wished Pikachu were allowed at these events, but he had been forced to leave all his pokemon at home.

"Where you going there, fancy pants?"

He did not just hear that.

When he opened his eyes, there was not going to be a thief fond of spouting lame nick names when he opened them.

He opened his eyes and felt his spirits sink even lower. There was not just one, but three muggers in front of him. The one who he assumed had spoken was leering at him, a gun aimed steadily at his chest. The two others stood on his left and right, each wielding very long, very sharp-looking knives.

It was the second time in one night that he had been threatened at gunpoint. He really didn't enjoy it much.

"Hand over your wallet, fancy pants," the leader demanded. He had an unkempt mullet and an overconfident grin on his face.

"I don't have it on me," Ash lied. There was no way he was going to wait around Viridian to replace the contents of his wallet before heading out to the confrontation against Team Rocket, and he would certainly need his identification and his money to travel through Pewter City.

The anger that had been surging through him moments before twisted itself into courage. He stared down the barrel of mullet-head's gun with as much defiance as he could muster.

"I don't believes him, boss," said the mugger on the left, who Ash noticed sported a very pronounced lazy eye.

Well no shit, Sherlock, Ash thought. It hadn't really been much of a lie.

He was trying to work out a plan on how to get out of this one, pondering how exactly he was going to overpower two knife-wielding and one gun-toting mugger with no weapons and dressed in a tuxedo. He had left his pokemon at home since they weren't allowed at the fancy event earlier. He had also left his very annoying but very formidable bodyguard behind at said event. All in all, he didn't really have a lot going for him right now.

"Search him," the leader grunted suddenly.

Lazy-eye moved almost too fast for Ash to react, charging forward and burying the hilt of his knife into Ash's stomach, knocking the wind out of him. Ash managed to swing an arm forward, grabbing for the knife. He felt the blade slice into his palm, but he ignored the pain. His bloodied hand had halfway pulled the knife from the assailants grip before he felt an impact at the back of his knees.

The third mugger had crept up behind him while he was distracted. Ash fell forward. In a moment of determined concentration, he used the momentum of the fall to press his advantage against the lazy-eyed thug and felt the hilt of the knife successfully slide from his assailant's grip and into his own bloodied hand.

That was the end of Ash's good luck, however. Rough hands grabbed a fistful of his hair and jerked his head forcefully backward. A knife was pressed carefully along his jugular, hard enough to draw a few beads of crimson red blood.

"He took my knife!" lazy-eye said indignantly, as though he had never heard of something so preposterous before. "Did you see that, boss? He took my knife!"

"Won't do him much good," the boss said, and Ash privately agreed with him. He was holding a knife in his bloody fist, but he was also on his knees with another knife pressed to his neck, held completely immobile. He was fighting fear now. The anger that had kept him defiant since the threat had arisen was slowly losing ground to panic.

"Look in his jacket pocket," mullet-head instructed. Obediently, the goon with the lazy eye knelt down and began to pull open the jacket at the lapel.

"What's going on back here, guys?" a new voice interrupted.

Despite himself, Ash felt a wave of relief wash over him.

Mina had sauntered into the alley, still dressed in her stunning gown and wearing an expression so doe-eyed and innocent that Ash would have believed she was an innocent bystander if he hadn't known any better.

Ash felt the pressure of the knife at his throat lighten a bit and the grip on his hair lose some of its painful tightness as well. Even the gun in the boss's hand lowered, unsure what to do about this strange interruption. The thieves seemed to be at a loss for words, so she spoke again. Ash had the impression she was buying time to size up the situation.

"Are you guys having a fight?" she asked innocently, still walking calmly toward them so that she was now mere feet from where the lazy eyed mugger was kneeling.

Then, before the boss could tell her go get lost or to command the others to attack, Mina had knocked out lazy-eye with a well-aimed kick to the head from her three-inch heeled shoe. As he fell to the ground with a thump, she drew a gun from a strap on her thigh and aimed it at the leader.

"Place your gun on the floor, very slowly," she said in an even, business-like voice, the girlish cluelessness of seconds ago completely dissipated. She had one foot on the floor and another on the fallen thug's face to ensure that he was down. There was no need, Ash could see that he was out cold.

The mullet-headed boss stared at her for only a few seconds before slowly bending down to place his own gun on the floor, then rising to his feet again.

"Now tell your flunky to let him go," she commanded.

Mullet-head didn't seem to have recovered his ability to speak just yet. Silence followed this command.

Mina released the safety with a threatening click. "Now," she growled. "Or I will put a bullet through your head, and a stiletto through the temple of your friend here." She pressed down slightly harder with the heeled foot that rested on the unconscious goon's face, squashing it so that he looked even more unattractive.

"Let him go," the boss croaked at last. Ash felt the pressure from the knife and the pull from his hair lift immediately. He rose gingerly to his feet, careful not to loosen his grip on the knife in his hand. He sensed that the danger had not quite past yet, and as it turned out, he was exactly right.

In the instant that Mina turned her head to see if Ash was safe, the boss yelled, "Get her!"

The thug who had been holding Ash hostage slid fluidly around him before he could react and lunged toward Mina, knife outstretched. She swung around and pushed her attacker's knife-holding hand upward, but he pressed the element of surprised and knocked her gun from her hand with his free one. Ash moved forward to help her, but at that moment, she made a smooth, twisting spin and swept a foot with considerable force into the thug's ankles. He was knocked on his back, temporarily incapacitated. She took the opportunity to extract her own knife from the strap on her leg.

She flipped it over once on its hilt and bent down to slit her own evening gown, opening a slit in it from the ankle up to the upper thigh for greater mobility.

She looked so lethal in that moment with her hair flying in the night breeze, her expensive gown violently split down the side, and a wickedly sharp blade in her hand that Ash felt the need to step in and help her evaporate. In fact, he almost felt sorry for the poor thug picking himself up from the ground and preparing to charge her again.

Suddenly, he had his own problems. In a blur of motion, the leader was on him. Fortunately, he had forgotten to retrieve the dropped gun before he attacked. But the force of mullet-head's charge still drove Ash backward several feet, away from where Mina and her attacker were clashing again. Ash slashed the knife in his fist wildly, and felt it cut cloth, and a thin layer of flesh.

"Son of a bitch!" mullet-head cried, hissing in pain. But he did not stop his attack. In fact, he lunged at Ash's hand clutching the knife with both hands. With sheer force and help from the blood slick on Ash's palm, mullet-head wrenched the knife from Ash's grip.

Ash landed a glancing punch to the leader's head, but he took an elbow to the midsection that bowled him backward off his feet.

The wind was knocked out of his lungs. He looked up to see the leader silhouetted against the moonlight above him. In the attacker's hand was a knife bloody from tip to hilt, raised high in the air, ready to be plunged into his chest.

Ash didn't close his eyes. If he was going to die in that moment, he was going to face it head on.

Suddenly, he heard a dull thump. Mullet-head's eyes, which had shone brightly with malice the moment before, seemed to become dull and unfocused, staring blankly into nothingness. There was a scuffling of feet, frantically scrabbling against gravel several yards away. Then, the leader collapsed onto Ash, the knife clattering uselessly to the ground, missing Ash's left arm by inches.

Ash used his uninjured hands to swipe strands of the man's mullet away from his face. He looked left, to where the man's head was, and spotted the hilt of a knife protruding from the back of his head with an awful sort of finality.

Disgusted, he shoved the body off of him.

Mina bent forward and offered him her hand. He didn't take it.

"You killed him," Ash said flatly, climbing to his feet under his own power, but not managing to completely keep the wince off his face as his cut palm pressed off against the ground. The mugger that Mina had kicked earlier was still out cold. The one that she had been fighting appeared to have run away while she was distracted.

"It was the only way," she said emotionlessly. "I was too far away, and I could not be sure that he wouldn't stab you unless he died instantly."

"They were just after money," Ash said. "You didn't have to kill him."

"That's the thing, I don't think they were," Mina said darkly.

"What do you mean?"

"They were too organized. They had a clear chain of command, a plan when they first attacked you."

"You were watching when they first attacked me?"

"Of course, I followed you when you left the event."

"Then why didn't you stop them sooner?"

"I thought, like you did, that it was nothing life-threatening. I would have let them escape with your wallet and recovered it later when they weren't paying attention. I didn't think you would be stupid enough to resist."

"What the hell was up with that clueless girl act? Why didn't you just come in and take them out while I was being held with a knife to my throat?"

"Think what would have happened, Ash. I jump in, take them by surprise. Ugly over there that ran away panics and slips. Then oops, I've got one headless pokemon master to protect. I had to approach them before I could attack, get them to let their guard down a bit."

He scowled at her. He knew she was right, but he wasn't going to admit it.

"We should call the police," said Ash tonelessly. He did not relish the idea of reporting a dead body to Officer Jenny.

"I'll put in a report," Mina said. "The Viridian police are obligated to take my word for what happened, but right now we have bigger problems, and we need to get back to the hotel immediately."

"What do you mean?"

"These guys are Rocket grunts."

"Are you kidding?" Ash asked, but it was quite clear from her expression that she was not. "There are no Rockets in Viridian. No way. It's a League stronghold."

"That's what worries me, and it's why we need to get back to the hotel immediately," she said, and began ushering him out of the alleyway in the direction of the Viridian Grand.

"How do you know they're with Team Rocket?" Ash asked, refusing to let the subject drop even as he fell in step next to her.

"The coordinated attack. Did you notice that when the leader commanded them to attack, one distracted you from the front while the other one took you down from behind? That's not something that most muggers take the time to coordinate. Muggers rely on the threat of their weapons. They wave a gun, the victims surrender their wallets, that's how they operate. They're often confused and disoriented if anyone is stupid enough to fight back like you did."

"Or you did," Ash muttered mutinously.

"Yeah, but the difference is that I was winning," she shot back with an annoyingly superior grin. "Anyway, if you turn the tables on muggers like I did, threatening them back, they will scatter. Their lives are worth more to them than one wallet full of money. These men, especially the leader, attacked even after their lives were threatened. That tells me they've had experience in fights to the death. That tells me they're Rockets."

"They didn't have pokemon on them," Ash pointed out.

"Of course they wouldn't. They're out of uniform, off duty. This was some sort of side venture they were on to make a little out of cash. They wouldn't use team-issued pokemon to pull a stunt like that," she said.

"What the hell are Rocket Grunts doing mugging bystanders in Viridian City?" Ash asked. The had arrived at the front doors of the hotel now and their expensive clothes coupled with their disheveled state was attracting the curiosity of the few people lingering in the lobby at this hour.

"I don't know," Mina admitted. "But it can't be anything good."

They had arrived at his suite. The second the door opened, Pikachu bounded out from inside the bedroom to greet them.

"Pikapi!" he exclaimed in surprise at their appearance.

"I'm all right, Pikachu," Ash said. He expected Mina to waltz straight into the shower as she had the previous day, and he was ready to let her take it. He wanted to confide in Pikachu anyway. But she surprised him by turning to him immediately.

"Let me see your hand," she demanded.

Reluctantly, he held out his left hand, the one that had been sliced open by the knife earlier in the night. Now that he looked at it closely, he saw that it was pretty deep, and that there were some bits of gravel and dirt in it. That was probably not good.

Wordlessly, Mina moved toward her bag and extracted a first aid kit.

"Sit," she said shortly. He obediently dropped down next to her on the couch.

He shuddered a bit as she touched his hand. She was a killer. She had killed someone earlier that night. Those very hands that had held his gingerly as she prepped the antiseptic had thrown a knife that had embedded itself into the head of a man just minutes before.

If she noticed his reaction, she didn't say anything. The first dab of a cotton ball soaked in alcohol on the cut made him shudder again, this time in pain.

Mina worked in silence, refusing to look up and meet his gaze, as though she were trying to hide something. He looked at her face as she worked, watching her even if she would not watch him. She was very pretty, he had to admit, now that he looked at her closely. He understood now why he had been so captivated by her the moment she had walked into the room in that dress.

But she was a killer, a murderer.

She was bandaging his hand now, with a gauze pad an a length of tape, wrapping it with such care that he would have sworn she was a Nurse Joy if he hadn't known been better. It was such a huge contradiction to the trained fighter he had seen earlier in the night that if he could hardly believe they were the same person.

When she was finished, she got up wordlessly and headed for the shower. He slid into the bedroom and closed the door.

The second the door clicked shut behind him, Pikachu launched into a very angry and very long demand to hear an explanation of exactly what had happened. Ash sat down very tiredly on the bed and began the long task of explaining the events of the night while changing into an outfit more comfortable to sleep in.

When he had finished, he sought Pikachu's opinion.

"How can you trust someone like that to protect you, Pikachu?" he asked. The running water in the shower was still audible, so he was sure that Mina could not overhear them. "She didn't even react after she killed him, like it was just business as usual for her. How can you trust someone who changes their appearance, their mannerisms so quickly, and who will kill without batting an eye?"

Pikachu seemed pensive for a second, but when he spoke again, he pointed out to Ash that whatever her shortcomings, she had gotten the job done. She had saved his life.

Ash supposed that Pikachu was right. In a sense. He owed her is life. It didn't change the fact that she was still a cold-blooded killer, had probably killed dozens, maybe hundreds of other people just as she had killed that Rocket.

Then, Pikachu posed a question that made him stop right in his tracks.

If he had been there, when Misty was being drowned, would he have killed the Rocket attacking her?

And Ash could think of no good way to respond to that, because he knew without a doubt that the answer was yes.

* * *

This had always been a problem for her.

Misty stood braced against the wall of the shower, allowing the hot water to run over her as she shook a little, shaking with lack of control.

There wasn't actually any blood from the dead Rocket on her. She had thrown the knife from over ten yards away, and she hadn't touched the body.

So why did it feel like she was covered in blood, blood that wouldn't wash off?

But she had dealt with this before, after every kill. You would think that she could learn to pull it together more quickly now. She was getting better and better at hiding her discomfort. The first time she had killed a man, she had vomited immediately afterwards. Gary had had to come in and extract her because she was so shaken that she couldn't move. Now apparently she could at least hide it adequately enough to fool Ash for at least half an hour.

Ash. He thought she hadn't noticed, but she had seen him shudder when he touched her.

Of course, she should have known that he would be disgusted by her. She had killed dozens of times. She was a murderer, and she was certainly not the same girl he had known at sixteen.

The face of the dead man floated into her mind as she closed her eyes. She pushed it forcefully way. Then, she saw Ash's face, eyes full of accusatory hatred as he refused to take the hand she offered to help him up, felt the wave of disgust that he had felt when she had touched his hands to bandage his wound. Hurt welled up over guilt inside her.

She cried.

She had wanted to all night. In the shower, no one would hear her, and no one would see the tear stains when she got out. It was perfect.

It was nearly an hour later when she emerged from the shower, her face the picture of collected detachment. Ash had already gone to sleep. She could tell from the faint sounds of snoring through the closed door to the bathroom.

She laid herself down on the couch and closed her eyes, but she knew that she was not going to sleep tonight.

She never could the night after a kill.

When the early morning sunlight leaked in through the shades in the morning, she rose from a restless night, and moved about the room collecting their belongings for the journey through Viridian Forest to Pewter City. Preoccupation with the night before was making her extremely nervous. What exactly were three Team Rocket Grunts doing in Viridian City? Were there more of them in the area?

The sooner they got away from it, the better. Gary had implied that the struggles between the League and Team Rocket were about to intensify. She hoped they weren't going to intensify around here.

Ash rose much earlier than she had expected him to, probably out of eager anticipation for the start of their journey. He mumbled good morning at her, which she thought was quite friendly given his attitude the night before, and stumbled into the shower.

Half an hour, breakfast, and some last minute packing later, they were out the door. Misty was on edge, painstakingly aware of all the activity from the people passing by them on the street. It was in her training to be suspicious, and she was doubly on edge after the attack of the night before.

"The first time I traveled through Viridian Forest, I was ten years old," Ash said conversationally.

It was such a neutral comment, laced with implications of her own childhood, that Misty was caught off guard, unsure of how to react. She walked in silence for a few seconds.

"It was much safer then," she commented finally.

"My friend didn't think so," Ash said with a smile. "She's deathly afraid of bugs, and we were attacked by a swarm of beedrill."

Misty shuddered involuntarily. Beedrill. She remembered the occasion all too well, and she was still deathly afraid of bugs.

"I hate beedrill," she said shortly.

"Oh?" he seemed surprised, but his face broke out into a mischievous grin. "Is the big bad bodyguard afraid of a wee little bug? Doesn't fit with your badass rep does it? How are you going to protect me if we run into a pack of Rockets dressed like caterpie?"

She was so relieved that he seemed to be treating her with some normalcy, that she almost overlooked the insult.

Almost.

"I guess I would just have to leave you to die. Oh well, can't win them all," she said with mock nonchalance.

"Hey!" he protested.

"Can't you take on some caterpie yourself anyway Mr. Pokemon Master? Or would your charizard still rather roast you with its flamethrower than burn some caterpie?"

He stopped dead and stared at her.

"How did you know my charizard used to not obey me?"

Oops.

"I... uh... read your file," she offered.

He gave her a suspicious glare that told her very clearly he didn't think that was in his file.

"Oh look at that, we've arrived at the edge of Viridian Forest," she said, desperately trying to change the subject.

He opened his mouth to question her further. To her immense relief, he was interrupted by the piercing sound of a communicator beeping. She looked down at her watch. The red light on it was flashing. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ash pull his pokedex out of his pocket. To her surprise, she saw that the light on the corner of it was flashing as well. The relief that she felt seconds before disappeared immediately and was replaced with worry. What kind of news flash called both of them simultaneously?

The flashing display on her communicator told her the message was from the League, a high priority alert addressed to all personnel. No good could come of this. She held the communicator up to her ear with trepidation and saw Ash do the same with his pokedex. She pressed the check message button.

"URGENT MESSAGE FOR ALL LEAGUE PERSONNEL:

"We have confirmed reports that widespread bombings coupled with pokemon attacks have been unleashed on the Pallet Town area. Preliminary reports suggest that agents for Team Rocket are behind the attacks. Casualty estimates have not been finalized, but evidence suggests that due to the significant and extensive nature of the attacks, there is little chance of finding any survivors.

"Do NOT approach the area. It is still highly volatile, and the members of Team Rocket responsible for the attack may still be close at hand. Do not speak to the media on this incident. The League is finalizing a public statement to be given by Lance, Head of the Elite Four, in a few hours.

"Repeat: Do NOT..."

Misty stopped listening. She thought her heart might have stopped beating as well. She stood frozen in place, unable to move her wrist from her ear, unable to do anything but turn her gaze to look at Ash.

The color had drained entirely from his face so that his dark hair and eyebrows were highlighted unnaturally against his increasingly pale skin. Disbelief and shock were etched over every millimeter of his expression. Like her, he seemed unable to move.

He recovered before her. Without saying a word, he reached for a pokeball on his belt and tossed it into the air. Charizard, the huge dragon-like fire pokemon, burst from the brilliant flash of white light. The flame on his tail lent its own brand of wavering light onto the cityscape.

Ash leapt onto Charizard's back in silence. Wordlessly, he urged the giant beast into the air. It was only when the wind from Charizard's wings swept across Misty's face that she finally overcame the shock.

"Wait!" she shouted after him. "It's too dangerous Ash!"

She supposed it shouldn't have surprised her when he didn't listen. When was the last time she had convinced him to do anything he didn't want to?

"Team Rocket is still in the area Ash, and a solitary flying pokemon is an easy target! You're asking to be shot down or blasted out of the sky!"

The only response was the ever softer flapping of Charizard's wings as the fire pokemon and its trainer lifted higher into the air, their progress unimpeded by her words.

* * *

AN: I have really let this story idle for a while haven't I? Apologies for that, but I can't promise regular updates from here on out either :( Real life is always getting in the way. I am, however, sticking to the plan of always having one chapter in advance written by the time I post one a chapter (meaning that chapter 4 is already done.)

For those of you that may have found Misty's faking like a ditzy girl act familiar, a virtual cookie for you if you can name the TV show I've borrowed it from :) Thanks again for everyone who has reviewed, and please drop me a line to let me know what you think!


	4. Chapter 4

For Your Protection

Chapter 4

Misty cursed to herself. She should have physically prevented him from running off, knocked him unconscious if she had to. She knew she had been too shocked by the news they had just heard to react properly.

As far as she knew, Mrs. Ketchum still lived in Pallet Town, and the woman had been almost like a mother to her when she was younger. Recollections stirred in Misty's mind of a brown-haired woman with sparkling personality and a kind smile. It was like recalling someone else's memories, like another life.

The disconnect was magnified by the fact that Mrs. Ketchum was probably dead now, her body charred beyond recognition and tossed brutally into the air. Misty had seen the Rockets strike before, had sorted through the bodies in the aftermath. The blast radius of the bombs would be magnified a hundred-fold by the psychic blasts from Team Rocket's pokemon, tossing hundreds of bodies into the air indiscriminately.

Ninety percent of them would die from the blast before they hit the ground again. The rest would be the lucky minority that got to die from impalement, broken bones, and whatever other lovely surprises the impact with the ground had in store for them as they fell.

Rocket blasts left no survivors. The Team had perfected the method over the years. But never had Misty heard of a blast radius of this size.

She cursed the fact that she had not brought along a flying pokemon or even thought to borrow one from Gary. Settling for the best possible alternative, she pulled a pokeball from her own waist and released a large, sturdy Rapidash.

"To Pallet Town, Rapidash," she said. "As fast as you can."

The flames from the Rapidash's mane didn't burn, but their dry heat irritated Misty's bare arms. She hated fire pokemon, but joining the League with an all-water team would have been just too much of a dead give away as to who she truly was.

She spent the better part of two hours enduring the uncomfortable rise and fall of the Rapidash's body as it carried her. As they approached the end of the woods outside Pallet Town, she dared to stray to the edge of the blast radius.

She had expected it to be quiet, a desolate wasteland of death and destruction with the eerily flickering light of fire casting dancing shadows over the charred remains of buildings and bodies indiscriminately.

The ruins of Pallet Town were worse. The sound of helicopters hovering overhead clashed against the shouts of League rescue workers that milled haphazardly over the scene. Pale, too-bright search lights illuminated patches of the ground at a time, fleetingly moving over images of gruesomely disfigured corpses, only to slide emotionlessly to the next patch of ground without pausing.

Misty had to fight the bile rising in the back of her throat.

Rapidash jerked to a halt suddenly, and Misty looked down to see that her pokemon had stopped at an unnatural demarcation in the ground. Under the fire horse's hooves was sparsely grown grass, poking its way through rich brown soil. Immediately in front of her, the green stopped abruptly, a curved line marking a sudden change to deep, lifeless black, the edge of the Rocket blast.

"Miss, you're going to have to leave the scene right now."

A league worker had noticed her, and had come up to investigate. Misty didn't budge.

"Did you hear me, miss? The area is not yet secure. You need to turn around immediately," the worker said, this time with an air of insistence.

"Level 5 security clearance," Misty snapped. She flashed her badge at the worker. "I'm looking for someone who may have come to investigate the scene."

"No one has come to the scene except the rescue workers and containment units that were airlifted in," the worker replied.

"He would have flown in on a flying pokemon and landed," Misty explained.

The worker balked. "That would be incredibly foolish and borderline suicidal. We have yet to confirm that the Rockets responsible have left the area."

Misty rolled her eyes. "No need to tell me that. Did he or did he not come through?"

"I haven't seen anyone fly over, ma'am, but our efforts here have been focused on the ground. We may have missed it."

Misty gave him a curt nod. "Thank you. I'll continue my search."

After the worker returned to his duties, Misty made a quick loop around the perimeter of the blast area, but she saw no sign of Ash. He must have already seen what he came to see.

She needed to find him, and each minute was accompanied by a feeling of rising panic at where he could be. Had he been shot down by a psychic blast as he approached? Been taken captive by lurking Rockets when he arrived at the scene?

Worry for Ash allowed her to push the images of burnt corpses and scattered wreckage out of her mind temporarily and turn to search the forests between Pallet and Viridian. She combed the paths through the forest, frustration mounting with each passing unsuccessful minute. She couldn't stand not knowing, and trying to find a single person who could be within an area of nearly a hundred square miles was almost impossible.

A spearow flew at her in the darkness, trying to attack the intruder to its territory. Out of pure frustration, she ordered the Rapidash to aim a flamethrower at it until it fainted. It dropped out of the sky, a smoldering, charred ball of flesh.

Probably what all the residents of Pallet Town had looked like a few hours earlier and possibly what Ash looked like now.

But the spearow would recover. It was only unconscious, maybe a little burnt. Mrs. Ketchum and all her neighbors would never recover.

The faint sound of rushing water drifted mercifully to her ears. There was a river nearby. She turned her Rapidash toward the light gurgling noises. If she couldn't find Ash, at least she could find water. She may pretend to feel the same way about water pokemon as she did about all other types since she had joined the league, but the primal, unwavering bond with water remained buried deep within her, even after she had nearly drowned.

Misty reached the edge of the river. By the light of the moon, she could see that fresh water ran rapidly over smooth rocks in the river bed.

"Slow down, Rapidash," she said, feeling the fire horse's heaving breaths after its continuous running. "Let's follow the river bank, and trot as slowly as you need."

She let the steady, rhythmic rise and fall of Rapidash's gait harmonize with the sound of rushing water from the river. Misty closed her eyes and let the scene of peacefully flowing water replace the horrific images of dead bodies that had been running through her mind. A cool night breeze rustled through her unnaturally black hair, and she breathed in the smell of the forest and the river.

Rapidash's gait shifted slightly. They were turning a corner. She opened her eyes somewhat reluctantly, and what she saw triggered a wave of relief that washed through her.

A solitary, Ash-shaped figure sat perched on a rock overlooking the river. Its silhouette outlined by the pale moonlight.

Something about the stillness of his figure made her resist to urge to charge recklessly toward him. Not wanting to startle him, she returned Rapidash to its pokeball, and approached the rock on foot.

When her boot took its first step onto the smooth gray surface of the rock, she recognized the view. It was from this rock that she had first fished a 10-year-old aspiring pokemon trainer and his Pikachu from the river below.

Funny, she sought comfort in water, and he sought comfort in her.

If it was a coincidence that he ended up here, it was a highly unlikely one, and if he heard her approaching, he didn't acknowledge her presence. She saw that Pikachu was sitting on his left, his little head resting in his master's lap.

"Ash," the sound of her voice rose assertively over the constant rushing of water below. He did not react, but Pikachu's ears perked up.

She picked her way across the rock until she stood behind where he was seated. Pikachu raised his head off Ash's lap to look at her inquisitively.

"Ash," she tried again, this time a little louder.

"Go away," he choked out. "I really can't deal with you right now."

"Pika pikachu..." said Pikachu apologetically.

"I'm sorry, but you can't be out here alone right now Ash," Misty said. It was a struggle to keep her voice even and professional.

"I'm not alone. I'm here with Pikachu. Now go away," he repeated.

"No."

Unexpectedly, he lept to his feet and wrenched around violently to face her.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" he yelled into her face, fists clenched tightly at his sides as though readying for a fight.

The accusation in his tone and the aggressiveness of his stance brought her own barely controlled frustration bubbling to the surface. Misty had, after all, never been one to back down from a fight. She hardly recognized the shrill edge of hysteria in her own voice when she opened her mouth.

"Wrong with me? With me, Ash? I'm not the one who flew off into a known hostile area! I'm not the one who can't stop for two seconds to consider the consequences and the risks! Frankly, I'm not surprised the League keeps you locked up at Indigo. You wouldn't last two seconds against a Rocket Commander. You'd barrel in without a plan and be outsmarted before you even realized you were losing!"

For a moment, Misty honestly thought that he would try to hit her. His fists shook erratically as he clenched them tighter, muscles flexing to their fullest extent. He opened his mouth, only to close it again. He tried again, but still no sound came out.

Finally, inexplicably, the fight seemed to leave his body as suddenly as it had come. Ash's shoulders slumped, he lowered his face defeatedly. The brim of his baseball cap cast a dark shadow over his eyes, shielding them from the light of the moon.

"You're right," he whispered, almost inaudibly.

"Pikachu!" protested the small pokemon at his feet.

"No, Pikachu, she's right," Ash continued. "I'm no use to anyone."

"That's not what I meant," Misty muttered.

"I couldn't even land."

Misty remained silent, confused and taken aback.

"I flew over the scene, and I saw the smoke, saw the bodies afar. I couldn't face it. I couldn't even land to see if anyone had survived, to see if she had..."

He broke off abruptly, managing to stifle a sob. He turned his head to the right, an unnecessary movement to avoid her gaze, like he was ashamed.

"I'm sorry," Misty said, as quietly as she could. Too quietly, the sound of rushing water below slid over her apology and rendered it inaudible.

She opened her mouth to apologize more loudly and to tell him that she had been selfish to vent her frustration on him, that she hadn't meant any of it, but before she could speak, Ash tensed suddenly, his eyes fixed on a location over her shoulder, some hundred yards or so away in the forest.

Misty turned to follow his gaze. She was just in time to see something shift away from them, hidden under the cover of the trees. Years of training told her it was a person, and it was a threat. She readied herself, hands moving automatically for her gun.

"Gary!" Ash bellowed, leaping from his sitting position and almost slipping on the smooth surface of the rock. He bolted across the river bank toward the tree line, in hot pursuit of the retreating figure. Misty jumped to her feet as well and sprinted after him.

"Get back here, Oak!" Ash shouted. He was shoving low-growing tree branches so violently that he was gaining on the shadowy figure. From behind him, Misty could now identify the distinctive spiky hair and Rocket uniform. What the hell was Gary doing here in person?

Ash's brash determination was closing the distance to his quarry. Misty pulled a throwing knife discreetly from her leg strap as she ran. If necessary, she would knock over a branch and trip Ash to prevent him from catching Gary. She'd have to endure the shame of supposedly missing her intended target later, but Misty had a shrewd idea of what Ash was going to command his pokemon to do to Gary in his current, unstable state of mind, and she was betting that it would be extremely bloody.

"I'm going to kill you for what you did to Pallet Town, Gary!" Ash yelled at the top of his lungs. "And I'm going to make sure it's brutal and painful!"

Just as she had predicted.

In a few seconds however, her precautions became completely unnecessary. With Ash only a few yards away, Gary lept into the air, seized a tree branch with one arm and swung himself upward. For a brief moment, his prone form suspended effortlessly in midair, and it seemed impossible that he would land on his feet. Then, in a subsequent click and flash of white light, he had vanished into thin air.

Ash let out a yell of frustration so loud that several bird pokemon took flight from the trees around them.

"Teleportation," Misty explained shortly, sheathing the knife. The ability of psychic pokemon to vanish and reappear at will, taking their masters with them, was a huge asset to the Rockets sophisticated enough to train such pokemon.

Ash pounded his fist uselessly against the trunk of the tree that Gary had disappeared near. A few bits of bark fell to the ground.

Several tense moments passed in silence. Misty was the first to break it.

"I brought the camping gear that we were going to start using once we left Viridian," she said. "We'll have a tough time getting back to the city by nightfall. We should set up camp for tonight. Look for the trail by daylight."

Ash merely grunted in response, still leaning against the tree, palms pressed flat against its trunk and head bowed downward.

She pitched the tent without his help. Pikachu lent a paw toward putting the stakes in the ground. Eventually, he unfurled his own sleeping back and slid into it, passing the rest of the night in stony silence.

Well, almost stony silence. He still snored just as loudly as his Snorlax.

Misty waited for this telltale sign that Ash had finally fallen asleep to surface. When she was sure from his loud, rhythmic snores that he was quite asleep, she crept out of her own sleeping bag and toward the tree where Gary had disappeared.

She'd been pondering this for several hours, ever since Gary had first been spotted. Gary was an expert at covert ops, even stealthier than she was. There was just no way that Gary had allowed Ash to glimpse him by accident.

The only possible explanation was that he had meant for _her_ to spot him, to know that he was there, and the only reason to do that would be to contact her. She could call him on her communicator, but he could not call her. It was too much to ask that Ash would not be around when her communicator rang and demand to know who was calling.

Cautiously she approached the tree, moving her fingers carefully over the bark, inspecting it for any sign that he might have left her. She circled the tree as she worked, meticulously careful not to miss an inch.

Quite suddenly, her fingers pressed upon what seemed to be a box of solid air, protruding at about eye-level from the tree trunk. She pushed harder, testing the barriers of the invisible box. They did not yield.

As silently as she could, she pulled the sixth pokeball from her pocket. Praying that the noise of releasing it would not awaken Ash or Pikachu, she let the pokemon out of its ball.

Gary's Alakazam appeared before her, turning its head from side to side and taking in its surroundings with an intelligent, if detached interest.

"Alakazam, I need you to reveal the message Gary left for me," she whispered urgently, pressing her palm against the surface of the invisible box.

The pokemon complied, its eyes glowing blue. The box of air under Misty's hand shone an identical shade of eerily bright blue, before gradually fading away.

The box had been an illusion and a psychic force field, designed to conceal what the true side of the tree looked like at that point. Impaled to the trunk of the tree by a gleaming silver knife was a small slip of paper. It carried a message in Gary's handwriting.

_I need to see you in person. Meet me at the remnants of Oak Lab. Alakazam can teleport you there._

_-G_

* * *

Gravel and small pieces of rubble dug into her palms as she collapsed onto all fours, gasping for breath. The lingering smell of charred flesh and smoke did not help matters.

"You really should have gotten used to that feeling by now," a voice remarked.

Misty ignored it. She closed her eyes and concentrated on not vomiting. She felt someone take Alakazam's empty pokeball from her belt.

When the voice spoke again, it was directed at the pokemon rather than her.

"You can lift the illusion for now, Alakazam. Take a rest for a bit."

She opened her eyes slowly. By the flickering fires still burning in the aftermath of the attack and the sparse moonlight from above, she saw the shadow of Alakazam disappear in a flash of light as it was returned to its Pokeball. Hanging just within the range of her peripheral vision was the single jet black braid that she had become accustomed to wearing her hair in. As she watched and attempted to focus her vision, she saw the tip of the braid begin to turn a vivid shade red. Almost as if her hair had caught fire, the red burnt its way through the black disguise and up the length of the braid. Although she couldn't see her face, she knew that her eye color was shifting as well as Alakazam's illusion faded and her usual appearance returned.

Finally, when she felt her stomach settle a bit and the waves of nausea die down, she raised her face and spotted the hand that he must have been offering to her the whole time. She took it and allowed him to help her to her feet.

"What the hell is going on, Gary?"

His face, which had shown a gentle and teasing expression a few seconds ago, gave way to an intense mixture of fear and worry.

"I wish I knew," he said, frowning and running a white-gloved hand through his hair. "Something is going on. The Rocket boss is making a move, and we aren't sure what it is."

Suddenly, Misty felt that she couldn't look at his face any more. Not sure what it is, was he?

"Gary," she grit her teeth as she spat out his name. She hadn't realized just how angry she was with him until that very moment. "What is the POINT of being a mole in the Rocket organization if you can't prevent things like this?" she demanded.

The accusation in her tone was undeniable.

He kicked a pile of rubble so that tiny stones and bits of glass exploded in all directions. Misty felt the small impacts through the lining of her boots and heard the angry clatter of the debris as it scattered across the floor. When he spoke his tone had dropped almost an octave

"Don't start with me tonight, Misty," he said. "I need to be able to keep it together, and you're not helping."

Misty wasn't quite sure what to say to that. Somehow she felt like she was no longer talking to her closest friend for the last five years. Instead, she was facing down with Rocket Commander Oak: ruthless, emotionless and unforgiving.

He was usually able to handle the brutality of what they did to maintain their covers much better than she was. After all, he had been the one to extract her after her first kill, had detonated psychic blasts that killed hundreds over the course of the last five years. It was a necessary evil. They both agreed on it.

She had touched a nerve and she knew it. Now she would have to give him time to collect himself. Misty sank to the floor, sitting and leaning against what was left of one of the walls and waited. She watched his boots pace furiously back and forth. Eventually the rate of his footsteps slowed. She watched as his feet shuffled toward her until Gary himself dropped noiselessly into a sitting position right next to her.

"I'm sorry," he said at last.

"I've had enough fights for tonight," she said calmly. "We're all on the same side here."

"I assume you're talking about Ash."

"You heard that did you?"

"Of course."

A few moments of silence passed between them.

"I know how to handle you when you're angry, Gary," she observed. "But somehow I never got the hang of how to calm Ash down."

"Have you ever thought that it might be because you're the one pissing him off in the first place?"

She didn't have to glance to her left to know that he was smirking at her. Some things never changed, and Gary Oak would be a cocky bastard until the day he died. She gave him a light punch in the arm.

"How is he doing?" Gary asked.

"Who, Ash?" said Misty.

"Yes, we are going to need his help if we are going to get to the bottom of what's going on here. He has intimate knowledge of the League that neither of us are going to be to get too. Plus he's not a bad trainer," Gary said with a note of annoyance in his voice at this last concession.

Misty rolled her eyes. Gary sure had a gift for understatement when his ego was on the line.

"It's as we expected. Ash is still unquestioning following the League's mandate," Misty said a bit dispiritedly. She heaved a bit of a sigh and blew a few spare strands of reddish hair out of her face. It was comforting to see her own hair color after spending so much time in disguise.

"You know him," Misty continued. "It has been his dream since he was a little kid to be the Champion, the figurehead of the League. He loves it. Wouldn't doubt its integrity for the world."

Gary let out a snort of derision.

"Got any clever plans on how to sabotage the League's image in front of him?" Misty asked.

Gary shrugged.

"I don't think there's really any need to. The odd behavior that first got me suspicious in the League has been escalating almost exponentially. It's my guess that you two will encounter it naturally soon enough," he said.

Misty looked at him quizzically. He was just content to wait for evidence to materialize? That didn't sound like Gary at all.

"How do you figure that's going to happen?" she demanded.

"Remember that encrypted kill order you intercepted for me a couple of weeks ago?" he asked.

She nodded. She had been incrementally stealing pieces of intelligence ever since she had joined the League as an agent. As she had progressed through the ranks, her security clearance had gone up as well, and as her security clearance had gone up, the reports she was able to intercept held more and more vital pieces of information.

"I decrypted it," Gary said.

"How did you manage that?" she asked quizzically. "It had to have been encoded with a League security cypher. The cypher is the key that you need to decrypt the message."

"It wasn't," Gary said simply. "I found the cypher buried in a Rocket transmission from years ago."

Misty furrowed her eyebrows. "That's unexpected."

"It gets more unexpected," Gary said. "The cypher that decrypted the kill order you intercepted two weeks ago, it matches the cypher used to decrypt an order that I received five years ago."

Five years ago... Misty's veins ran cold. She knew what was coming next.

"It was the same cypher used to encrypt your kill order."

She was silent for a bit.

"What does that mean?" she asked.

"I'm not sure, but I read the new communication that you passed on to me. It's another kill order. This time it's targeted at Brock."

"At Brock?" Misty demanded. She could not have heard him correctly. Why would the League target its own gym leader, especially a gym leader who had been so instrumental in fending off the Rockets at Pewter City, one of the cities crucial to maintaining the League's core of power around Indigo Plateau.

"Yes," Gary confirmed. "You need to make sure that you and Ash get to Pewter in time to thwart the assassination attempt. The target date on the file is two days from now."

"Do you know who is going to carry out the hit?" Misty asked.

"I have no idea," Gary replied. "But you intercepted the hit within League headquarters. That can only mean that it was intended for a League assassin."

"Why would someone recycle a cypher on two kill orders, five years apart?" She knew it was the question they were both asking, and she knew that if Gary had the answer to that, he would have told her by now.

"I have no idea," Gary said simply.

They lapsed into silence for a few minutes afterwards, both sitting almost completely still, propped up against half a ruined wall inside Oak laboratories. Misty stared at the tips of her own boots, thinking hard about what she had just learned.

They had started working together years ago, after she was first "murdered." Gary was right to think that something had not been quite right with the League over the years. There were strange patterns that started small and ended bigger, rigged tournaments in League sponsored events, strange disappearances of key trainers, and this most inexplicable recent trend: internal orders to undermine itself.

She could not see what the organization was playing at or who could possibly be pulling the strings behind it.

Abruptly, Gary broke the silence.

"I grew up here," he said matter-of-factly.

"I know that. I spent some time here in my childhood too, remember?"

"It used to be a happier place before Grandpa passed away. The Rockets have been using it as a staging ground for espionage and experimentation in Pallet town ever since."

Misty didn't respond. He had never thought to share that fun fact with her.

"Many of the pokemon that had been here belonged to trainers, but often new ones were bred, or the trainers lost interest, and then they had no one to look after them except Grandpa. The Team took these pokemon underground. They hired a new scientist to keep up the appearances of a legitimate lab here and constructed an elaborate basement in which to place the pokemon and conduct their experiments.

"I found all this out tonight. Sabrina was in charge of this operation, and the Rocket Boss likes to keep our jurisdiction completely separate so that he is the only one who knows the complete direction of the organization. It minimizes the chances of a mutiny against him, you see."

"If this place was a Rocket facility, why bomb your own property?" Misty asked.

"There's only one possible explanation: The experiments must have achieved their intended purpose," Gary replied simply.

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know." Gary shook his head dejectedly. "My suspicion is that it was a weapon. Something that was completed and evacuated before the lab was destroyed."

Abruptly, Misty got up and brushed the dirt from her pants.

"Well, let's go find out," she said confidently.

Gary eyed her with some trepidation. "The basement and the underground network are completely collapsed. I led the attack Misty. This was the first thing I was told to target."

Misty rolled her eyes. "No offense to your tactical skills Gary, but there is no way you managed to destroy all the evidence. Let's have a look around."

Reluctantly, he stood as well and followed her through the darkness in search of a way underground. They made their way around to where the stairs to the basement had once stood, but the entryway had been completely caved in.

"See?" Gary said, an edge of juvenile smugness sneaking into his voice. "I told you. I don't miss."

Misty pressed her fingers against the wall of rubble that blocked their path. She moved her hands slowly and deliberately over inches of the surface as she examined the pile of concrete and plaster. Gary watched in somewhat dubious silence as she leaned lower, until finally, knelt on the floor, Misty's index finger slid over a small groove near the bottom of rock pile.

She lept nimbly onto her feet and back towards where Gary had stood watching her. In one fluid motion, she snagged a pokeball from Gary's belt.

"Hey!" he protested. "I could have you killed for doing that."

Misty rolled her eyes and threw the ball forward. The pokeball split down the middle, and opened on its hinge in a brilliant flash of white light.

A familiar, star-shaped pokemon materialized as the light faded, and Misty rushed forward to greet her Starmie, throwing her arms around it. Starmie's center gem glowed a happy shade of red in recognition.

"Starmie," she said after she released it. "Aim your water gun at that weak spot in the base there."

"I really don't know what you're hoping to accomplish here, Misty," Gary grumbled.

Starmie obediently shot a steady, pressurized stream of water into the groove that Misty had identified moments ago. Gary crossed his arms and waited.

Quite suddenly, with a spectacular crashing noise and a dense cloud of dust, what seemed to have been wall solid rock a second before collapsed into a pile of discordant rubble about the height of Gary's knee.

"How did you do that?" he demanded.

"I've been to hundreds of Rocket blast sites with the League over the last few years," Misty explained. "The psychic blasts might be effective at eliminating life forms and witnesses, but they aren't spectacular and eliminating the structural integrity of buildings, especially an underground complex that I'm sure was designed to withstand attacks from traditional bombs."

She picked her way over the collapsed wall and into the darkness beyond.

"Well, I'll just add that to the list of things the Rocket Boss isn't aware of," Gary muttered as he trotted somewhat incredulously in her wake.

"I never mentioned it to the League," Misty said absentmindedly over her shoulder. "The first few times I kept hoping to find survivors on the other side of the wall. When I realized that there were never any people alive, it didn't seem important to tell the other members of the clean up crew. It would really only give them false hope."

They picked their way over the debris by Starmie's glowing red light for a while, descending over the cracked remains of what was once a steep staircase. At last, the incline leveled out abruptly.

"There's a lot of glass down here," Misty observed.

"Run of the mill for ruins of a laboratory, I'd expect," Gary replied nonchalantly.

Misty returned Starmie to its pokeball and handed the ball back to Gary. She unhooked a flashlight from her own belt and directed it into the deepest areas of darkness. Nothing except more piles of rocks and glass greeted the beam of the flashlight.

She stepped forward, moving into the darkness with a comfort that suggested she had done this dozens of times before. The room seemed cavernous and most of the instruments had been reduced to unrecognizable smithereens. She supposed she should have seen that coming. After all, the psychic blasts were targeted at small objects or life forms like people, it was quite characteristic to find a room itself intact but all the contents demolished beyond recognition.

She heard Gary split off from behind her and didn't comment. He was probably right in thinking that they would cover more ground separately. She was already beginning to worry about leaving Ash alone for too long.

They searched the basement for what seemed like hours to no avail. Fatigue was beginning to take its toll on Misty. She found her eyesight beginning to waver and had to remind herself that she had not slept the previous night, and it must now be only hours from daybreak. She had spent much of the day and early parts of the night searching for Ash.

At last, she reached for the button on her communicator to call Gary. They could come back for evidence later. Just as her finger was about to alight on the button to open his frequency, her communicator beeped abruptly.

"Agent Mina," she snapped.

"Drop the act, Misty, it's me," Gary's voice crackled through the communicator. "I've found something. Two rooms from the left of the room that we entered through."

"Copy," she said shortly.

She made her way back out of the room she had been standing in and toward the main entrance. Spotting the wavering light of Gary's flashlight in the distance, she broke into a light run, anxious to get this over with sooner rather than later.

Gary was kneeling in a corner of the room, holding a scorched object that he seemed to have unearthed from underneath a particularly large pile of ruins in the corner.

"It's a research log," he explained without turning around. "One of the more junior scientists must have left it lying around."

He flipped through a few pages carefully, inspecting them by the artificial glow of his flashlight. Misty was too far away to see the details on the page, but she could see that Gary was frowning in concentration.

"The pages are too damaged for me to make out the words right away. Something about subjects responding to treatment... but maybe a few days and some better light would help."

He stood up and handed the book to Misty.

"You take it," he said shortly. "It will be a lot easier to make up a cover story if Ash discovers it in your possession than if someone within the Rocket organization found it in mine. Take some of your free time to see if you can make something useful out of what's left of that."

She wanted to snark back about preferring to use her free time for sleep, but bit her tongue and accepted the charred book.

"I don't think we'll find much else here," Gary said with a regretful look around. "We should get back soon anyway, before people begin to ask questions about where we've gone."

Misty didn't look at him. She was staring pensively at the cover of the book, but it wasn't the contents of its pages that had captivated her thoughts. She ran one finger delicately over the scorched edges.

"You didn't know that we would be able to explore the ruins, Gary, so why did you ask me here?" she mused aloud. "You took a risk showing up in the forest like that."

"I wanted to put you on your guard," he replied, simply. A little too simply for her taste. He was avoiding a direct answer. In her experience, that always meant bad news from him.

"I'm always on my guard."

"You'll need to be a bit more cautious from now on. My sources tell me that the Rockets know Ash is on his way to Cerulean City."

Misty looked up immediately, attention immediately refocused. "How could they possibly know that?"

"I don't know. There is a leak inside the League, but we have no way of identifying who it is. Only Ash knows who he told about his journey before setting off. Besides, I'm only supposed to provide inside intelligence from Team Rocket, information from the League is your responsibility, remember?"

Misty ignored the jibe. She had more pressing matters on her mind.

"What does that mean for our trip?" she demanded

"No one is planning to ambush you with a battalion of Rockets, if that's what you're thinking. The Boss is considering how best to assassinate Ash, but he knows that Ash is protected by a League agent-that would be you-and his own considerably powerful Pokemon. The League Champion not an easy man to kill."

Misty waited for the other shoe to fall.

"But the Rockets are going to try. They will need to lure Ash into a trap. Force him to fight on their terms, preferably without the protection of his beautiful and highly skilled body guard."

"Forced flattery doesn't suit you, Oak."

"Ok fine. That's what I meant about being on your guard though. I need you to make sure that Ash doesn't give you the slip."

"You mean like he did tonight when he ran off to Pallet Town. Or right now as I'm leaving him virtually unprotected in the forest."

Gary shrugged. "All Rocket personnel are off celebrating the success of the attack, our first attack of such magnitude. Plus, it will take hours before the League rescue crews decide it is 'safe' enough to send workers inside any of the buildings. This is the safest possible time and place to contact you."

"I need to get back to Ash," Misty said stubbornly. She could kick herself for not worrying more about his safety before now.

"Of course, one more thing."

Gary pulled a small device out of his pocket no bigger than a postage stamp.

"It's a low priority Rocket communication patch," he explained without waiting for her to ask a question. "It took me years to think out a plan to smuggle this out for you. It's a one-way link in which you should be able to hear what is being broadcast on the Rocket frequency to entry-level personnel in the area.

"I know it's not much, but if the Rockets are coordinating an attack on Ash, they may use it to coordinate large numbers of people. I may be put in charge of the attack, but then again, I may not. Keep in touch with me, but you should monitor the Rocket internal frequency closely."

Misty took the device and slotted it into a compatible space on her communicator. She pulled Alakazam's pokeball from her belt and released it in preparation for teleporting back to her campsite.

"Goodbye Alakazam," Gary said, grasping the Pokemon's hand by way of farewell. Alakazam blinked dolefully at him, saddened to be separated from its real trainer so soon.

"The war is escalating, Misty. I'm not sure what's going to happen next. We're taking our orders directly from the Boss. Only he knows where this is all going, but we sure as hell need to get to the bottom of it soon."

His back was to her, but she sensed that he saw this as an important moment. Gary had never been good with emotions.

"This may be the last time I see you in person," he finished.

"Don't be such a pessimist."

But she hugged him anyway, and she couldn't help but notice that he was almost the exact height and build as Ash. It was funny how similar they were, but how different at the same time, rivals so evenly matched that their childhood feud had stretched for over a decade.

She pulled away at last, and as Alakazam enveloped her in a flash of white light, she thought she saw a glimmer of sadness on Gary's face that she couldn't quite explain.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Even hardened assassins had difficulty operating on a few back to back nights with no sleep, and Misty was certainly struggling by the time she arrived back to the campsite that she and Ash had pitched for the night. She could already see the first faint lights of dawn stretching across the sky through the cover of the trees and knew that it would not be long before Ash and Pikachu would awaken.

Appearing like she was lazy and liked to sleep in probably wouldn't inspire a great amount of faith in her ability as a bodyguard, so Misty busied herself with starting a fire on which they could cook breakfast.

It took only a few moments to confirm that she had made the right decision. No sooner had she kindled the first sparks of a campfire than Pikachu came bounding out of the tent flap. How it had figured out the zipper mechanism and opened the door, Misty had no idea. Presumably years of traveling with and waking up earlier than Ash had taught Pikachu a few tricks about how to operate human mechanisms without its trainer.

"Good morning Pikachu," Misty said wearily.

The Pokemon gave her a cheerful enough greeting and hopped over to see what she was preparing. Misty had never been a great cook and growing up had done very little to help along her culinary skills. Pikachu looked at her dubiously as she moved to place her ingredients in the small pot they had brought along for food.

"What?" she demanded irritably.

"Pi Pikachu chu pika!" the Pokemon insisted.

"It is NOT too much salt, Pikachu. You just like your food way too bland!" she shot back.

Pikachu blinked at her, staring unabashedly and unwaveringly with its pure black eyes. It took Misty a few seconds before she realized the source of it's confusion. Of course, it was not used to strangers being able to understand what it was saying. It had taken Ash years to be able to understand Pikachu perfectly, after all. Most newcomers could only interpret tone and gestures.

"Don't think you can carry on talking behind my back with Ash without me understanding Pikachu," Misty covered quickly. "My best friend growing up had a Pikachu too, and I got practically fluent at listening and interpreting Pikachu speak a long time ago."

It wasn't even a lie. Misty felt pretty smug at being able to save that one so smoothly and convincingly. Pikachu eyed her in astonishment for only a moment longer before mumbling something mutinous about human taste buds being inferior and needing to over-salt everything just to be able to taste it.

Misty made a face at him before turning her attention back to the fire but Pikachu took it goodnaturedly enough, contenting himself with sitting next to her and watching her work.

The first scent of cooked meats and porridge that wafted over the campsite was predictably enough to draw the slumbering Ash away from the confines of his tent.

"Morning," he grunted in her general direction as he pulled himself toward the fire and settled himself on the ground opposite of her.

They ate in silence, the only break in the soft clicking of spoons on bowls coming from Ash's frantic dive into his pack for a bottle of water after his first bite of food. She chose to make no comment at the horrible face he pulled though she made a mental note that maybe Pikachu had a point about the excess of salt.

Then again, maybe it would inspire Ash to volunteer to cook all the meals for the remainder of the trip. Misty had to admit that being a terrible cook had its upside as well.

They had exchanged no words with the exception of Ash's grunted greeting since Gary had appeared the previous night. Misty was not certain how she should break the silence without sounding insensitive. As she worked to pack up their campsite and stuff the equipment into her pack, she contemplated what to do next but found that her brain was having some trouble operating from the lack of sleep. She gave a sigh as she did a check for anything that might have been left behind. She felt sure that she could not stand the entire trip to Cerulean if she had to endure it in silence.

But she needn't have worried because Ash was not the type of person who could travel in silence either. Hadn't their childhood journeys taught her that he would rather incite bouts of constant bickering with her than not talk to anyone at all?

In fact, Ash chose that moment to speak up.

"That was terrible. I'm going to cook all our meals from now on, and I'm going to need to go back to the river to refill my water bottle after all that salt. I'm surprised your face didn't shrivel up into a raisin eating that excuse for porridge without taking a sip of water."

He stepped closer as though to inspect her face for telltale signs of shriveling due to lack of hydration. She smirked, half out of relief that he seemed to want to ignore their argument of the previous night and half because he had volunteered to do exactly as she had hoped.

"As you wish master chef Ketchum," she said with an ironic little curtsy in his direction. "Can't wait to see what your culinary genius of a mind decides to concoct for us for lunch."

He gave her a dirty look, perhaps because he realized with her response that she may have intended to foist cooking duties on him with her terrible breakfast all along.

So they returned to the river that they had met on the previous night to refill Ash's water bottle. They even made it back to Viridian City before noon, and Ash was able to avoid the first chore of cooking for the two of them as they stopped at a local fast food restaurant for lunch.

"That," Ash said as they got up to leave their table, "is what a real meal tastes like. See how you can actually taste some flavor other than salt?"

They were on their way out the door as Misty spotted a blonde girl staring at Ash very carefully. With his baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes and Pikachu tucked safely away in his backpack, Ash had managed to avoid recognition so far in Viridian City. But as Misty looked carefully, she noticed that Ash had raised his head slightly to make sure that she had heard his insult, and that a single yellow Pikachu ear was sticking out of the opening in the top of his backpack. They had had to open the bag slightly to sneak Pikachu some lunch in the restaurant.

The look on the girl's face was starting to look more and more like dawning recognition. Now Misty could see out of the corner of her eye that a man standing on the corner trying to hail a cab was also looking curiously at the ear sticking out from Ash's backpack.

Thinking quickly, she flung her arms around him, forcing Pikachu's ear back into the pack with one hand and using her other to draw Ash's face as solidly downward as possible so that she could hide it from sight with her shoulder.

This didn't quite work out as she had planned. Though she stood as high on her toes as possible, he was still several inches taller than her so that she had limited success concealing his face.

"Play along," she hissed in his ear. "People are starting to suspect who you are. We don't want another mob scene like the train station on our hands."

She felt him relax a bit and encircle his arms sound her waist. Almost involuntarily she leaned closer into him.

"Thanks for the lunch Richie!" she exclaimed, loud enough for everyone nearby to hear. "Now let's see if we can't catch that movie!"

It felt so strange to be standing on the sidewalk in Viridian City, hugging Ash in broad daylight. She had missed him so miserably for five years, unable to communicate with him without breaking her cover, and now here she was standing in his arms on such an ordinary day in such an ordinary place as though she had never been "murdered" and he was never the League champion. They could almost have been sixteen, just an ordinary girl and an ordinary boy on an ordinary date.

She closed her eyes and held on a few moments longer than was strictly necessary. Maybe it was just her imagination, but he didn't seem to want to initiate letting her go either.

"Thanks," he whispered to her as she finally pulled away.

She scanned their surroundings surreptitiously as she intertwined her fingers with his and led him away. The girl had returned her attention to her cell phone, presumably to text her friends about how she thought she had seen the Champion but had been mistaken, and the man was climbing into a cab.

They walked quickly and purposefully for a while, Ash carefully keeping his eyes fixed on the sidewalk so that his cap cast a shadow over his features. He clung to her hand as she led him through a few less populated streets. It wasn't until they were nearly at the edge of the city limits that she let go of his hand to signal that it was safe for him to look up again.

"Close call," he muttered as he adjusted his cap. He pulled the pack off of his back and loosened the top enough for Pikachu to pop his head out.

"Chu pikachu chu pi," Pikachu said indignantly as he rose from the bag.

"Sorry if I was a bit rough, Pikachu," Misty apologized. "Your ear was giving us away."

Pikachu smoothed his ear with his paw as though insulted that Misty would suggest such a thing about any part of his body.

"Don't worry, Pikachu," Ash said. "You can ride on my shoulder for a while. We'll be in Viridian Forest where it's safe."

Misty gave a snort of derision. Safe from people recognizing Ash maybe, but there was a very good reason why people tended to stay out of Viridian Forest these days.

"What?" Ash demanded. "Viridian Forest is perfectly safe. Pewter City on the other side is still League territory. Plus, I traveled through it when I was only 10."

"Times have changed."

They made their way toward the tree line, the dense cover of the foliage above nearly blacking out the sunlight as their figures faded into the forest.

* * *

Compared to other people in the world, Ash felt that he had lost relatively little in the course of his life. Besides the murder of his best friend as a teenager and the passing away of Professor Oak a few years ago, he had had very little experience with death and loss, really. When almost every life in Kanto had been in devastated by the war, he had escaped relatively unscathed until recently.

Given his lack of experience, he thought he was carrying the weight of the Pallet attack by the Rockets reasonably well. The horrible hopeless, powerless feeling that had threaten to overtake him in the wake of the attack was receding ever so slowly. Enough that he could resume functioning on the surface like a normal person.

But the powerless feeling was never going to go away, and he could see only one solution to that: Travel to Cerulean City. Confront the people who had done this face to face. Make sure that Gary and all the other Rockets responsible for the attack paid for what they had done to all those innocent people.

Ash trudged through the forest with determination, following Mina's measured steps through the underbrush. The forest was thicker than he remembered. Each step that he took made a satisfying crunch on the layer of dead leaves and twigs that had dropped from the branches above.

A few days ago he had set out from his spacious apartment in Indigo Plateau. In that time he had almost been killed by a group of Rockets turned petty criminals and, more importantly, he had lost his mother and his entire hometown.

On the Plateau, the League ran its every day business as though nothing were going on in other parts of Kanto. He had always thought that the Rockets were a small resistance group that eluded capture only through their evil ways and their lack of morality.

The last few days had done nothing to assuage his hatred for the Rockets.

What this war really came down to was good versus evil. It was as simple as that as far as Ash was concerned.

As if she had sensed the stream of his thoughts, Mina chose that moment to speak up.

"What's it like, leaving the League after being stuck on Indigo Plateau for so long?"

"Not everyone would call it 'stuck' on the Plateau, you know. A lot of past champions have been perfectly content to sit in their luxury quarters, greet the crowds and wave in parades. I suspect those were often the ones that grew complacent and were dethroned rather quickly."

"Somehow I don't think you fit into that category. I heard you volunteered for this mission."

"You heard right. I can't stand not being in the middle of the action. What use is a Champion if he doesn't fight?"

"The League was against you leaving Indigo then."

"Special permission from Lance. He's the one rational Elite Four member as far as I'm concerned."

"So you are dissatisfied with the way the League has handled the war?"

He gave her a funny look. "Are you trying to imply something?"

"No, just curious about your opinion."

"There's no question that the League is in the right here. Just because they make some bad decisions about how best to fight this war doesn't mean that they don't have our best intentions at heart."

"You think so?" she had the tone of someone who didn't seem to be very convinced. But he had to be imagining that. She was a League employee with high level security clearance, why would she be questioning their cause?

Maybe she noticed the suspicious look that he was throwing her way, because she quickly covered the question with an explanation.

"Look, I just get the feeling that maybe we're not getting the whole picture here," she said. "Everyone in Indigo thinks that the war is being won, that we are fighting a rogue group of terrorists who are causing a small disturbance and need to be put down. If that's the case, then why did we run into Rockets in Viridian City, the city that is supposed to be such a League stronghold?"

Ash pondered that one for a second and had to admit that he really didn't have a good answer for that one.

"Look," she continued. "I've been off the Plateau often for assignments, and things out in the real world are definitely not as rosy as the League might have us believe. Don't be surprised if Pewter doesn't turn out to be as strongly fortified as we thought either."

"Don't be stupid, we're headed to Cerulean City on a direct intelligence report to Lance. That's further away from the Plateau than Pewter and fighting has only just started to break out there. How could there be Rockets in Pewter?" Ash asked.

Their steps through the thick underbrush had grown rhythmic over the course of their conversation. Suddenly a rustle and a cracked branch to the left broke the rhythm, and Ash froze.

Mina's hand landed on his wrist. He watched as she reached silently with her other hand to her gun. He felt Pikachu tense up on his shoulder, and he knew instinctively that the Pokemon was preparing for a fight. He'd be grateful for the backup.

Eyes trained on the spot in the bushes from which the noise had issued, Ash felt Mina shift soundlessly in front of him, moving to place herself between him and the disturbance.

Over her shoulder, he saw a small white horn emerge, then a round yellow head. He breathed a huge sigh of relief.

"It's just a weedle," he said with a sigh of relief. He let his body loosen and the tension flow out of it. He noticed that his own free hand had moved toward his belt and his pokeballs, ready to call out backup for Pikachu had it been necessary.

To his surprise, Mina's grip on his arm did not loosen, and her stance did not relax. He studied her face a bit more closely. It was pale as a sheet. Was it his imagination or was she shaking a bit?

"You really don't like bugs, do you?" he said, recalling what she had mentioned earlier. His face broke into a smile. "Doesn't really fit with your big bad assassin image does it? Going to get beaten up by the big bad weedle? Going to-"

He cut off immediately as the weedle raised its head to look at them.

The pokemon's eyes glowed a deep eerie blue, narrowing at the edges in an evil, malicious glare.

Without warning, it pounced, hissing ferociously and launching itself horn first at Mina intending to gore her face on its horn.

Ash moved without thinking, shoving her to the side and out of the Weedle's path.

"Pikachu, Thunderbolt!"

Brilliant yellow electricity struck the weedle with an expert precision. Pikachu had turned up the voltage, a full blown attack on a low leveled Pokemon like that should have left it dead or close to it.

The weedle fell to the floor. Instead of lying still, it writhed violently on the bed of leaves, its body smoking slightly from the attacks. Ash watched it in amazement. How could it have survived an attack like that?

After a few seconds, the yellow bug found its way to its feet and scampered away, still hissing angrily in indignation. Ash let it go, still shocked at its rapid recover.

"Pika..." Pikachu muttered in confusion, echoing Ash's surprise.

Finally, Ash turned to where Mina lay sprawled on the floor and offered her his hand

"What the hell kind of weedle was that?" she asked as she accepted his help and jumped to her feet.

"I have no idea. There was no way it should have been able to shrug off an attack like that from Pikachu."

"Its eyes... did you see its eyes? Since when do weedles look like that?" she asked.

He shook his head. He was just as unnerved as she was, as much as he didn't like to admit it. He couldn't even muster the strength to mock her inability to react to the attack.

The only sound he could hear was the heavy breathing of Mina and himself. There was only the periodic crackle of electricity from Pikachu's red cheeks, residual energy from the intense attack he had released earlier.

"Maybe it was rabid," he said slowly after a few moments. "It had some sort of disease that addled its brain, so it attacked us because it imagined we were predators or something."

Mina looked doubtful, but she didn't object either. Ash watched as she checked for a few of her essentials to make sure that nothing had fallen out when she had fallen ungracefully to the ground.

Wrist communicator, water bottle, set of throwing knives. Mina touched her wrist, backpack and thigh in turn. Seemingly satisfied that everything had remained in place, she flipped her long black braid in a wide circle over her shoulder and fixed her eyes on him.

"Let's keep moving. I want to hit Pewter by nightfall," she said.

And she went tearing though the forest at a furious but rhythmic pace. She made it a good 50 yards ahead of him before he could react, and he had to scramble along to keep pace with her.

"By nightfall?" he huffed when he finally caught up to her, Pikachu clinging to his shoulder. "Are you crazy? We started south of Viridian this morning! We'll have to jog the rest of the way there with no breaks if we want to get to Pewter by nightfall."

She said nothing. If anything he thought that she might have increased the pace.

"Pika... pika chu," said the pokemon on Ash's shoulder resignedly.

Ash heaved a big sigh and fell into step beside Mina.

"Yeah, I guess you're right Pikachu. No use arguing with her."

Five hours of nonstop hiking later, the forest finally began to thin, and through the gaps between trees, Ash could spot a sparsely star-dotted twilight sky.

They made their way through the last of the tree line and stood at the edge of a shallow rock overhang. The land sloped softly down after a small drop from the rock on which they stood and below them lay a hazy gray outline of Pewter City.

"Minaaaaaaaa," he whined as she lept nimbly down from the small rock overhang onto the soft grass below and began to canter down the hillside. "It's almost 8... I'm HUNGRY. We haven't eaten in HOURS."

"Don't be such a wimp," she called over her shoulder, not bothering to slow her pace. "We'll get food once we get to a hotel in Pewter."

Ash half jumped, half fell off of the overhang and stumbled a bit on his first few steps down the hill.

They reached the first houses situated on the outskirts of the city. Sparse street lamps lit up just as they approached the first roads, and Ash fell into step beside Mina. He was tired, and she wasn't slowing her pace one bit. Ash gasped for breath a bit as he stumbled along beside her, almost tripping a few times on the cobblestone streets.

Ash found himself thinking wistfully about lunch. His stomach let out a very insistent growl, and he glared at Mina as if to accuse her of abusing his poor stomach. She really was a slave driver, that one. He was convinced that she would have plowed right on through to Cerulean City had she not been hampered by his very vocal protests.

Abruptly, Mina paused. They had reached a small square. In the center stood a fountain that was slowly trickling water into a shallow pool. She focused her attention on her communicator. He could only assume that she was using the small screen on the device to check for suitable hotels in the area.

Now that she had stopped and he could see her face clearly for the first time in hours, he was surprised at what he found there. Dark circles had formed under her eyes and she was definitely looking a bit paler than usual.

Why had she been so insistent on pushing them to get to Pewter City before nightfall if she looked like she was going to pass out from the exertion?

"There's a hostel not too far from here. Good place to lie low. They should take cash and ask no questions about who we are. No need to give the Rockets a clear indication that we are coming," she said, setting off again down one of the side streets leading out of the square.

"Mina," he said. "Stop, why are you in such a rush?"

"It's getting dark Ash," she said, not entirely answering his question. "Let's try to get indoors before the sun sets completely."

Ash looked around, trying to get his bearings and figure out where in the city she was leading them. It had been years since he had set foot in Pewter. His childhood travel companion Brock had hailed from Pewter, but Ash hadn't spoken to him in a while.

Ash blinked a few times. Why hadn't he called Brock in a while? They had spoken at least once a week for years. Ash would catch up on the new challengers to Pewter City gym and the goings on at Indigo Plateau, but somehow, a few months ago, they had both just conveniently forgotten to call each other.

He shook his head. Odd coincidence. There was no other explanation for it.

The only sound on the streets was his own dragging feet along a few pieces of loose gravel as they moved closer to the city center. Ash frowned. They had been walking for a little while into the center of the city now. It was only around 8 in the evening. Why was there no one around?

By the light of the streetlights and the dim glow of lit windows, he could see people moving around inside windows behind drawn curtains in the windows, but there was not a single sign of life in the streets.

Mina was on her communicator again, her eyes fixed on the map on its screen as she led them forward. As he watched, she would periodically mutter to the device and tap the screen, resetting the map. He hoped she wasn't lost. He was hungry enough to eat his backpack if she didn't take them to a restaurant soon.

Suddenly, Mina looked up from her communicator and stopped dead in her tracks. She flung an arm out that Ash nearly ran into as he stumbled to a halt next to her. He glared at her.

Mina was completely tense. She still had one hand held out to stop him and the other was hovering at thigh level right where he knew she concealed her gun.

He figured he should follow suit. Pikachu tensed as well on his shoulder as he slowly moved his hand to wear his poke belt was, placing a few fingers delicately on the surface of Charizard's pokeball.

In one massive whirl of movement, five white flashes erupted in the street around them. Mina reached for her gun, and Ash had thrown Charizard's pokeball.

The massive fire lizard materialized in front of them, as did the five other pokemon that had been released. By the light of his pokemon's tail flame and the sparse streetlights, Ash could make out two Golems and an Onyx. Each had a trainer by its side.

A fourth hulking figure lurked in the background. Ash could see a domed head and two sharp, praying mantis-like arms. Could it be a Kabutops?

Ash cursed himself for reaching for Charizard. He had done it on instinct, knowing that besides Pikachu, Charizard was his highest leveled pokemon. But this was Pewter City, known for its rock type specialization. Charizard was weak to rock on both his flying and fire side. He could not take on this group.

Nevertheless, Charizard himself looked supremely unconcerned with his type disadvantage. He narrowed his eyes and huffed black smoke menacingly out of his nostrils, as if daring the newcomers to come any closer.

"Drop your weapon and recall your pokemon!" a voice called from Ash's right.

Mina had not called any of her own pokemon, but she already had her gun trained in the direction of the leader. How could she have known that's where he was before he called out? Ash made a mental note never to try to sneak up on her. She'd probably shoot him before he even got to her.

Well if they were going to make a fight of it, Ash was glad that she was on his side, creepy ninja reflexes and all.

To his utter surprise however, Mina holstered her gun in one fluid motion and held her hands up in surrender.

They could escape by air, Ash thought wildly as he stared around at the rock pokemon that surrounded them. If they could jump on Charizard's back fast enough they could fly a short distance away, before any Rockets could use psychic blasts to shoot them out of the sky.

At that moment, a violent gust of air blew across his face and he looked up to see what had caused it.

He had forgotten until now that there had been five flashes of light when the trainers had first arrived, and he had only seen four pokemon on the ground. Now, he realized what the fifth must have been.

An Aerodactyl swooped in menacing circles around them cutting off any hopes of aerial escape.

"I said recall your pokemon!" the leader of the new trainers barked again.

Ash hesitated.

"Ash," Mina hissed at him. "Do as he says."

Ash glared at her, but obediently recalled his Charizard. She better know what she is doing.

The trainers approached slowly. Ash could see that they were dressed not in Rocket uniforms, but in the hiking gear typically seen on trainers from the Pewter City Gym.

"Stand down," Mina said firmly. "We're not here to cause trouble. Let me show you my identification. I'm a League Agent."

"And I'm the League Champion," Ash chimed in.

If looks could kill, the look Mina gave him for that declaration would have murdered him on the spot.

She might have a point. Now that he thought about it, being League Champion might not be the best thing to advertise in a life or death standoff with trainers of unclear allegiance. He noticed that despite her command, none of the trainers had backed off from their approach

"We don't take orders from the League," another of the trainers, the one with the Onyx, piped up. "Our orders come directly from Brock."

Relief flooded through Ash.

"We're old friends of Brock's," he called. "We" was probably an exaggeration. He was pretty sure Mina had never spoken a word to Brock, but he figured that a little white lie couldn't hurt.

"A likely story," the leader sneered. "What are you doing out after curfew?"

"Curfew?" Ash said, genuinely confused.

"Don't play dumb, Rocket. You thought you'd dress up like the League Champion and waltz around the City did you? Well, you've got balls, I'll give you that, but the Champion isn't that scrawny."

"Scrawny?" Ash fumed. He started to reach his hand for his poke belt again but Mina's grip on his wrist stopped him.

"We're not Rockets," Mina insisted. "We are traveling here on League business. No one told us there was a curfew. How long has this been in place?"

The leader was close enough that Ash could make out his features now. He was young, probably in his mid-twenties, medium height and had jet black hair. He wore a shrewd and suspicious expression on his face. Ash glanced around at the circle that had enclosed upon them. None of the five trainers looked familiar. Ash frowned. He thought he had met all the trainers that worked under Brock in the Pewter City gym.

"Since the first attacks. Months ago. All civilians are to remain indoors after dark," the leader explained, the wariness never leaving his face. "Put that Pikachu away."

Ash was hoping that they wouldn't notice Pikachu, still sitting ready to attack on his shoulder.

"The Pikachu stays out," Mina said, not budging in the slightest. "Take us to see Brock."

"Why would I bother Brock with you? We have orders to eliminate Rockets on sight."

"Pretty convincing League Champion disguise isn't it?" Mina asked almost conversationally.

Ash gave her a sideways glance, what was she playing at.

"I think you'd be in pretty big trouble with Brock if you killed the League Champion, wouldn't you? The trainer might not look the part, but that Pikachu looks awfully familiar doesn't it. What other trainer would be dumb enough to keep an Pikachu unevolved at that high of a level?"

"Pikaaaa," Pikachu protested from Ash's shoulder, clearly insulted and giving off a few angry sparks from his cheeks.

Ash was pretty insulted himself, but the leader of the Rock trainers seemed to be having second thoughts. Any amateur trainer could see from the crackles of electricity that Pikachu was high enough level to demolish any Pokemon present that was not a ground type.

A few seconds of tense silence passed. Mina looked smug and Ash felt annoyed. Couldn't she have found some way to get them out of this without insulting him?

"Fine," the Rock trainer leader finally conceded. "We will escort you to see Brock, but don't say I didn't warn you. Brock will know on sight if you're the real Champion or just Rocket scum in disguise, and if it's the latter, you can bet that we have enough forces in the Gym to make you and all your Pokemon wish you had never set foot here.

"Leave the Pokemon out," the leader commanded to the other trainers. "Form a guard, and let's get them to the Gym."

With military precision, the other trainers and Pokemon formed a tight circle around them. They marched purposefully in the center of the group down the road toward the Gym.

A few blocks in, Ash seized an opportunity to accidentally/on purpose stomp on Mina's foot.

"Ow," she hissed at him. "What do you want?"

"Can't you just… I don't know, kung fu them and make them go away?" Ash demanded.

She rolled her eyes at him. "Ash, they are clearly not Rockets, what would the point of that be? We'll get this all sorted out when we talk to Brock."

He didn't understand how she could be so confident seeing as he doubted she had ever met Brock, but he really didn't relish the idea of being paraded through the empty streets at the center of a Rock pokemon entourage with a guy who had just called him scrawny.

So he sulked the entire way to the Gym. This, for some reason, seemed to only make Mina more amused. He found it flat out embarrassing being marched around like this. She had a terrible sense of humor if this is what she thought was funny.

They arrived at the doors to Pewter Gym, and Ash noticed that there were sentries who looked like more Pewter Gym trainers patrolling the perimeter of the gym. What was with all the added security?

The trainers in Ash and Mina's escort withdrew their Pokemon as the party walked through the wide metal doors. The once familiar interior of Pewter Gym seemed somehow more sinister than it had on his last visit.

They made their way through a few hallways, and Ash noticed that the lead gym trainer that had brought them in nodded curtly a few times to passers by. He could not remember when he had ever seen a Gym so full of people, and every one of them looked like a seasoned trainer.

Finally they came to the Arena where Ash had first battled Brock for his very first Gym badge. From what he could see, the flat arena had been preserved and training was still ongoing on the surface. Two Pewter trainers were conducting a furious training battle with a Golem and an Onyx, and the building shook slightly each time one of the heavy pokemon landed a hit.

"Golem, Magnitude!" one of the trainers commanded.

Ash stumbled sideways a bit as the massive boulder of a pokemon brought its food down to the ground in a stomp. The floor of the arena cracked a bit as the Onyx tried to slither out of the way.

"BROCK!" the lead Gym trainer in their party bellowed. From the side of the arena came a tall, tan-skinned figure with familiar slit eyes turned in the corner and walked purposefully over to where they stood.

"Brock!" Ash yelled.

Brock's face lit up in delighted surprise.

"Ash Ketchum! What the hell are you doing here?" Brock shouted.

They embraced, long lost brothers who had not seen each other in years.

"What brings you off the Plateau, Ash?" Brock asked.

"Got tired of sitting around, waiting for the war to come to me," Ash said with a shrug.

Brock smiled. "Same old Ash, always wanting to be in the middle of the action."

"Listen uh," Ash reached his hand to scratch the back of his head in embarrassment. "We were just brought to the gym by these trainers here, who said something about us violating curfew?"

Brock looked over Ash's shoulder to see the patrol of Pewter City trainers, all determinedly trying not to meet his eyes.

"You can stand down, Levi," Brock said to the patrol leader. "No danger here, but I'd appreciate it if you went back out on patrol."

With a curt nod, the five trainers that had arrived with Ash and Mina turned on their heels, recalled their Pokemon and left the gym.

Mina chose this moment to clear her throat rather loudly.

"Oh right," Ash said. "Brock, this is Agent Mina. She's been traveling with me since we left Indigo Plateau. She's a League Agent who's been assigned to uh..."

"I'm his bodyguard," Mina said curtly. She stuck out a hand forcefully for Brock to shake, and he seemed to take it with some trepidation.

"Pleased to meet you," Brock said. His voice sounded calculated and suspicious to Ash.

A tense moment of silence passed. Brock stared Mina down and Mina stared right back at him. Ash looked between the two of with a bit of confusion.

"Something wrong Brock?" Ash asked.

Brock shook his head and let a slight smile return to his face. "Nothing's wrong Ash. These are dangerous times, that's all. It's hard to trust a stranger who waltzes into your home."

"Well you can trust, Mina," Ash said. "She saved my life back in Viridian City."

He could tell that Mina was pleased that he had spoken up for her. She smiled broadly at both of them. He had rarely seen her genuinely happy. It was a nice look for her.

Brock's expression softened noticeably. "Any friend of Ash's is a friend of mine, welcome to Pewter, Agent Mina."

"What's going on in Pewter, Brock?" Ash said. "Curfews? Nightly patrols?"

Brock looked shocked.

"You don't know?" Brock said in astonishment. "How can you not know what has been going on here?"

Ash shrugged. The last he had heard about Pewter, it had been business as usual.

Brock shook his head. "I knew that the League had not been sending reinforcements to help us, but I had no idea that they were keeping even the information secret. I just figured that they didn't have the resources.

"The Rocket attacks started here three months ago," Brock explained. "They are currently camped just outside the city on Route 3, between Pewter and Mt. Moon. We have been fighting them off for months, the gym trainers, the police force and anyone else who was capable enough and had well-trained pokemon. We have been fighting for our lives against them here in Pewter."

Ash's jaw dropped. He gaped at Brock speechless, unable to form words to express his shock and outrage. How was it possible that Pewter had been locked in battle for months?

"That can't be true," Mina said, echoing Ash's astonishment. He turned to see that she looked every bit as incredulous as he did. "We would have seen something about it on the news. The League would have made an announcement."

"You're going to tell me that I haven't been battling for months? Haven't been losing friends, family?" Brock's voice sounded low and gravelly. It was a dangerous tone.

Mina fell silent.

"If it's true," she said slowly. "If it's true that you've been out here fighting for your lives for months. Then there are some bigger questions about the war and the League that need to be answered."

"Like what?" demanded Ash.

"Like how did the League keep this news from us?" she said immediately. "There are dozens maybe hundreds of people on Indigo Plateau with family and friends in Pewter. Even if someone was keeping this out of the news media, how is it that none of those people have called their love ones and heard this news for months?"

Ash considered this. Hadn't he just been wondering when he was walking into the city why he hadn't thought to call Brock in months? They used to talk all the time. From the look on Brock's face, it was clear that he had not thought about calling Ash in months either. How could it be a coincidence that no one in all of Indigo Plateau or Viridian had thought to contact anyone in Pewter for months?

"That's a mystery that I don't even know how to begin to solve. The more immediate question is why. Why would the League not send reinforcements to one of its key cities? Why would it keep the fact that the city is under attack to its people, even its own employees and personnel? I don't believe for a second that this knowledge was kept from us unintentionally. Someone planned this and went to great lengths to cover it up."

They were good questions, Ash had to admit. The only problem was, he had no idea how to begin answering them.

"It doesn't add up," Brock agreed. "But I can't spare the time to investigate. I've got a city to protect. The Rockets could mount another attack at any moment."

"We can help," Ash said immediately. "I left Indigo Plateau to make a difference in this war. We were planning on going to Cerulean to investigate what might be some Rocket activity there, but if there is all out war in Pewter, then I'll stay here and fight.

Brock shook his head, but before he could open his mouth, Mina spoke up again.

"Ash," she said. Her tone had shifted from demanding and questioning to that of someone delivering bad news near a death bed. "If the Rockets have pressed to just outside of Pewter, then Pewter is the new battle front. There's no telling what the situation looks like in Cerulean."

"You two need to move on," Brock said.

"We're losing this war. We're losing this war, and the League is pretending otherwise," Ash murmured, letting the truth of the words sink in to himself

"It's more than that," Mina said. "We don't even know what we are fighting."

* * *

Misty stood on the rooftop of Pewter City Gym. It was easily the tallest building around, and she could see as the sunrise broke across the horizon.

"You're not supposed to be up here."

She didn't have to turn to know that it was Brock who had caught her.

"I tend to get up early. Didn't want to bother anyone by shuffling around downstairs."

"Why are you staying here today? You were insistent. I would have preferred that you and Ash have stayed the night at set out this morning."

"I have a job to do," she said cryptically.

"I thought your job was to protect Ash."

"That's one of my duties. I'm also in the business of protecting anyone else whose allegiance I value."

"Sounds so cold and calculating."

"Trust me, I have to be that way."

"What do you think of Ash, Agent Mina? You seem to treat him like you don't think he's Champion material."

"Looks can be deceiving."

Brock approached the railing that she was leaning over. Misty moved her hand covertly, grabbing her left wrist with her right hand and concealing the screen of her communicator.

They stood in silence for a while. She had a feeling that Brock was trying to get her to say something about Ash, but she felt no urge to speak up and share. Brock had always teased them when they were younger. She didn't need to relive any childish memories now, not when she had much bigger things to focus on.

Finally, when it became clear that she was not in a sharing or conversational mood, he gave up and moved away.

"We have breakfast in an hour," he said as he left. "And I'd like for you two to help train the new recruits if you'll be sticking around for a day."

As he left, Misty moved her hand glanced down at her communicator. On its screen was the kill order that Gary had decoded and sent to her earlier. If their sources were right, someone was coming for Brock today, and she was not about to let them take him from her. No matter what he thought of her now, he was still her best friend.

* * *

Author's Note: What? Two chapters in the same year? I know, I have set a glacial pace for updating, and frankly I'm really sorry and quite embarrassed about it. Part of it is that I'm a naturally slow writer, and part of it is that I have trouble finding the motivation and time. Thanks everyone who has stuck with this story so far. As always, posting this chapter means that I have chapter 6 completed, and I have to say that the next one might be my favorite so far :) I am also feeling motivated and have done some extensive planning and writing out of parts of chapter 7 and 8, so I'm hopeful that the next chapters will come out a bit quicker.

As always, I'd love to hear everyone's feedback in the reviews!


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

"Again!"

The massive Rhydon dug its feet into the ground. It pawed the floor violently twice, with such force that the floor beneath them shuddered slightly. With a deep intake of breath, it lowered its horn and charged at full speed.

Ash's Snorlax stood its ground 200 yards away. The pokemon's eyes never looked open, but Ash knew that it was alert and acutely aware of the mass of rock pokemon barreling toward it at full tilt.

At the last minute, Snorlax pushed its short arms out in front of it, anchoring its feet firmly into the ground and met the charging Rhydon head on.

The force of the collision dug two deep furrows in the ground as Snorlax slid back a good twenty feet. Quickly though, the forward motion of the Rhydon halted, and the two pokemon stood locked hand to hand, each trying to push the other.

"You lost the advantage when you lost the forward momentum," Ash explained to the young rock trainer.

She was a girl of only about 18, and she scowled in the corner as she contemplated what to do next. Ash though she reminded him a bit of Misty would have looked like at that age. She had the same fiery red hair, the same tomboyish look, but had grown a few inches and filled out a bit.

Of course, he didn't know for sure what Misty would have looked like at 18. She had never made it that far.

He shook the thought out of his head and concentrated on the battle at hand.

"Snorlax," he called. The pokemon was doing just enough to hold off the opposing Rhydon and no more. Ash had the level advantage. His Snorlax was having no strength problems while the Rhydon was exerting itself as hard as it could, trying to push forward and gore Snorlax with its horn.

"Ice punch," he said. "Aim for the belly"

The trainer he was facing narrowed her eyes. "Its arms are full with Rhydon's. How is it going to hit the belly?"

Snorlax's right fist glowed a brilliant shade of sky blue. Ash could see the determination and hint of pain in the Rhydon's eyes as the icy freeze from Snorlax's hand transferred over to Rhydon's.

Suddenly, Snorlax released its grip on Rhydon with its ice punching hand. The rock pokemon stumbled forward with its left foot, off-balance.

With surprising grace, Snorlax spun sideways allowing Rhydon's momentum to carry it forward. As Rhydon fell forward and passed in front of Snorlax's side turned body, Ash's pokemon sank the ice punching fist into its opponent's belly.

The Rhydon fainted on contact.

"Snorlax is not a fast pokemon, but he is faster than Rhydon. Engaging in close combat with a more agile opponent is almost never to your advantage," he explained.

The girl rushed over to check on her fainted pokemon. It took her only a few seconds to confirm that as Ash suspected, the blow had caused no lasting damage. The Rhydon had only fainted and would recover shortly. He walked over to where she knelt.

"It was a good match," Ash said, extending his hand toward her.

Now that the battle was over, the intensity had been wiped from the girl's face. She looked almost shy to him now, and the resemblance to Misty seemed to have melted away instantaneously. Her eyes were not the right color, and her demeanor was much too quiet. She took his hand gratefully and managed a shy smile.

"Thank you for the opportunity, sir," she said with almost rehearsed politeness.

"It was my pleasure," Ash replied. "Remember to play to your pokemon's strengths. If agility is not one of them, there are other ways to win the battle."

She nodded to show that she understood before turning to rejoin the ranks of trainers on the other side of the room.

Ash had been pulling trainers out for one-on-one practice battles as Mina put an entire class through an introductory self-defense course. The opposite wall of the room were punching synchronously. Ash could pick out the lone dark haired figure at the front leading the group's motions.

Truthfully, he would have appreciated a bit of combat training himself. If the past few days had taught him anything, it was that the physical strength of a trainer could be just as important as the strength of a pokemon when the fights took place outside of an arena where there were no rules.

Perhaps if he had been a bit stronger, a bit faster, he would not have needed Mina to save him from the muggers in Viridian City. More importantly, perhaps he would have been able to catch Gary two nights ago.

Ash clenched his fists at the thought of the encounter. Gary had grown up in that town with him. Even with Professor Oak's passing, Gary must have still had friends in the town. How he could have been capable of such an act, Ash would never understand.

"Thanks for helping today, Ash," Brock's voice cut through his thoughts.

Ash let the tension leave his body and exhaled a breath that he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

"It was no problem, Brock," he said, turning to smile at his old friend. "I'm just happy for the chance to test my battling skills as often as possible."

Brock rolled his eyes.

"I can't imagine that this group gave you much of a challenge," he said. "We are woefully under prepared."

It was the truth, but Ash felt impolite agreeing, so he chose to change the subject.

"How is the hand-to-hand combat training coming along?" Ash asked.

Brock gave a nod of approval. "Your friend knows what she's doing. I wish we could have more like her around to train the others."

Ash made a face. "She's not my friend. She's some bodyguard assigned by the League to make sure I get around safely, kind of like a glorified babysitter. She's not very good at it either. She's got no people skills. She's always threatening me with her throwing knives and suggesting that I'm a terrible League Champion. She's annoying and abrasive and... and..."

He had worked himself into a tirade and was struggling for another bad trait harsh enough. Brock raised an inquisitive eyebrow at him.

"...and she's terrible at cooking," Ash finished somewhat lamely.

Somehow this seemed to amuse Brock. The older man smiled at that and turned his face slightly away and covered his mouth with his hand as though attempting to muffle a snicker.

"What's so funny?" Ash asked.

"Nothing," Brock said. "It's just, the way you talk about her. Doesn't it remind you of someone we used to know? Someone else who couldn't cook and would knock you down a peg or too whenever you started to think too much of yourself?"

Ash puzzled at that one for a second.

"What, you mean Misty?"

He took Brock's silence as a yes.

"She's nothing like Misty. Misty would never have been so..."

"Rude to you?"

Ash had no argument for that one. Pikachu seemed to find it plenty amusing though, judging by the giggling "chu chu chu..." noises he was making from Ash's shoulder.

"Oh shut up," Ash muttered, not sure if he was talking to Pikachu and Brock, both of whom were now laughing in earnest at him.

"Don't worry, Ash," Brock said. "I know she's not Misty. I just know what happens when you describe girls like you used to describe her. It's like the equivalent of a five year old pulling on a girl's pigtails in kindergarten. It just means you have a little crush on Agent Mina is all."

Pikachu gave a loud laugh and hopped from Ash's shoulder to Brock's.

"Chu pikachu!" the pokemon said in agreement.

Sometimes Ash wondered why he even bothered to keep friends like these. They were so off base on this one, that he couldn't even begin to fathom where they got their ideas from. Sure one time he had fought with a girl constantly, and eventually it had become... something more. Was that supposed to be his pattern now? He had been with plenty of girls that didn't drive him up a wall since then. He was older now, more mature, and this girl was not the other. In his darker moods, he had admitted to himself before that no one would ever be like Misty again, not to him.

"She's just different from Misty," Ash huffed, crossing his arms over his chest.

Their walk around the arena had brought them in front of the group of trainers practicing hand to hand combat. From the looks of it, Agent Mina was in the process of dismissing the class as they approached. The rows of trainers each gave a short bow before dispersing into smaller groups, chatting amiably about the days' training.

"All wrapped up, Agent Mina?" Brock called out.

She nodded affirmatively and made her way through the crowd of trainers closer to them.

"A good solid day's worth of training," she said as she approached. "They won't be winning any one on one fights against the Rocket Commanders any time soon, but they should be able to defend against the basics, keep the typical Rocket grunts on their toes."

"I appreciate it," Brock said. "Good timing on the class wrapping up as well. The sun is about to set, which means the nightly patrol shifts will be starting up."

Mina nodded. Ash was already thinking about what was for dinner. Brock was an excellent chef. Maybe he could whip them up something for dinner for old time's sake?

What Brock said next crushed Ash's hope of a delicious home cooked meal.

"I'm afraid I will have to leave you two for a bit. We've gotten some reports of strange activity on the eastern outskirts of the city, near the craters caused by the meteorites of Mount Moon. I am planning on going myself this evening."

The craters were no small ditches on the side of the main road. Some of them were deep enough that ten men standing one on top of the other would not be able to reach the edge. It was a treacherous area to explore, especially at night.

"Tonight?" Mina asked. "Can't it wait until morning?"

Brock shook his head.

"The reports are of activity after dark. Could be nothing, could be Rockets. There is only one way to find out, and my brother Forrest and I are the best people to do it. We grew up exploring those rocks," Brock said.

"Well I'll go with you," Ash said immediately. "Provide some backup."

"I can't take you, Ash," Brock said, sounding regretful and shaking his head. "You told me yourself that you were on a mission to Cerulean. We can't alert the Rockets of your movements by getting you spotted in Pewter. It is just too risky."

Ash scowled in frustration. Brock had a point, but he didn't like the idea of his friend going off with only his brother for protection into a possible Rocket territory

"I'll come with you instead then," Mina spoke up.

Ash looked at her in surprise. Why would she want to go along?

"I thought you were supposed to protecting me," Ash huffed.

"Please, you will be perfectly safe in the gym. There are lots of other trainers around. It's far more dangerous where Brock and I are going," Mina said, rolling her eyes.

"You really shouldn't be going anywhere."

"Awww," she pulled a fake pitying face and put on a baby voice. "Is the widdle pokemon champion scawed without his big bad bodyguard?"

"I am not!" he protested vehemently.

"Well, looks like you agree with me then," she said, and turned on her heel so that she was facing Brock and her back was to him.

"I'm not sure it's such a good idea to bring you along. Forrest and I know the terrain, and you don't. We should be able to handle it alone. You'll just slow us down," Brock said.

"If you meet individual Rockets, you'll be glad you brought me," she assured him. "I want to do a little investigating myself. We've been seeing strange signs since we left the Plateau. The more we know about the situation we are walking into at Cerulean City, the safer we will be."

"Still, I'm not sure it's such a good idea," Brock said, looking reluctant.

"Look, you're not responsible for my safety, Brock. How can a bit of extra backup hurt your investigation?"

Ash moved around so that he could see the two of them again. The look in Agent Mina's eyes surprised him. Steely resolve and a stubbornness that he had rarely seen before in his life lived in those eyes. Why was she so intent on leaving with Brock?

Brock must have noticed the same thing, because he threw up his hands in defeat.

"Fine, fine," he said. "We leave now. Come with us if you will."

Within a few seconds, they had gathered Brock's brother Forrest from the group of trainers and moved to the hallway to pick up supplies for their trip.

Ash fumed as he watched them disappear out the doorway, crossing his arms over his chest.

"She's supposed to be MY bodyguard, Pikachu," he muttered mutinously to the small Pokemon perched on his shoulder. "What do you think she's doing going off with Brock?"

"Chu pikachu chu," Pikachu said, clearly amused by Ash's attitude.

Ash almost swatted Pikachu off his shoulder at that, but Pikachu hopped down to the floor just in time to avoid Ash's flying hand.

"I am not jealous!" he insisted huffily. "She's just clearly not very good at her job is all."

Pikachu's laughter at that was just too annoying to stand, so Ash decided that he'd head off to get some dinner instead. Damn him, and damn that useless bodyguard as well. When they got back to the plateau, he'd make sure she got reprimanded for neglecting her charges on a whim.

* * *

It was darker than Misty had expected out. She and her companions each carried their own flashlight and swept them back and forth in the heart of the crater as they picked their way slowly over the rocky terrain.

She felt a twinge of guiltiness at leaving Ash, but she could not leave Brock without protection to face the assassination that she knew had been ordered. They had been the best of friends once.

Damn him for choosing this night to go off alone. Couldn't he have waited?

"Watch your step around that ledge."

She was so tense that she almost stumbled over the edge just at the sound of Forrest's voice.

A handful of pebbles went skittering down the side of the crater as she pitched forward. As she shuffled her boots forward to catch herself, a steadying hand grabbed her to help her regain her balance.

"You shouldn't have come with us," Forrest said with a frown, his hand still fixed around her elbow. She noticed that he purposely kept his voice quiet enough so that Brock, walking a few paces ahead of them, would not hear. At least he was courteous enough to save her a reprimanding from his brother.

"I'm more useful than I look," she replied with a friendly grin. She waved the beam of her flashlight into the path of her feet.

By the dim light, she saw him give her a noncommittal shrug, as if to say he'd believe it when he saw it. Mina ignored the gesture. He'd figure it out if they actually ran into danger, and if they didn't, well she'd trade Brock's life for a few insults on her abilities any day of the week.

She knew she was nervous to the point of being too jumpy. She watched the beam of her flashlight like a hawk, intent on picking out any sign that something was amiss.

There was something strange about those rocks over there, Misty decided. Their flashlights played over the boulders, casting strange long shadows and falling unexpectedly into crevices of darkness. It was nearly impossible to pinpoint any kind of irregularity given the unusual shape of the rock formations, but somehow Misty was sure that that shadow in the corner was wrong.

She trained her flashlight at the spot and steadied her hand. The curvature of the shadow made no sense given the shape of the rock formation in front of her. She studied the shadow.

And suddenly it moved.

At the same instant, a crash resounded behind her, with a surprised yell, the scraping of rock on rock echoed throughout the crater.

"Forrest!" she heard Brock cry.

She whipped around, abandoning the investigation of the shifting shadow for a second. A hole just wide enough for a person to fall through had appeared in the ground. Brock had rushed to the edge and was shining his flashlight nervously into the darkness.

The look on his face was filled with worry, but there was something else in his expression that she had not expected to find there. He looked... suspicious?

Misty tensed. Something told her this was no accident. She flipped her light back to the spot that she had been staring at before. The strange shadow was gone.

"He never falls in here," she heard Brock mutter, still shining his light into the hole. "He knows this crater like he knows the back of his hand."

She hated the feeling of not knowing where an attack was going to come from, and she felt certain now that one was coming.

Before she could draw her weapon, she heard a scuttle of loose pebbles shift from off to her left. Whip like, she pivoted. Something was headed toward Brock.

Too far! Her senses screamed. Why had she let him stand so far away.

Misty sprinted and hurtled her body in Brock's direction, not bothering to stay on balance or in form. Her only thought was of getting to him before their attacker did.

A dark figure sliced through the night air. Misty saw a katana flash in the attacker's hand, catching the light of her own discarded flashlight as it rolled around on the ground.

She lowered her head and barrelled into the attacker shoulder first. The swipe that was meant to slice through Brock's neck pushed forward too rapidly, and the attacker's swing caught Brock's head with the hilt of the weapon instead of the blade.

The force behind the swing and the collision between all three of them flung Brock into the air. He landed a few feet away, crumpled and unconscious, but alive. She saw the katana fall out of their assailant's hands as the impact knocked them both off balance.

Misty breathed a sigh of relief as she rolled herself away from the attacker. Her gun was in her hand before she had even climbed to her feet. She stretched it in front of her and disengaged the safety.

With a kick so fast that Misty had not even see the assassin move, the gun was knocked from Misty's hand it clattered uselessly to the floor, too far for her to reach it.

Misty had no time to react and pull another weapon. A black gloved fist was flying toward her in the wake of the kick that had disarmed her. Deftly, she blocked the blow with her own forearm.

She ducked another high strike and attempted to deliver an elbow to the abdomen of her own. She felt her elbow sink satisfyingly into soft flesh and felt her opponent stumble off balance. Emboldened, she kicked her foot forward and hooked the assassin's leg with her own. A sharp jerk of her leg, and her opponent was on the ground.

She almost grinned in satisfaction. Whoever the assassin was, Misty knew she had the advantage in unarmed combat.

Before she could congratulate herself and pin her opponent to the ground, the figure rolled sideways with more agility than she would have thought possible. Two back flips later, and it was easily out of range.

Misty growled in frustration and drew her dagger. A few yards away, she saw the assassin do the same.

I have to keep her away from Brock and Forrest, she thought to herself, and away from that katana.

With no other choice, she charged forward, leading with her own dagger and showing a vertical slash. It was a feint. At the last second, she shifted her direction and slashed from the left, hoping to fool her opponent.

No such luck. The assassin parried the blow easily.

Her opponent turned the parry into an offensive slash so quickly that Misty could not bring her own dagger up to meet the blow in time. On instinct, she ducked to the right.

The dagger missed most of her body but nicked Misty's sleeve and drew blood from her upper arm. She spun backwards, stretching her own knife in front of her to ward off the follow up attack. Metal clashed loudly on metal as her blade met the assassin's inches from Misty's face.

She rotated her blade so that it lay flat against her opponent's and swiped the attacker's arm violently to the side. In one, fluid motion, she used the rotation from her arm to lead her body into a roundhouse kick. She felt her boot connect solidly with the side of the assassin's head. Her opponent stumbled back a few paces. Misty took the time to ready herself for another attack.

Before she had even put her kicking foot back on solid ground, she could tell that something was wrong. Her foot hit the floor with an ungraceful thump. Why did she feel off balance? She shuffled backward awkwardly, trying to regain her center.

She shook her head, trying to shake the nagging feeling that something wasn't quite right, that her body was not reacting as it should, but nothing happened. Cloudiness and disorientation flooded her mind. Her limbs felt foreign to her, like they had grown three size too big for her within the course of a couple seconds.

Piercing, high pitched laughter cut through the haze of uncertainty like an arrow.

Misty looked up. Her opponent was taunting her.

"Feel the effects of the poison yet, Agent Mina?" the assassin said. "You were always such a teacher's pet in operative training. Glad to see that I was right to think you were a talentless troll. Do you have a rich daddy who paid off all the higher up commanders? You couldn't kill me in my sleep, and you don't even realize yet that you've already lost this fight."

Misty strained her eyes through the darkness, trying to identify who the attacker was. It was certainly a woman's voice and someone who knew her, but who was it?

"You know, Mina," the other woman said conversationally. "I've been authorized to eliminate anyone who comes between me and my target. Guess that means I won't even get a reprimand when the poison does its job and chokes the breath right out of that weaselly little neck of yours."

Misty said nothing. It was true that the dagger that had nicked her shoulder was causing more problems than she was willing to admit. The cloudiness in her mind was worsening, and white hot pain had begun to emanate from the shallow gash in her upper arm where the poisoned dagger had made contact.

Poison master. Trained with her as a League operative. Misty put two and two together a bit slower than she probably would have had she not been on the path of dying from poison.

"Aya," she breathed out emotionlessly.

Before the other woman could react, a loud rumbling noise emanated from the blackness to the left.

"Onyx, rock slide!"

Brock must have recovered, Misty thought to herself. Huge boulders rained down from above, crashing violently against the floor, but Aya was too quick for them. She slid fluidly from side to side so gracefully and quickly that it wouldn't be hard to believe she could have dodged raindrops in a thunderstorm if she wanted to.

As the dust cloud from the fallen rocks abated, Misty reached for her own pokeballs. Her breathing was starting to get more and more labored now, but she could still move.

A boulder falling to her left knocked her off balance. She felt the wrong pokeball dislodge from her belt as her hand moved instinctively to break her fall.

With a brilliant white flash, she saw to her horror that the pokeball had released Alakazam.

The pokemon blinked at her, confused as to why she had summoned him. He knew that he was meant to stay hidden and to keep up the psychic glamour for her disguise.

Prone on the floor, Misty knew that she needed to get back on her feet or risk being crushed by the falling rocks. Just as she started to push herself to her feet, she saw a slab of granite tumbling end over end, on a trajectory that seemed quite likely to crush her skull.

Misty jerked to the left, knowing that it was going to be too late. That the slab was simply too large, and that she had no chance of rolling far enough away in time.

She landed on her back, looked up and saw the rock not more than ten feet away. She took a sharp intake of breath...

...And let it out in relief as a bluish glow of a psychic field halted the rock's decent. Turning to her right, she saw that Alakazam's eyes were glowing the same brilliant shade of blue. He had stopped the fall of the rock and saved her life.

Gratefully, she crawled out from under the rock. As she emerged, she heard Alakazam release the rock and the a dull thump as the slab finally met the ground.

Squinting, she scrambled ungracefully to her feet and pulled a long knife from her belt. The bulk of the falling rocks had passed, but the cloud of dust that they had kicked up hung around her like a dense fog.

Shrill, triumphant laughter rained down through the last few small falling stones. Misty fought to see clearly through the cloud of dust raised by the falling rocks and the bright spots beginning to dot her vision that she could only assume was a side effect of the poison. She was still on her feet though, and her adversary could not know that.

No doubt Aya thought that she had been pinned underneath the rock slide. With the poison limiting her mobility, Misty knew that she had had no chance of dodging the deluge without Alakazam's help.

Misty froze in her stance, hand clutching the hilt of the long knife. She could not see, but she was sure that Aya could not either.

And she was of course not dumb enough to give away her position with a stereotypical evil laugh.

Her hand was shaking now, and her vision was beginning the suffer severely, the white spots coming more frequently so that she could only make out about half of her full field of vision at a time.

But she waited. The laughter continued. Was it getting louder?

There! A faint outline of a person through the dust.

Misty lunged.

Her knife found its mark as she buried it up to the hilt in soft, human flesh. The blade was so long and the other woman so thin, that the tip protruded through the victim's back, stained a glossy red by freshly exposed blood.

Misty heard the laughter fade and morph into a faint gurgling sound as blood bubbled its way into Aya's throat.

The poison master's hand went to her own mouth as though to cover a cough, and instead the slick dark red flow of blood ran its way down her fingers.

Misty twisted the knife viciously, and Aya jerked in response.

"You stay away from my friends, you bitch," Misty whispered.

Something in the other woman's eyes as the lighted faded away from them seemed strange. Was it surprise? Confusion?

Misty let go of the hilt of the knife. Aya collapsed in a heap on top of the rubble, the blade still lodged firmly in her midsection. Her body convulsed one final time, and then she was still.

Misty sank to her knees, the pain from the poison was becoming unbearable. She clutched at her wounded shoulder with her good hand, as though pressing her fingers against the cut could keep the poison from spreading.

As she fell sideways to the ground, the last thing she saw was a lock of her own fiery red hair falling across her face as her head hit the ground.

The last thought that flickered across her mind as she lost consciousness was of how wrong it looked. She had not kept her hair red in years... Black, it was meant to be black hair, just like Ash's...

* * *

_**Six years ago...**_

_It is a beautiful summer day in Cerulean City. Misty sits with her legs dangling off the pier, rapt with attention, staring at the waves rippling across the ocean's surface beneath her in fascination. She kicks her feet back and forth slowly, mesmerized by how the water catches flecks of mid-day light, reflecting small dancing fragments of the bright sunshine back at her._

_Suddenly, a loud snore snaps her out of her reverie. She jumps a bit as she feels a heavy dead weight slump against her left side. The weight does not react to her startled movement. She rolls her eyes as she realizes what must have happened._

_A fishing pole begins to slide out of the sleeping Ash's hands. Misty snatches it up deftly before it can drop into the ocean. She glares at his face, as if hoping that the sheer amount of annoyance in her expression might wake him. It doesn't._

_She goes with plan B and pokes him with the end of his fishing pole._

_"Ouch!"_

_He jerks awake, nearly losing his balance and falling off the edge of the pier. Once he steadies himself, he rubs his side where the tip of the pole made contact._

_"What did you do that for?" he demands reproachfully._

_"You fell asleep on me. I'm busy fishing. I can't carry your dead weight around," she explains._

_"This is so boring, Misty. Can't we do something else?"_

_"Let me recap this for you, Mr. Future Pokemon Champion. You were the one that wanted to go fishing. You said you need a new water type to balance out your team. I graciously offered my company and advice as an expert fisherwoman which you accepted. Then, you proceeded to squander my advice by refusing to listen to anything I had to say and now you've wasted away the pleasure of my company by falling asleep on me."_

_"Your advice was stupid. Who makes lures in the shape of people? How is that supposed to attract Pokemon?"_

_She decides not to dignify that with a response and instead shoves him off the edge of the pier._

_"Ahhh!" he screams as he falls forward._

_She is just beginning to congratulate herself on what an efficient solution this has turned out to be when she feels a weight like an anchor attach itself to her right foot. Taken by surprise, she screams and lets go of her rod as she slides forward over the edge as well. He has managed to snag her one of her red sneakers around the ankle on his way down._

_Down they both go, falling with a spectacular splash into the lukewarm salt water below._

_She propels herself toward the surface with a reasonable amount of grace. When her head breaks the surface of the water, she spots a red and white cap bobbing up and down on the surface only an arms length from her. A few seconds later, a dark haired figure emerges gasping and flailing around several yards further away._

_She grabs the cap and swims toward the shore until she reaches shallower waters. She has always been a better swimmer than him, so she sits herself casually down on the sand, still partially submerged in ankle-deep water, and puts his cap on her own head for good measure. She paints a self-satisfied smirk on her face and sits patiently waiting as he kicks his way toward the shore, half doggy paddling and half mule kicking his way through the waves._

_It is nearly a full minute before he manages to pull himself onto the sand next to her, clothes drenched and crouched on all fours in the shallow water._

_"You," he manages to sputter between coughs. "are such a brat."_

_He flops over onto his back a few feet from her, body prone and elbows propping himself up._

_Before he can react, she has turned his face toward hers with a gentle but firm hand and pressed her lips to his._

_She can taste the salt water and a bit of sand on his lips as she moves her mouth against his. He doesn't react at first, and her courage begins to wear off. Had she been to bold? Maybe he didn't feel the same way about her as she felt about him. Was she ruining a friendship?_

_Misty begins to pull away, but Ash stops her with one hand clasped to the back of her neck. He responds in earnest, one hand on her neck and one around her waist and kisses her back with such enthusiasm that she shudders a bit in surprise._

_It is the first kiss for both of them, and first kisses are never perfect. But as she recalls, this one was pretty close._

* * *

Misty blinked.

Her mind felt like a blank slate. Had she been dreaming or recalling some happy and peaceful memory a second ago? She thought she might have been, but she couldn't quite be sure.

She felt drained, like she couldn't move a single muscle if she wanted to. Even the effort of lifting her eyelids and focusing her eyes felt like intense exertion.

It was way too bright. She was lying flat on her back and could see a blank white ceiling, illuminated by sunlight flowing in from a window to her right. Someone was sitting near the window, and he was casting a shadow across the ceiling that she stared up at. Someone with very spiky hair.

She turned her head very slowly, trying not to wince as her neck muscles strained with effort at the action.

"Hello," she said to Brock. She thought it was a reasonably cheery greeting given how terrible she was feeling.

He stared at her rather like an older brother might stare at a younger sibling who had taken his car out and crashed it. His expression remained stony.

"Hi?" she tried again. Forming longer sentences seemed like a lot of effort. Maybe she could get him to respond by changing up her greeting.

"Hi yourself, Misty," he said.

She tensed, and it was not a pleasant sensation.

"Who?" she asked.

"Don't play dumb with me, Misty. That Alakazam you released was hit by a stray rock just before you took out that assassin. He lost consciousness for a few minutes and you appeared as you really are. Psychic glamour to keep your disguise in place? Very clever."

She stayed silent.

"Are you going to tell me what you're doing? Why you are in the possession of a psychic pokemon that I'm almost certain was trained by Gary Oak, Rocket Commander? Or why you aren't, oh I don't know, dead?"

"Have you told Ash?" she asked quietly.

"No," Brock said. "But that doesn't mean I'm not going to. I'd like an explanation first."

"Ash trusts the League, Brock, but I'm sure that something doesn't add up here. I've been working with Gary for years, trying to figure out what the real cause of this war is. The League and the Rockets, this war isn't black and white, and Ash won't accept that. Until he does, I can't reveal myself to him. He'll blow my cover at the League and I'll lose years of investigative work."

Brock stared at her.

"That's why you aren't telling him who you really are? You really think he would turn you in?"

"Are you going to turn me in?"

"Please, the number of unanswered questions I have about the League and this war? Something is up. I'm a League-affiliated Gym Leader who was a target of an attempted assassination by a League Agent yesterday. You were the one that stepped in and saved my life, almost getting yourself killed in the process. As far as I'm concerned, I don't know how to pick sides in this war any more, I can only pick people that I know I can trust. You were my best friend for years. You saved my life yesterday at great personal risk. I'm pretty convinced you're on my side. My only question is, how can you possibly know that you can trust Gary?"

"The same reason you know you can trust me. Gary was a friend years ago, and he saved my life at great personal risk five years ago."

"Five years ago? You mean when you were 'killed'?"

"Yes, Gary was the Rocket who was assigned to kill me. He pretended to drown me, knowing it would be caught on surveillance tape and revived me afterwards. If it had been discovered, he would have been executed."

"So you and Gary have been investigating the League ever since?"

"The League and the Rockets. For two opposing sides in the war, they behave startlingly similarly. Intercepted transmissions encrypted with the same key. Gaps and inconsistencies in the way battles are waged. Someone high up in the League is a traitor. I am sure of it. The question is, what is his end game?"

Brock seemed to consider it for a while.

"I'm not going to report you to the League, Misty. You're right, something fishy is going on."

"Thank you."

"I don't think Ash would either."

"Ash is the League Champion. He has loved that organization and wanted to be its Champion since he was less than ten years old. It's his dream. Nothing is more important to him than that."

"Misty, you were his best friend. We went to your funeral. He cried. For a while, I thought he was going to give up training. Trust me, there are lots of thing in life that Ash considers to be more important than being the League Champion."

Misty would have given anything to conceal from Brock that her own eyes were welling up with tears.

"He lost a friend years ago, Brock. He's mourned. He's gotten over it. I'm not that girl anymore."

"War has changed all of us. It doesn't mean we stop caring about the people we love."

"War hasn't changed Ash, yet," Mist said. "And I don't ever want it to if I can help it."

"You can't always protect him from everything."

"I'll be damned if I don't try."

They fell silent for a while.

"You are making a particularly speedy recovery, the doctors told me," said Brock eventually. "They think you will could be released by tomorrow morning, a remarkably fast timeline given the ordeal you've been through and the poison that you were exposed to."

"Good, Ash and I will leave tomorrow then."

Brock frowned but didn't respond.

"You should come with us," she added impulsively.

She didn't know what made her say it. Part of her yearned for the three of them to travel together again, for all of them to be happy and friends again, just like it had been when they were kids. The words felt stupid as soon as they were out of her mouth.

To her surprise, Brock did not say no right away.

"Let me give it some thought," he said. "Pewter City needs me, but what you two are doing could ultimately help turn the tide of this war. It may be time I stepped aside and Forrest do some of the leading. He's old enough now."

The smile she gave him in return was so broad that it hurt her face a bit, but she didn't care. It had been a long time since she had felt so truly happy about anything.

"So Forrest is ok?" she asked, changing the subject.

"He's fine. He was released this morning before you woke up. Doctors say he has a mild concussion but should heal without a problem."

"And where's Ash? How long was I out?" she asked him. She was a little disappointed that he had not been waiting for her when she woke up. They were not friends anymore, she had to remind herself, much less anything more. They had strictly a professional relationship now.

"He's out in the lobby," Brock said. "I told him to find some food for Pikachu when it looked like you were about to come to. Had to have a private word with you before you got back. You were out just under a full day. The sun is about to set again."

"And the body?" she asked.

Brock's expression darkened.

"I asked Ash to dispose of it after I brought you in."

"Ash?" she said alarmed. "You asked Ash to dispose of a body? You brought him there?"

"His Charizard's flame could cook anything to cinders. I cannot have the body of a League operative lying around. It would raise all sorts of questions."

"And didn't Ash ask all sorts of questions?"

Brock shrugged.

"Maybe he will, eventually. Right now the only question on his mind is whether or not you will make a recovery."

Brock gave her a crooked smile that reminded her of the old Brock, the one that would chide Ash and her as children. It comforted her.

"So now that you're all woken up, and he'll remember all those other questions he wanted to ask, I figure I'll let you answer them," Brock said smugly.

She glared at him. She had forgotten how annoying he could be when he was right.

* * *

Author's note: Hello! I'm not dead, and I haven't actually abandoned this story, although I think I'm currently setting the record for most glacial writing pace ever. I am sticking to the resolution to always have the next chapter written when I post a chapter, and it's actually helping me a lot because the months between updates tend to make me forget things and make continuity errors. If you are still reading this, you are AWESOME for sticking with this story for so long! I am hoping that part of the reason for the long wait in this chapter is that Chapter 8 (which I wanted to finish before posting this) is a bit of a filler given all the action in this one, and I am terrible at writing fillers. This rather eventful one has unfortunately sat on the back burner for a while as a result.

Hope to read your reviews! Constructive feedback is always welcome :)


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