By Sallie Rocket
Giovanni paced down a long corridor in Team Rocket HQ, his footsteps sounding powerful and sure. Beside him, silent as the shadows, trotted his smooth crčme persian.
This corridor was empty. No one saw anything of importance down this dark, smoky corridor. But Giovanni knew there was. Why else would he come down here every night he could? Why else would he waste his free time coming down here?
He reached the end of the corridor and pulled a small silver key from his pocket. Its glint was caught in the persian’s eye, and he put it in the door’s keyhole, and turned it.
The door opened into a room, set like a living room, with other door leading to other rooms in this “apartment”. All the furniture was well designed, expensive and exquisitely made, but the most beautiful thing in the room was sitting before him, her red eyes cold.
A woman, older then Giovanni, and yet youthful. With long blue-black hair that trailed down her back and shone like a pool of water. Long legs were crossed, seeming to make them all the longer. At her feet lay an old persian, which also had a youth about it. Giovanni’s persian seemed to shrink away from it’s glance. Both of them had a powerful and commanding personality, which you could feel as soon as you saw them.
She was not known to anyone by a name. It was long forgotten, or perhaps never known. To nearly all she was simply “Madame Boss”. But to Giovanni she was “Mamma.”
“Look at that!” She said to the persian at her feet. “He has lowered himself to come and visit lowly people like us.”
“Stop complaining.” His voice lost something menacing that her’s had. “I’ve come haven’t I? I’ve always come. And I’ve kept you well,” he added as an afterthought.
“Yes, I have been kept well,” She answered coldly. “I’m the best kept prisoner around.”
Not liking where this conversation was heading, Giovanni declined her an answer and changed the subject. “Do you want news on the organisation or not?”
“Yes. I do,” She said softly. “Tell me how my organisation is doing.”
He ignored her again. “We’re doing well with our research for a drug to make Pokčmon stronger. With it any Pokčmon should be as good as, if not better then Myuutu.”
“That’s lovely,” She told him with feigned interest. “But I’d rather hear about the talk of the revolt.”
He inwardly groaned, although he showed no change physically. He might have known she would have heard about that, her room was by some of the sleeping quarters. “There was a rumour that some Rocket’s were going to revolt against me and burn down the HQ. I sorted it out.”
“But,” She asked sweetly, but with her hard tone still there, “how do you know you got them all?”
[Good Question] half of him thought, the rest wondering why she was never satisfied. “I’m confident I have.”
“Good, I’m pleased,” She told him coldly, not one syllable had any love or confidence in it.
He opened his mouth as if to say something, then stopped. He simply turned back to the hall and locked the door on his mother again.
*~*~*~*
Giovanni had a long hard night. Reports to examine and amend, files on recruits to read and all the other hum-drum of work that collected up into an end-of-the-week-all-nighter.
The silence in the deafening in the quiet office, with only one light burning. The spell of silence was only broken when the persian’s tail thudded against a chair-leg.
Maybe it had been fate that Giovanni should have discovered the cigarettes he normally had an abundance of were all gone. Whether it was fate or not, it meant he noticed the smell of smoke when it came.
He looked up from his desk, looking almost casually around the room. The restful persian beside him suddenly leapt to his feet and began to hiss and spit at the door. From underneath there was a small trickle of smoke.
Giovanni stood quickly and tried the door. It didn’t open. Giovanni’s had made sure all doors were unable to be locked, and he knew instinctively it had been barricaded. Near the door as he was he could feel the heat from the flames and hear the roar and crackling of the flames.
He tried the door again, and then in desperation kicked it hard.
His face was burning with the sound of the insults he would give Rocket’s being told to him.
He moved across to the window and looked out. In the dim light, a safe distance away stood a sea of black and white Rocket fukus. All the Rockets stood with their hands clasped, as if innocent and praying for him.
[well they can’t have known about every door] he thought casually. His Mother had been an extremely intelligent woman and built secret passages for emergencies. No one knew of them, only their builder and her son.
He moved across to a large bookcase and stood on the left side of it. His hand landed on the cool wall as he measured three hands from the bookcase, then on the fourth he pressed hard, slowly, the wall moved back to a cool dark passage.
He stepped into it, his persian leaping after him. At the end of the passage he pushed again and opened up into a slightly smoky passageway. He thanked several names, which held no meaning to him, that the building was big and the flames quite slow.
He paced along, the heat getting to him and sweat beaded across his head. He came across an exit from the building and found that his efforts to open it were pointless.
So he walked among the smoke filled hallway, getting to slightly clearer ones near the centre where the flames had not yet reached. His destination was sure, and his anger at himself was absolute.
He knew someone else would hate him too…
He found himself pounding down the dark corridor, the second time in as many days, and pulling out a small silver key.
He pushed open the door, and as usual she was waiting for him. She has known he was coming, and she sat like a queen, not a façade of fear and knowledge of impending death on her face, but a authority and somehow a definite regality.
For a moment they both looked at each other, both calm and placid, with harsh accusing eyes. Then;
“Say it,” Giovanni hissed bitterly, wit years of unhappiness in the words.
“Say what?” She asked flicking her hair over her shoulder, ever beautiful.
“You know what,” For some reason, which he put down to smoke, he felt tears stinging his eyes.
She said nothing looking at him with her beautiful eyes, still hard and cold but with something he wasn’t sure of in them.
He waited till the silence was too blinding before he spoke again, his voice choking, “Tell me I’m a failure! A complete let down of a son, whom you never wanted, and that none of this would have happened if you were still running the organisation!” He looked at the floor, finding, now death was so close, that bitter feeling he perhaps hadn’t known of were running loose in his body.
There was a moment of silence. Then she spoke again, “I am proud of you.”
He looked up at her, his eyes large, and he looked, she thought, just like her small boy again. He didn’t seem able to ask the question in his eyes, so she continued.
“Do you think I would have sat here day after day if I hadn’t been proud of you and expected you to take over my organisation? Do you? Then you are a fool.” She paused. “But you are my son. And I, like any weak feeble woman, cannot help but love my son, no matter how foolish he is. I am so very proud of you.”
At her last words he broke down and moved towards her like a lost child. He fell to his knees before her and then wrapped his arms around her and buried his tear-stained face against his shoulder, sobbing wildly.
She ran her hand slowly through his hair, looking powerful and all commanding, and yet with a strange little smile on her face, and something unusual in her eyes.
And that’s how they stayed, while the flames moved in the building. That’s how they stayed, waiting for their slow death.
~*~ El Fini ~*~