Story Three: Paths
"Mya, you must have no fear!" shouted Giovanni over the Gym floor. He stood with his pet Persian upon a balcony, watching a fierce battle below. The young woman, Myamoto, had thin streams of blood trailing down her face and determination in her eyes. She glared at the Growlihe that was her opponent, raising her small wooden club, her only weapon.
The Growlithe had been trained to be vicious, to attack people. For Myamoto, this human-on-pokemon battle was both training and punishment. Giovanni set her to battle like a gladiator of Ancient Rome, human-against-fierce-beast. "True" Pokemon Battles were not like this, but Giovanni suspected that they would become so someday. He had a penchant for all things Roman.
Her first assignment had gone well, but not well enough. She had proven that she truly did have no memories of her predecessor-that she was a perfect clone. She, however, had shown a weakness, Fear, causing her assignment to remain incomplete.
Soon, they would be departing this place. Things had been based here for too long. Team Rocket had already begun setting up the cloning labs at a place codenamed "Isle Noir".
The Growlithe leapt for Myamoto again. She sent it reeling, unconscious to the far end of the Gym with her club. She stood, sweating and gasping for breath, awaiting her Master's approval.
"Well done, Myamoto. Well done"
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Jessie swam across a swift river, almost getting pulled under by the current. She emerged soaked and bedraggled on the other side. She had escaped the Vermilion City Hospital five days ago. Both Jenny of the Mount Moon Patrol and Jenny of Vermilion City with their packs of Growlihes were after her.
It was not merely concern for her health because of the gunshot wound that she had sustained, but because she was now a fugitive from justice, fleeing the "house arrest" she had been effectively put under at the hospital.
Jessie had learned of a secret Team Rocket base that The Boss had set up from hacking into the Team Rocket main computer system through a computer at the hospital late at night. It was somewhere in the Viridian Forest.
There was a record Jessie had found. Most of it was encoded beyond her hacking abilities, but it was titled "The Myamoto Project" and listed a connection with the Viridian Base.
"Myamoto". Her mother's name. Perhaps she hadn't been hallucinating about the face that she saw that terrible night when she and James got shot. She knew that there was something up-something to do with her mother-and she was going to sneak into that Viridian Base to find out what.
Jessie parted through a tangle of young tree branches as she came to a place in the forest where she had seen smoke. She had left the Jennys and their Growlithes far behind, beyond the river. She thought she could hear them baying in the distance. She would not be caught, not until she found out what she had to know.
She felt ironic, being on a search for the truth.
What met Jessie's eyes in the woodland clearing was a great smoldering ruin.
"Wha-" she said aloud as her orbs of sapphire were scanning the scene. It was clear that the wreckage had been and enormous compound of some sort. Jessie walked through the ashes, peering behind the standing ruins of walls, hoping to find some wisp of evidence of what went on there.
Behind a toppled wall of brick, she did find something.
"Meowth?"
"Jessie?"
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"Meowth, what are you doing here?" Jessie asked, eyes wide and mouth agape.
Meowth ran to her with tears in the corners of his eyes and hugged her tightly around the legs; "Jessie, you and James, I tawght you guys were dead!"
Jessie went on to explain waking up in the Vermilion City Hospital, James being in a coma, her escape, and the image of the assassin bearing the face of her mother.
"Myamoto was your MOTHER?!" Meowth exclaimed. Jessie stared at him, shocked.
"How do you know her name? Who she is?"
Meowth explained what he knew. Jessie sat down beside him. The conversation lasted well over two hours. The cat explained the records that he had seen-the secrets that Giovanni had shared with him when he was his favored pet.
He told what he knew of the old Joy/Jenny Project...and of The Boss' dream of The Myamoto Project.
"The perfect soldier;" Jessie sighed painfully; "Mom was the Best, I constantly lived under her shadow. I joined Team Rocket, Meowth, because-because I wanted to bring honor to my family-to honor her. The Boss...said once...that I was a disgrace to her memory..."
Meowth saw something in Jessie's face that he had very rarely ever seen before, true sorrow. She was an expert at hiding her emotions-except her anger, which she readily revealed, often in some painful way, to him and James. Things like pure, unsuperficial sorrow, however, were expressions that he seldom witnessed in his red-haired human friend.
"She died...somewhere in the Andes when I was just a child;" Jessie continued; "The body was never found...how would they-the geneticists-have cloned her?"
"Da Boss has files;" Meowth replied; "Every human Rocket member is in it, includin' him. His mother or grandfather or somebody set it up years ago-when Team Rocket got started. Everyone's blood samples are in dose files."
"Which means-it is true-they cloned my...mother...from a blood sample? Why did my mother try to kill me...?"
Light tears were streaming down Jessie's cheeks.
"She...wouldn't be exactly your mother, Jessie;" Meowth spoke softly, trying to provide some measure of comfort, though small; "She...is like da Joys an' Jennys. Dey are all...a little different...an' different from da originals. Myamoto who shot ya...wasn't really your mother."
"Whatever's going on, it must be stopped;" Jessie sighed, standing up; "Perhaps we can find some clues here."
"It's a ruin;" said Meowth; "torched to destroy all evidence."
"Still, maybe there's SOMETHING." Jessie began sifting through ashes with her hands, seeking some small thing that remained undamaged. She wasn't sure what she hoped to find, but would know when she saw it.
"I wish I could see James;" Meowth muttered; "Is know that you said he was in pretty bad shape, but I still wish I could see 'im."
"We could call the hospital;" Jessie suggested; "Get some news-like if he's woke up. There's no way of knowing otherwise. I'll have to disguise myself-we could use the phone at the Pokemon Center in Viridian City."
Viridian City was not very far. Within and hour of leaving the burnt-out Team Rocket Base in the Viridian Forest, Jessie and Meowth were in the Viridian City Pokemon Center, dressed as and old woman and her pet Meowth on a leash, respectively.
"Yes, is this Vermilion City Hospital?" Jessie asked into the videophone as she was greeted with the smiling visage of a young woman receptionist; "I wish to inquire about a patient under care there."
The receptionist put Jessie on hold for a long five minutes after which she was greeted by a Doctor Jensen-Chief of Staff.
"I am inquiring about James Rochester in Room 204;" Jessie asserted.
"May I ask who is calling?" replied the young physician; "we are not authorized to release that information to anyone but close relatives."
"I'm his aunt, Lois Rochester."
Jessie waited while Dr. Jensen checked through his computer data records. She knew that the name would clear-James did have an Aunt Lois. He mentioned it to her once. It seemed funny to Jessie some of the weird little things she remembered James telling her around the campfire at night. There was no logical reason in her mind why she would bother to remember him mentioning his Aunt Lois, but she did.
"Ms. Rochester?" the Doctor asked, snapping Jessie out of her reverie; "We regret to inform you...your nephew passed away at approximately 2:03pm today. I'm very sorry."
All color drained from Jessie's face. She stared at the blank videophone screen after hanging up. Already weary from the grief she had poured out to Meowth today, this pronouncement was too much for her. She fainted.
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Dr. Jensen returned to doing paperwork after getting off the phone with "Ms. Lois Rochester". He glanced over his shoulder with a nervous eye. The black-clad Team Rocket agent behind him had his gun holstered, but that was little comfort.
*That James Rochester fellow must be SOME important guy.* Jensen thought. Team Rocket agents had swarmed in and taken over Vermilion City Hospital at precisely 2:00pm that afternoon. It was 6:00pm now and they still hadn't left. They had already taken what they had come for-the young shooting victim in Room 204, a Rocket agent himself.
Jensen wondered if all Rockets were given such treatment by their Team when in need of hospitalization-kidnapped even when in Intensive Care. Perhaps, it had been a mistake for Mr. Rochester to have been brought here, perhaps Team Rocket had their own hospital of some sort for their members-to best guard their secrets.
Dr. Jensen didn't know. All he knew was that, if anyone outside the hospital asked; the official word was that James Kojiro Rochester in Room 204 was dead.
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James awakened upon a steel table, bright white light burning into his eyes. He had been slipping in and out of consciousness for the past four days after being in a coma-state for almost two weeks, but was finally beginning to truly awaken. Images came back into his memory in sporadic flashes.
He was in the woods, chasing somebody. Jessie had been shot.
He was on some sort of gurney, being wheeled into the back of a black van-by people dressed in black.
He was getting some sort of needle thrust into his arm.
James tried sitting up, but found himself too weak. He lay back down with a low groan. He was naked except for a pair of boxer shorts. Tubes and needles were projecting from ever part of his flesh that he could see.
*What is going on here?*
For a moment, James wondered if he might have been abducted by aliens. This seemed a lot like some accounts of supposed "alien abduction survivors" he had read about.
His eyes scanned the room he was in, as much as he could see of it, anyway. A steel cage in a corner held a Jolteon. James felt a not-unpleasant dizziness come over him.
*Not again!* he thought as he lost consciousness once more.
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When James came to again, he was no longer upon a steel table, but inside a small prison cell. He was still clad in nothing but his boxer shorts and his body was racked with a tremendous ache.
He felt the greatest pain in his chest-his lungs felt as if they were weighted down with iron. There were other spots of soreness in his arms and legs, looking at them, he saw numerous small wounds, a few of them slowly seeping small amounts of blood.
As James crawled around on the floor of the cell he noticed something. As he stretched out his hand, sparks and small arcs of electricity emanated from it!
He wearily stood, barely able to keep his balance. Delicate spirals of lightning swirled up his legs, traveled up his torso and sparked off his skin. It looked eerily reminiscent of an electric-pokemon's attack, but James felt no pain from it.
"He's still alive and is no longer comatose;" James heard a voice say; "It appears that the splice was a success."
James looked toward where he thought the voice came from. There were three men and one young woman standing a few feet from the bars of his cell. One of the men, James recognized. Giovanni, the Boss of Team Rocket.
"His power shall have to be tested;" Giovanni said to the man who had made the previous statement.
"Then;" whispered the young woman; "You will try it on me?"
"Yes;" Giovanni replied; "More tests will necessarily be done, but with this breakthrough, Team Rocket will indeed have a race of perfect soldiers-ones with true power."
He continued; "It actually turned out a good thing, Myamoto, that you failed to kill him-he provided the perfect subject for this-the first one to actually survive the procedure. I am pleasantly surprised."
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!!" James demanded; "WHERE'S JESSIE AND MEOWTH?!!" Arcs of lightning flashed off his body, seeming to express his fury, illuminating the interior of his cell.
"James, James, James. Calm down;" Giovanni sneered; "You should feel honored. You have become a milestone of modern genetic science. When you and your partner first told me about that incredible Pikachu that you found, remember how pleased I was? How much I wanted you to capture it for me? You never knew what I wanted to use it for, did you?"
He paused, then continued; "Well, I no longer need the Pikachu. Cassidy and Butch brought me a high-level Jolteon several days ago. You have been, shall we say, 'spliced' with that Jolteon, James. Your body is now capable of producing powerful electric currents! If you continue to survive, Team Rocket will have a new power on our side-human members with the power and strength of pokemon! It will be a grand asset for the army of perfect soldiers soon to populate the ranks. If you prove useful and cooperative, perhaps there will be no need to terminate you at the end of the experiment and you will be allowed to join them."
James looked at Giovanni balefully-in horror of what had been done to him-of what The Boss and his secret scientists were doing to him!
"Perfect soldiers? With pokemon powers?" he whispered; "What have you done with Jessie and Meowth?"
"You should be happy to know that, for the time being, we do not know where your former partners are. I have men searching for them. But they will be taken care of soon enough."
"We should leave him now;" said one of the two men beside Giovanni, the one that had not as yet spoken; "Giving him more stress could jeopardize his body's taking of the splice. We need to check the tanks anyway-to view the progress of Mya's 'sisters'."
Giovanni, the two scientists, and the young woman slowly left the room. As they closed the laboratory's heavy stainless-steel door behind them, James' emerald eyes watched them from behind the bars of the tiny cell in the corner. The young woman stared at him-the look in her eyes very strange to James. It was as if she understood the confusion that he was going through.