[fanfic] The Harder They Come - Act I (Part 1/2)
Click to return to the Prologue
Act I
The story of Professor Oak's missing grandson is being blasted across the airwaves by every major news station the next day and every day after that.
There are televised statements from the neighbors, which mostly consist of touching scenes of the townspeople standing outside Oak Labs to show their support.
Most notable of these interviews is the one of a woman holding her sobbing daughter tight in her arms, looking as if she was just barely restraining her own tears.
"Those boys were - are my daughter's friends. She misses them." She hesitates for a moment before looking directly into the camera. "Just the thought of my daughter being lost out there with them - if she hadn't come home and had gone with them instead - I can't even imagine how it would feel… Please - help us find them," she chokes out, barely audible over the sound of her daughter's intensifying cries.
Eventually, the family makes a statement, and a girl who looks more like the boy's sister than his mother speaks tearfully. The professor himself stands behind her, a hand placed comfortingly on her shoulder, his face stern.
"Please," she begs, voice thick with tears, "if a-anyone knows where they are, please bring them h-home. He - they need to come home." She pauses, and the tears begin to flow unrestrainedly now. "Please… he's all I have left… please."
It's media gold.
There was little emphasis played on the other boy's mother, who was leaning into Oak's side, crying the whole time. They only played a sound bite of her tearful statement at the very end of the report, but by that time Giovanni had already turned off the television, his upper lip curled around his cigarette in disgust.
Archer watches from his seat across the Boss's desk, jaw set and eyes wary.
"I had no idea the goddamn media would take so much interest in this," Giovanni all but snarls, hanging onto his dignity by the coattails.
"None of us could have predicted this would happen, sir."
The darkness of the Boss's eyes deepens in anger, flashing dangerously.
"That is no excuse," he snaps, tendrils of smoke steaming from his flaring nostrils. "Our advantage is lost to us now. We cannot contact Oak to make our demands when the police are so intimately involved in the situation! Claiming responsibility for this would increase our visibility to a degree that is unacceptable in these early stages."
Archer understands. It wouldn't do to trade one advantage for another, especially not one as valuable as this one. Knowledge of Team Rocket is still rather hard to come by these days, with the police only recently starting to realize that their motives and operations may run deeper than making a quick buck.
This false assumption is possibly the most valuable inheritance the Boss had received from his predecessor.
The long years that Madame Boss was in charge led the police to the correct assumption that the organization was just a typical den of thieves. They believed the Rockets posed a similar threat to that of a few rabid rattata. Sure, it was unfortunate if someone got bitten, but it wasn't anything that couldn't be fixed with a few shots of potent vaccine and a call to the exterminator. There were bigger fish to fry anyway, so the law had deigned to only deal with the Rockets on a case-by-case basis, basically leaving Madame Boss and her Rockets to their own devices.
Archer and Ariana had been newly recruited grunts when the old bat finally keeled over and died, leaving behind a couple hundred members whose only allegiance was to themselves. Being of similar intentions at the time, Archer and Ariana had often discussed deserting before the inevitable power struggle between the administrators and executives started and they were forced to take sides. After all, the life of the solitary criminal, though riskier than running with a pack, was preferable to the degradation of fighting for power-grubbing bureaucrats. It simply wasn't a productive use of their time.
But that was when the Boss took over.
Archer remembers being skeptical at the thought of the scientist from Silph Corporation leading an organization like Team Rocket. When the rumors that his mother had disowned him began to spread, his skepticism was distilled into incredulity. The story behind their falling out varied depending on who exactly was asked, but one of the most surprisingly persistent rumors held that it was due to his refusal to end a drawn out summer romance when she ordered him to.
Back then, Archer and Ariana had considered the rumor to be a particularly entertaining notion. They used to take a base enjoyment in snickering about the new leader and his years-long roll in the hay with the country bumpkin behind his back. It was so comical that when a few of the other grunts had started a betting ring around the question of how long he would last before the Madame's old cadres deposed him, Archer and Ariana had thrown their caps into the ring. Archer had bet a moderate amount on a solid year; Ariana had wagered two month's pay on a meager six months.
And then the purges had started.
One morning, the Madame's executives and admins were found dead, a single bullet buried in each of their skulls. There was none of the pomp and circumstance that the she'd employed whenever she had someone killed, yet even without the sight of the corpses of her victims put on display at general assemblies as examples of what became of "traitors" (the term having a very loose definition in the Madame's day), the new Boss's executions made more of an impact. Nearly a dozen of Team Rocket's leaders, most of them in power as long as the Madame herself, were wiped out all at once. The move was bold, indicative of cunning, power, and ruthlessness. It made a statement much more profound than even the Madame could have hoped to aspire to.
With a dozen bullets, the Boss made his position clear: all the power the newly retired pencil pushers had accumulated by exploiting the old bureaucracy was meaningless before his own. He was not dependent on admins or execs to give orders to the different factions; whoever did not follow his orders was handled in the same manner as the cadres.
Gone were the secretive snickering and betting rings. Their absence was not yet an indication of respect but fear - the only message some members of the organization could understand.
The next seven years were defined by efficiency, ambition, and grand goals. The Boss gave Team Rocket purpose and ambition, but above all, he gave it honor and pride. There were unspoken codes of conduct that all members were expected to live by: rape was not a method that the organization employed; accordingly, a special punishment was reserved for those found to be rapists. If an operation necessitated an innocent person's death, it was to be carried out swiftly and painlessly. Rockets did not turn on other Rockets - snitches, when discovered (and they always were), were left to the mercy of their fellow Rockets.
They were more soldiers than criminals under Giovanni's leadership, a cohesive group working together toward accomplishing the organization's noble goals. No matter what the public thought of them, this was always something the Boss took care to reinforce.
Ariana had scoffed at this in the early days, but she soon came to be awed by him instead. Archer shared this reaction - it is rather difficult not to when confronted by someone like Giovanni.
It had taken a little under four months for the two of them to be noticed by the Boss. The particular job that had garnered them the recognition was an intelligence-gathering mission in the Saffron City Police Department. With the sterling new credentials the organization had provided for her, Ariana had gotten a job as the chief of police's secretary. Archer had posed as a delivery boy.
He still looks back on that time fondly - Ariana, looking classy and professional in her knee-length skirts and deceptively modest blouses, forced to act demure and polite to get into the chief's good graces. She hadn't even had to get into the old man's bed; he had fallen all over himself trying to get her there that he'd inadvertently given her access to all the intelligence they had been ordered to retrieve and more.
Even better than that was how Archer had gotten to present the man with the terms of their arrangement at the end of their time together. Ariana had looked on, smirking placidly as Archer laid out the countless pictures of the chief's liaisons with women who certainly weren't his wife. Secretaries and other employees, even prostitutes.
Surely he didn't want his wife or the press to know, Archer had said. They'd eat him alive!
When the man blubbered and agreed to provide them with anything they wanted, Ariana had been unable to contain her mirth, and a cruel laugh spilled from her ruby-red lips. Archer had merely smirked.
(Perhaps the most enjoyable part of that mission was months later, when the chief was beginning to get testy, chewing at his tight leash. He knew too much and was letting his conscience get the better of him. Archer was surprised; he expected the man to be too self-involved to value the well-being of the pokémon they had appropriated from errant trainers that wandered into unpatrolled alleyways, especially over his career.
Archer had put him down quickly because of that. He'd outgrown his usefulness anyway, what with the new mayor's intentions of replacing him).
When they had returned to headquarters after two months of undercover work, the Boss had called them into his office and regarded them with a dark-eyed stare of appraisal.
"I've read your report. You'll excuse me if I found it a bit hard to believe at first. Somehow two new recruits have managed to extract a multitude of reliable information from the Saffron Police Department and cultivate a reliable asset - the chief of police, no less?" their leader had said. "Team Rocket is very fortunate to have you."
Archer and Ariana had immediately fallen to their knees to pledge their loyalty. The Boss had laughed, the sound booming and appreciative.
"You would never betray me, would you?"
"Never, sir!" they had returned in unison.
Higher-ranked missions followed, and after a half a year of these, the promotions came - operative-issue uniforms and desks. They became known as Apollo and Athena, gods among men.
The Boss was a man of many tastes, appreciative of both Ariana's unparalleled talents in the field and cutting, curvaceous beauty, dangerous and wild.
In Archer he saw both an invaluable operative, skilled in deception and subterfuge, and a loyal devotee. For all the people he has deceived and betrayed into turning over their inheritances and tightly guarded information, Archer has never - would never, lie to Giovanni. The Boss knows this. He can see the devotion in Archer's eyes, fervent and unyielding. He trusts Archer implicitly, and even though his uniform is still not the white of the Executive rank, he is already his right-hand man.
So maybe any other operative in his position would feel as if the Boss were berating him for the situation. Archer, however, has served his leader long enough to know that the Boss is a fair judge of character and does not make it a habit of passing the blame onto others to save face.
It is but one of the many characteristics that make Archer adore and serve him out of devotion and admiration rather than self-interest.
"What do you wish me to do with the children, sir?" he asks.
The Boss's head snaps up. He regards his subordinate flatly through the cloud of acrid smoke.
"Would you have me return them to their families?" Archer hedges, voice the slightest bit hesitant. "Or perhaps you would rather I dispose of -,"
"No," the Boss interrupts firmly, eyes steely with reproach, "that won't be necessary."
Child-killers are something else that Team Rocket does not tolerate. Their punishment is even more severe than the kind given out to the rapists.
There is a pregnant pause, and Archer berates himself for acting as if the Boss were no different from a typical criminal. He may lead a criminal organization, but Archer knows that the Boss has a moral code that he refuses to cross, no matter the circumstances.
It only makes Archer adore him all the more.
"I apologize -" he begins.
But his understanding leader waves him off, tapping some of the ash off his cigarette and into the ashtray on his desk.
"There's no need for that, Archer. I understand your concerns."
There is another long moment of silence, this one considerably less tense than the last, before the Boss addresses him again.
"Train them."
He doesn't understand. "Sir?"
"Train them," the Boss repeats, turning his attention to a stack of reports on his desk disinterestedly. "They displayed extraordinary talent in battling when we discovered them. It would be a shame to see all that talent go to waste." Amusement glints in his eyes now. "Perhaps in a few years they will be valuable assets to Team Rocket. It's a fairly equitable compensation for the loss of our advantage."
And he still does not understand why he would want this from him, but his leader's full attention is on the reports, now. The cigarette has been stubbed out onto the ashtray, still smoking faintly.
It is not his place to ask 'why.'
So he rises, salutes.
"Of course, sir."
Giovanni nods without looking up from the papers. "You may leave."
Years later, Archer will have but a second to wonder where exactly it was that he had gone wrong.
- . . . -
It has been three days since they were taken, but it feels more like an eternity to Green.
He hasn't seen anyone but Red since they arrived at - wherever the place they're at now is. Immediately after they helicopter had touched down, the man had fired off orders at a woman before walking off without another word to the boys.
The woman had led them down long and winding hallways that made Green think of the labyrinth from a movie he'd watched once. Fearfully, he wondered where the monster with the head of a tauros was.
When they finally reached a door, the lady had all but shoved the boys, still filthy from the rain and mud, into the room beyond the threshold. She snatched Eevee's and Pikachu's poké balls away from them before slamming the door shut. At the heart-stopping sound of a key twisting in the handle, Green had started banging on the door with his tiny fists, screaming frantically for help. Red had just made his way over to one of the two beds, the one furthest from the door, and lain down on his side facing away from Green.
They had been left alone ever since.
Green's cries had accomplished nothing save leaving his throat swollen and aching. Someone had been by to leave them dinner the night before and breakfast early that morning (so early that they'd woken Green up with a start; Red had already been staring at the door, unperturbed), but whoever was doing it was so quick that the food was always deposited on the floor by the door before Green could get a good look at them.
It doesn't help their situation any that Red refuses to talk to him, looking away whenever he tries to start some sort of conversation. Surely Red understands that the man tricked Green? He can't be blamed for that, especially when he had a giant nidoking that could make the earth swallow them up with a snap of his trainer's elegant fingers.
Red, Green concludes, is just stupid. It is the harshest insult his eight-year-old mind can conjure up, and he thinks it furiously, glaring at the back of the other boy's head from across the room, imagining that the force of his thoughts alone could set his dumb, stupid head on fire.
(So when Red starts making small wet sounds that first night, body shaking in the sheets, Green just grits his teeth and thinks good.)
The hours trudge by, and Green finds himself growing increasingly distressed. Isolation does not suit him at all. He has become accustomed to the wide-open spaces of Pallet's fields - of having acres and acres as his backyard. The four windowless walls of their prison saps his strength and fill his young mind with an agitation that he has never experienced before, not even when his mommy and daddy started fighting every night and Daisy would sneak into his room, hiding her tears in the downy hair at the back of his head.
At first he fights it. Even though Red is mad at him and all the terms and rules he'd come to know about dealing with his surroundings (avoid grandpa and you won't get in trouble, pretend to cry and Daisy will let you have your way, call Leaf a stupid girl and she'll get so angry she'll leave you alone, just lead and Red will follow) no longer apply, he still has his pride. This is the second time in his short life that this has happened to him, and Green finds himself more lost than the first time. He doesn't have Daisy to smile at him and tell him that everything will be alright (even if it won't), and despite that the peculiar neighbor boy with the dull red eyes is in the same predicament as he is, it feels like he's billions of miles away.
So after he finishes his breakfast, his valiant efforts at holding it all in falter.
He is in the middle of picking some of the caked mud off his skin when it happens; one second he is sliding his stubby nails under a particularly stubborn patch of dirt and the next his vision goes blurry. It takes him a few moments to realize that the burning means that he is crying, that the terrible sounds he hears are coming from him.
The intensity of the emotions that wash over him is too overwhelming for him to worry about looking weak in front of Red. His sobs bounce off the whitewashed walls, echoing back into his ears, and all he can think is that he wants his sister, his mommy, his daddy. He cries thoughtlessly for what seems like days before he falls into a shallow, dreamless sleep.
When he wakes up, he finds Red in bed with him, small body tucked in against his own. The hand whose thumb isn't stuck in his mouth is clamped tightly around Green's abdomen.
The older boy blinks, body tense. He is not quite sure if he should forgive Red for being mean to him earlier. Something about this feels wrong - the way his body's lanky, bony angles sink into Red's soft form, still pudgy with the baby fat that Green lost far too early. There is something else, something fundamental and binding, but he cannot quite put his finger on what exactly that reason is, or even why he should feel that way.
After a few minutes of this the doubts fall away and he gives in thankfully. He is too exhausted to deny any kind of comfort, even if it isn't from the people he'd been crying so desperately for before.
The man from before - Archer - finds them like this.
When the door opens abruptly, both boys jerk up, their muscles tense and eyes wide with fear. The man regards them with a smug expression on his face, tinged with something else that reminds Green of how Leaf used to look whenever she found him first when they played hide-and-go-seek. It makes Green unbearably homesick and annoyed at the same time, and he glares at the man with all the defiance he can muster.
It only serves to add a muted sort of amusement to the man's dark azure eyes.
"What do you want?" Green sneers. He does not like this man and feels compelled to make sure he knows this.
"My name is Archer," the man says, voice clipped and business-like, "but from now on you will address me as sir."
Riled up at how the man avoided the question, Green makes a fist around the bed sheets. "No."
The only sign of annoyance Archer gives is the minute twitch of his eyebrow. "It seems like respect was something you were never taught. Your deficiency of common sense, however, is something you came into this world lacking."
Green may not understand how the man is doing it, but he knows that he is being insulted. "Are you sayin' I'm dumb?" he demands, his cheeks flushed underneath the dirt caked there.
A smile, sardonic and all teeth.
"You can say that."
The blood running through his veins burns, but before he can open his mouth to retort, Red whispers, "Green."
There is a warning hidden beneath the otherwise monotone voice, and Green clamps his mouth shut, glaring at the other man with all the hatred he can muster.
After a moment of tense silence, Archer nods, satisfied.
"Much better. Now, assuming you can remember to stay quiet and respectful-" He pauses, staring pointedly at Green. "-the two of you will follow me. If you even so much as say one word out of turn, however, you will be returned to this room until I feel you've learned your lesson. Do you understand?"
Green is practically aching to talk back, but when Red elbows him in the side, he grits out a bitter "yes."
Archer raises an eyebrow. "Yes…?"
"Sir," Red supplies, voice small and cracked, still rough from sleep. "Yes, sir."
The Rocket nods approvingly. "You can stand to learn something from your friend, kid," he says before turning on his heel and marching out of the room.
Red grips Green's hand, the knuckles nearly white, and pulls him off the bed. They pause at the open door, almost as if they were considering the possibility that this were all a trick. It is more likely that they are scared of what lies in wait for them outside the relative safety of their prison, the memory of the men who had attacked them in the forest and their fearsome raticate alerting them to the frightening reality that this place was probably full of men just like them.
"Would you rather stay in there?" Archer asks, stopping to look back at them questioningly.
Taking a deep breath, Green grits his teeth and takes his first step over the threshold with Red in tow, small hands grasping each other, their fingers pressing harshly into the soft skin of their palms.
Archer ends up leading them to a large, low-ceilinged room unlike any they had ever seen. When he notices the sinks and urinals, white and pristine, much like his grandfather's lab, he realizes that it is some kind of big bathroom.
The Rocket leans onto the edge of a porcelain sink, regarding them with distaste. "The two of you are filthy," he points out, wrinkling his nose. "Clean yourselves up."
The boys stare at the man for a few moments, almost as if they can't quite comprehend what it is he's asking of them. Archer sighs softly, raising his hands to his head to massage at his temples in soothing circles.
"The showers are that way," he says impatiently, gesturing beyond the wall of urinals, past the faucets and stalls. "Make use of them. You have ten minutes."
Before Red can open his mouth to say that he's never taken a bath by himself, Green pulls him along to where Archer indicated, flushing in embarrassment.
The showers look like the ones attached to the locker rooms of the local middle school Daisy attended, except a lot cleaner and lacking the pungent stale smell that lingered there. With the abandon that only young boys possess, Green begins to undress, bending over to untie his muddy shoes. Red stares in something vaguely resembling terror before doing the same, small hands tugging at the hem of his t-shirt and pulling it up and over his head, leaving his hair in a state of disarray. Despite the fact that they had gone swimming together plenty of times before, there is something about the room that makes them avert their eyes and turn their dirty bodies away, ashamed. The tile beneath their bare feet is cold, and they stiffly make their way from their discarded clothes to one of the showerheads.
After fiddling with the knobs for a few moments, the showerhead roars to life, shooting out a jet of cold water that buffets Green in the head. Yelping at the painful sensation of the cold high-pressure water stream against his scalp, he lowers his head to protect his eyes, leaving the water to scrape at the crown of his head. It takes a few torturous moments for the frigid water to warm to a tolerable temperature, and Green and Red go from shivering in the spray to yelping at the heat. In minutes, the showers are filled with a thick, cloying steam.
Slowly, feeling returns to Green's body as the layers of dirt and mud are peeled away and the numbness that had lingered there beforehand are drowned in the thousands of tiny knives that prick against his skin and muscles.
The boys just stand in the spray for several moments, occasionally opening their mouths and drinking the warm water, scalding against their sore, swollen throats. They drink until their bellies are full, spreading warmth so that their bodies begin to tingle with life.
The water is turned off abruptly.
"Your ten minutes are up!" calls Archer's voice from down the hall, a ring of impatience hanging like a threat.
When they reluctantly make their way back, Archer greets them with a disinterested look and new clothes that turn out to be a few sizes too large.
"We don't exactly have many operatives your size," he says by way of explanation. "Until we can procure clothes in your size, you'll just have to make do with these."
Red seems to have a small crisis when he sees the 'R' on his shirt, eyes flashing with instinctual repulsion. In the end, necessity wins when he begins to shiver again. When he pulls on the black uniform, he does it in a manner that suggests extreme discomfort.
If Green shares his friend's apprehensiveness, he doesn't show it. The older boy steps into the offered clothes almost gratefully.
When the boys are dressed, Archer signals for them to follow him again, leading them back into the maze. It is hard for them to keep up with the man's long strides. They trip over the legs of their oversized pants that drag behind them a few times in their efforts to keep their guide in sight.
They eventually come to a door that looks identical to the one that had kept them locked in for the past two days. Green sets his eyes on it with dread, expecting to be tossed back into the suffocating little room, but when Archer turns the handle and opens it, the sight that greets them is nothing like the room.
The room is easily the biggest Green has ever set foot in. Its ceiling is high and the walls widely spaced apart. There is a familiar pattern on the floor - a wide rectangle with two smaller ones inscribed along the shorter sides and a circle drawn in the middle. It is an arena - not quite the size of the ones used for the tournament matches on the television, but large enough to warrant the boys' slack-jawed awe.
"This is one of our training rooms," Archer says. "It's usually reserved for the higher-ups of the organization, but the Boss has relegated its use to us for the foreseeable future. The two of you will be spending a lot of time in here from now on, so I suggest that you become acquainted with it quickly."
"Why?" At the man's quirk of an eyebrow, Green tacks on a rushed "sir" to the end of his question.
"The Boss has requested that the two of you be trained and has placed me in charge of your… cultivation as Team Rocket operatives."
Something cold and tight grips Green's heart at the man's words. Red, naturally quiet and still, goes tense, crimson eyes flashing dully with alarm.
Seeing the expression on their faces, Archer barks out a chuckle.
"Now, now. It's not the end of the world. I assure you that being personally requested for service by the Boss is a great honor, though I'm sure that you two don't view it as such. Yet. There will be time for the two of you to learn what it means to wear the uniform of the organization and work to bring our goals to fruition. The Boss has assigned me to be your teacher in this regard, and I fully intend to carry out my duties. Let my example serve as your first lesson." He makes eye contact with both children, blue eyes steely and severe. "Always follow orders. Failure and insubordination are not tolerated."
Green barely processes Archer's words. His narrow back is suddenly drenched in a cold sweat, and his throat has become tight.
They mean to transform them into criminals, he thinks. Like the ones from that almost killed them in the forest. Like the ones that he sees on the news, hunted by the police and hated by everyone.
He can barely process the thought. He is not bad. He can't be a criminal. He wants to be the Pokémon League Champion; he can't do that if he lets them make him a criminal. He can't be a criminal. He's just a kid. Kids can't be criminals. They're crazy if they think kids - Green and Red - can ever be criminals.
"I - I - I," he stutters, mouth gone dry. "I want… I can't…"
"What you want," the man interrupts curtly, tone brooking no argument, "is irrelevant."
Something wild flares in Green's chest and spreads through his blood to the rest of his body, makes him lightheaded and heedless of the man's warnings. "I don't want to be one of you! I want to go home! Take me home! Take us -"
Before he can process the dwindling distance between him and Archer, he feels the crack of a fist against his cheek. With a mangled yelp, he is thrown to the floor with the force of the punch, landing facedown, his mouth half-open against the tile.
A snarl tears its way out of Red's throat, animalistic and uncontrolled, and he lunges at Archer, who swats him away with the back of his hand almost effortlessly. Red does not make a sound, nor does he fall to the ground from the force of the blow like Green did. Instead he gets back up and charges the man again, who extends his arm and grabs him by the forehead, keeping him at arm's length. Red snarls again as his feet pedal uselessly at the floor.
"Idiots," Archer hisses, and with a swipe of his arm, he finally sends Red hurtling onto the floor. The boy lets out a cry when he hits the ground, falling silent again when he rolls to a stop on his back, eyes staring at the ceiling listlessly.
Green can only see the floor. Something tastes metallic and coppery in his mouth. His head is pounding. What just… he didn't…
"Willful little brats," Archer mumbles to himself disbelievingly. With a sigh, he straightens out the wrinkles in his uniform. He lays his eyes on Green's sprawled form with distaste. "I already told you that what you want has no bearing on your situation. You belong to Team Rocket. Any and all behavior like the insubordination you two just displayed will be punished again and much more severely than whatever damage I may have inflicted upon the two of you just now."
Still reeling from the blows, the boys don't perceive the sound of Archer's boots against the tile or the sound of the door opening again.
"Your lessons begin tomorrow. Spend the rest of today reflecting on the consequences of your actions."
And with that the door closes, leaving them alone.
Green inhales sharply through his mouth and finds that the air stings the inside of his cheek. Groaning, he props himself up on his arms with some difficulty. When he does, his vision swims violently and the room lurches with it. He feels like throwing up. Blood dribbles from his mouth and onto the back of his hand, and he stares at it dumbly.
"Red…" he calls weakly, not quite trusting himself not to crane his neck around to look at the other boy.
There is no response.
"Red," he repeats, this time with more urgency in his voice. His arms tremble from the strain of his weight. The blood keeps falling in droplets onto his hand - a violent scarlet against the paleness of his skin.
"G-Green…" comes the small reply after a few unbearable moments.
The tight feeling that had been gripping his chest since Archer announced his intentions for them loosens at the sound of Red's voice, if only slightly. Relief washes over Green's body in waves, and his muscles go slack with it. Luckily, he is able to use the last of his strength to push himself into a sitting position before his arms give out from under him. Groggily, he lifts his unstained hand to his mouth. It comes back red.
His vision is still too cloudy to see read clearly. "You - you okay?" he asks, voice trembling despite himself.
Red's answer is the wet sound of a hiccup, a shuddering intake of breath. Green bites his lip at the sound, and hisses when the pain is sharper than he expected. His head feels like a pack of geodude are sitting in it, but he tries getting to his feet anyway. It's hard, but he manages, dizzily dragging his feet, each movement bringing him closer to Red.
When he is close enough, he eases himself down beside the shuddering body.
Green has never been good at this part. Whenever Red cried, he would either tell him to stop being such a girl or stand a few feet away from, hovering awkwardly, until he managed to collect himself.
But things have changed. No one had ever raised their hand to Green before, not even as a threat. He's pretty sure that Red's mom had never even raised her voice at him in a harsh reprimand. Everything is brutally new and foreign, and even though he's just a kid, Green can understand that things can't stay the same.
All they have is each other now. They might never see their families again. He thinks of Daisy, Red's mom, Leaf. He holds their memory close to his chest for a few moments. Then, he reaches out and lays his open hands on Red's trembling back to offer him what little comfort he can.
"It's gonna be okay," he whispers (even though it won't, not ever again). "It's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay."
He hopes that if he repeats it enough, it might actually come true.
- . . . -
The fluorescent lights of the training room stay on throughout the night, so Green hardly gets any sleep. The floor is uncomfortable, and he is cold even though Red's body is pressed against his, still trembling slightly as he cries in his sleep.
Something coalesces in Green's mind during those long hours. It is an ugly and wretched thing, this feeling, and it festers at the sight of Red's swollen cheek, at the lingering taste of copper in his mouth.
Hatred is a volatile thing - a terrible fire that burns within a heart, transforming it into a furnace made of the blackest of metals. When tempered with the instinctive drive to survive, it becomes a weapon. The furnace will give you all the strength you need, if you would only continue to feed its flames.
This is truly the first lesson of Team Rocket. Beneath its grand ambitions and cruel experiments, there are hundreds of faces underlying it all. They are human faces, faces just like everyone else's. Greed, ambition, envy - all the deplorable things that people think of when they see another headline about the 'evil' criminal organization - they are all facets of human nature. It is ugly and monstrous, but still human, no matter how much the stay-at-home mother of three or the everyday businessman reading his newspaper at the local Pokémon Center want to deny it.
There is evil in the world, and it dwells as much in the typical housewife as it does in the Team Rocket grunt holding a gun to the Poké Mart cashier's head.
(The one distinction, however, is that Team Rocket's evil is channeled toward freedom).
Green is going through the elementary motion that all members of Team Rocket do. The vivid memories of Archer's fist cracking against his jaw, of Archer throwing Red onto the ground - fill his young heart with loathing, virulent and venomous.
Yet he does not long for vengeance yet. All hatred starts out innocuously enough, and the poison spreading through Green's veins is no different.
He stares at Red's sleeping form and desires nothing more than to protect him. He never wants to see him hurt again, wants to be strong so that bastards like Archer will never be able lay a finger on him and make him cry ever again.
Ah, but there it is. He needs to be strong enough.
He does not know how he'll do it, but as the arm thrown over Red's side tightens around the sleeping boy, he promises himself that he'll do whatever it takes to get it done.
I promise, he thinks. I promise no one will ever hurt us again.
He wills the thought hard enough to make it solid, make it fall into the center of his heart, a rock for it stand on. He'll never let himself be weak again. He'll be strong.
Eventually, he falls asleep, the thought still echoing through his dreams.
- . . . -
Archer appears early the next morning and meets Green's glare with a flat look. Without waiting for the boys to get to their feet, the man plucks two poké balls from his pocket and tosses them at them. The spheres hit the floor a couple of feet away from the boys, and they explode simultaneously in twin flashes of light. Before they open their eyes, wincing from the assault against their retinas, they hear squeals of surprise and are knocked back by small, furry creatures jumping onto their laps.
When Green is finally able to open his eyes, he is greeted by the chocolate-colored muzzle of Eevee. She licks at his face delightedly, and he finds that he cannot suppress the equally delighted laugh that leaves his mouth. Beside them, Red and Pikachu go through a similar reunion, the electric mouse head-butting his trainer's stomach playfully.
"Rather than give these pokémon to our Research & Development Department to enhance, the Boss has ordered they remain with the two of you."
Green may be incredibly grateful to have Eevee back with them but not enough to dispel the hatred that seizes him each time he sees Archer's face. He scowls at the man, wincing when the expression sends a dull throb of pain through his swollen cheek.
"It's all well and good, then," Archer continues, choosing to ignore Green's expression, "because Team Rocket would not exist without pokémon. All training for prospective members is carried out with both hopeful trainers and their pokémon," he pauses to point at the wall behind them and the large red 'R' that is painted there, "Beneath that insignia is our oath. It reads: 'All pokémon exist for the glory of Team Rocket.' This will be your second lesson.
"Pokémon are tools. They exist to help mankind achieve their goals. It is our duty to sharpen these tools beyond their natural limits and make them achieve levels of power unlike any they would be able to achieve on their own. This cannot be done by coddling them; it can only be done by ordering them to confront challenges thought insurmountable and forcing them to overcome them," Archer reaches into his pocket and brandishes a third poké ball, "With that, we will commence our third lesson."
With a flick of his wrist, the poké ball flies through the air, landing a small distance from the boys and their pokémon. Another blinding flash of light explodes put from the sphere's confines, and a roar tears out of the creature's throat as it takes shape. When the light fades, the sturdy, fearsome form of an onix is revealed, its beady eyes locked on the boys.
"Your task is to defeat your opponent in battle," says Archer from where he stands behind the giant rock snake. "Failure will not be tolerated."
Before they can voice their objections, Archer snaps his fingers, and the rock snake draws back its tail to attack, casting a shadow over them. Letting out a cry of alarm, Green tackles Red into a roll, just barely missing the downward swipe of the onix's rocky tail. They roll to a stop with Green on top of Red, who stares up at him with eyes wide with terror. Dust hangs in the air as the onix draws its tail back, revealing the crater left behind from its attack.
"You're crazy!" Green yells over Pikachu and Eevee's cries. "Electric and normal attacks don't work on rock types!"
Archer just shrugs disinterestedly, squinting at them through the cloud of dust. "Type disadvantages are no excuse for failure. A true Rocket stops at nothing to claim victory and accomplish his mission. Attack again, Onix!"
With another cry, Green grabs onto Red's shoulder and rolls again. Each time Green's back is too the floor, he sees the tail of boulders speed closer and closer to them.
This time they aren't quite fast enough.
They manage to avoid the blow itself, but they are still close enough to where it lands to be tossed through the air. Green and Red land hard on their sides, the impact jarring enough to make their breaths leave them in a startled whoosh, but luckily not violent enough to break anything.
"Is this the best you can do?" yells Archer, unimpressed. "Hopeless! Onix, finish them now!"
Letting out a rumbling cry, the onix slithers across the arena floor towards them, eyes focused on its prey predatorily. Green forces himself to his feet, the adrenaline dumping into his veins temporarily muting the pain in his side.
"Red," he grits out, "Get up, Red! We have to move outta the way!"
The onix is almost upon them now, opening its mouth in a gravelly roar. Green stares at the wide maw of its jaws, but he cannot accept that this is how it will end for them. He can't even consider it. His heart is pounding in his ears, the drum-like sound overpowering the voice in his mind that screams in terror, that wants to beg for mercy.
He has to fight.
"Eevee!" he yells, and the brown blur that is racing towards them from across the arena pulls ahead of the yellow one, lunging into the air towards the rock snake.
Eevee hits its target headfirst, but the attack ends up doing more damage to her than the onix. She ricochets off the rock snake's body with a cry of pain, just barely recovering in time to land on her feet a short distance away. The attack, however, has its intended effect. The onix lets out a disgruntled cry and rears back from its advance on the boys, focusing its attention on its attacker.
Red finally makes it back onto his feet at the same time that Pikachu reaches Eevee, standing beside her in silent solidarity, cheeks crackling threateningly. The onix, aware of how moot that threat actually is, pays it no heed, lunging at the pokémon with another roar.
"Dodge it!" Green orders, hoping that Pikachu listens to him too.
The boys' pokémon manage to get out of the way of the onix's tackle in the nick of time, each jumping in separate directions. As the onix gathers itself back up to its full height, Green hastily goes through all the things he's ever read about pokémon battles. Eevee and Pikachu are low leveled, so there's no way that they could possibly know any strong attacks. The only moves they know are useless - tackle, thundershock, growl, tail whip…
The answer comes to Green in a flash.
"Use tail whip, Eevee!" he yells.
Eevee swings her bushy tail at the onix, making it let out a growl of annoyance and swat at her with the end of its tail. Fortunately, she manages to avoid it, continuing to use tail whip when she lands.
Green had always thought that this kind of strategy was lame whenever he saw someone else use it in a televised match, but circumstances have dictated that this be their best hope of surviving.
He catches sight of something out of his peripheral vision, and jerks his head to the side to see what it is. His fears that it was Archer sneaking over to beat them up some more turn out to be unfounded, as it's just Red. The other boy stands with his back hunched and teeth gritted against the pain in his limp arm.
"Pikachu!" he calls, causing the yellow mouse to turn to look at him. The two make eye contact, and something passes between them silently, something that Green can't even begin to decipher.
A pained yelp from Eevee makes Green tear his eyes away from the other boy and back onto the battle. She was just tackled to the floor by the onix, skidding to a stop with a whine. Hurt as she is, it takes her longer to recover, and this lag is everything the relatively slow and cumbersome rock snake needs to swat at her with its tail again, sending her sliding across the arena with another cry.
"Eevee!" Green yells.
And then Red is moving, cocking his head to the side and narrowing his eyes, and across the field, Pikachu responds, letting out a sharp cry. The onix closes its eyes in irritation at the sound of the growl. Before the rock snake can react, Red moves again, and, impossibly, Pikachu changes tactics, darting towards the onix and swinging its lightning bolt-shaped tail at the same boulder on its body that Eevee had focused her attacks on before.
Green smirks nervously at the realization of what Red is doing. By simultaneously using growl and tail whip, he's building on Green's strategy and reducing their opponent's attack stats as well. He's not sure how they're communicating, but he can't bring himself to care, just hoping that whatever freaky connection they seem to have holds up for a while longer.
"Get up, Eevee!" it takes her a while, but she eventually manages to comply with that order, breathing hard. "Help Pikachu! Use tail whip, too!"
With both pokémon darting around the onix, the rock snake seems to hover on the edge of indecision as to which of them to attack. Even when it attempts to get rid of them, their lithe bodies, quick and small, are hard targets to hit, and its attacks end up missing.
Almost, Green thinks. Just a little more and -
"Rock slide!" Archer commands.
With a roar, the onix swings its tail at the ceiling. The impact dislodges several large pieces of concrete that hurtle to the floor haphazardly.
"Eevee!" Green screams.
Pikachu and Eevee let out cries of alarm and try to escape the attack, but to no avail. A rock hits the already wounded and sluggish Eevee in the abdomen and she crumples in on herself with one last, pained whine. Pikachu is not much luckier. He runs, darting through the falling rocks, but just as he is about to make his escape, a rock strikes him clear on the head. The rodent lets out a shriek before falling unconscious.
The boys tense with terror as the onix turns its head towards them. From across the arena, Archer lets out a sigh. "It seems that you didn't believe me when I warned you that failure wasn't an option…" He snaps his fingers again, but instead of slithering towards them to attack again, the onix seems to relax, bowing its head in submission.
"I-it was impossible," Green stutters pathetically, trying and failing to maintain his composure. "There was no w-way that an electric type and a normal type could beat a rock t-type…"
"Really?" Archer asks, raising an eyebrow at them sardonically as he makes his way over to them with long, measured strides. "I remember telling you that it is your role as trainers to force your pokémon to overcome their limits." He pauses in the rubble to pluck both Eevee and Pikachu out of it by the tails. "If they failed, it's due to their inability to overcome their weaknesses. Such a failure requires a suitable punishment, wouldn't you agree?"
Red's blood runs cold at the Rocket's words, his eyes widening and then narrowing at the sight of Pikachu hanging limply in his grasp. When Archer is within a few feet of them, he drops the pokémon on the floor and gestures towards them.
"What are you doing?" Green hisses, though there is more fear than bite in his tone.
The corners of Archer's eyes crinkle, revealing the early signs of wrinkles on his otherwise youthful and handsome face.
"I'm not doing anything. The person who should be responsible for the discipline of a pokémon is its trainer." He all but smirks now, his eyes shining with cruel mirth at the sight of their expressions. "Punish them. It is for their own benefit."
Green stares at the man, jaw gone slack with shock.
"No."
Archer lifts a blue eyebrow and turns to look at Red.
"No?" he repeats. It does not sound like a question.
The defiance on Red's face does not ebb away. His crimson eyes shine dangerously, the fire from before returning. "I won't hurt Pikachu for what you did to him."
Archer and Red maintain eye contact for a long moment. Green tries to make a noise in protest, but he does not know what to say. He keeps his eyes on Eevee's battered, unconscious form slumped in front of him. He can't hurt Eevee… she only tried to protect him. It was Archer's fault. All of it was Archer's fault. Not Eevee's.
"Be careful," Archer warns him without breaking eye contact, eyes gone cold and icy. "You're skating dangerously close to being insubordinate again."
There is silence.
Archer squints at the boy and then snaps his fingers. Behind him, the rock snake lets out a growl as it twists into motion again, putting its head low to the floor and beginning to slither towards them.
"Red…" Green whispers, eyes fixated on the encroaching snake.
"You boys will learn…"
The onix is close now, its head changing direction to avoid running into Archer.
"Red, you've gotta -"
Archer's eyes flash dangerously, and he raises his arm slowly. "That insubordination will always be met with the same punishment!"
The rock snake's tail is curling around Red's feet now, its head rising above them and staring down at them imposingly.
"Red!"
Archer extends his arm and points straight at Red, his hand curling into a fist.
"Bind!"
All at once, the rock snake's tail wraps tight around Red's middle, clamping his arms to his side. The boy lets out a scream as he is lifted into the air, the tail of rocks tightening around him.
"Red!" Green tears his eyes away from his screaming best friend and glares at Archer. "Let him go!"
Green charges at the Rocket wildly, heedless to the already foregone conclusion. The Rocket grabs and holds him at arm's length, hand fisted in his hair.
"And why should I do that, Oak?" Archer sneers, voice barely audible over Red's screaming. "Why should I listen to a spoiled, disobedient child like you and excuse insubordination from my trainees?" h=His fist twists in Green's hair painfully, and a cry tears its way out of his throat. "Give me one good reason."
The sound of Red's screaming in his ears drowns out everything - the pain, the voice of his conscience, the sting of his battered pride. The flames in his heart stutter out, and the smoke that curls out from his chest tastes acrid in the back of his mouth.
"G-Green…!" Red grits out, monotone voice broken open with agony and pleading.
He hates, he hates, he hates (himself - for thinking of the whole stupid plan that got them into this mess, for not listening to Leaf when she warned them about stealing, for agreeing to go in the helicopter, for not being strong enough)… but all that hate is useless without the power to act on it.
"Please…" he whispers hoarsely, "please… just let him go. I'll do anything. Please, sir…"
And Archer smiles. He twists his hand in the boy's hair a little harder for good measure.
"Follow my orders," he says. When Green doesn't respond, Archer jerks his arm and draws the boy up by the hair to meet his eyes. "Did you hear me? Fulfill your responsibility."
The forest green of the boy's eyes shine impossibly with a stubborn fire. Archer smirks, wondering just how long that fire can rage before it burns those pretty little forests away.
But despite the defiance that burns so overtly in his eyes, the boy nods choppily, and Archer lets go of him.
Green stares at Eevee blankly. She is just beginning to come around, her dark brown eyes opening groggily and trying to focus on Green. She lets out an apologetic whine, trying to make it onto her feet. There is a lump is his throat that he can't seem to swallow. He can't, he can't -
Another scream.
"If you don't act soon, Onix will be sure to crush some of his bones to dust," Archer reminds him.
He thinks of his promise, of how he'd told himself that he would never let anything hurt Red again, about how he'd be strong from now on…
Quickly, he draws his foot back and then snaps it forward in kick. It catches Eevee in the stomach, and she lets out a high-pitched cry. Red screams again, and something within him snaps. He draws his foot back and kicks, again and again and again, until Eevee has stopped whining and has fallen unconscious from the blows again.
There is a snap of fingers, and the onix gives a rumbling growl as it unwinds its tail from Red's torso, letting the boy fall limply to the floor. Green stares at Eevee, at the labored rise and fall of her chest, at the distressed expression on her face even in unconsciousness.
Archer says nothing. He reaches into his pocket and grabs the poké ball from it, pointing it at the rock snake and recalling it with red beam of light. Wordlessly, he turns and makes his way back out the door, shutting it behind him with a resounding slam.
The room spins and Green doubles over, emptying the contents of his stomach onto the arena floor. When his eyes begin to sting and there is the warm sensation of liquid running down his cheeks, he blames it on the burn of the stomach acid and bile against his esophagus.
He isn't crying. He's going to be strong. He has to be strong, and tears are for the weak. He's not crying.
He's not, he's not, he's not -
- . . . -
Today their opponent is a golem.
It rolls and rolls and rolls about the field, trampling everything in its path.
Instead of ordering him to fight, Red grabs Pikachu and runs about the field, futilely trying to outrun the boulder-like monster. Green alternates between ordering Eevee to distract it from Red and screaming at the other boy to order Pikachu to attack.
Archer just watches them from across the field, a figure of cutting black against the white of the arena's walls.
When they lose, Red refuses to hurt Pikachu again. So Archer hurts him.
To stop him, Green kicks Eevee until she passes out.
- . . . -
Now their opponent is a kangashkan.
When separated from their young, most kangashkan fall into a deep depression, Archer informs them tonelessly.
The beast rams a ferocious mega punch into the ground, Eevee and Pikachu just barely managing to avoid it.
Only the toughest of them enter unstoppable rages.
He falls silent after that, opting simply to watch. Green doesn't need him to continue to know that this is one of those rare cases.
When it finally manages to knock Eevee and Pikachu out, Green decides he hates it. It doesn't matter that Pikachu is no longer at a type disadvantage. No matter how many times the little rodent fires volleys of electricity at it, the kangashkan keeps coming, plowing through the electric attacks with crazed roars.
Nothing he can think of ever works.
He takes his anger out on Eevee, gritting his teeth and deafening himself to her squeals of pain, to Red's cries as Archer punishes him for not punishing Pikachu.
He doesn't want to look up and see the tears spilling over from the kangashkan's eyes. He doesn't want to come face to face with the agony that makes it heedless to pain and reason.
She misses her baby more than anything, and she'd destroy everything that stands in her way to find it. Seeing that makes it a lot harder for him to hate her, to objectify her and make her an it.
Green lets himself wonder if his mother would do the same for him even though he knows she wouldn't. She chose to abandon him. She left him at Pallet Town and ran off without looking back.
(He's jealous of that baby because its mother loves it so much it would destroy itself before giving up on finding its child. It makes hating easier even as he makes excuses for her pain.)
It's just a pokémon. Those tears aren't real. Can't it realize that taking away its baby made it stronger? Of course it doesn't. It's just a stupid pokémon.
He draws his leg back one more time, and lashes out at Eevee's small, curled body.
It's just a stupid pokémon.
- . . . -
Continue to Part 2.
Act I
The story of Professor Oak's missing grandson is being blasted across the airwaves by every major news station the next day and every day after that.
There are televised statements from the neighbors, which mostly consist of touching scenes of the townspeople standing outside Oak Labs to show their support.
Most notable of these interviews is the one of a woman holding her sobbing daughter tight in her arms, looking as if she was just barely restraining her own tears.
"Those boys were - are my daughter's friends. She misses them." She hesitates for a moment before looking directly into the camera. "Just the thought of my daughter being lost out there with them - if she hadn't come home and had gone with them instead - I can't even imagine how it would feel… Please - help us find them," she chokes out, barely audible over the sound of her daughter's intensifying cries.
Eventually, the family makes a statement, and a girl who looks more like the boy's sister than his mother speaks tearfully. The professor himself stands behind her, a hand placed comfortingly on her shoulder, his face stern.
"Please," she begs, voice thick with tears, "if a-anyone knows where they are, please bring them h-home. He - they need to come home." She pauses, and the tears begin to flow unrestrainedly now. "Please… he's all I have left… please."
It's media gold.
There was little emphasis played on the other boy's mother, who was leaning into Oak's side, crying the whole time. They only played a sound bite of her tearful statement at the very end of the report, but by that time Giovanni had already turned off the television, his upper lip curled around his cigarette in disgust.
Archer watches from his seat across the Boss's desk, jaw set and eyes wary.
"I had no idea the goddamn media would take so much interest in this," Giovanni all but snarls, hanging onto his dignity by the coattails.
"None of us could have predicted this would happen, sir."
The darkness of the Boss's eyes deepens in anger, flashing dangerously.
"That is no excuse," he snaps, tendrils of smoke steaming from his flaring nostrils. "Our advantage is lost to us now. We cannot contact Oak to make our demands when the police are so intimately involved in the situation! Claiming responsibility for this would increase our visibility to a degree that is unacceptable in these early stages."
Archer understands. It wouldn't do to trade one advantage for another, especially not one as valuable as this one. Knowledge of Team Rocket is still rather hard to come by these days, with the police only recently starting to realize that their motives and operations may run deeper than making a quick buck.
This false assumption is possibly the most valuable inheritance the Boss had received from his predecessor.
The long years that Madame Boss was in charge led the police to the correct assumption that the organization was just a typical den of thieves. They believed the Rockets posed a similar threat to that of a few rabid rattata. Sure, it was unfortunate if someone got bitten, but it wasn't anything that couldn't be fixed with a few shots of potent vaccine and a call to the exterminator. There were bigger fish to fry anyway, so the law had deigned to only deal with the Rockets on a case-by-case basis, basically leaving Madame Boss and her Rockets to their own devices.
Archer and Ariana had been newly recruited grunts when the old bat finally keeled over and died, leaving behind a couple hundred members whose only allegiance was to themselves. Being of similar intentions at the time, Archer and Ariana had often discussed deserting before the inevitable power struggle between the administrators and executives started and they were forced to take sides. After all, the life of the solitary criminal, though riskier than running with a pack, was preferable to the degradation of fighting for power-grubbing bureaucrats. It simply wasn't a productive use of their time.
But that was when the Boss took over.
Archer remembers being skeptical at the thought of the scientist from Silph Corporation leading an organization like Team Rocket. When the rumors that his mother had disowned him began to spread, his skepticism was distilled into incredulity. The story behind their falling out varied depending on who exactly was asked, but one of the most surprisingly persistent rumors held that it was due to his refusal to end a drawn out summer romance when she ordered him to.
Back then, Archer and Ariana had considered the rumor to be a particularly entertaining notion. They used to take a base enjoyment in snickering about the new leader and his years-long roll in the hay with the country bumpkin behind his back. It was so comical that when a few of the other grunts had started a betting ring around the question of how long he would last before the Madame's old cadres deposed him, Archer and Ariana had thrown their caps into the ring. Archer had bet a moderate amount on a solid year; Ariana had wagered two month's pay on a meager six months.
And then the purges had started.
One morning, the Madame's executives and admins were found dead, a single bullet buried in each of their skulls. There was none of the pomp and circumstance that the she'd employed whenever she had someone killed, yet even without the sight of the corpses of her victims put on display at general assemblies as examples of what became of "traitors" (the term having a very loose definition in the Madame's day), the new Boss's executions made more of an impact. Nearly a dozen of Team Rocket's leaders, most of them in power as long as the Madame herself, were wiped out all at once. The move was bold, indicative of cunning, power, and ruthlessness. It made a statement much more profound than even the Madame could have hoped to aspire to.
With a dozen bullets, the Boss made his position clear: all the power the newly retired pencil pushers had accumulated by exploiting the old bureaucracy was meaningless before his own. He was not dependent on admins or execs to give orders to the different factions; whoever did not follow his orders was handled in the same manner as the cadres.
Gone were the secretive snickering and betting rings. Their absence was not yet an indication of respect but fear - the only message some members of the organization could understand.
The next seven years were defined by efficiency, ambition, and grand goals. The Boss gave Team Rocket purpose and ambition, but above all, he gave it honor and pride. There were unspoken codes of conduct that all members were expected to live by: rape was not a method that the organization employed; accordingly, a special punishment was reserved for those found to be rapists. If an operation necessitated an innocent person's death, it was to be carried out swiftly and painlessly. Rockets did not turn on other Rockets - snitches, when discovered (and they always were), were left to the mercy of their fellow Rockets.
They were more soldiers than criminals under Giovanni's leadership, a cohesive group working together toward accomplishing the organization's noble goals. No matter what the public thought of them, this was always something the Boss took care to reinforce.
Ariana had scoffed at this in the early days, but she soon came to be awed by him instead. Archer shared this reaction - it is rather difficult not to when confronted by someone like Giovanni.
It had taken a little under four months for the two of them to be noticed by the Boss. The particular job that had garnered them the recognition was an intelligence-gathering mission in the Saffron City Police Department. With the sterling new credentials the organization had provided for her, Ariana had gotten a job as the chief of police's secretary. Archer had posed as a delivery boy.
He still looks back on that time fondly - Ariana, looking classy and professional in her knee-length skirts and deceptively modest blouses, forced to act demure and polite to get into the chief's good graces. She hadn't even had to get into the old man's bed; he had fallen all over himself trying to get her there that he'd inadvertently given her access to all the intelligence they had been ordered to retrieve and more.
Even better than that was how Archer had gotten to present the man with the terms of their arrangement at the end of their time together. Ariana had looked on, smirking placidly as Archer laid out the countless pictures of the chief's liaisons with women who certainly weren't his wife. Secretaries and other employees, even prostitutes.
Surely he didn't want his wife or the press to know, Archer had said. They'd eat him alive!
When the man blubbered and agreed to provide them with anything they wanted, Ariana had been unable to contain her mirth, and a cruel laugh spilled from her ruby-red lips. Archer had merely smirked.
(Perhaps the most enjoyable part of that mission was months later, when the chief was beginning to get testy, chewing at his tight leash. He knew too much and was letting his conscience get the better of him. Archer was surprised; he expected the man to be too self-involved to value the well-being of the pokémon they had appropriated from errant trainers that wandered into unpatrolled alleyways, especially over his career.
Archer had put him down quickly because of that. He'd outgrown his usefulness anyway, what with the new mayor's intentions of replacing him).
When they had returned to headquarters after two months of undercover work, the Boss had called them into his office and regarded them with a dark-eyed stare of appraisal.
"I've read your report. You'll excuse me if I found it a bit hard to believe at first. Somehow two new recruits have managed to extract a multitude of reliable information from the Saffron Police Department and cultivate a reliable asset - the chief of police, no less?" their leader had said. "Team Rocket is very fortunate to have you."
Archer and Ariana had immediately fallen to their knees to pledge their loyalty. The Boss had laughed, the sound booming and appreciative.
"You would never betray me, would you?"
"Never, sir!" they had returned in unison.
Higher-ranked missions followed, and after a half a year of these, the promotions came - operative-issue uniforms and desks. They became known as Apollo and Athena, gods among men.
The Boss was a man of many tastes, appreciative of both Ariana's unparalleled talents in the field and cutting, curvaceous beauty, dangerous and wild.
In Archer he saw both an invaluable operative, skilled in deception and subterfuge, and a loyal devotee. For all the people he has deceived and betrayed into turning over their inheritances and tightly guarded information, Archer has never - would never, lie to Giovanni. The Boss knows this. He can see the devotion in Archer's eyes, fervent and unyielding. He trusts Archer implicitly, and even though his uniform is still not the white of the Executive rank, he is already his right-hand man.
So maybe any other operative in his position would feel as if the Boss were berating him for the situation. Archer, however, has served his leader long enough to know that the Boss is a fair judge of character and does not make it a habit of passing the blame onto others to save face.
It is but one of the many characteristics that make Archer adore and serve him out of devotion and admiration rather than self-interest.
"What do you wish me to do with the children, sir?" he asks.
The Boss's head snaps up. He regards his subordinate flatly through the cloud of acrid smoke.
"Would you have me return them to their families?" Archer hedges, voice the slightest bit hesitant. "Or perhaps you would rather I dispose of -,"
"No," the Boss interrupts firmly, eyes steely with reproach, "that won't be necessary."
Child-killers are something else that Team Rocket does not tolerate. Their punishment is even more severe than the kind given out to the rapists.
There is a pregnant pause, and Archer berates himself for acting as if the Boss were no different from a typical criminal. He may lead a criminal organization, but Archer knows that the Boss has a moral code that he refuses to cross, no matter the circumstances.
It only makes Archer adore him all the more.
"I apologize -" he begins.
But his understanding leader waves him off, tapping some of the ash off his cigarette and into the ashtray on his desk.
"There's no need for that, Archer. I understand your concerns."
There is another long moment of silence, this one considerably less tense than the last, before the Boss addresses him again.
"Train them."
He doesn't understand. "Sir?"
"Train them," the Boss repeats, turning his attention to a stack of reports on his desk disinterestedly. "They displayed extraordinary talent in battling when we discovered them. It would be a shame to see all that talent go to waste." Amusement glints in his eyes now. "Perhaps in a few years they will be valuable assets to Team Rocket. It's a fairly equitable compensation for the loss of our advantage."
And he still does not understand why he would want this from him, but his leader's full attention is on the reports, now. The cigarette has been stubbed out onto the ashtray, still smoking faintly.
It is not his place to ask 'why.'
So he rises, salutes.
"Of course, sir."
Giovanni nods without looking up from the papers. "You may leave."
Years later, Archer will have but a second to wonder where exactly it was that he had gone wrong.
- . . . -
It has been three days since they were taken, but it feels more like an eternity to Green.
He hasn't seen anyone but Red since they arrived at - wherever the place they're at now is. Immediately after they helicopter had touched down, the man had fired off orders at a woman before walking off without another word to the boys.
The woman had led them down long and winding hallways that made Green think of the labyrinth from a movie he'd watched once. Fearfully, he wondered where the monster with the head of a tauros was.
When they finally reached a door, the lady had all but shoved the boys, still filthy from the rain and mud, into the room beyond the threshold. She snatched Eevee's and Pikachu's poké balls away from them before slamming the door shut. At the heart-stopping sound of a key twisting in the handle, Green had started banging on the door with his tiny fists, screaming frantically for help. Red had just made his way over to one of the two beds, the one furthest from the door, and lain down on his side facing away from Green.
They had been left alone ever since.
Green's cries had accomplished nothing save leaving his throat swollen and aching. Someone had been by to leave them dinner the night before and breakfast early that morning (so early that they'd woken Green up with a start; Red had already been staring at the door, unperturbed), but whoever was doing it was so quick that the food was always deposited on the floor by the door before Green could get a good look at them.
It doesn't help their situation any that Red refuses to talk to him, looking away whenever he tries to start some sort of conversation. Surely Red understands that the man tricked Green? He can't be blamed for that, especially when he had a giant nidoking that could make the earth swallow them up with a snap of his trainer's elegant fingers.
Red, Green concludes, is just stupid. It is the harshest insult his eight-year-old mind can conjure up, and he thinks it furiously, glaring at the back of the other boy's head from across the room, imagining that the force of his thoughts alone could set his dumb, stupid head on fire.
(So when Red starts making small wet sounds that first night, body shaking in the sheets, Green just grits his teeth and thinks good.)
The hours trudge by, and Green finds himself growing increasingly distressed. Isolation does not suit him at all. He has become accustomed to the wide-open spaces of Pallet's fields - of having acres and acres as his backyard. The four windowless walls of their prison saps his strength and fill his young mind with an agitation that he has never experienced before, not even when his mommy and daddy started fighting every night and Daisy would sneak into his room, hiding her tears in the downy hair at the back of his head.
At first he fights it. Even though Red is mad at him and all the terms and rules he'd come to know about dealing with his surroundings (avoid grandpa and you won't get in trouble, pretend to cry and Daisy will let you have your way, call Leaf a stupid girl and she'll get so angry she'll leave you alone, just lead and Red will follow) no longer apply, he still has his pride. This is the second time in his short life that this has happened to him, and Green finds himself more lost than the first time. He doesn't have Daisy to smile at him and tell him that everything will be alright (even if it won't), and despite that the peculiar neighbor boy with the dull red eyes is in the same predicament as he is, it feels like he's billions of miles away.
So after he finishes his breakfast, his valiant efforts at holding it all in falter.
He is in the middle of picking some of the caked mud off his skin when it happens; one second he is sliding his stubby nails under a particularly stubborn patch of dirt and the next his vision goes blurry. It takes him a few moments to realize that the burning means that he is crying, that the terrible sounds he hears are coming from him.
The intensity of the emotions that wash over him is too overwhelming for him to worry about looking weak in front of Red. His sobs bounce off the whitewashed walls, echoing back into his ears, and all he can think is that he wants his sister, his mommy, his daddy. He cries thoughtlessly for what seems like days before he falls into a shallow, dreamless sleep.
When he wakes up, he finds Red in bed with him, small body tucked in against his own. The hand whose thumb isn't stuck in his mouth is clamped tightly around Green's abdomen.
The older boy blinks, body tense. He is not quite sure if he should forgive Red for being mean to him earlier. Something about this feels wrong - the way his body's lanky, bony angles sink into Red's soft form, still pudgy with the baby fat that Green lost far too early. There is something else, something fundamental and binding, but he cannot quite put his finger on what exactly that reason is, or even why he should feel that way.
After a few minutes of this the doubts fall away and he gives in thankfully. He is too exhausted to deny any kind of comfort, even if it isn't from the people he'd been crying so desperately for before.
The man from before - Archer - finds them like this.
When the door opens abruptly, both boys jerk up, their muscles tense and eyes wide with fear. The man regards them with a smug expression on his face, tinged with something else that reminds Green of how Leaf used to look whenever she found him first when they played hide-and-go-seek. It makes Green unbearably homesick and annoyed at the same time, and he glares at the man with all the defiance he can muster.
It only serves to add a muted sort of amusement to the man's dark azure eyes.
"What do you want?" Green sneers. He does not like this man and feels compelled to make sure he knows this.
"My name is Archer," the man says, voice clipped and business-like, "but from now on you will address me as sir."
Riled up at how the man avoided the question, Green makes a fist around the bed sheets. "No."
The only sign of annoyance Archer gives is the minute twitch of his eyebrow. "It seems like respect was something you were never taught. Your deficiency of common sense, however, is something you came into this world lacking."
Green may not understand how the man is doing it, but he knows that he is being insulted. "Are you sayin' I'm dumb?" he demands, his cheeks flushed underneath the dirt caked there.
A smile, sardonic and all teeth.
"You can say that."
The blood running through his veins burns, but before he can open his mouth to retort, Red whispers, "Green."
There is a warning hidden beneath the otherwise monotone voice, and Green clamps his mouth shut, glaring at the other man with all the hatred he can muster.
After a moment of tense silence, Archer nods, satisfied.
"Much better. Now, assuming you can remember to stay quiet and respectful-" He pauses, staring pointedly at Green. "-the two of you will follow me. If you even so much as say one word out of turn, however, you will be returned to this room until I feel you've learned your lesson. Do you understand?"
Green is practically aching to talk back, but when Red elbows him in the side, he grits out a bitter "yes."
Archer raises an eyebrow. "Yes…?"
"Sir," Red supplies, voice small and cracked, still rough from sleep. "Yes, sir."
The Rocket nods approvingly. "You can stand to learn something from your friend, kid," he says before turning on his heel and marching out of the room.
Red grips Green's hand, the knuckles nearly white, and pulls him off the bed. They pause at the open door, almost as if they were considering the possibility that this were all a trick. It is more likely that they are scared of what lies in wait for them outside the relative safety of their prison, the memory of the men who had attacked them in the forest and their fearsome raticate alerting them to the frightening reality that this place was probably full of men just like them.
"Would you rather stay in there?" Archer asks, stopping to look back at them questioningly.
Taking a deep breath, Green grits his teeth and takes his first step over the threshold with Red in tow, small hands grasping each other, their fingers pressing harshly into the soft skin of their palms.
Archer ends up leading them to a large, low-ceilinged room unlike any they had ever seen. When he notices the sinks and urinals, white and pristine, much like his grandfather's lab, he realizes that it is some kind of big bathroom.
The Rocket leans onto the edge of a porcelain sink, regarding them with distaste. "The two of you are filthy," he points out, wrinkling his nose. "Clean yourselves up."
The boys stare at the man for a few moments, almost as if they can't quite comprehend what it is he's asking of them. Archer sighs softly, raising his hands to his head to massage at his temples in soothing circles.
"The showers are that way," he says impatiently, gesturing beyond the wall of urinals, past the faucets and stalls. "Make use of them. You have ten minutes."
Before Red can open his mouth to say that he's never taken a bath by himself, Green pulls him along to where Archer indicated, flushing in embarrassment.
The showers look like the ones attached to the locker rooms of the local middle school Daisy attended, except a lot cleaner and lacking the pungent stale smell that lingered there. With the abandon that only young boys possess, Green begins to undress, bending over to untie his muddy shoes. Red stares in something vaguely resembling terror before doing the same, small hands tugging at the hem of his t-shirt and pulling it up and over his head, leaving his hair in a state of disarray. Despite the fact that they had gone swimming together plenty of times before, there is something about the room that makes them avert their eyes and turn their dirty bodies away, ashamed. The tile beneath their bare feet is cold, and they stiffly make their way from their discarded clothes to one of the showerheads.
After fiddling with the knobs for a few moments, the showerhead roars to life, shooting out a jet of cold water that buffets Green in the head. Yelping at the painful sensation of the cold high-pressure water stream against his scalp, he lowers his head to protect his eyes, leaving the water to scrape at the crown of his head. It takes a few torturous moments for the frigid water to warm to a tolerable temperature, and Green and Red go from shivering in the spray to yelping at the heat. In minutes, the showers are filled with a thick, cloying steam.
Slowly, feeling returns to Green's body as the layers of dirt and mud are peeled away and the numbness that had lingered there beforehand are drowned in the thousands of tiny knives that prick against his skin and muscles.
The boys just stand in the spray for several moments, occasionally opening their mouths and drinking the warm water, scalding against their sore, swollen throats. They drink until their bellies are full, spreading warmth so that their bodies begin to tingle with life.
The water is turned off abruptly.
"Your ten minutes are up!" calls Archer's voice from down the hall, a ring of impatience hanging like a threat.
When they reluctantly make their way back, Archer greets them with a disinterested look and new clothes that turn out to be a few sizes too large.
"We don't exactly have many operatives your size," he says by way of explanation. "Until we can procure clothes in your size, you'll just have to make do with these."
Red seems to have a small crisis when he sees the 'R' on his shirt, eyes flashing with instinctual repulsion. In the end, necessity wins when he begins to shiver again. When he pulls on the black uniform, he does it in a manner that suggests extreme discomfort.
If Green shares his friend's apprehensiveness, he doesn't show it. The older boy steps into the offered clothes almost gratefully.
When the boys are dressed, Archer signals for them to follow him again, leading them back into the maze. It is hard for them to keep up with the man's long strides. They trip over the legs of their oversized pants that drag behind them a few times in their efforts to keep their guide in sight.
They eventually come to a door that looks identical to the one that had kept them locked in for the past two days. Green sets his eyes on it with dread, expecting to be tossed back into the suffocating little room, but when Archer turns the handle and opens it, the sight that greets them is nothing like the room.
The room is easily the biggest Green has ever set foot in. Its ceiling is high and the walls widely spaced apart. There is a familiar pattern on the floor - a wide rectangle with two smaller ones inscribed along the shorter sides and a circle drawn in the middle. It is an arena - not quite the size of the ones used for the tournament matches on the television, but large enough to warrant the boys' slack-jawed awe.
"This is one of our training rooms," Archer says. "It's usually reserved for the higher-ups of the organization, but the Boss has relegated its use to us for the foreseeable future. The two of you will be spending a lot of time in here from now on, so I suggest that you become acquainted with it quickly."
"Why?" At the man's quirk of an eyebrow, Green tacks on a rushed "sir" to the end of his question.
"The Boss has requested that the two of you be trained and has placed me in charge of your… cultivation as Team Rocket operatives."
Something cold and tight grips Green's heart at the man's words. Red, naturally quiet and still, goes tense, crimson eyes flashing dully with alarm.
Seeing the expression on their faces, Archer barks out a chuckle.
"Now, now. It's not the end of the world. I assure you that being personally requested for service by the Boss is a great honor, though I'm sure that you two don't view it as such. Yet. There will be time for the two of you to learn what it means to wear the uniform of the organization and work to bring our goals to fruition. The Boss has assigned me to be your teacher in this regard, and I fully intend to carry out my duties. Let my example serve as your first lesson." He makes eye contact with both children, blue eyes steely and severe. "Always follow orders. Failure and insubordination are not tolerated."
Green barely processes Archer's words. His narrow back is suddenly drenched in a cold sweat, and his throat has become tight.
They mean to transform them into criminals, he thinks. Like the ones from that almost killed them in the forest. Like the ones that he sees on the news, hunted by the police and hated by everyone.
He can barely process the thought. He is not bad. He can't be a criminal. He wants to be the Pokémon League Champion; he can't do that if he lets them make him a criminal. He can't be a criminal. He's just a kid. Kids can't be criminals. They're crazy if they think kids - Green and Red - can ever be criminals.
"I - I - I," he stutters, mouth gone dry. "I want… I can't…"
"What you want," the man interrupts curtly, tone brooking no argument, "is irrelevant."
Something wild flares in Green's chest and spreads through his blood to the rest of his body, makes him lightheaded and heedless of the man's warnings. "I don't want to be one of you! I want to go home! Take me home! Take us -"
Before he can process the dwindling distance between him and Archer, he feels the crack of a fist against his cheek. With a mangled yelp, he is thrown to the floor with the force of the punch, landing facedown, his mouth half-open against the tile.
A snarl tears its way out of Red's throat, animalistic and uncontrolled, and he lunges at Archer, who swats him away with the back of his hand almost effortlessly. Red does not make a sound, nor does he fall to the ground from the force of the blow like Green did. Instead he gets back up and charges the man again, who extends his arm and grabs him by the forehead, keeping him at arm's length. Red snarls again as his feet pedal uselessly at the floor.
"Idiots," Archer hisses, and with a swipe of his arm, he finally sends Red hurtling onto the floor. The boy lets out a cry when he hits the ground, falling silent again when he rolls to a stop on his back, eyes staring at the ceiling listlessly.
Green can only see the floor. Something tastes metallic and coppery in his mouth. His head is pounding. What just… he didn't…
"Willful little brats," Archer mumbles to himself disbelievingly. With a sigh, he straightens out the wrinkles in his uniform. He lays his eyes on Green's sprawled form with distaste. "I already told you that what you want has no bearing on your situation. You belong to Team Rocket. Any and all behavior like the insubordination you two just displayed will be punished again and much more severely than whatever damage I may have inflicted upon the two of you just now."
Still reeling from the blows, the boys don't perceive the sound of Archer's boots against the tile or the sound of the door opening again.
"Your lessons begin tomorrow. Spend the rest of today reflecting on the consequences of your actions."
And with that the door closes, leaving them alone.
Green inhales sharply through his mouth and finds that the air stings the inside of his cheek. Groaning, he props himself up on his arms with some difficulty. When he does, his vision swims violently and the room lurches with it. He feels like throwing up. Blood dribbles from his mouth and onto the back of his hand, and he stares at it dumbly.
"Red…" he calls weakly, not quite trusting himself not to crane his neck around to look at the other boy.
There is no response.
"Red," he repeats, this time with more urgency in his voice. His arms tremble from the strain of his weight. The blood keeps falling in droplets onto his hand - a violent scarlet against the paleness of his skin.
"G-Green…" comes the small reply after a few unbearable moments.
The tight feeling that had been gripping his chest since Archer announced his intentions for them loosens at the sound of Red's voice, if only slightly. Relief washes over Green's body in waves, and his muscles go slack with it. Luckily, he is able to use the last of his strength to push himself into a sitting position before his arms give out from under him. Groggily, he lifts his unstained hand to his mouth. It comes back red.
His vision is still too cloudy to see read clearly. "You - you okay?" he asks, voice trembling despite himself.
Red's answer is the wet sound of a hiccup, a shuddering intake of breath. Green bites his lip at the sound, and hisses when the pain is sharper than he expected. His head feels like a pack of geodude are sitting in it, but he tries getting to his feet anyway. It's hard, but he manages, dizzily dragging his feet, each movement bringing him closer to Red.
When he is close enough, he eases himself down beside the shuddering body.
Green has never been good at this part. Whenever Red cried, he would either tell him to stop being such a girl or stand a few feet away from, hovering awkwardly, until he managed to collect himself.
But things have changed. No one had ever raised their hand to Green before, not even as a threat. He's pretty sure that Red's mom had never even raised her voice at him in a harsh reprimand. Everything is brutally new and foreign, and even though he's just a kid, Green can understand that things can't stay the same.
All they have is each other now. They might never see their families again. He thinks of Daisy, Red's mom, Leaf. He holds their memory close to his chest for a few moments. Then, he reaches out and lays his open hands on Red's trembling back to offer him what little comfort he can.
"It's gonna be okay," he whispers (even though it won't, not ever again). "It's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay."
He hopes that if he repeats it enough, it might actually come true.
- . . . -
The fluorescent lights of the training room stay on throughout the night, so Green hardly gets any sleep. The floor is uncomfortable, and he is cold even though Red's body is pressed against his, still trembling slightly as he cries in his sleep.
Something coalesces in Green's mind during those long hours. It is an ugly and wretched thing, this feeling, and it festers at the sight of Red's swollen cheek, at the lingering taste of copper in his mouth.
Hatred is a volatile thing - a terrible fire that burns within a heart, transforming it into a furnace made of the blackest of metals. When tempered with the instinctive drive to survive, it becomes a weapon. The furnace will give you all the strength you need, if you would only continue to feed its flames.
This is truly the first lesson of Team Rocket. Beneath its grand ambitions and cruel experiments, there are hundreds of faces underlying it all. They are human faces, faces just like everyone else's. Greed, ambition, envy - all the deplorable things that people think of when they see another headline about the 'evil' criminal organization - they are all facets of human nature. It is ugly and monstrous, but still human, no matter how much the stay-at-home mother of three or the everyday businessman reading his newspaper at the local Pokémon Center want to deny it.
There is evil in the world, and it dwells as much in the typical housewife as it does in the Team Rocket grunt holding a gun to the Poké Mart cashier's head.
(The one distinction, however, is that Team Rocket's evil is channeled toward freedom).
Green is going through the elementary motion that all members of Team Rocket do. The vivid memories of Archer's fist cracking against his jaw, of Archer throwing Red onto the ground - fill his young heart with loathing, virulent and venomous.
Yet he does not long for vengeance yet. All hatred starts out innocuously enough, and the poison spreading through Green's veins is no different.
He stares at Red's sleeping form and desires nothing more than to protect him. He never wants to see him hurt again, wants to be strong so that bastards like Archer will never be able lay a finger on him and make him cry ever again.
Ah, but there it is. He needs to be strong enough.
He does not know how he'll do it, but as the arm thrown over Red's side tightens around the sleeping boy, he promises himself that he'll do whatever it takes to get it done.
I promise, he thinks. I promise no one will ever hurt us again.
He wills the thought hard enough to make it solid, make it fall into the center of his heart, a rock for it stand on. He'll never let himself be weak again. He'll be strong.
Eventually, he falls asleep, the thought still echoing through his dreams.
- . . . -
Archer appears early the next morning and meets Green's glare with a flat look. Without waiting for the boys to get to their feet, the man plucks two poké balls from his pocket and tosses them at them. The spheres hit the floor a couple of feet away from the boys, and they explode simultaneously in twin flashes of light. Before they open their eyes, wincing from the assault against their retinas, they hear squeals of surprise and are knocked back by small, furry creatures jumping onto their laps.
When Green is finally able to open his eyes, he is greeted by the chocolate-colored muzzle of Eevee. She licks at his face delightedly, and he finds that he cannot suppress the equally delighted laugh that leaves his mouth. Beside them, Red and Pikachu go through a similar reunion, the electric mouse head-butting his trainer's stomach playfully.
"Rather than give these pokémon to our Research & Development Department to enhance, the Boss has ordered they remain with the two of you."
Green may be incredibly grateful to have Eevee back with them but not enough to dispel the hatred that seizes him each time he sees Archer's face. He scowls at the man, wincing when the expression sends a dull throb of pain through his swollen cheek.
"It's all well and good, then," Archer continues, choosing to ignore Green's expression, "because Team Rocket would not exist without pokémon. All training for prospective members is carried out with both hopeful trainers and their pokémon," he pauses to point at the wall behind them and the large red 'R' that is painted there, "Beneath that insignia is our oath. It reads: 'All pokémon exist for the glory of Team Rocket.' This will be your second lesson.
"Pokémon are tools. They exist to help mankind achieve their goals. It is our duty to sharpen these tools beyond their natural limits and make them achieve levels of power unlike any they would be able to achieve on their own. This cannot be done by coddling them; it can only be done by ordering them to confront challenges thought insurmountable and forcing them to overcome them," Archer reaches into his pocket and brandishes a third poké ball, "With that, we will commence our third lesson."
With a flick of his wrist, the poké ball flies through the air, landing a small distance from the boys and their pokémon. Another blinding flash of light explodes put from the sphere's confines, and a roar tears out of the creature's throat as it takes shape. When the light fades, the sturdy, fearsome form of an onix is revealed, its beady eyes locked on the boys.
"Your task is to defeat your opponent in battle," says Archer from where he stands behind the giant rock snake. "Failure will not be tolerated."
Before they can voice their objections, Archer snaps his fingers, and the rock snake draws back its tail to attack, casting a shadow over them. Letting out a cry of alarm, Green tackles Red into a roll, just barely missing the downward swipe of the onix's rocky tail. They roll to a stop with Green on top of Red, who stares up at him with eyes wide with terror. Dust hangs in the air as the onix draws its tail back, revealing the crater left behind from its attack.
"You're crazy!" Green yells over Pikachu and Eevee's cries. "Electric and normal attacks don't work on rock types!"
Archer just shrugs disinterestedly, squinting at them through the cloud of dust. "Type disadvantages are no excuse for failure. A true Rocket stops at nothing to claim victory and accomplish his mission. Attack again, Onix!"
With another cry, Green grabs onto Red's shoulder and rolls again. Each time Green's back is too the floor, he sees the tail of boulders speed closer and closer to them.
This time they aren't quite fast enough.
They manage to avoid the blow itself, but they are still close enough to where it lands to be tossed through the air. Green and Red land hard on their sides, the impact jarring enough to make their breaths leave them in a startled whoosh, but luckily not violent enough to break anything.
"Is this the best you can do?" yells Archer, unimpressed. "Hopeless! Onix, finish them now!"
Letting out a rumbling cry, the onix slithers across the arena floor towards them, eyes focused on its prey predatorily. Green forces himself to his feet, the adrenaline dumping into his veins temporarily muting the pain in his side.
"Red," he grits out, "Get up, Red! We have to move outta the way!"
The onix is almost upon them now, opening its mouth in a gravelly roar. Green stares at the wide maw of its jaws, but he cannot accept that this is how it will end for them. He can't even consider it. His heart is pounding in his ears, the drum-like sound overpowering the voice in his mind that screams in terror, that wants to beg for mercy.
He has to fight.
"Eevee!" he yells, and the brown blur that is racing towards them from across the arena pulls ahead of the yellow one, lunging into the air towards the rock snake.
Eevee hits its target headfirst, but the attack ends up doing more damage to her than the onix. She ricochets off the rock snake's body with a cry of pain, just barely recovering in time to land on her feet a short distance away. The attack, however, has its intended effect. The onix lets out a disgruntled cry and rears back from its advance on the boys, focusing its attention on its attacker.
Red finally makes it back onto his feet at the same time that Pikachu reaches Eevee, standing beside her in silent solidarity, cheeks crackling threateningly. The onix, aware of how moot that threat actually is, pays it no heed, lunging at the pokémon with another roar.
"Dodge it!" Green orders, hoping that Pikachu listens to him too.
The boys' pokémon manage to get out of the way of the onix's tackle in the nick of time, each jumping in separate directions. As the onix gathers itself back up to its full height, Green hastily goes through all the things he's ever read about pokémon battles. Eevee and Pikachu are low leveled, so there's no way that they could possibly know any strong attacks. The only moves they know are useless - tackle, thundershock, growl, tail whip…
The answer comes to Green in a flash.
"Use tail whip, Eevee!" he yells.
Eevee swings her bushy tail at the onix, making it let out a growl of annoyance and swat at her with the end of its tail. Fortunately, she manages to avoid it, continuing to use tail whip when she lands.
Green had always thought that this kind of strategy was lame whenever he saw someone else use it in a televised match, but circumstances have dictated that this be their best hope of surviving.
He catches sight of something out of his peripheral vision, and jerks his head to the side to see what it is. His fears that it was Archer sneaking over to beat them up some more turn out to be unfounded, as it's just Red. The other boy stands with his back hunched and teeth gritted against the pain in his limp arm.
"Pikachu!" he calls, causing the yellow mouse to turn to look at him. The two make eye contact, and something passes between them silently, something that Green can't even begin to decipher.
A pained yelp from Eevee makes Green tear his eyes away from the other boy and back onto the battle. She was just tackled to the floor by the onix, skidding to a stop with a whine. Hurt as she is, it takes her longer to recover, and this lag is everything the relatively slow and cumbersome rock snake needs to swat at her with its tail again, sending her sliding across the arena with another cry.
"Eevee!" Green yells.
And then Red is moving, cocking his head to the side and narrowing his eyes, and across the field, Pikachu responds, letting out a sharp cry. The onix closes its eyes in irritation at the sound of the growl. Before the rock snake can react, Red moves again, and, impossibly, Pikachu changes tactics, darting towards the onix and swinging its lightning bolt-shaped tail at the same boulder on its body that Eevee had focused her attacks on before.
Green smirks nervously at the realization of what Red is doing. By simultaneously using growl and tail whip, he's building on Green's strategy and reducing their opponent's attack stats as well. He's not sure how they're communicating, but he can't bring himself to care, just hoping that whatever freaky connection they seem to have holds up for a while longer.
"Get up, Eevee!" it takes her a while, but she eventually manages to comply with that order, breathing hard. "Help Pikachu! Use tail whip, too!"
With both pokémon darting around the onix, the rock snake seems to hover on the edge of indecision as to which of them to attack. Even when it attempts to get rid of them, their lithe bodies, quick and small, are hard targets to hit, and its attacks end up missing.
Almost, Green thinks. Just a little more and -
"Rock slide!" Archer commands.
With a roar, the onix swings its tail at the ceiling. The impact dislodges several large pieces of concrete that hurtle to the floor haphazardly.
"Eevee!" Green screams.
Pikachu and Eevee let out cries of alarm and try to escape the attack, but to no avail. A rock hits the already wounded and sluggish Eevee in the abdomen and she crumples in on herself with one last, pained whine. Pikachu is not much luckier. He runs, darting through the falling rocks, but just as he is about to make his escape, a rock strikes him clear on the head. The rodent lets out a shriek before falling unconscious.
The boys tense with terror as the onix turns its head towards them. From across the arena, Archer lets out a sigh. "It seems that you didn't believe me when I warned you that failure wasn't an option…" He snaps his fingers again, but instead of slithering towards them to attack again, the onix seems to relax, bowing its head in submission.
"I-it was impossible," Green stutters pathetically, trying and failing to maintain his composure. "There was no w-way that an electric type and a normal type could beat a rock t-type…"
"Really?" Archer asks, raising an eyebrow at them sardonically as he makes his way over to them with long, measured strides. "I remember telling you that it is your role as trainers to force your pokémon to overcome their limits." He pauses in the rubble to pluck both Eevee and Pikachu out of it by the tails. "If they failed, it's due to their inability to overcome their weaknesses. Such a failure requires a suitable punishment, wouldn't you agree?"
Red's blood runs cold at the Rocket's words, his eyes widening and then narrowing at the sight of Pikachu hanging limply in his grasp. When Archer is within a few feet of them, he drops the pokémon on the floor and gestures towards them.
"What are you doing?" Green hisses, though there is more fear than bite in his tone.
The corners of Archer's eyes crinkle, revealing the early signs of wrinkles on his otherwise youthful and handsome face.
"I'm not doing anything. The person who should be responsible for the discipline of a pokémon is its trainer." He all but smirks now, his eyes shining with cruel mirth at the sight of their expressions. "Punish them. It is for their own benefit."
Green stares at the man, jaw gone slack with shock.
"No."
Archer lifts a blue eyebrow and turns to look at Red.
"No?" he repeats. It does not sound like a question.
The defiance on Red's face does not ebb away. His crimson eyes shine dangerously, the fire from before returning. "I won't hurt Pikachu for what you did to him."
Archer and Red maintain eye contact for a long moment. Green tries to make a noise in protest, but he does not know what to say. He keeps his eyes on Eevee's battered, unconscious form slumped in front of him. He can't hurt Eevee… she only tried to protect him. It was Archer's fault. All of it was Archer's fault. Not Eevee's.
"Be careful," Archer warns him without breaking eye contact, eyes gone cold and icy. "You're skating dangerously close to being insubordinate again."
There is silence.
Archer squints at the boy and then snaps his fingers. Behind him, the rock snake lets out a growl as it twists into motion again, putting its head low to the floor and beginning to slither towards them.
"Red…" Green whispers, eyes fixated on the encroaching snake.
"You boys will learn…"
The onix is close now, its head changing direction to avoid running into Archer.
"Red, you've gotta -"
Archer's eyes flash dangerously, and he raises his arm slowly. "That insubordination will always be met with the same punishment!"
The rock snake's tail is curling around Red's feet now, its head rising above them and staring down at them imposingly.
"Red!"
Archer extends his arm and points straight at Red, his hand curling into a fist.
"Bind!"
All at once, the rock snake's tail wraps tight around Red's middle, clamping his arms to his side. The boy lets out a scream as he is lifted into the air, the tail of rocks tightening around him.
"Red!" Green tears his eyes away from his screaming best friend and glares at Archer. "Let him go!"
Green charges at the Rocket wildly, heedless to the already foregone conclusion. The Rocket grabs and holds him at arm's length, hand fisted in his hair.
"And why should I do that, Oak?" Archer sneers, voice barely audible over Red's screaming. "Why should I listen to a spoiled, disobedient child like you and excuse insubordination from my trainees?" h=His fist twists in Green's hair painfully, and a cry tears its way out of his throat. "Give me one good reason."
The sound of Red's screaming in his ears drowns out everything - the pain, the voice of his conscience, the sting of his battered pride. The flames in his heart stutter out, and the smoke that curls out from his chest tastes acrid in the back of his mouth.
"G-Green…!" Red grits out, monotone voice broken open with agony and pleading.
He hates, he hates, he hates (himself - for thinking of the whole stupid plan that got them into this mess, for not listening to Leaf when she warned them about stealing, for agreeing to go in the helicopter, for not being strong enough)… but all that hate is useless without the power to act on it.
"Please…" he whispers hoarsely, "please… just let him go. I'll do anything. Please, sir…"
And Archer smiles. He twists his hand in the boy's hair a little harder for good measure.
"Follow my orders," he says. When Green doesn't respond, Archer jerks his arm and draws the boy up by the hair to meet his eyes. "Did you hear me? Fulfill your responsibility."
The forest green of the boy's eyes shine impossibly with a stubborn fire. Archer smirks, wondering just how long that fire can rage before it burns those pretty little forests away.
But despite the defiance that burns so overtly in his eyes, the boy nods choppily, and Archer lets go of him.
Green stares at Eevee blankly. She is just beginning to come around, her dark brown eyes opening groggily and trying to focus on Green. She lets out an apologetic whine, trying to make it onto her feet. There is a lump is his throat that he can't seem to swallow. He can't, he can't -
Another scream.
"If you don't act soon, Onix will be sure to crush some of his bones to dust," Archer reminds him.
He thinks of his promise, of how he'd told himself that he would never let anything hurt Red again, about how he'd be strong from now on…
Quickly, he draws his foot back and then snaps it forward in kick. It catches Eevee in the stomach, and she lets out a high-pitched cry. Red screams again, and something within him snaps. He draws his foot back and kicks, again and again and again, until Eevee has stopped whining and has fallen unconscious from the blows again.
There is a snap of fingers, and the onix gives a rumbling growl as it unwinds its tail from Red's torso, letting the boy fall limply to the floor. Green stares at Eevee, at the labored rise and fall of her chest, at the distressed expression on her face even in unconsciousness.
Archer says nothing. He reaches into his pocket and grabs the poké ball from it, pointing it at the rock snake and recalling it with red beam of light. Wordlessly, he turns and makes his way back out the door, shutting it behind him with a resounding slam.
The room spins and Green doubles over, emptying the contents of his stomach onto the arena floor. When his eyes begin to sting and there is the warm sensation of liquid running down his cheeks, he blames it on the burn of the stomach acid and bile against his esophagus.
He isn't crying. He's going to be strong. He has to be strong, and tears are for the weak. He's not crying.
He's not, he's not, he's not -
- . . . -
Today their opponent is a golem.
It rolls and rolls and rolls about the field, trampling everything in its path.
Instead of ordering him to fight, Red grabs Pikachu and runs about the field, futilely trying to outrun the boulder-like monster. Green alternates between ordering Eevee to distract it from Red and screaming at the other boy to order Pikachu to attack.
Archer just watches them from across the field, a figure of cutting black against the white of the arena's walls.
When they lose, Red refuses to hurt Pikachu again. So Archer hurts him.
To stop him, Green kicks Eevee until she passes out.
- . . . -
Now their opponent is a kangashkan.
When separated from their young, most kangashkan fall into a deep depression, Archer informs them tonelessly.
The beast rams a ferocious mega punch into the ground, Eevee and Pikachu just barely managing to avoid it.
Only the toughest of them enter unstoppable rages.
He falls silent after that, opting simply to watch. Green doesn't need him to continue to know that this is one of those rare cases.
When it finally manages to knock Eevee and Pikachu out, Green decides he hates it. It doesn't matter that Pikachu is no longer at a type disadvantage. No matter how many times the little rodent fires volleys of electricity at it, the kangashkan keeps coming, plowing through the electric attacks with crazed roars.
Nothing he can think of ever works.
He takes his anger out on Eevee, gritting his teeth and deafening himself to her squeals of pain, to Red's cries as Archer punishes him for not punishing Pikachu.
He doesn't want to look up and see the tears spilling over from the kangashkan's eyes. He doesn't want to come face to face with the agony that makes it heedless to pain and reason.
She misses her baby more than anything, and she'd destroy everything that stands in her way to find it. Seeing that makes it a lot harder for him to hate her, to objectify her and make her an it.
Green lets himself wonder if his mother would do the same for him even though he knows she wouldn't. She chose to abandon him. She left him at Pallet Town and ran off without looking back.
(He's jealous of that baby because its mother loves it so much it would destroy itself before giving up on finding its child. It makes hating easier even as he makes excuses for her pain.)
It's just a pokémon. Those tears aren't real. Can't it realize that taking away its baby made it stronger? Of course it doesn't. It's just a stupid pokémon.
He draws his leg back one more time, and lashes out at Eevee's small, curled body.
It's just a stupid pokémon.
- . . . -
Continue to Part 2.