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Corrupt Authority: Chapter 30

by Pokemon Fanfiction Novels

Pokemon Fanfiction Novels
“The double team!” announced a man Hibiki didn’t recognize, coming forward with his arms held high in victory, clapping over his head. “Kenta Nyna, and his young cloaked assistant. So good of you to drop by!”



A second uproar of cheering came from the crowd of Rockets. Kenta waited until they’d quieted down, holding a neutral expression on his face. “So you knew we were coming?” he asked conversationally. “I mean, you had the welcoming committee in position and everything. What’s your secret?”



“Nothing ingenius,” came a calm male voice from the back of the crowd. “Just the usual sound amplifier. We hear everything within half a mile’s radius.”



At the sound of the man’s voice, Kenta suddenly tensed beside Hibiki. Looking at him, Hibiki’s nerves heightened; Kenta’s eyes had reduced themselves to slits, and his face had become a mask of fury. He was glaring daggers at the man who had spoken, whose hair, Hibiki noticed, was long and dyed white. In fact, both men looked so similar that he was astounded that they could still stare at each other with such loathing. Or at least, Kenta burned with revulsion, while the Rocket simply looked back in cold dislike.



“Basho,” said Kenta, spitting the name out detestingly, “you soulless monster.”



“Do I sense hypocrisy?” responded the Rocket, Basho, airlessly. “Do these words come from the same person who was just saying we need to work together?”



“Kenta, who is he?” whispered Hibiki, so that only his brother would hear. Kenta didn’t take his eyes off Basho, but replied in a voice loud enough that all would hear. “He’s one of the two men who were in charge of the Crystal System during the Raikou incident. When the machine malfunctioned, Baku nearly died because of him.” Kenta glowered at Basho, who still simply gazed, almost boredly, back at him. “So, Basho, whatever happened to your boyfriend? Did Buson have to go work with someone else when you got demoted for your failure?”



Basho didn’t respond, but glanced for a moment at another Rocket who had signaled something at him. A few seconds of awkward silence passed, then the Rocket acting as spokesman cleared his throat loudly and stammered back into speech. “Uh . . . well! Um, anyway, here you are. Come on down, both of you, and we’ll discuss business in a more suitable location.”



***



In about five minutes, Hibiki found himself sitting beside Kenta at one of the biggest round tables he’d ever seen in his life. The diameter must have been about forty or fifty feet, and at every seat, a member of various pokémon-using rogue organizations gazed on at the Nyna brothers intensely. Trying to distract himself from his unsteady nerves, Hibiki silently named off the teams as he looked from uniform to uniform, noticing that every advocate was present except for Team Aqua. However, the members of Team Rocket, Magma, Galactic, Innuendo, Snagem, and Cipher took up every chair and all possible floor space of the large underground meeting room. There wouldn’t have been room for anyone else anyway. The Spokesman Rocket who’d first greeted Kenta stood up from his chair at the far opposite end of the table, and any chattering in the room was silenced abruptly. He waved his hands in an upward motion, and six people in different uniforms rose to their feet and stood with him.



“A reminder, gentlemen,” declared the Spokesman Rocket, “that we are together in temporary unity. Leaders, repeat your stances for the late arrivals.”



Kenta twitched angrily beside Hibiki, and he saw what was wrong; Basho had straightened up. “Neo Team Rocket Administrator 006, Basho.”



“Representing Team Magma,” announced the woman in a red hood decorated with fake horns, “Magma Admin, Kagari.”



She looks like an occultist, thought Hibiki, slightly intimidated. Allies or not, these people are freaking me out.



“I’m here on behalf of Team Galactic,” said a second woman, dressed in a stiff skirt with tight black pants beneath. Hibiki found himself reminded of Cindy-Lou Who from the Grinch movie . . . if Cindy-Lou had died and come back from Hell. “Codename, Commander Mars.”



“The Chief chose me as Innuendo’s delegate,” uttered a man in a duster cloak, who’d styled his long black hair to have it cover his left eye. “My title is Second Wind. Call me Sariel.”



“Gonzap,” grunted a giant of a man, with his bare muscles bulging at his sides. “Leader of Team Snagem.”



He looks like Atilla the Hun, thought Hibiki, feeling a strange compulsion to laugh in spite of his fear, -if Atilla had designed his moustache to resemble a spider.



“I’m Ein,” spoke the last man in a labcoat, not really looking at anyone but keeping his eyes down at the floor. He seemed a lot less enthusiastic to introduce himself than any of the other representatives had been, and almost out of nowhere, Hibiki felt strangely sorry for him. “I’m ashamed to say that I was once part of Cipher. Now I’m in charge of the small remnant who, like me, broke away.”



Hibiki checked around the room. He couldn’t see any uniforms aside from those of the first five representatives, and wondered just how sparse this remnant must be. A moment later, his survey jerked to a halt as hundreds of eyes turned on him, causing him to cower back in trepidation. Thankfully, most of the Team members were not gazing directly at Hibiki, but at the young man to his left. Kenta gave no signs of stage fright, but clasped his hands together and returned the stare of the Spokesman Rocket. The latter smiled.



“So, now that the introductions are over . . . what have you got in store for us, Nyna?”



Kenta raised an eyebrow at him. “What do you mean?”



“What do I mean?” The Spokesman Rocket gave a short bark of a laugh. “You should know better than I do!” He held up his arms enthusiastically. “Wherever you go, things happen. We know you’ve been rallying trainers to fight the law, and urging them to cooperate with us. For god sakes, the news is spreading like wildfire to those of us underground! So here we are, working together, just like you said we should.



“We risked sending Yosuke and a couple other boys out this morning, just so you might hear about us on the news and drop by the area.” The spokesman grinned mischievously. “You took longer to arrive than expected. But of course, it’s understandable why. That little robbery in Orre would delay you, wouldn’t it?”



A great uproar of laughter resounded through the chamber. Kenta waited until it had died down, then got to his feet, stone-faced. “I’m not as used to stealing as you probably are,” he said firmly, “so it’s crucial that I make up for this weakness, ‘if the tide is to turn.’” He was greeted with a few confused faces, and continued on steadily. “One day in the near future, there is going to be a decisive mass pokémon battle, in which agent forces of the government will mow down our resistance. I’m not oblivious to my enemy. Any hastily-trained pokémon that we rebels capture now will serve no purpose, except to buy time and wear down their super pokémon.”



This wasn’t Hibiki’s first time hearing these words, yet it disheartened him all the same. After all of his recruitment visits and “can-do” encouragement to the masses, in the end, Kenta didn’t have faith in his own troops to finish off their oppressors. What he was about to announce wasn’t the back-up plan; it had been the battle strategy all along.



“Our only chance of winning is to do what we should have done before G.R.I.P.’s little privacy invasion: fight them with OUR pokémon. On the day of battle, I intend to snatch trainer-owned uber pokémon right back out from their grubby hands, and use those against them.” Kenta’s eyes sharpened. “But to do that, I must have the Snag Machine. Krane Laboratories used to have a real one, but since then, they’ve replaced it with a fake. I have no idea where they hid the true invention, and I’m running out of time to find it.”



Someone cleared his throat. Everyone’s attention in the room shifted to the giant musclebound man called Gonzap, whom Hibiki had likened to Atilla the Hun. He had a distant look in his eyes, but smiled as though he was recalling a fond memory. “You know, kid,” he said, “in any dilemma, there’s always a backdoor route that leads to the solution. Do you think those suits are the only ones with a Snag Machine?”



Kenta glanced at him intently, eyes alert. “You mean you’ve been keeping a spare stashed away? You know how to make them?”



“Well, you’re half-right.” Gonzap crossed his arms, in his own little world. “You see, Team Snagem used to be a legitimately feared organization back in the Orre Region, but that was largely because of one talented rogue we used to have, who later quit. No, ‘quit’ isn’t the word. He flat-out betrayed us, even blowing up our base as he fled. His name was Wes.”



Hibiki stared at Gonzap in wonder. He was expecting outrage in the big man’s voice, yet Gonzap almost seemed to be basking in the memory of his treacherous former teammate.



“I suppose it’s mostly my fault for what happened,” he sighed, “and it just took me a while to accept it. Our team had gotten a proposition from two elderly gentlemen named Evice and Greevil Cipher- brothers born into great fortune. They were going to offer us more money than we’d ever seen in any of our desert-wandering lives, in exchange for the blueprints to our infamous Snag Machine. I was all for it. When you’ve lived in an arid wasteland your whole life, and Survival comes knocking at your door, you don’t turn him down. It was always about the money.



“Wes differed on the matter, and he told me so quite readily. Said he didn’t trust the Cipher brothers one iota, and I shouldn’t, either. I was too short-sighted at the time to realize that they would later try to conquer the region with their ‘Shadow Pokémon Plan,’ and if possible, the rest of the world- twice. We got into a shouting match over it, and Wes just stormed off, threatening to take matters into his own hands. I didn’t think he’d really do it.



“As the team Snagger, Wes held the most responsibility for our Snag Machine. I guess he felt convicted about Cipher conquering the earth using his baby, on his watch. He could’ve just taken it and left, but instead, he blew a large hole in our wall and drew attention to himself. I don’t know when or how he planted all the explosives around our base, but he obviously wanted the blueprints destroyed. As soon as we were all out of the base and chasing him, he sent the whole thing up in flames.”



Gonzap shrugged, staring at his own feet. “Good kid. A little rough around the edges, but he knew what was going on when the rest of us failed to see it. And he made sure we all got out alive. Fool that I was, I ended up siding out team with Cipher anyway. We didn’t accept that they were evil until long into their second attempt at world domination.”



He must’ve been waiting a long time to get that off his chest, Hibiki observed, as a pregnant silence lapsed in the room. Looks like there’s more complexity to the stereotypical bad guys than the media has given them credit for.



“So,” Kenta finally said, somewhat awkwardly, “that’s interesting and all, but you say that Wes left with your Snag Machine? Where is it now?”



Gonzap smiled and shrugged. “I can’t tell you that for sure. I can’t even be certain of where Wes is.” He clasped his hands together, looking serious. “But I can tell you about his favorite haunt. He likes to hang out in an old diner on the outskirts of the Orre Region. It looks like a disfigured steam locomotive. You can’t mistake it when you find it.” He grinned. “I met him there a couple of times. He still has gray-dyed hair, reflector shades, and that stupid blue duster cloak of his. But no Snag Machine on his arm. Not anymore.”