Chapter 5: “Tom Yum Goong Otob”
We drove through the night, up Route 1 and through the Viridian Forest where I’d caught my first pokémon, into Viridian City where Giovanni used to own a pokémon gym sanctioned by a League that clearly turned a blind eye to his criminal activities. After we filled up at a gas station on Route 3, we continued north to Pewter where Misty and I had met Brock all those years ago.
I remembered the countless brothers and sisters he tended to after his mother died and before his father came back from his failed pokémon quest, and wondered what they thought of Big Bro when he went under the splicer’s knives.
We didn’t stop in Pewter but continued east past Mt. Moon and finally to Cerulean City. When we arrived at Misty’s hometown we stuck to the roads on the outskirts for her comfort and made our way south to Route 5, bypassing Saffron entirely and arriving via Route 6 in Vermillion at around eleven in the morning. It was the exact same path I’d followed as a child, though back then I didn’t have a car. Just my friends.
“We’re here,” I said, gently rubbing Misty’s shoulder to awaken her.
“Vermillion,” she said, yawning. “Isn’t this where Lieutenant Surge kept his gym?”
“Yeah,” I said. “His raichu put up a good fight against pikachu but we won in the end.”
“Of course you did,” she said, her eyes still closed. She was falling back to sleep. “You always win, Ash.”
“I didn’t win you,” I said. She was asleep again.
I could feel the demons of Slumberland tugging at my eyelashes, too, having been driving for the past ten hours straight. We put up at a hotel for the day. I told Misty to rest up because we had a long night ahead of us.
The restaurant Tom Yum Goong Otob was actually a moored luxury liner, and I recognized the boat as none other than the Saint Anne. I knew the massive boat was registered to and operated by Giovanni himself, though I hadn’t been aware that he’d turned it into a restaurant. If jynx’s love powder was one of Desire’s ingredients, and one of the two jynxes in the whole Kanto region lived on this boat, owned by Giovanni, then it meant we’d followed the proper track. I smiled at my own cleverness. If this was where D came from, then it’d lead us to Jessie. At least, that’s what I hoped.
I wore a men’s suit I borrowed out of Yerska’s trunk, God bless him, and Misty had a slim black thrift store dress wrapped around her body that revealed a bit more of her soft pink flesh than I thought should be legal in a decent society. But I couldn’t complain and neither could the other single or not-so-single men waiting in line to get into the restaurant. Why anyone would put a dress like that in thrift was beyond me.
After only half an hour in line the bouncer, a big black guy obviously packing heat, noticed Misty’s curves, too, and decided to usher us to the front of the boarding ramp. We were so close I could hear the classical musical chimes and the clinking of silverware. The Tom Yum Goong was a classy place but luckily Misty and I weren’t there for the thousand-dollar plates.
“Is it just you two?” the bouncer said.
“Yes,” I said. “We meant to make a reservation.”
“She is your reservation,” he said. “A table just opened.”
“Thank you,” I said, slipping him a ten.
He raised his eyebrow and handed it back.
“Buy yourself a new suit,” he said. “This way, please.”
Our table was near the back of the joint, by the restrooms. I guess Misty was enough to get us in but Yerska’s suit wasn’t enough to get us a good table. It was for the better, I thought, as it kept us out of the center of attention. The last thing I needed now was a Rocket regular recognizing Misty or me. I left my main piece in the car’s glove compartment but kept my backup rod in the shin holster, just in case.
“What do we do now?” Misty asked after the waitress brought us two cups of water.
“We ain’t eating here, that’s for sure,” I said, looking over the menu. When the waitress came back I grabbed her arm and said, “M’am, is this the only menu you got?”
“You… you want to see the other menu?”
“Yes,” I said, perplexed. Misty looked at me.
“I’m afraid I don’t recognize you,” she said. “Do you have your membership card?”
“No,” I said. “I left it at home. Forget it.”
After the waitress left, Misty whispered to me, “I wonder what she meant by the ‘other menu.'”
“Let’s hope they don’t have a cookbook called ‘How to Serve Man’ back there,” I said. “Let’s ghost before she gets back with the appetizers. I want to see what’s so exclusive about the deck above us. That’s probably where we’ll find the jynx.”
“And from there?”
“We work our way up,” I said. “If we’re going to find Jessie before she finds us, we need to follow the drugs and hit Rocket where it hurts. And so much the better if we manage to topple their entire organization. Think of the lives we can save if we put Gio out of business for good.”
Misty smiled.
“What?”
“You always helped everyone, Ash,” she said, reaching her hand across the table and placing it over mine. “Ever since we were kids, everywhere we went, you defended the weak and fought against the odds to save total strangers. I was afraid time would’ve changed that. I see now it hasn’t. But if there’s one thing I learned in all the years we’ve been apart, it’s that one person can only do so much good in the world before the world turns around and cuts them down.”
I took my hand back and looked away. “Don’t you think I know that? I couldn’t help my mother. Brock is dead. You and I will be in the ground before the end of the week, if Jessie has her way. If anyone’s accepted how cold a place the world is, it’s me. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try.”
“I understand,” she said, standing. “Then let’s try.”
I looked around the dining hall at all the rich suits, glitzy dresses and diamond chandeliers. This was Gio’s speed, all right–gain, inheritance, all the luxuries without any of the hard work and sweat and blood that normal people have to put in to get anything out of life. Giovanni, I remembered, had inherited the Team Rocket syndicate from his mother. If he had a weakness, it was mothers.
“What do we do?” Misty asked.
“I gotta get to the next deck,” I said.
“What about me?”
“I can’t sneak around with you tugging on my arm the whole way,” I snapped. “You stay here and watch the entrance. If anyone unsavory comes through that door, go to the bathroom and slip out the window. Once you’re on the deck, look over the edge and scream that someone’s drowning. With that distraction we can make ourselves dust clouds and scram. Can you do that?”
She nodded. “What if you get caught?”
I tapped my leg. “If I get caught, you’ll know. Go back to the hotel and if I’m not back before the night’s end, disappear. But that won’t happen, Misty.”
“I know,” she said. “Good luck.”
I walked away from the table and into the restroom nearby. The layout of the ship hadn’t changed since the last time I’d been aboard, thankfully, as the window I was thinking about when I’d told Misty my bogus plan was still there. Giving her a sense of purpose was the only way I could keep her off my back, and it’d worked like a rare candy. As I cracked open the bathroom window just enough to let in the cold sea air and the smell of sea wrack and kelp, the sounds of the waves lapping against the ship and the marina, I smelled something else, something fishier than the fish this place was serving. It came from the deck above.
On the deck of the ship, just outside the view of the entrance and the big black bouncer who let us in, I could see the whole city of Viridian lit up against the purple night sky. If Brock had been here, he would’ve told me the story about how the whole world was actually an island on the back of a giant lapras, and that lapras was swimming through the seas of the universe and of time itself. Magically. Magic. That’s what we lost when pokémon battling was criminalized and the Leagues worldwide were shut down. The whole world had suddenly turned sane for a brief moment only to collapse on itself with a whole new brand of insanity. We lost our sense of wonder and the awful relationship between ourselves and the natural order.
For a moment I wished we actually were on the back of a lapras, surfing across the infinite oceans.
It was the smell, once again, that awful smell that pulled me back to earth. I followed my sneezer farther down the deck, farther from the entrance and nearer the stern, to an open window located on the deck above. There were two decks on the Saint Anne, I knew. Misty and I were only permitted on the first deck, but there was a whole ‘nother restaurant on the second. I’d caught a glimpse of the stairwell in the foyer as we were escorted to our table, saw the two thugs guarding the entrance. I didn’t think much of it at first until the waitress mentioned the “other menu” and “membership card.” Only the wealthiest and most infamous brand of people were allowed to climb the stairway to heaven and dine on Giovanni’s exclusive deck. But what was that god awful smell?
The room above was pitch black, darker even, the color of a gengar’s eyes at midnight during All-Hallows-Eve. I shimmied up a stanchion using a lifeguard donut tacked to the wall to support my weight, until I could reach my fingertips over the window’s ledge. It took all the strength I had to pull myself up by the fingertips, up enough that I could toss a leg over and into the gloomy dark. And when I was finally inside, I lay propped against the wall beneath the window, my entire body sore and my lungs collapsed to the size of walnuts.
“After this,” I gasped to myself, “we’re exercising twice a week.”
And then, from behind the veil of shadows, something answered me.
“Bulba…”
“Chaaaaaaaarrrr.”
I reached for my gun and undid the safety toggle, then stood slowly, aware of the sounds all around me: shuffling, the sound of teeth against metal bars, of tongues licking festering wounds. And the smell, I realized, was that of death.
I removed the lighter from my pocket and cracked a flame, and what I saw nearly set me back on the floor.
Dozens of pokémon, many common and some as rare as the rarest gems on earth, were each crammed into their individual cages with barely enough room even to breathe. Beside me, three dratini fought each other for water in a small plastic box. Behind them, in a larger cage, was the bulbasaur that had spoken to me previously. He’d knocked over the bowl of food that had been placed in his cage and now looked at me as if I was the one who’d thrown him in there. His vine tentacles were bound to his side with duct tape and electrical wire.
The largest cage, in the corner of the room, contained a lapras itself in a tub of dank water so small it couldn’t move its flippers. I put my gun back in my pocket and moved back to the window, confident that I’d chuck breakfast. When nothing came out after a few minutes, I turned my attention back to the makeshift zoo behind me, and cracked another flame. This time, I looked for a light switch, though I wasn’t so sure I was ready to illuminate the whole of the atrocities present in this room.
When I neared what I assumed was the door, I heard finally the sounds of busybodies at work. I found the keyhole and peeked through. On the other side of the door was a kitchen, where half a dozen chefs moved silently from station to station. The only station I could glom I wish I hadn’t. A farfetch’d was laid out on the cutting board, still alive and with its wings bound to its side. The chef wrapped his mitts around the bird’s throat and gave it one quick squeeze and then the little creature fetch’d no more. Though I didn’t want to watch any more, I had to, and the chef carried the pokémon out of sight, leaving behind the spring of green onions that the farfetch’d once used as a sword and its only ally.
That’s what the second deck was about, then. The real dish behind the Tom Yum Goong was rare pokémon, chopped and served how you like it. If I’d had enough bullets I would’ve kicked down that door and executed every single mother fucking one of them. My hatred for Giovanni intensified where I stood, I felt it welling up inside me like some black thing out of a horror movie. All of the pokémon in the room with me would be cooked, baked, served with a side of magikarp eggs and a Caesar salad. Infuriated, I stepped softly to the nearest cage–containing a drowzee–and examined the lock. Without my lock-picking gear there was no way I’d open it.
The drowzee’s eyes looked into mine and his soft yellow trunk extended through the cage bars to touch my shirt.
“I can’t help you,” I apologized. “I want to.”
“Drowz… drowz… drowz… drowz…”
“Don’t do that,” I said.
“Drowz… drowzee…”
“Oh, fuck.”
I hit the floor like a sack of Poké balls.
It was some time later that I woke up, but not too much later as I was still alive and hadn’t yet been discovered. My eyes adjusted to the dim light coming in from the window and I scratched my nose. Drowzee’s were known for eating your dreams through your nose, and I knew as soon as his eyes caught mine that he’d find nothing but nightmares. If he’d survived what I had to show him, I didn’t care. I heard footsteps nearing the door and, half of my body still paralyzed, crawled down the row of cages and around a corner.
The door opened and three people entered. With all three of them outside of my line of sight, I didn’t know if they were armed, or even if they were looking for me.
“There she is,” the one man said.
“This is it?”
“One of the only jynxes in the region,” he said. “What’s this all about, anyway?”
“Team Rocket is concerned about the safety of your jynx,” the other man said. “This little bitch is a very valuable asset to our organization. I’m sure you understand.”
“Now hold on a second,” the man said. “When I made Giovanni half-owner of my ship, he promised to stay out of my affairs and allow me to run the restaurant as I see fit. The love powder jynx produces is a key ingredient in many of my restaurant’s recipes. My most popular dishes absolutely require her. Giovanni specifically said that as long as I gave him an ample supply of her powder, Team Rocket would leave me alone. I’ve given him enough powder to last him for decades.”
“Things have changed, old man.”
“I’ve held up my end of the bargain and Giovanni is a man of his word,” he continued. “You just wait until your boss hears about this.”
“See, that’s the thing,” the other man retorted. “Giovanni’s only getting older, and when he finally passes on, God bless him, there will be new management. That means new deals and new promises to override the old ones.”
“You can’t have my jynx.”
I tried to position myself as quietly as possible so that I could see the three figures. Only two had spoken so far, one, the owner of the jynx, the other a Rocket grunt trying to steal it from him. The third figure hadn’t opened his mouth yet.
“I want to talk to him,” he said. “Put him on the phone.”
“My boss is right here, you see,” the grunt revealed. “But here’s the thing, see? She can’t talk too good right now. She brought me along to be her spokesman.”
“Why can’t she talk? Why’s she wearing that stupid fucking mask? I don’t care who she is, I want to talk to Giovanni.”
All I heard after “Giovanni” was the sound of a sword being removed from its sheath and then the blade getting buried in restaurant owner’s chest. I could imagine the scene without needing to see it. The ninja, the same one that had tried to kill Misty and then me a few days after, the same one that had killed Brock, the owner of the jaw through which I put a bullet, had had enough conversation and put an end to it with an exclamation mark shaped like a katana.
I reached into my pocket for my gat. Though I was mostly paralyzed, if I could get a viddy on Jessie long enough to afford me a cleaner shot than last time, I could put an end to this whole mess right now. And whether I lived or died at that point didn’t make that much of a difference–Jessie had to take the big sleep so that Misty could live, so that hundreds of others could live. She was eating away at Team Rocket from the inside like a worm in an apple, restructuring it the way she wanted it to be, the way she always thought it should be, with her at the top, the queen bee, and all her drones slaving for her and dying for her and killing for her. With Jessie behind the reigns of a racket like Team Rocket the world would never know peace.
“Now that we have the jynx,” the man said, “we control every aspect of the production of Desire.”
I pulled myself over the top of a cage and saw the two figures standing there. As I moved my gun into position, inch by painful inch, their one-sided conversation continued.
“What will Giovanni do when he finds out?”
Jessie sheathed her sword. Then she removed the black leather glove on her right hand. Something about her hand caught my eye and it caught the other man’s eye, too. He was transfixed by what he saw on the palm. I couldn’t see it, but I wondered what she was showing him. And then I heard a third voice, one not belonging to either the Rocket grunt or to Jessie. Memories of the voice chilled my spine and caused my entire nervous system to jangle beneath my skin.
“We are cleverer than he,” the voice said.
Where was it coming from?
“Giovanni will award us and thank us for a job well done,” the voice said. “As he always has.”
It seemed to come from beyond the periphery of anything sensory that I possessed. And the only other time I’d felt such a presence was when I was looking through my Silph scope at the pokémon underworld which my pikachu inhabited.
“Understood,” the grunt said.
Jessie replaced the glove on her hand and I looked at her chest through the iron sights of my rod. In the time it took me to apply pressure to the trigger, Jessie grabbed the man beside her and pulled him into the space between herself, myself, and the barrage of bullets I unloaded in her direction. When the gun dry clicked to report an empty clip, Jessie dropped the body and darted for my direction, sword half-drawn, but I was already at the window peering into the murky blackness of the sea. Between the window on the second floor and the ocean was eight feet of hardwood deck, but I had no choice.
I leapt for it, and landed feet-first onto the deck just short of the railing. At least one bone in my leg broken, I continued to the edge of the ship and rolled myself off the deck and into the freezing cold waters off the Viridian shore, just as the floor around me exploded under a barrage of machine gun fire from above.
The last thing I remembered was the bee stings I felt in my back and shoulder, and I remembered the day so long ago when I saved my metapod from the deadly swarm of beedrills.
is not an exit 
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