Chapter 9

Chapter 9: “Continue Game?”

When I woke up screaming an hour after dawn, Misty dropped her toothbrush and rushed out of the bathroom and to my side.

“What? What’s wrong?” she cried.

“She was right there!” I said.

“Who?”

“My mom,” I said.

“You had a dream about your mom?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I was back in Pallet Town, a kid again, and pikachu was with me, too. She was standing in the long grass, the sun shining through the trees behind her, and suddenly this red fire consumed her and she started to burn in that great red light and I saw her skin fade away, then her muscles, then her nerves, until there was nothing left but her skeleton, and then that was gone, too, and all the while this was happening she was screaming my name. It was like she was right there.”

“It was just a nightmare, baby,” she said, wiping the sweat from my forehead. “It’s perfectly normal to still have dreams about her from time to time, Ash, considering she only disappeared five years ago.”

“I never dreamed about her like this,” I said, sitting up. “I spent so much time trying to find her but I couldn’t and I can’t help but think I didn’t do as much as I could’ve. It was just another of the many fucking failures of my life.”

“We can’t change yesterday,” she said, “so focus on tomorrow. That’s what I do now.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You’re right. I’m focused.”

“I peeped at the seed board while you were asleep,” she said. “You’re the second match of the eight matches in round two, so we should mental up a battle strategy. Your opponent’s name is Marsea and she specializes in water types so you’re going to want to take my advice this time around. We also need to get you some new digs.”

---

I looked at the seed board and frowned, because the second day of battles encompassed not only the second round, but also the third and fourth. I asked Misty if she knew about this and why I was just learning about it, and she told me that she did, and that she thought I’d read the pamphlet that the Rockets had passed out to all the cabins.

“I left it on the desk for you.”

“Damn it,” I said. “Three matches in one day?”

“It’s the endurance day,” she explained. “It’ll eliminate all but the two semifinalists, who will battle before nightfall tomorrow. I can’t believe you didn’t read the script.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’ve got the same chances as anybody else.”

“That’s the spirit.”

We moved into the stadium and took our assigned seat in the middle row on the left, just over the entryway. Sometime overnight the first layer of the stadium had been opened, revealing the earth arena beneath it, which was covered with dirt. Small rocks and boulders the size of basketballs had been strewn about haphazardly to create the illusion of rocky terrain. I regretted not choosing a rock pokémon as one of my wildcards, but it was too late to mope.

The first match was between Artie, who had a hybridized ice and water roster, and Martin, who, like me, had come with a type-balanced roster. It ended almost as quickly as it began, and the four pokémon Artie had brought with him from the previous round bled out onto the dirt like cattle to the slaughter while Martin suffered no casualties and hardly any injuries, except for the broken leg on his rapidash.

My new Rocket uniform had a grey top and grey slacks with a black undershirt and was, according to Esteban, the older design, and one with which I should’ve been most familiar. It was a little tight in the groin but all they had left, apparently.

Misty gave me her usual good luck smooch and I ran into the stadium with a little more enthusiasm than before. The crowd reacted in kind, and I grinned as I climbed atop the trainer’s platform. Marsea’s water types were well-adapted to ground battling but still out of their natural element, which meant I had the bulge. My venusaur tore through half of her roster and when his movements slowed I pulled him back and deployed blastoise for a water-versus-water match. Blastoise eliminated her vaporeon and her slowbro before sustaining any damage, then Marsea pulled out her final pokémon: another blastoise. Hers had a customized shell painted with flowers and rainbows. The crowd went berserk when my blastoise overpowered hers and knocked it onto its back. It struggled to right itself.

“Curb stomp!” I shouted. My blastoise lifted up his great foot and brought it down hard on the other blastoise’s brain can, killing it instantly. The crowd roared as blood and pink stuff oozed from multiple holes in the blastoise’s head.

“Ash Ketchum advances to Round Three,” the announcer said. “Next up, after a ten minute recess, Terry Owens of the Hoenn Mafia, top seed, will go up against Magma Grunt Seth, bottom seed!”

By six o’clock that evening, when the third round between eight trainers began, I found that I was against Ying, a Yakuza hatchetwoman who specialized in fighting types and had three surviving pokémon from her previous matches. She had not yet been forced to reveal the last pokémon of her roster, and the buzz among the crowd was that she would have to when she faced me. I couldn’t help but wonder what it was, if it was another fighting type or a wildcard.

“Look,” I said to Misty, “look at my hand.” I held it up for her. “Solid like a geodude.” I wasn’t shaking at all.

“Seems like you’re hitting on all eight,” she said. “But don’t get cocky, kid.”

I ran out for my third match as the top seed and deployed my grounded charizard first, and Ying, the bottom seed, started immediately with her surprise pokémon: a dragonite. Unlike the charizard I’d trained in my youth, Team Rocket’s charizard received and processed my commands like a mechanical dragon. My grounded charizard and her slower, hovering dragonite fought for sixteen minutes until a lucky fireball met dragonite’s right wing and forced him to ground, and then the two dragons engaged in what could only be described as a wrestling match, exchanging occasionally close contact but cautious hyper beams and flamethrowers. Finally, charizard grabbed hold of dragonite’s undamaged wing and snapped it back like a bit of Styrofoam. The dragonite reeled in pain back toward its trainer’s platform as if to say, recall me, god damn it! Recall me! Charizard then launched one last volley of flames in dragonite’s direction and scorched its flesh until the poor dope dropped to its knees and died of body shock. I withdrew charizard, and Ying fell to her knees, for the other two pokémon she had in her roster, machamp and hitmonlee, had been too severely wounded to continue the battle in any meaningful fashion. She dropped her balls on the ground and unclipped a hammer from her belt, which she used to smash her last two balls, destroying the data they contained. This was the policy of the tournament.

The crowd erupted in the kind of fanfare I haven’t heard since I was ten years old at the Indigo Plateau. I immediately forgot about the emotional turmoil that my opponent must have endured to have to crush her own pokémon, to kill them as she did out of mercy rather than send them out to be tortured in a meaningless battle. Mine were Rocket-trained and Rocket-owned but she’d probably been working with hers for years before coming to this island. It must’ve felt like suffocating her own babies in their cribs, I imagined, and I wondered briefly if I would ever be able to do the same to mine. Misty ran out onto the field and jumped into my arms.

The fourth round would determine the two semifinalists who would battle tomorrow for the million credit reward and the even more valuable honor of a tournament victory. On my roster remained only five of my original six pokémon but I had something even better than a full team and that was confidence.

“I told you it’d be okay,” Misty said as we left the floor.

---

Of the two battles encompassing the fourth round, mine came last. I left Misty in the bleachers and crept out the stadium to reread the seed board and learn the name of my next opponent: Dexter. I had about half an hour before my battle so I walked to a secluded section of the beach and looked out over the ocean. I summoned each of my pokémon: venusaur, blastoise, charizard, and pidgeot. I left the psyduck in its ball and the other four lined up for me like a row of disciplined soldiers. The injury on charizard’s wing had worsened with each battle but HP Sprays and first aid of any kind weren’t allowed and the poor beast had simply to hold out for as long as possible before he died or I finished in first. I moved down the line of pokémon, touching each one, blastoise’s coarse shell, venusaur’s smooth bulb, charizard’s prickly scales, the soft down feathers under pidgeot’s beak. For the first time since my childhood I felt like a part of a world that might not have been all that bad, as I whispered words of encouragement, of praise, of gratitude into each of their ears.

“If Team Rocket lets me keep you after we win,” I said to them all, more to energize them than because I felt I had any real chance at winning, “then we’re going to tear up the underground circuit together.”

I returned each of them to their balls, then returned to the stadium. Misty was waiting for me at the entryway.

“Are you ready?” Misty asked.

“Yeah.”

“What do you know about Dexter?”

“He’s using psychics and ghosts.”

“Okay,” she said, “but what do you know about Dexter?”

“He’s a nerd with glasses and probably a virgin.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she said. “You’ve been watching the battles but you haven’t been watching the trainers. Dexter doesn’t talk during his matches. His pokémon seem to act on their own, but judging by the focus on his face, and these little ticks I’ve been noticing, I think he’s a psychic himself. He’s communicating with his pokémon telepathically and that makes him a road block because you won’t be able to counter his strategies until they’re already in play. Don’t underestimate him, Ash. That’s all I’m saying.”

The announcement came over the loudspeaker. “All trainers and spectators please return to your seats in the stadium! The last match in round four will take place in five minutes between Ash Ketchum of Kanto, the top seed, and Dexter Brinn of Unova, the bottom seed!”

“Good luck, Ash,” Misty said.

“Won’t need it.”

---

The fourth round ended, and I was a semifinalist.

I sat on the cool beach under the stars listening to the waves crashing against the shore, rolling my three remaining Poké balls over in the palm of my hand. From off in the distance I could hear the faint music from the bar carried to me by the wind, but I was in no mood to mingle with the others. During the match against Dexter, I’d lost both charizard and venusaur, and now all I had left for tomorrow was blastoise, pidgeot, and Misty’s goddamn psyduck. And I was going up against Lorelei, a former member of the Elite Four. I’d been nervous about squaring off against that dame since the beginning of the tournament, when I first saw her name on the seed board, but now that the two of us had advanced together into the final round and I’d lost my fire to counter her ice, that sinking feeling in my gut came back just like after my raichu took the big sleep, and I wanted nothing more than to drink another beer.

When Misty walked up behind me, I dropped my Poké balls onto the beach and took a sip from my beer. She wore a bikini with a thin blue towel wrapped around her waist like a skirt, which she removed and set on the beach before sitting down on top of it. She crossed her smooth long legs and leaned back on her elbows to viddy the stars with me.

“Y’okay, Ash?”

“He should’ve won,” I said, almost to myself.

“Who?”

“That Dexter kid,” I said. “He was the better trainer.”

“But he didn’t win,” she said. “You won.”

“You should’ve let me quit when I told you I wanted to quit,” I said. “Now I’ve gotten two very good pokémon ghosted, and tomorrow I’m going to get two more, and a psyduck, ghosted as well. What’s the point of fighting if there’s no chance at a victory? Tell me what’s the goddamn point?”

“Ash…”

I finished my beer and threw the empty bottle into the sea. A fucking psyduck, she gave me. If she would’ve picked for me an arcanine or a magmar, I might’ve stood a chance against the Ice Queen Lorelei.

“Maybe you don’t remember Lorelei,” I continued, “but I remember. I remember watching her on the telly back when she was with the Elite Four. She’s inhuman, that Lorelei, and her pokémon are the best of the best. I don’t have anything left to give me an advantage over her ice types, so all the matches I’ve won so far, all the pokémon I’ve gotten zotzed, were for zilch. Maybe Spassek did the right thing when he turned us all into a bunch of rotten criminals, because maybe that’s what we are.”

“Ash,” she said, leaning into me, “you’re going to win.”

“I can’t win.”

“You didn’t watch Lorelei’s battle before you went up against Dexter, so maybe you’re not aware.”

“Aware of what?”

“She’s got nothing,” Misty said. “She’s got a dewgong and a dragonair left on her roster, but they’re both in critical condition, and the odds are on you to win ten-to-one. A couple people at the bar are even calling Giovanni a chiseler because they think he designed the seed board to guarantee a win for Rocket, but no one’s paying them any mind. The other trainers are taking bets for tomorrow and no one’s betting against you. No one’s dumb enough.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’ve won,” she said, smiling. “Lorelei’s going to try to put up a fight with her last two pokémon because she has no choice, but for all intents and purposes, you’ve won the tournament. You’re finally going to win a tournament, just like you always wanted, you lucky son of a bitch.”

I stared out into the darkness surrounding the island and went over Misty’s words in my head. Then that was it, was it? For the first time in my life I could honestly say I wasn’t a fucking loser. Tomorrow was redemption day.

The next day, just before the final match, there was another banquet to celebrate the closing of the event, for the ships were going to arrive the next morning to take us all home. The tables and chairs were moved back out onto the stadium floor by Rocket employees, and every trainer, even those who’d been eliminated, attended to enjoy what would be their last meal in paradise. Just as on the first day, Giovanni climbed onto one of the trainer platforms to give a speech. He said, “I am so proud of each and every one of you, but as at the end of every tournament, there can only be one victor. Tonight, we will bear witness to the final match of the First Annual Team Rocket Invitational, where Team Rocket’s own Ash Ketchum, a man who once was poised to be the most famous pokémon trainer of his time, will do battle against the Ice Queen Lorelei, formerly of the Elite Four, and a woman for whom I have tremendous respect due to her lifelong dedication in fighting to overturn the Spassek Act.

“This tournament is but the first step in my own efforts to undo that unjust law, and I sincerely hope to see each of you in the following years as Team Rocket continues to bring pokémon battling back into the forefront of our public’s consciousness.”

Applause, as Esteban helped Giovanni step down. Even I found myself clapping. I saw Lorelei’s blue hair from across the stadium. Our eyes met once, and she quickly looked away. She must have known she had no chance. I squeezed Misty’s hand.

“How does it feel to be the champion?” she whispered.

“I’ll tell you later tonight.”

Thirty minutes before the match, I returned to our cabin, but Misty wasn’t there. She wasn’t at the stadium, and she wasn’t at the beach bar. I stood outside the door to our cabin and looked out to the ocean, and there she was, like a mermaid, her red head bobbing up and down in the surf. This was where she felt at home, I knew, and I determined then, standing there, that after winning the tournament, I’d get us a house near the ocean so that she could swim every single day. She began a backstroke for her return to the shore, and I started back for the stadium. I was walking along the row of empty trainer cabins when I overheard a familiar voice on the other side of a rack of rowboats.

I stopped and dove behind the other side of the rack, out of sight. It was Jessie. I hadn’t seen much of her during the tournament because I figured she was with Giovanni in his mansion, watching the battles through their monitors.

“He doesn’t suspect anything?” It was James, the voicebox in her hand.

“Of course not,” Jessie said, but not without difficulty due to her lack of a complete jaw. “He’s senile and ignorant and unfit to lead Team Rocket, as evident by this tournament. After Ash wins, we will together finish the old codger, and then announce his death during the victory celebration.”

“Will they accept us as new Team Leader?” he asked.

“Those who resist,” she said, “we will collect their heads.”

I slipped away from the rack of rowboats and continued toward the stadium, where a couple of trainers were waiting outside the entryway for me. They cheered as I approached, and shook my hand, and wished me luck, and I signed a couple autographs, just like in days before. I walked out onto the stadium floor, which had been cleared of the banquet tables but which was besmirched with bloodstains, scorch spots and deep claw marks. Lorelei stood already on the platform on the opposite end of the arena, her head already sunken in defeat. I climbed onto my own platform and looked out over the crowd. Misty was there among them, her hair still soaked from her dip in the ocean.

“This is it, folks,” the announcer said. “The final match between Ash Ketchum of Team Rocket and Lorelei formerly of the Elite Four. The winner of this match will–“ he stopped, for I had stepped down from my platform.

“I forfeit,” I shouted, and then I started to run.

I had to warn Giovanni, because if Jessie took over the Rockets then Misty and I would be next on the chopping block. I ran hard but for the pain in my ankle, kicking up sand with each step. Giovanni’s mansion was off in the distance, farther than it’d seemed earlier. When I reached the mansion’s outer security wall, I peaked around the corner and down the gravel driveway. Esteban stood outside the front door, his piece bulging through his jacket. I followed the wall around toward the back of the mansion and climbed over it and fell over, crashing into a rose bush before rolling onto the deck beside the empty swimming pool. At the bottom of the pool I found a large wrench left over from the mansion’s construction.

I stood behind Esteban and brought the wrench up above my head, when his radio clicked on and the voice on the other end said, “Ketchum threw the match and ran off toward the mansion. Be on the lookout. But Giovanni’s orders still stand. Detain him on sight but do not shoot. I repeat, do not shoot Ash Ketchum.”

Esteban dropped like a sack of Santa’s toys down the chimney when I slammed the wrench into the back of his skull. I checked his pulse: alive, barely. I reached into his jacket and pulled out his peashooter then slipped into the mansion, real hush in case there were any more Rockets on patrol, because there was no way of telling just how deep Jessie’s corruption went and at that point anyone could’ve been on anyone’s side. I crept up the stairs in the foyer and stopped at the top to pipe for footfalls, but the house seemed deserted, and I had no idea where Giovanni would be except for maybe beyond the ajar door at the end of the hall. I thought I saw movement through the opening so I crept closer and peaked through the small crack.

There he was, lying on the floor on his stomach, a pool of blood still forming fresh around his torso, his wooden cane beside him. I kicked open the door and shined on Jessie sitting on the windowsill in her ninja getup, her pistol aimed upward at the ceiling, a shrunken Poké ball balanced on the tip of the barrel. Her finger rested on the trigger.

James said, “Drop it.”

“Drop yours,” I said, moving sidelong into the room, my pistol remaining trained on the middle of her forehead.

“Drop it or I’ll cook her.”

“Who?”

“Misty, you idiot.”

Misty was in the ball.

“You’re going to kill us anyway,” I said, still sidestepping closer to Giovanni’s body. “So, James, I might as well put daylight into your bitch and cut my losses.”

He smirked, then Jessie stood up from the windowsill. “Obviously,” the voice coming from her hand said, “two of us are going to die today, so why don’t we make this a fair fight and handle this like mature adults.”

“You mean with a pokémon battle?” I said.

James was quiet, then. Jessie removed her mask. She spoke. “We’re not kids anymore, Ash,” she said, each word a struggle. “I learned long ago the futility of pokémon battling, but Giovanni refused to evolve. He risked our entire organization for this nonsense. James and I will take Team Rocket to the next level. We will protect our world from devastation.

“In the past, we used their flesh to proxy our flesh, their blood to proxy our blood, their pain to proxy our pain, but the true sign of a warrior is his ability to fight with his own flesh, his own blood, and the desire to feel his own pain.” With one hand still balancing the Poké ball on the tip of her pistol, the other reached over her shoulder and unsheathed the katana strapped to her back. The katana clanked as it landed at my feet. Her hand then settled around the handle of the katana still at her waist.

“On three,” she said, “we will drop our shooters and settle this like proper warriors.”

“On three,” I repeated.

“Three, two…”

At one, she lowered her pistol and I shot her in the chest. She stumbled backwards and flipped over the windowsill and fell headfirst. The Poké ball containing Misty rolled across the hardwood floor and under Giovanni’s bed.

“It wouldn’t have been a fair fight, bitch,” I spat, pocketing my heater. “You’re a goddamn ninja and I’ve never held a sword in my life.”

I recovered the ball and summoned Misty out onto the bed. The red outline slowly materialized into my naked water-flower, who screamed as soon as her voice box was formed enough to let her. I pulled her body close to me and squeezed her against my chest and told her it was okay.

“Oh my God, it was like hell in there,” she cried. “I felt my entire soul being torn to pieces over and over again. How can they store people in Poké balls like this? Now I know why pikachu hated it so much.”

“I’ve got you babe,” I whispered. “We’re okay.”

“Is it over?”

“It’s over,” I said, setting Esteban’s pistol on the bed at her side. “It’s finally over. I’ll find you something to wear and then we’re getting the fuck off this island.”

I moved to Giovanni’s wardrobe and found for her an overlarge dress shirt, which would suffice until we returned to our cabin. As I turned back toward the bed, Jessie burst through the door like a cannonball, her katana ahead of her like a herald of destruction. Misty jumped from the bed and screamed out for me but I could barely react before the tip of Jessie’s sword pierced Misty’s bare stomach and came out through her back. The blood-covered blade slid out of her after Jessie pushed her back onto the bed in a bloody heap. I roared.

As Jessie reached for her gat I charged her, but too late, for she spun around and fired into my shoulder. Maintaining my momentum I threw my body into her center and slammed her against the wall. The pistol flew from her hand and out the window. As I stepped back and readied a frenzy of blows against her mush she sliced her katana across my thigh. I screamed and grabbed my leg as she pushed me away from on top of her. I fell onto my back and the three Poké balls I still had from the battle rolled out of my jacket pocket and onto the floor. I started to pull myself toward the katana that Jessie had dropped at my feet before I plugged her, and Jessie grabbed hold of the windowsill and recovered her footing. She flipped her katana over and stumbled toward me when one of the Poké balls started to rumble. After a hissing sound of escaping air, the psyduck’s red outline appeared on top of the bed next to Misty, and then the pokémon materialized before our eyes. I turned over onto my back. Jessie then lurched toward me ready when the psyduck quacked and said, “Psy-y-y-y,” which caused Jessie to pause.

Misty whispered into the psyduck’s ears words too faint for me to hear. Jessie heard, though, and scoffed. She turned to the psyduck and said, “You can barely control another pokemon’s mind, you stupid fucking duck. What makes you think you can control mine?”

“Psy-y-y-y…“

She continued on her path toward me, her bloodied sword raised over her head and ready to bury the blade in my chest, but she stopped mid-stroke as her right hand, the hand in which James’s spirit resided, shot up and grabbed the handle and stopped her.

“What are you doing?” Jessie said.

“He’s in my mind!” James cried out.

“Fight him, you idiot!”

Her right hand let go the sword then and clawed at her face, removing bits of the reconstructed jawbone in a bloody flourish. Jessie seethed in pain and dropped the sword from her left hand, and her right hand caught the sword just before it landed on the floor. As Jessie held her left hand over the bleeding gash in her jaw, the James hand brought the sword up to her neck.

“I can’t stop it!” James cried, as the edge of the blade slid effortlessly across her throat. Black blood oozed out from the gash. Jessie fell to her knees and released the sword. She gargled, then fell over on her side. The psyduck returned to its Poké ball with a quack and a “Psy-y-y.”

Bleeding out, I crawled back to the bed and pulled myself up by the sheets to join Misty at her side. Both her hands covered the hole in her stomach and the bed was drenched with blood. I touched her cheek and said, “Don’t leave me, okay?”

“I told you I didn’t want to die, right?” she whispered weakly as I lifted up her head and slid the pillow underneath it. “Don’t let me go, Ash.”

I found the Poké ball in which Jessie had imprisoned her and held it in front of Misty’s face. “I’m going to catch you again, okay?” I said.

“No…”

“Misty,” I said, “I know it’s a terror but it’ll preserve you in this state and stop you bleeding to death. When we get back home, I’ll get you to a hospital and let you back out, I promise. I’m not losing you out here, sweetheart.”

“Don’t put me back in there, please,” she whimpered.

“I have to,” I said. “Please, let me catch you. Tell me to catch you. Say the words, Misty. Tell me to catch you, baby. I love you and I’m not letting you go.”

She said, “Catch me, Ash…”

I kissed her one last time then dropped the Poké ball on her chest. I held her in my arms as she became a beam of bright red light and then she disappeared into the ball, and I was holding nothing but bed sheets, and my Misty was gone.

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Continue to Chapter 10: “Awakenings”