For a moment, time stood still. In spite of the raining sprinklers and wailing alarms, Team Rocket and Team Flare’s Scientist stared one another down. The trio held their poses, Aliana looked at them with a blank expression on her face. Celestia’s eyes flicked from one side to the other. Druddigon simply looked confused.
“How did you fit that much hair under your disguise?” The red-haired woman finally broke the standoff, looking at Jessie. “Your hair is at least five or six times longer than it was a few seconds ago. I’m a scientist and even I don’t know how that’s possible.”
Come to think of it, neither do I. Celestia realized with a slight start.
“Good hairstylists are like good magicians,” Jessie crossed her arms and smirked. “We never reveal our secrets.”
“…why do I even bother?” the other woman just shook her head, then pointed. “Alright Druddigon, let’s go! Take out these interlopers with Dragon Pulse!”
Her dark blue dragon roared its approval, and then opened its jaws wide. A massive ball of white energy tinted with all colors of the rainbow quickly grew to the size of a human head, then erupted out. The energy raced towards them as half a massive dragon, wings flared and mouth wide open as if to swallow all three of them whole. But Celestia leapt in front of Team Rocket, wings held out like shields, and took the full force of the attack with her own body. The draconic energy collided with her head and chest, seemed to freeze in the air for just a split second, and then burst into a brilliant shower of multicolor sparkles dancing in the hallway.
“Was that it?” Celestia said with an arched eyebrow, more to the startled Pokémon than its mistress. “Because you might want to consider surrendering now. I can honestly say that the sprinklers hurt more.”
“So the sparkling rainbow unicorn is a Fairy-type,” Aliana said disdainfully. “I suppose I should have guessed, but I thought you’d just brought along one of your dollies.”
Why can’t we ever just do things the easy way? The princess sighed internally.
“That ‘dolly’ is going to send you and your oversized oaf packing,” James declared, arms crossed and a cocky grin on his face.
“Oh yeah? You think a scientist wouldn’t be prepared for any eventuality?” She clenched her fist. “Druddigon, Sludge Bomb now!”
“Celestia, use Protect!” James countered.
The dragon blinked away its startled expression and opened its mouth wide once more. This time what emerged was a veritable barrage of brown and purple sludge-balls. But a bubble of turquoise energy enveloped the alicorn, and the attack spent itself against that like rain on a window. So did the actual rain from the sprinklers, which irritated her skin.
“You’ll never win a battle by cowering behind barriers! Shadow Claw, let’s go!”
This time the massive dragon leaning forwards and charged the princess, talons aglow with purple and black energy.
“As it happens I agree.” James gestured dramatically, one hand on his heart and one extended and open. “Celestia, show us you’ve been practicing by serenading that scallywag with the sweet sound of Hyper Voice!”
“STOP BEING STUPID AND EVIL!” the alicorn promptly screamed at the top of her lungs.
The words emerged as a shockwave of white energy rippling from her open mouth. The sheer force of it was enough to halt Druddigon’s charge in its tracks and bowl over the woman behind it. The heavy dragon Pokémon immediately dug its claws into the floor, leaving deep gouges in the metal but arresting its momentum all the same.
“Now my dear, demonstrate your delightful dulcet intonation with the scintillating sonorous sensation of your Disarming Voice!”
“He’s really hammin’ it up, ain’t he?” Meowth said with a sweat drop behind his head.
“You know how he gets,” Jessie shrugged.
“Why can’t we just be friends in-steeead?” Celestia sweetly intoned in soprano.
This time the energy came out purple-pink and heart-shaped, a beam of ever-expanding shockwaves that hurled the dragon about like a kite caught in the breeze. Druddigon hit the slick wet metal on its back in a painful-sounding thud. It forced its eyes open and rolled onto its side, arms struggling to push itself upright.
“Now terminate the troublesome termagant with a paramount persuasive presentation worthy of artistic accolade!” James cried, hands held wide. “Hyper Beam!”
Golden energy seemed to appear from nowhere to coalesce about the alicorn’s horn, a blazing beacon in the smoky darkness of the underground base. After a moment’s buildup, she unleashed a coherent beam of destruction that slammed straight into her struggling opponent. Druddigon smashed into its trainer at lightning speed, both flung backwards down the corridor like a jet slicing through the air. There was a distant thud followed by a brilliant flash, and then nothing more.
“And with that we must bid a fond farewell to our Flare foe,” James tossed a rose from somewhere to Celestia who caught it in her teeth. Both turned as one to Jessie, Meowth, and Wobbuffet. “And to our cherished congregation, we bid a bonne journée.”
James grabbed a second rose in his own teeth, and alicorn and human bowed deeply as one.
“They really have been practicing, haven’t they?” Jessie asked with a sweat drop of her own.
“You’re tellin’ me.”
“Wobbuffet.”
Celestia giggled.
Far above, Lysandre Café was absolutely packed to the gills – and running critically low on hot cocoa to boot. Soaked, confused, and frequently pajama’d members of Team Flare milled about in a general state of paralyzed shock. Or, more accurately, pressed up against another and struggled not to spill precious steaming hot beverages. The lucky ones got to stand inside, the less fortunate shivered out in the cold of Kalos’ night.
Even after almost half an hour no one was entirely sure what was happening or what they should do about it. Their guiding voice was missing, and training for living in a secret underground base had been notably light on fire drills. Generally, it had been assumed that good ventilation, metal construction, and a top-notch automated fire suppression system with an abundant reservoir of water would be adequate to handle any potential risks from that department. And no one had any means to immediately contact headquarters via secure channel. They were equally unwilling to venture down into a flaming death trap to retrieve one. In the absence of higher leadership, lesser managers and admins debated their next course of action. At the moment, they were divided between those who wanted to call the fire department and those who realized how profoundly stupid calling outsiders into a massive secret underground lair would be.
In a night of strange and unexpected events, what happened next still said something about how shell-shocked the crowd was feeling. A man and a woman Team Flare uniforms, soaking wet but bright-eyed and giggling, came racing up the stairway from the underground with a Meowth riding on their shoulders. They shoved their way quickly through the murmuring grunts, taking a few smacks in the process but hardly seeming to notice. Right at the door, the woman snatched a passing man’s hot chocolate out of nowhere, drained it in one chug, then tossed the styrofoam cup aside and gave a mock salute. At which point all three ran out into the Kalos night as fast as their legs could take them, laughing like madmen to the baffled stares of their “teammates”. No one bothered to run more than a few hundred yards after them.
It would be hours before a soaked, dirty, burnt, quivering-with-rage Aliana stormed up the hidden stairwell and restored overall sense of purpose and coherency with liberal applications of screaming, insults, and pain. By which time, of course, it was much too late.
“Took you all long enough,” said the image of Giovanni said to his three employees. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d been found out and defeated as well. That would have been inconvenient.”
“We promise da wait will be worth it, boss!” Meowth saluted.
“We took every scrap of data from their system we could fit on our drives,” Jessie said.
“And we’re transmitting it to headquarters for decryption as we speak,” James added.
“I’ll put our best system analysts on it without delay,” Giovanni answered from where his holographic face stood beside the trio’s balloon. “We’ll soon see what exactly these fools have been up to and what they want with Dark Ball technology. Did you learn anything else while infiltrating the enemy?”
“Just that their collective hygiene is as poor as their fashion sense, sir,” Jessie answered.
The boss raised an eyebrow, but did not inquire further. Instead, he soon gave that rarest of his expressions: a slight smile.
“I have to admit that most of me wasn’t expecting you three to come back at all,” he said. “That you appear to have actually accomplished something this time exceeds my expectations. So… well done.”
Jessie, James, and Meowth all visibly swelled with pride at such rare words of praise from Giovanni.
“Boss…” Meowth sniffed with visibly moist eyes. “You’re too kind.”
“Perhaps I am,” Giovanni said. “Still, while we focus on decrypting Team Flare’s data, I want you three to concentrate on laying low and avoiding their inevitable attempts to ferret you out. Reinforcements are being gathered for the Kalos region but for the moment you three represent Team Rocket’s only local presence. You have my permission to engage targets of opportunity if there’s something to gain, but none of your idiotic news-grabbing schemes, you understand? I want you out of sight, out of mind until we know more.”
“Sir yes sir!” the trio saluted once more.
“Good,” he nodded. “Giovanni out.”