Rocking the Base
Aliana, scientist and administrator for Team Flare, current ranking officer for Lumiose City, was utterly exhausted. It had been a long day conducting last-minute experiments, yelling at screw-ups, arranging for the movement of vital equipment, and handling payroll. Though only a few yet knew it, the base was getting ready for evacuation. It wouldn’t be long before Lumiose itself and the rest of the old world were no more, and when that happened no one could be left here. Deciding what was vital and what equipment to ditch was a lot to ask in a hideout filled with several hundred people was immense enough a task. And that was without even considering that her closest colleagues had already moved north and left her to manage this place. She sat back on her bed, sighed, and then yawned.
But just before she got up to get into her sleepwear, there came a sudden clanging from the large vent overhead. She looked up, visor already scrambling to track motion, when the cover flew off the shaft. She reached for a Poke Ball, but almost immediately a small blue-pink Pokémon her device identified as an Inkay dropped out of it and right in front of her face. Aliana started backwards, but the little thing released a beam of yellow rings that caught her dead in the face. She stared at it for a few seconds, then fell over backwards onto her bed.
The cephalopod’s short tentacles wrapped themselves about her visor and tugged. It took a few tries for the lightweight little thing to pull it off, but once it did Inkay quickly retreated upwards and vanished back into the ventilation ducts. What it missed, once the room had gone silent, was the Flare scientist’s eye cracking open and a grin tugging at the corner of her mouth. The visor offered more than powers of observation.
“Ambush me in my bed, will you?” she muttered. “Someone’s going to regret that.”
“Good work, Inkay,” James smiled as his Pokémon dropped the high-tech visor in his hand. He glared at it. “This for all the toilets you made us clean!”
“Wha – wait!” Celestia held out a hoof, but too late.
James hurled Aliana’s visor at the ground as hard as he could, cracking the red glass. The alicorn took a step forward, but Jessie had already brought down her foot on top of it. James cheerfully, obliviously joined her in stomping all over it, very quickly reducing the mechanical marvel to so many shards of metal and glass.
“And that’s for every time you called me an idiot over your stupid loudspeakers!” Jessie declared as she ground a piece beneath her heel. “Who’s the idiot now?!”
“You could have just worn it yourselves…” Celestia moaned with a hoof on her forehead.
“That’s the way it is,” Wobbuffet said sympathetically.
“It’s not like knowing your enemy’s every move would be useful or anything,” the princess sighed. “And heaven forbid we used it to make announcements over their own speaker systems.”
When the two humans were finally done spitefully reducing their tormenter’s spying eye and microphone to so much dust, they looked back at their Pokémon, pleased as could be.
“Alright, Phase One was a great success!” James declared with a confident thumbs-up.
“So Phase Two is a surefire home run!” Jessie said. “Meowth, if you’d do the honors?”
“With pleasure!” the cat Pokémon slammed down on a button on his phone, and the diversion began.
Throughout Team Flare’s underground base, a series of muffled thumps in the ventilation shafts heralded a tide of smoke suddenly pouring from the vents. Almost immediately, the base’s fire alarm began to wail, sharp and shrill. Just as suddenly the base’s automated sprinkler defenses activated one after the other in a score of separate rooms and hallways. Hundreds of men and women were jarringly ripped from slumber by shrieking alarms and cold water, looking frantically around to spot heavy black smoke wafting from the air ducts.
Normally a familiar sharp and commanding voice through the intercoms would provide some sense of direction, but most senior personnel were already gone and their acting leader mysteriously silent. Therefore, the great majority of Team Flare personnel did exactly what one expects a mob of bleary, half-asleep people suddenly faced with the prospect of being trapped in a very confined space with a raging fire to do. They panicked.
Men and woman ran screaming from bunkrooms and mess halls, fanning out in all directions as the confused mass either sought the source of the flames or just the exit. Contradictory information quickly began filling the air as some agents yelled that this or that way was blocked by fire or smoke, or that another room was filled to the brim with flames. Lesser admins shouted for order when they weren’t running around like headless chickens themselves, but their voices were barely audible above the wailing fire alarms and shouting subordinates. Even when they were heard they had no sense of overall agency and were as likely to order a “calm” evacuation as to try to locate the source of it all.
The base was, in short, in total chaos.
Jessie, James, and Meowth, Pokémon safely recalled to their balls, dashed through the smoky, wet, ear-splittingly loud base with smirks on their faces. They passed Team Flare grunts dashing madly for the exit in their pajamas, splayed out all over each other on the wet metal floor, and in one case spraying a fire extinguisher into a vent to no particular effect. The trio ignored them all, running and shoving their way towards the primary data storage facility. In the maddened panic and confusion, no one noted them going.
“Out of my way you idiots!” Aliana screamed as she shoved at the amorphous blob of bodies surrounding her. “Out of the way or you’re all fired!”
It did her no good. The headache-inducing wails and incessant shouting ensured that her voice didn’t carry much further than a few feet in any direction. Most Flare grunts didn’t recognize her on sight through the haze and ceiling rain, what with her missing her signature visor and being thoroughly soaked. Even those who did were packed into the corridor like sardines themselves and could barely move. Up ahead, three grunts had simultaneously tried to claw their way through a door built for one and had gotten thoroughly stuck. Dozens more people were now packed into the hallway behind them, each pressing forward mindlessly as smoke continued to waft from the vents. One of them carelessly elbowed the scientist in the face.
“Alright, that’s it!” she raged, seizing a Poke Ball. “Druddigon, clear a path!”
Silver light burst from the ball, forming quickly into a massive bipedal dark blue dragon with a red head and yellow belly. With nowhere else to take shape, it appeared above several of her subordinates and immediately fell on top of them. Ignoring the squirming humans beneath its feet, Druddigon bull rushed the door ahead, tossing Team Flare grunts aside like blades of grass before a lawnmower. The sheer force of its charge sent all three men blocking the portal flying, breaking open the hallway beyond. Aliana followed quickly in its wake, stepping carelessly over her moaning grunts in her haste.
Immediately once she emerged, the scientist took a right, then a left, then another right. Her Pokémon charged before her at all times, massive strength sweeping aside anyone dumb or unlucky enough to get in its way, until finally she reached the security. Aliana’s teeth clenched to see the door slid open and the room smoky, wet, and empty.
“You abandoned your posts?!” she clenched her trembling fists. “Am I the only competent woman in this building?!”
Vowing revenge on her idiot subordinates, the scientist hurried over to the security console, flipping through camera views one after the other in rapid succession. Quickly a pictured began to take shape in her head: smoke and sprinklers and panicked morons throughout the complex, but not even one instance of open flame. Then the whole thing was a deliberate distraction, just as she’d thought. If she’d had her visor she could have confirmed this in an instant.
“Knock me out and throw the idiots into confusion,” she growled. “Then hit…”
She immediately switched the view to the laboratory cameras, but apart from being soaked by sprinklers her experiments appeared just as she’d last left them. No one was in there save some fool with a fire extinguisher running about this way and that and dousing the vents in white foam. Next she checked the central data repository, but it too was empty and the door sealed tight. Frustrated, she flipped through several hallway views, getting nothing but screaming idiots flailing all over the place.
Wait.
Aliana paused her view one hallway in particular. Two grunts – in full uniform, not pajamas – and familiar Meowth ran straight down the near-empty metal corridor. There was no sense of panic to their movements. They looked like they knew where they were going and ran straight with a steady sense of purpose.
Also the Meowth was running on two legs.
The Team Flare Scientist hissed her outrage through clenched teeth, then slammed one balled fist into the control console. Of course, she should have seen it sooner! The shame she felt only fed her urge to kick the living daylights of them. Quickly surmising their intended destination, she got up and began another dash. She wouldn’t let this humiliation become a true disaster. Not when they were so close.
Team Rocket rounded the final corner, and at last their destination was in sight. At the end of the hallway was the flat, handle-less door. Behind it lay Team Flare’s central data repository for this base and all the information Giovanni could want. They’d make the boss proud of them this time for sure!
It was only when the trio had run straight up the reinforced security door and its biometric locks that the problem finally began to dawn on them.
“Uh, guys?” Meowth said as he stared up at the featureless sliding door. “Now dat we’re here, how do we get inside all quick like?”
“Well, I…” muttered James.
“Uh…” Jessie trailed off.
Just as the sinking feeling was finally beginning to creep over the failure-prone trio, one Poke Ball on James’ waist spontaneously doubled in size and burst open.
“Allow me,” said the white alicorn as she appeared in silver light, a calm smile on her face.
Celestia opened her mouth and unleashed white-hot flames. Team Rocket flinched and backed away as the fire assailed the door’s side, top, and bottom. After giving each location a few seconds of withering Flamethrower, the princess’ eyes flashed with psychic power. The weakened door was torn from its portal and flung to the side, leaving red-hot metal on three sides steaming in the sprinklers.
“After you,” she gestured at her slack-jawed teammates.
Whatever else could be said about them, Team Rocket always recovered quickly. Jessie, James, and Meowth rushed the open portal – stepping gingerly over the steaming metal – and all but tackled the machines inside. Sleek black devices no larger than a human thumb seemed to emerge from nowhere about their persons and were quickly inserted into localized server stacks, computers, laptops, and wherever else presented an opening. Red “R” symbols on the black data thieves began to glow as they worked at a feverish pace. James looked down at his handheld computer, frowning.
“What’s da matta?” Meowth soon asked him.
“All this data is heavily encrypted,” James answered. “I’m not even getting coherent file names. We could be getting their top-secret plans or the last five years’ worth of bills for dry cleaning and hair dye.”
“Just copy everything you can and we’ll send it to headquarters for decoding once we’re out of this dump!” Jessie ordered
“Right,” he nodded quickly.
“That’s far enough!” a sharp, familiar voice cut in.
Jessie, James, Meowth, and Celestia all peered as one out into the corridor. Striding through the smoke and rain, an imposing dragon Pokémon at her back, was the flustered and wet but unmistakable form of their slave driver of the past few days. Her green eyes, visible for the first time, were alight with rage. Her teeth and fists alike were clenched, and the dragon behind her flexed its claws meaningfully.
“I should have realized that you three were more than just idiots from the moment you came back from patrol,” Aliana snarled. “The way you made a beeline for this place that first day – I thought you were just being stupid, but I should have known better. I should have thrown the lot of you into the brig right then and there!”
“But ya didn’t so dere!” Meowth taunted her.
“You made us clean bathrooms, but now we’ll clean your clock!” Jessie added, sticking out her tongue.
“Your good fortune is a mistake I intend to rectify right now!”
Her Pokémon roared a challenge, stepping forward past its mistress and flaring its wings wide, taking up almost all space in the hallway.
“Look lady,” James crossed his arms. “If you expect us to be scared by that then you obliviously have no idea who you’re dealing with.”
“Enlighten me. I’ll be sure to add names to your tombstones.”
Jessie, James, and Meowth all looked at one another with a identical gleam in their eyes. Then, as one, the two humans cast off their Flare guises, revealing proud white Team Rocket uniforms underneath. With experienced ease, all three posed.
“Prepare for trouble, we’re wrecking this base!”
“And make it double, putting you in your place!”
“To protect the world from tacky fashion!”
“To unite all peoples with our passion!”
“To denounce the evils of Team Flare’s ranks!”
“To extend our reach to computer banks!”
“Jessie!”
“And it’s James!”
“Team Rocket breaks in at the speed of light!”
“Hands up and surrender or be crushed by our might!”
“Meowth, that’s right!”
“Wobbuffet!”
When was motto practice? Celestia wondered. I wanted to be in this one.
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Never before has it felt so satisfying to hear the Team Rocket intro
Wait... Isn't Celestia a fairy type? Oh, this is gonna be good.
God their motto is so cringy.
Excellent chapter.
8997033
Yes she is...
It's also mutlifaceted it can be used for any situation, Bad or good.
One of the free times when you are actually rooting FOR Team Rocket. Too bad that they underestimated that visor!
And that ending was quite funny. "When was motto practice?"
A few typos, though:
Run-on sentence. I originally had difficulty parsing it.
Consider this:
Deciding what was vital and what equipment to ditch was a lot to ask. A hideout filled with several hundred people was immense enough without even considering that her closest colleagues had already moved north and left her to manage this place.
a tide of smoke suddenly pouring from the vents
what was vital and what equipment to ditch was a lot to ask in hideout filled with several hundred people
They passed Team Flare grunt dashing madly for the exit in their pajamas
1. What was vital and what equipment to ditch was a lot to ask in a hideout filled with several hundred people.
2. Grunts.
I wonder if this is going to be mimetic Team Rocket, where getting stomped by Ash constantly has turned them into badasses.
She could go after Meowth :
"Meowth! That is right!"
"Tia! Celestia!"
I think Tia is having more fun than she should with Team Rocket.
That last line.
I think the room is agreement.
*rolls up a news paper* NO! Bad Celestia.
8997033
tse1.explicit.bing.net/th?id=OIP.8Hy89ZR-5ZYaLgfm-VfImAHaI3&pid=Api
They better clean this lady's clock though, as honestly yeah Team Rocket aren't completely useless pokemon users. They just have SHIT luck when dealing with Ash, other people they can actually have a chance of dealing with.
8997029
well they are actually trying to save the world this time, so let us hope they win here, but since Tia is a fairy type they should stand a good chance.
Oh, Celestia. You're supposed to be on spotlights here. Someone's got to set the stage with dramatic lightning...
8997097
They might be chumps, but they're fun chumps.
Reword?
agents
grunts
Despite their holding of the idiot ball by breaking the visor, they actually had a mission sorta succeed. I'm impressed. Also, nice motto indeed.
8997302
They're also chumps with hearts of gold.
this is the chapter to put this in.
8997147
Let her have her fun at least once.
Always satisfying to hear the Team Rocket motto, or at least a variant of it. Played the theme and everything
8997033
Doesn’t one of her pokemon have surf though? Tia is fire type.
I'm pretty sure it's all improvised, Cele.
8997356
Dagnit, I wanted to be the first to link that!
8997593
Awesome. Considering the types of fights they get into regularly and have had recently, they stand a good chance of winning. And Luna with her army of Spearow/Fearow knights.
8998012
Oh ho ho! I'm guessing you didn't pay much attention to Gen 6? Dragon types do nothing to fairies. It's like trying to use psychic on a dark type. Fairies however, are super effective against all Dragon types, much like dark against psychic. In short:
They're strong against Dark, Dragon and Fighting types.
They don't do much against Fire, Poison and Steel Pokemon
They resist Bug, Dark and Fighting moves
They're weak against Poison and Steel attacks
They're completely immune to all Dragon attacks
And yes. Ash's Pokedex identified Celestia as a Fire/Fairy type. The types of Luna and Twilight and currently unknown, though I assume they're also a dual type Fairy. Probably Dark/Fairy for Luna and Psychic/Fairy for Twilight.
Glad this is getting regular updates again. I really like this fic.
Oh, that last line. That was priceless. I love the competence Celestia adds to the team, I have to say.
And I was glad to see that events with Luna defied expectations! I imagine most of us were expecting she'd be captured, but nope, the warrior princess has plenty of fight in her. Can't wait for all parties to convalesce.
Oh I love Team Rocket, and I love this story!
If Discord had been there to see it, I wonder if he'd be jealous of the chaos Jesse and James were creating.
Well, Celestia, I'm sure there are ways you could've contributed. For instance, when James said:
I like to ask, "Are you sure it's not to ignite all peoples?" And, when Jesse said:
I'd ask something like, "Well, shouldn't you be blasting off now?" while Jesse's saying what she was saying. You could have fun doing something like that. Timed perfectly, it'd be like Meowth's agreeing with you.
Poor Celestia -- only wanting to be included. Ah well next time 'suppose.