Chapter 1: Gotta Catch 'Em All
(Three Years Later)
To: Agent 56
From: Agent 2
Subj: Agent 298, Obj. 23920
Sergeant Johnson,
Agent 298 has still not reported back from his most recent objective. It is requested that he be located immediately. Please assign one mobile agent to the task. Agent298 was operating in Objective 23920, and last reported from the desert two and a half miles north of Site L. He was in possession of a silver Mach 9000 desert motorcycle, license plate number 6436-ML. Report back if the target has not been found within two days of mobile agent deployment. If found, communicate back his condition, and further actions will be assigned.
Commander Smith
The metal door slid shut with a clank as a tall, thin boy jogged into the narrow steel-walled corridor, a large brown sack slung over his shoulder. He was wearing a dark blue jacket over a white and red shirt, and had several skid marks on his worn blue jeans from months of sliding, fighting, and infrequent washing. A pair of large black goggles were lodged in his long mess of brown hair, which hung down to his dark eyes.
After scanning the hallway for any other bystanders, the boy walked confidently forward to what he deemed was a safe distance from the door and drew a small rod-like device from within his jacket. The device resembled a metal pen, with a tiny red button where its eraser should have been. He examined the pen for a second and then pressed the button with a grin, bracing himself for the result.
The room behind him exploded.
The blast shook every wall of the complex, and a bright red and white light flashed below the door behind him. Without waiting another second, the boy took off running, racing down the corridor towards the building's exit. He knew the alarms would go off at any second, and then the security would arrive. But it would be too late for them; by the time they got to the room, he would be long gone.
The boy flew around a corner and down another hallway, this one lined with doors. As he passed the second door on the right, several spinning red lights on the walls began flashing, and a voice on the intercom announced, “All personnel evacuate immediately. I repeat, all personnel evacuate immediately. This is not a drill.” The boy grinned; a slow reaction, as usual.
Before any of the doors around him could open, the boy had rounded another corner, heading down a relatively wide hallway. As he slowed for a moment, he noticed that the building around him was eerily quiet, besides the annoying squealing of the alarm. According to his research, there should have been at least a hundred people in that wing of the building, and about then they all should have been fighting to escape. But nowhere could he hear the familiar scuff of footsteps. The boy took off again, unease slowly filling his dark brown eyes. He cleared another hallway. Then another. Still, he was completely alone.
“Two more corners and I'm out,” he mumbled to himself as he ran. He dashed around yet another corner, and found that a room about fifty feet away was open. As he neared the door, two tall men in suits stepped out from within, and one drew a gun.
“Stop right there,” the man said in a deep, gruff voice, pointing the gun at the boy.
Watching as the second man – who was oddly wearing a pair of sunglasses, even though he was indoors – also drew out a gun, the boy skidded to a halt and swore, raising his hands over his head and dropping the brown bag to his feet. It looked like the security wasn't quite as bad as he had hoped.
“Step away from the bag,” the first man said, inching closer to the brown sack.
Face slowly turning pale, the boy took several steps backward. The man lifted the sack and loosened the drawstrings, peering inside. Satisfied with what he saw inside, he tossed it to the sunglasses-wearing man and returned his attention to the boy in front of him.
“What's your name, boy?” he asked calmly.
The boy's eyes widened, and he glanced down the hallway in both directions before he answered, “...My name is... Blaze.”
The suited man's eyes narrowed. “Not a very common name, Blaze. You sure that's it? Wouldn't want to be caught lying now, would you?”
The boy just glared at the man in contempt.
The man laughed and said quietly, “That's a lot of Pokemon you just stole. And setting off that bomb wasn't very smart on your part.”
“Stealing back stolen Pokemon isn't a crime, it's a duty,” Blaze replied blankly.
“So you're with the Red Army, are you?”
“I never said that,” he answered quickly. “I just said I did what was right.”
The suited man's grin faded. “Not feeling like telling the truth, eh? You terrorists sicken me.” He strode slowly around Blaze, taking up a position behind him. “We better take this scoundrel to the mayor,” he said to his partner. The other man nodded, and the first man jabbed Blaze in the back with the barrel of his pistol.
Blaze began to walk forward, and was lead down two more hallways before he was told to stop in front of a silver door by the second man.
“Alright punk, empty out your pockets.”
“You sure you don't want to frisk me?” Blaze asked sarcastically.
“Shut it,” the first guard said angrily, holding out his hand. Blaze reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out a gun and a pokeball. He dropped both in the man's extended hand, and took a step back.
“Just so you know,” Blaze said smugly, “There's a homing device in that pokeball. So my friends will go pick it up for me from wherever you send it.”
The first guard snorted. “Like you Reds could afford homing beacons. You fools'd probably go bankrupt if we left you alone.”
Blaze grinned; his facade had obviously worked marvelously. While the man had indeed called his bluff on the pokeball, the man failed to realize that Blaze had only mentioned it to see if the guards expected him to have a homing beacon in the first place. Because, as luck would have it, Blaze did, in fact, have one strapped firmly to the palm of his right hand, hidden inconspicuously under a black leather glove. A single click of a button on the device's face would send help racing toward him by land, sea, and sky to free him from any prison.
“Hey you little sneak, what's that bulge in your other jacket pocket?” the sunglasses-wearing guard demanded, pulling Blaze from his mental gloating.
Blaze's face paled a bit. “You want my wallet? What, you gonna rob me?”
“Hand it over,” the first man said, shaking his gun at Blaze's face.
Blaze hesitated for a second and then pulled out his black leather wallet. He had never expected that they would know to check his wallet for anything. Trying to sound confident, he said, “Hey, I'm really thirsty from all that running, so could you go buy me a soda from a vending machine or something? I've only got like a hundred bucks in there, so its not like you could buy anything else with it.”
The red-faced man snatched the wallet from Blaze and shook it upside down, dropping all the money and cards within to the floor. He scanned the cards on the floor and then turned the wallet over again. Blaze's mind was racing. He couldn't let the men find his Pokemon trainer card; with it, they could get into any of the Red Army's bases. It listed all his personal information and would give them access to virtually all of the group's secrets.
“So,” he babbled reflexively. “I guess that's a no on the drinks.”
There was a tearing sound, and the man tossed a ripped piece of black cloth to the ground. Blaze waited in anticipation, hoping futilely that the cloth wasn't the false back to his wallet. Triumphantly, the man drew out Blaze's sleek gray trainer card, flashing it briefly to his comrade. Blaze groaned loudly, looking into the man's fiery eyes.
“Nice try, kid. Next time, make the fake back the same shade of black as the wallet.”
Regaining his composure, Blaze held up his hands sheepishly and retorted, “I swear officer, that's not mine. I've never seen it before in my life.” As soon as his right hand reached his head, he wished that he hadn't moved; if the guards noticed that one of his hands was gloved and the other was not, he'd lose his last plan of escape. If they pulled of his glove, he could kiss his emergency homing beacon goodbye. And if he was held captive long enough, the Red Army could easily be infiltrated by any number of government agents now that they had a trainer card.
Slowly, and as discreetly as possible, Blaze lowered his hands, sliding them into his jean's pockets. He could press the homing beacon's signal button at any time, but the guards still had his trainer card and his pokeball, so what was the point in escaping?
The second man stepped forward and pressed several buttons on a keypad next to the door before them, causing it to slide silently open. The room beyond was fairly small, with a few tables and chairs and a large desk inside. Leaning against the desk was a middle-aged businessman with neatly combed, pitch black hair, whom Blaze assumed was the mayor. The man was wearing dress clothes and a tie, and Blaze noticed that a suit jacket was hanging on the back of the chair behind the desk. Two soldiers were crouched down beside the desk, both pointing large automatic guns at the opening door. As they saw the two suited men with Blaze, they stood and moved to the side of the room, raising their weapons.
The mayor smiled and clapped his hands. “Ah, Damian and Harold. This is the person behind that explosion, I assume?
“Yes sir,” the sunglasses-wearing guard beside Blaze answered, “we found him running out of the building with this bag of pokeballs, and he admitted to setting off the bomb. I have the recording here.”
Blaze almost swore again. The men had tricked him into admitting that he had blown up the room. Now he'd have that to deal with too, if he didn't escape.
“Excellent work, as usual, Damian,” the mayor said. “What is the boy's name?”
“He says his name-” the man, apparently named Damian, began.
But before he had a chance to finish, Blaze stepped forward and interrupted angrily, “My name is Blaze.”
“Blaze is it?” the mayor asked, standing up straight and slowly approaching his prisoner with a quizzical but sly expression. “I've never met a Blaze before. What area is that name from? Certainly not from Orre.”
“Sir,” the second guard, Harold, interrupted, “it says on his trainer card that his name is David Arthur Jones. He's nineteen years old and he's from New Phenac.”
The mayor's eyes narrowed. “Let me see that trainer card,” he ordered. Harold meekly handed the card to the mayor, and set Blaze's gun, wallet, and single pokeball on the desk beside him. The mayor examined the card briefly and then pocketed it. “Well, David,” he said, returning his attention to the boy before him, “I'll cut right to the chase. You were just caught stealing over fifty legally confiscated pokemon, owned by the national government, and you personally admitted to setting off an explosive device inside a government facility. You've also been found to be directly linked to the Red Army, a dangerous terrorist organization. Given that, I could lock you up for the rest of your life, and no one would ever even think twice about it.” The man paused for a moment, as if allowing his message to sink in.
“But I'd like to propose a bargain with you. I will let you off with five years in prison and a couple of hours of community service, and all you have to do is tell me the exact location of the Red Army's headquarters and how to get inside. As you know, we already have your trainer card, and we have scouts scouring the countryside, so it's only a matter of time until we locate it even without your help. But I'm offering you your life back. I like to believe people should always be given a second chance. One should always look to forgive before they look to condemn.” The mayor smiled quickly, but his face quickly turned blank again. “But first, I need you to prove that you want to change and start a better life. I know it's a lot to ask, but I need an answer now. Do we have a deal?”
Blaze almost grinned. The mayor obviously thought he had the mind of a second grader. While beginning to talk, the boy slowly pressed the emergency button in the palm of his right hand. It was now or never; he could very easily find himself in a jail cell within minutes. “With all due respect sir, I'm going to have to decline your offer. You said it yourself: no one will ever ask what's happened to me if you lock me up. I'm a nobody. So what's to stop you from putting me in prison for the rest of my life anyway? No one will notice that you accidentally forgot to hold up your end of the deal. I know your type. And I know you're bluffing about finding the Red Army's base too. Your scouts gave up weeks ago! The whole world knows it. How dumb do you think I am?”
“Hey!” Damian cried, stepping close to Blaze and raising his fist. “Remember who you're talking to, punk! This is the mayor of Gateon!”
“That won't be necessary, Damian,” the mayor said quietly. “Now David, I've given you a choice and you've decided to...” But his voice trailed off as his eyes fixed on Blaze's right hand. The glove was shaking about wildly at Blaze's side as the metal homing device below it flashed and vibrated. A tinge of fear flashed through the mayor's eyes, and all four of the guards in the room raised their weapons.
Blaze glanced quickly at the sole window in the room and saw a flash of green shoot by. He had no idea how his backup had arrived so quickly, but the fact that the mayor and his cronies seemed to think that the beacon was a threat was very encouraging. “Now, I think you all understand that I will not be going to prison,” Blaze said calmly, slowly stepping towards the guards. If he was going to get out alive, he'd need to convince all five government agents to leave the room. An idea instantly popped into his mind as he slowly paced forward. “In a few seconds we'll all be blown into little pieces by this bomb in my hand.”
“Now now,” the mayor said hastily. “I'm sure we can work up a deal.” Even as he spoke, he was slowly creeping towards the room's single exit, with his guards closing in around him. Never once did his eyes leave Blaze's glove.
Thinking quickly, Blaze tried to calculate what he could say that would prevent the guards from shooting him immediately. “Sorry,” he said with a slightly insane grin, “but there's no off button on this bomb. No more deals.” Trying to solidify himself as a maniac in the five men's view, and make it look like he wouldn't pursue them into the hallway, he sidled over to the desk and sat smugly on the end of it. “So now... any last words?”
Suddenly, without warning, all five men spun and sprinted out the door, obviously trying to put as much distance between themselves and the bomb as possible. The electronic door slid shut behind them before they had even had time to make it down the hallway. Blaze grinned and hopped off the desk as soon as they were around the corner, striding over to a panel next to the door, and pressing a small red lock button. The guards were idiots; they didn't even bother to shoot him, and they left him his pokeball too.
Returning to the business of escaping, he snatched up his pokeball from the mayor's desk and shoved it in his jacket. He hopped up on a thick metal table in the corner of the room, right beside the sole window, and kicked the glass as hard as he could. The window didn't even budge. Blaze began to panic; the window was his only means of escape, and the guards would call his bluff soon. If the window was reinforced well enough, he was trapped. He backed up again and kicked with all his strength at the middle of the window. A crack moved across the glass, but still it didn't break. One last time, Blaze wound up and struck out at the window, this time shattering the glass outward, and leaving only a few fragments of glass in the frame. Down the hall, he heard the guards yell something as they began thundering back towards the room. Obviously, they were beginning to realize that they had been duped.
Blaze pressed the button on his glove again, silencing the irritating alarm and alerting his backup that he was ready to get out. The footsteps in the hall were nearing every second, but nowhere in sight was a sign of his help. The rough sounds of boots on tile reached the door within seconds, but still no help arrived. Even from across the room, Blaze could hear the guards rapidly pressing the buttons to unlock the door. Blaze took one last fleeting look at the room behind him, roughly jammed his goggles onto his face, and threw himself out the window, trying his best to avoid the remaining shards of glass in the window frame.
Around him, wind rushed by as he began to plummet downward five stories in what he estimated would take less than a quarter of a minute. As he looked up, he spotted that the window he leaped from was right above a large sign that read 'Orre Region Administration Building'. Even as he was falling to his death, it struck Blaze as odd that the more secretive a building's purpose, the more bland and uninteresting its name seemed to be. Suddenly, Blaze's legs brushed up against something long and solid. He wrapped his legs around the form, and turned to see that it was a large, green, dragon-like creature. The Flygon – which had bug-like wings, bulbous red eyes, and two backward-pointing horns – pulled sharply out of the dive and swooped several feet above the ground, before finally regaining some altitude.
On the creature's back sat another person: a slim woman slightly taller than Blaze wearing a green and black leather flight suit and a small jacket. She had short golden hair pulled back into a small ponytail and was wearing a pair of dark green goggles over her eyes.
“Hey Blaze, how'd it go?” the woman shouted friendlily to him.
“How do you think?” Blaze yelled back, wrapping his arms around her waist as her bug Pokemon swerved to avoid a small flurry of gunfire from the building. Scanning the ground below, Blaze shouted forward, “Jade, can you drop me off at my motorcycle?”
Jade just laughed and pointed her left hand to a small plume of smoke rising from what was apparently the smoldering remains of his motorcycle on the ground near the building. “Oh...” was all he managed to respond with. He was sure that he could get another bike when he returned to the Red Army's base, so it wasn't a huge loss, but he still felt a bit sad that he had lost his favorite bike.
“Did you get back the stolen pokeballs?” The Jade shouted while signaling Flygon to increase altitude by kicking it softly with her right foot.
“Yes,” Blaze responded quickly, “but a couple of guards took them. They got my gun and trainer card too.”
“Wait!” Jade shouted frantically. “You lost your trainer card?!”
Blaze paused for a moment to scan her unbelieving expression. “Yeah,” he answered slowly. “They took my gun, my card, and my Pikachu, but I only managed to get Pikachu back. The mayor of Gateon has my card right now.”
“The mayor?!” she shouted. Her face had visibly reddened.
“Uh-huh,” he responded quickly, hoping to change the subject. “But, uh... anyway, how did you respond to my distress signal so fast?”
“The mayor, really?! ...ugh, crap, the Commander's going to blow a fuse...well, I was just checking in on you today because it's been two days since we heard from you, and... really, the mayor has it, c'mon?!”
“I couldn't fight back, they had guns!” Blaze defended. “I had to jump out a window, for god's sake! You saw me!”
The Flygon dove downward and landed on the hard desert sand with a signal from Jade. She gracefully hopped off the beast's back and pulled a small phone-like device from her jacket. She gave Blaze one last glare and dialed a number.
“Hello, this is agent Jade,” Blaze heard her say into the speaker, a slight twinge of annoyance in her voice. “Yes, yes, he's fine... I've got him right here. But he's lost his trainer card... ...Yes, I'm sure. No... he looks completely normal... fine, yes. So... what do you want me to do with him?”
“Wait a second!” Blaze interrupted in alarm, jumping off the Flygon and landing next to her. “What do you mean 'do with me'? C'mon, Jade, we're friends! You know me, I'm a Red through and through. You don't honestly think I've turned traitor just because I've lost a piece of plastic?”
Jade didn't even glance at him, remaining entirely emotionless as she listened to the speaker on her phone. Finally, after seconds of waiting, she said quietly, “Really? Is that necessary? I know there was that business a while ago with the lookalikes, and it's been a few days since he left, but-” There was another pause as the person at the other end of the phone spoke. “Fine,” Jade responded firmly, “I'll take him to Site F.”
Blaze's jaw dropped. His arm shook nervously and he felt a trickle of sweat drip down his forehead. Of all the places he could have been sent to, why did it have to be Site F? Why couldn't they just shoot him and be done with it? “C'mon, Jade... I'm not a traitor” he mumbled.
Jade pocketed the phone and stared off into the distance for a moment. “We don't think you're a traitor,” she said coldly. As if it pained her to do so, she reached into her jacket again and pulled out a gun. Without pausing for a second, she twirled around and pointed the barrel of the weapon at Blaze's nose, right between his eyes. Her lips were clenched together and her eyes were grim and determined.
“We think you're a fake. Empty your pockets, now.”