Pokemon Fan Fiction / Pokemon Fan Fiction ❯ Desert Hurts ❯ Part-time Marionette ( Chapter 6 )

Desert Hurts
By Hector Gilbert

Chapter Six
"Part-time Marionette"

Disclaimer: I don't own Pokémon.

A nearby explosion shook its surroundings such that Butch nearly found himself holding on to the handrail while continuing his dart up the stairway. He would have a sharper aim on Rob from the windows a few floors up, and it would be harder for the guards to counter-attack at a higher position, so he felt that it would be prudent to ascend.

What he did forget about was that there were plenty of people on patrol on the third floor up, which also happened to have the quarters of senior executives. Forgotten, that was, until Butch opened the door to that floor and found two armed Rockets talking.

Swallowing his breath, Butch hastily slipped back. Perhaps thoughts of Rob were distracting him too much; Butch found himself having to catch himself going too fast, which wasn't usually the case.

The Mantine was back in Butch's pokéball, as James had made him withdraw it. Perhaps quite simply a stupid thing to do.

Or perhaps James was afraid that Mantine would kill a few more Rockets with its swift, Butch presumed. But couldn't he just kill the thing?

"Hey!" Someone had clearly noticed his presence; cursing under his breath, Butch brought out his gun where he could see it.

Tap-tap. The sound of metal soles cracking against the concrete rang in Butch's ears. Moving closer and closer. The guard only stopped tapping when he stopped moving, and he only stopped moving when he was standing right in front of Butch.

Hastily Butch fired the pistol through the chin, blowing the Rocket's head into two pieces. Blood sprayed all over Butch and the wall as the semi-headless man collapsed.

Tap-tap. Now they were running. Butch brought out his pokéball, and without much hesitation released Mantine to the side wall above the new corpse.

Without further warning Butch slipped around the corner and fired a couple more shots; Mantine quickly took care of the rest with its swift. The normal-type attack was proving quite useful, as despite Mantine's poor attack rating the flying stars proven themselves quite deadly against weak human flesh.

Five men and women wearing Rocket Grunt and Rocket Executive uniforms dropped like harpooned Beedrills before the two of them. Smoke rose and shrapnel fell as the now-accepted noise of the alarm finally began to take over again.

Yet, above the alarm, Butch could hear someone yelling something from the next corner. "Mantine - use your bubblebeam!"

Nothing happened, but Butch kept interest with his gun at hand.

"Fire at Butch!" the voice continued to yell, "Will commands you!"

Butch fired his pistol again, as a sort of warning shot as he couldn't really see where the voice was coming from. But soon enough he did, as that man (indeed also wearing a Rocket uniform) also popped out from around the corner.

In place of its swift Mantine used its bubblebeam attack, plastering the Rocket on the wall. Unlike the swift there were no stars jamming into or penetrating his bones, but in its place the massive kinetic force alone killed him. He was in fact wedged into the wall such that his body lay in a semi-standing position.

A voice echoed in Butch's head, making him jolt upright: sorry about that.

Butch ground his teeth. Who are you?

This is Will. And you are Butch. I'm sorry; I forgot to tell him that I in fact don't have control over your previous Mantine.

What?

But it was too late; by this time Butch could tell that Will's presence had withdrawn from his head. Keeping his pistol as steady as he could, Butch decided that perhaps aiming for Rob from the top wasn't the best thing to do after all.

***

Will sat down on the chair in the center of his own one-room quarters, focusing his thoughts. Now that his Pokémon had control of security, Will finally had enough clearance to get to the being controlling Rocket City. Will had no idea how Giovanni managed to get that thing under control. Mewtwo must have been good practice.

Will could sense his getting in with a sense of pride and an inner fear of the unknown taking him, like happening to open a door that was usually locked. Yet this was his goal. The goal of all of his colleagues. What so many people failed to do.

I have opened up your cage. This is the moment I have been waiting for!

...So I'm no longer left waiting. But you may be disappointed, Will. I am essentially just a Pokémon with psychic ability.

Well, Will returned, I am a human with psychic ability.

***

Will was laughing, crossing his arms while seated. Giovanni was screaming as he clutched his swelling head.

Will enlarged the air bubble in Giovanni's brain with every second that passed. Empowering the once-powerful entertained Will like never before, keeping him in awe of his own ability.

Will had killed him. It was what Rob had recommended he did. It had been roughly a month ago.

***

But that ability isn't yours, Will... No human has that ability. If so, Misty would attack by squirting water from her mouth.

You have no basis for that argument, Will reminded it, for I still have this power now.

Only since you sensed me. Or rather, since I sensed you.

And Sabrina? And all the other practical proofs in this world?

I am not one for debate; I shall just disprove such proofs. I shall leave my "cage", as I have intended you to let me. I shall let you and the rest of your mediums go, and I will never come back. Farewell, my part-time marionette!

***

He had gone through with his plan, and with that everything vanished.

Will came back to the chair in his room - facing the door - with all of his power suddenly gone. He felt it. He felt dead to reality. He felt Human.

***

Butch burst into Will's quarters quicker than he had initially thought he would get to them; the labeled directions to the room in the hallway were quite easy to follow. But what he really didn't expect was Will himself actually staying in his quarters in a time like this.

"Hello, Butch," Will began.

Butch was in a rush after killing those Rockets, so he disappointed himself with his own haste in approaching Will. Moments of such haste were usually ultimately fatal events. But soon it was clear that now was an exception to the general rule.

An exception, as Will looked visibly different. Butch could recognize him - but only barely. Will appeared to have a sagging look about him that Butch when he caught a glimpse of him in the days of the much-hyped Elite Four.

"I'm nothing special now," Will admitted after some silence. He didn't need to be psychic to say that.

Butch raised an eyebrow. "I'd question that."

What he got in response from Will was simple.

"Try," Will chuckled. "I welcome it; you've certainly come at the right time."

Butch began to slip his hand towards his pocket. Will watched him.

"Go on," Will encouraged him. "Kill me. See how big a hole your bullet puts in my skull."

Butch indeed whipped his pistol out in front of him from his pocket. He focused on the grip he had on the trigger, and almost got as far as Will wished. But not quite.

Will's eyes began to water, so he shut them and didn't open them again. "A powerful Pokémon has been controlling this place."

"Explain."

"Me and my colleagues believed that it could give us more power if we met it in person, but... It turns out that I'm just a puppet for it, like all of the supposed psychics in the world." He kept his head bowed down low. "It has left, leaving us all without the power that we thought has made us stand out."

Butch wasn't too interested in his story, whatever it was trying to explain. When Butch thought about what he was interested in, he thought about one man.

"Why is Rob here?" Butch predictably asked. Those three words were why Butch arrived in his quarters with such haste; those three words were why Butch had the gun pointed at his face.

"I... I don't know."

Butch didn't feel in the shape to listen to stuff about a psychic Pokémon controlling him to make for an excuse to not know such a thing. He kept gradually tightening the trigger more and more, heading closer and closer to firing.

Will appeared to notice this with a relish the likes of which Butch had never seen before. Beads of sweat squeezed out of Will's forehead. His face turned gradually redder, matching his grimace.

Will began to hiss something through tightly clenched teeth, and Butch could have sworn that he was asking him right there to kill him.

Butch thought for a second of what to say next. "You know what the deal is with Rob." More a straight-forward inquiry than a question.

Will couldn't appear to take lying anymore by this stage. "...He's fighting a bunch of Rockets."

The answer relieved Butch, but he didn't look like he was. "Why?"

"Not sure... He was going to help me in return." He looked back up at Butch from the floor, finding that he couldn't have appeared more irritated. "I developed an army to support him disguised as Rocket Grunts, but as my power is fading quickly so will this force."

Will tightened his hands on his own chair further as Butch withdrew his pistol. "Thank you." With that Butch hurriedly left, leaving Will on the edge.

Butch slammed the door behind him, and grinned right afterwards when he reached into his other pocket and slipped out the universal keycard that he had sneakily snatched from Will into the palm of his hand.

Butch felt like going out to see if Will was correct about those Rocket Grunts. But Rob and Will weren't about to outwit him with a trick. Not yet.

***

Triatu tried to sense Will, to inquire on what it should do next. It sensed nothing but a body inside Will's quarters. The body was alive, but didn't have any power resonating from it. No power; no Will; no orders.

And what was Triatu going to do without orders? Whatever it wanted.

***

Butch was actually quite impressed at Will's universal clearance. Usually even the highest-ranked of Executives got either specialist or pseudo-general clearance on their key-card.

Either way, now that this development had come to Butch's attention he stopped associating thoughts of facing Rob with thoughts of death. He now had access to the Team Rocket Headquarters' entire "top floor" stash of Pokémon. Butch knew that it wasn't guarded, except with the electronic locks that the universal clearance on the key-card could make redundant.

Impulsively he headed for the door that shown the markings of the highest-security. He slipped the keycard through; the light flashed green, and the door opened.

Butch looked through to find a single shelf in a small brightly-lit room the size of a closet containing four pokéballs. Each one had a number painted on the top: "1", "2", "3", and "4".

After a few seconds, Butch's eyes widened in realization.

Like most of the former (and even present) Executives, Butch half-thought that the Team Rocket Four was just a rumor - stemmed by Giovanni to try to bring leader wannabes in and strike fear in the hearts of the many "copycats". But ever since Fortress took over as the leader of Team Rocket, Butch was concerned by how more willing Fortress seemed to be to send Crobat - his only Pokémon - into danger. It was as if Fortress had a backup plan; clearly in Butch's eyes this must have been it.

Though the pokéballs in the room only had numbers on them, it was said that the Team Rocket Four were Tyranitar, Dragonite, Arcanine, and Blissey. Butch hurriedly put this to the test, opening the first of the four pokéballs that he could get to.

Nothing.

Butch opened the other three in desperation, but there was also nothing. Then it dawned on him just how Will had universal clearance - and why. With that, he immediately dismissed his guess on why Fortress was less wary, and replaced that association with one of sheer incompetence.

Butch ground his teeth, reassuring himself that at least he knew what he was going to be up against in an encounter with Rob. But then again, it was no reassurance.

***

Rob surveyed the carnage before him with a relieving sense of nostalgia, taking all signs of lulls in the fighting with a grain of salt. Outside the building, his own turncoats and the Rocket forces clashed. Bodies of overwhelmed Rockets littered the ground; the turncoat forces were more powerful than they were Human.

Rob's own men and women from the base were no longer watching the entrance as was ordered, but he didn't care. They were at least fighting with their friends from inside the Team Rocket Headquarters: former Grunts, of which had been gathered up by Will under Rob's command.

But Rob's return to the reforming days of old was at first more real than he had hoped it would be. He found that although his new formerly Rocket Grunt forces appeared to outnumber and outgun the other Rockets, something was making them vanish from the fray. Rob didn't see a single one die, so this puzzled him.

Nothing would puzzle Rob and live to tell the tale. He perked up to attention, whipping his pistol out in front of him and moving into the chaos.

Rob brought a Pokémon with him that everyone knew about. But indeed he had a secret stash of his own; Will had kept it warm for him.

He whipped out a pokéball that nobody else from the base knew about. "Show your stuff, Tyranitar."