Pokemon Fan Fiction ❯ Home Is Where the R Is ❯ Twelve Men and a Little Lady ( Chapter 4 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

After being rescued by Tyson, Anari is taken to Dr. Namba's underwater research base. While waiting for her uncle to pick her up, she vows to find a way to help those who have saved her life. After persuading her uncle to forgive Butch and Cassidy, her next self-appointed task is to free her brother's men imprisoned in the cells of Team Rocket Headquarters...

Home Is Where the R Is
Chapter Four - Twelve Men and a Little Lady

. . .

The following morning, as Anari followed Giovanni to his office, she tried to think of a way to talk to him about her friends in the basement. She didn't want to make her uncle angry again, but her heart wouldn't allow her to continue to stand by and do nothing while her brother's former employees spent their days behind bars wondering what was going to happen to them. For the past week she'd felt helpless; a child trapped in a world of grown-ups ruled by a powerful man whose authority she was afraid to question. No longer. She had stood up to her uncle and kept him from committing murder once and she was certain that if she went about it the right way she could do it again. In one day she had survived jumping out of a helicopter, helped Butch and Cassidy steal a blimp and managed to conceal herself long enough to keep the police from discovering her during a raid. If she could do all that, she rationalized, surely she could help her friends... preferably without having to go through all that again. She sat down on the floor with Persian, nuzzling against the Pokemon as she tried to come up with a plan. She couldn't think of one.

"Aren't you going to go play?" Giovanni asked, after a few minutes. Anari shook her head.

"I want to stay here with you."

Surprised, but pleased, Giovanni motioned for her to come near.

"Come over here then and I'll show you something worth seeing."

"Okay," Anari agreed, getting to her feet. "What do you want to show me, Uncle?"

Giovanni opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out an old photo. He handed it to her.

"Look at this."

It was a group of rough-looking teenagers posing in front of a chain link fence. She recognized her uncle immediately, despite the many years difference between the teenager in the photo and the middle-aged man currently in front of her. He was smirking in the picture as he stood in the middle of the group balancing a pokeball on his booted foot.

"This was your gang?"

"That's right."

She climbed up on her uncle's desk and examined the photo more carefully. There were only two females in the gang; a brown-haired young woman with a sweet face standing next to Giovanni and a black-haired young woman holding onto a large net that some unfortunate person was trapped in. Her eyes widened.

"Momma..." She looked up at her uncle questioningly. He nodded.

"Your mother was a member, too. That's how she met my brother. She had exceptional aim, both with a gun and a throwing net."

Having no memory of either of her parents and only one photo of them from when she was a baby, Anari had imagined them doing all sorts of things before they had died. Her mother might have been a sharp career woman, a loving homemaker, a tomboyish pokemon trainer, a rich fashion model or any number of other things. She had never imagined her in a gang before.

"Who's in the net she's holding?" Anari asked.

Giovanni laughed. "Your father."

Anari laughed as well.

"She loved snake-type pokemon," Giovanni told her. "Your father caught an Ekans once trying to impress her, but she laughed at him and told him that she already had two Ekans and an Arbok."

Anari shivered. She wondered if her mother would have loved snake-types as much if she'd known that one day her son would be strangled to death by one.

"That's 009's father there," Giovanni said, pointing to another man in the group.

"She doesn't look anything like him," Anari observed, "But that boy sitting next to him looks just like Mondo." She pointed to the youngest member of the gang, who couldn't have been more than twelve or thirteen.

"Yes, definitely a case of generation Xerox," Giovanni agreed. "The resemblance between him and his son is uncanny."

"So this was Mondo's father." The boy in the photograph could have been Mondo's twin. They even had the same haircut. It was an eerie experience seeing this Mondo-clone in a photo taken more than two decades ago with her then teen-aged parents and uncle.

"He was called Lucky, and you might say he was our pet," Giovanni said. "He was an orphan that fell in with us after we tried to mug him. We couldn't catch him, but he said he'd give us all his worldly possessions if we let him join our group. Turns out "all his worldly possessions" consisted of three bottle caps, a pack of chewing gum he'd just lifted from a corner store and a white rock." Anari laughed at this. Her uncle reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a piece of quartz and laid it on his desk top. "Here's the rock."

"You still HAVE it?" Anari asked, amazed.

"Obviously. It's here, isn't it?"

Examining the various people in the photograph, Anari concluded that Mondo's father was the only one who truly looked like his offspring. She could see a (very) slight resemblance between herself and her mother, but the only physical trait she shared with her father was the same brown eyes. He had brown hair as well, but it was a darker shade than her own. The man her uncle pointed out as Domino's father looked nothing like his daughter at all; Anari would never have guessed that the two were related.

"Did everyone in your gang join Team Rocket?" the child asked, causing her uncle to frown as he looked at the young woman standing next to him in the photo. He had been quite fond of her, but she had been more fond of a young man keen on becoming the world's greatest Pokemon master.

"Almost everyone."

"You must have had lots of fun when you were young," Anari said.

"We did," Giovanni said, as he gazed at the image of his younger self. "They called me "The Ball-kicker" back then."

Anari raised an eyebrow. "Why did they call you that?"

"Because I kicked my pokeballs in battle to minimumize the reaction time."

"That's so cool!" Anari exclaimed, her eyes shining. "Can you teach me how to do that, Uncle?"

"I don't see why not," he grinned, pleased to see that he was beginning to bond with her.

"Can I... keep this?" the girl asked, holding up the photo.

"If you wish. I'll get you a frame for it if you'd like." Anari nodded.

"I want to show it to Mondo."

"He's seen it. I gave him a copy after his father died. Like I've told you before, this organization is like a family. We've got people working here who knew my mother before I was born. Most are retired now, although we have a few still working in the labs or teaching at Team Rocket Academy."

Like a family... Anani took a deep breath, remembering when her brother had used similar words to describe his organization. "Uncle... there's something I want to talk to you about," she said, deciding now would be time to broach the subject she'd been wanting to discuss with him since the day she'd come to live with him. "Something important."

"What is it?"

Anari took another deep breath, steeling her resolve. "I know what you mean," she began slowly. "About people being like family. I know people like that, too."

"Oh?"

"Yes... and they need my help."

"And just who might these people be?" he inquired, genuinely curious.

"They're downstairs, locked in your cells."

. . .

The next day, twelve disheveled men clad in all black filed silently into Giovanni's office. They were accompanied by several armed grunts who'd brought them up from the cells below.

"Leave us," Giovanni ordered the guards. "Niko and Marco can handle any problems that might arise." The addition of a dozen men, particularly a dozen men who looked (and smelled) like they hadn't showered in over a week, was making his office feel rather congested.

The grunts eyed the aforementioned "bodyguards" standing behind their boss warily and promptly vacated the room. Marco and Niko were well known for their ability to make anything (or anyone) the Boss wanted gone disappear.

Anari, who was standing beside her seated uncle, was suddenly struck with the childish urge to run over to the group of prisoners and hold out her arms to be picked up and swung around as many of them had done before all their lives had changed so drastically. Giovanni spread out his right arm in front of her, as if sensing her thoughts. He motioned for her to remain where she was. A pregnant silence filled the air, until finally Giovanni spoke.

"Did any of you kill my brother?" he asked bluntly. He never had been one to beat around the bush.

Anari swallowed the lump in her throat, praying in her heart that her instincts were right. She just couldn't believe that any of these people had helped her brother murder their parents. She didn't want to believe it.

The eldest member of the group stepped forward to break the uneasy silence.

"No one here killed your brother," Henry told the stone-faced man seated in front of him, feeling it necessary to make his and his companions' lack of involvement in this matter perfectly clear without delay. "Only I and two other men here were even employed there at the time. The rest were hired months, some years, later."

"Which two?" Giovanni asked.

"I was," said one man, stepping forward to join the group's self-appointed spokesman. He sported several scars on his arms and face, one of which Anari had been present when he'd obtained it two years ago. He'd said something to anger her brother- she'd long since forgotten what- but she remembered vividly how Antonio had backhanded him across the cheek, drawing blood with the ring he always wore. She still couldn't remember the man's name.

"And I," said Kent, joining them.

Anari was glad her friend Dan was not one of them.

Giovanni carefully examined each of the three men's faces. They aren't cowards, I'll give them that... "Where are the remains of my brother and his wife?" he asked them, causing the blood to drain from Anari's face.

Remains.

She was the one who'd pleaded with her uncle to do this, to at least talk to her brother's men and hear what they had to say, but now she wished she was anywhere but here doing anything but listening to this conversation. At the same time, she couldn't possibly be anywhere else.

"Answer me!" Giovanni demanded. All three pairs of eyes lowered, avoiding his gaze.

"We can't," Henry replied. "Not in front of the little one."

"You know?" Anari whispered, beginning to shake.

"Anari, leave the room," her uncle ordered.

"No."

It wasn't defiance- at least, it wasn't meant to be. Regardless of what her uncle- or indeed, Anari herself- may have wanted, at that moment she felt that she was no more capable of leaving the room than she was of cutting off her own foot. She had to know what happened to her mother and father. She had to know the truth after a lifetime of lies. Much to Giovanni's chagrin the little girl went over to Henry and took the old man's hands. They looked like a grandfather with his cherished grandchild, but old Henry had never found time to have children, let alone grandchildren. He'd always been too busy, too involved in one criminal activity or another since the day he'd run away as a youth nearly fifty years ago. His hands had done great damage over the course of his lifetime, but looking into the eyes of the innocent young soul in front of him Henry had never been more thankful not to have been party to this particular criminal act.

"Henry, you know?" Anari asked again. "You know where my family is?"

Henry looked away from her.

"I suggest you answer," Giovanni advised him, his patience thinning. He pulled out a gun.

To his surprise, all eleven of the younger men sprang into action, jumping in front of Henry and Anari. Marco and Niko pulled out their own weapons, but Giovanni told them not to fire. Despite the promise he'd made to himself to avoid exposing Anari to situations like this after the near-disastrous incident with Butch and Cassidy, he had yet again acted on his emotions without considering her presence. Again he silently resolved to be more mindful in the future.

"Put it away," the scarred man told him. His name was Antony, called Tony by most of those who knew him, and he didn't appear to be in the least bit frightened of having a loaded gun pointed at him.

For a split second Giovanni wondered if the men were foolishly going to attempt to take his niece hostage to use as a bargaining chip for their own lives and freedom, but the thought died almost as quickly as it entered his mind. Anari had pleaded with him to hold this meeting on the grounds that these people were also part of her "family" and he highly doubted she would feel so strongly on the matter if she had any reason to believe they'd harm her. Observing the tense scene in front of him, he finally reached the conclusion that the men were attempting to shield Henry (who he assumed they had appointed their new leader) from potential gunfire. He found it admirable that these young men were willing to die for a man twice, perhaps three times their age until Henry himself walked around the group and stood at its head.

"Not in front of the child," Henry commanded, looking his captor square in the eye as if he were the one in control of the situation and not the other way round.

Any protest Team Rocket's leader might have made regarding the audacity of the old man standing in front him died when Giovanni suddenly realized exactly what was going on. It wasn't the old man the rest of his nephew's former employees were trying to protect. They had formed a human blockade to shield Anari. Something in him stirred at the realization that every single man standing on the other side of his desk was willing to die to protect his niece.

"They're part of my family, Uncle," she had told him yesterday. "Just like Team Rocket."

"Anari, come here," he commanded, putting his weapon away. The sea of men parted and Dan walked up to him, holding Anari protectively in his arms. "Put her down," Giovanni ordered the younger man. Dan tightened his hold on the child and glared at him distrustfully.

"Now, Danial," Henry ordered, trying to diffuse the situation before it got out of hand. He'd had plenty of experience dealing with men like Giovanni over the years to know what could happen if it did.

"It's all right," Anari said softly. "Uncle Giovanni won't hurt me."

"Where I come from we don't wave guns around in the presence of children," Dan informed his captor coldly as he sat Anari down on his desk. This wasn't enirely true; Anari had seen her brother and his men "wave guns around" on several occaisions.

"No one in this room is in a position of moral superiority, young man," Giovanni informed him. "If you, any of you, were this concerned about my niece's welfare you shouldn't have left her in the care of a psychopath."

"We don't have a choice," Dan replied defiantly. "You're holding us at gun point."

Giovanni growled at the brazen insult, but forced himself to remain calm. He motioned for Niko and Marco to put their guns away, and ordered Dan away from his desk. The younger man obeyed him reluctantly, keeping a wary eye on Marco and Niko as he rejoined the group.

"Perhaps we should have taken Anari from Antonio when it became apparent how mentally unstable he was," Henry told his captor. "But to what end? She would have been deprived of the only family she had left."

"She had family HERE!" Giovanni shouted, stabbing at his over-priced desk with his index finger. "My nephew murdered my brother to take his place in the family while the three of you did nothing!" This was directed at Henry, Kent and Tony. "YOU allowed him to go underground with his kidnapped sister and the entire LOT of you allowed him to abduct my agents and assault them in that dungeon he called an office. You should have given him a sound beating instead letting him anywhere near this child!"

"Antonio Gambini was our leader," Kent responded this time. "It was our duty to obey him, not question his motives or his mental competence. Would you tolerate such behavior is your subordinates? I highly doubt it."

Giovanni could not argue the point, nor did he have any desire to. The entire interrogation had gotten completely off-topic.

"I'm going to ask you for the last time: where is my brother?"

Henry sighed heavily. "The last time I saw my former employer the whole family was boarding a plane for an expedition to some island or another. Only Antonio and baby Maria returned."

Maria was Anari's birth name, before her brother had changed it and given them both the last name of Gambini. Giovanni still cringed every time she used her surname, but the child was resolute. Everything else in her life had changed, she refused to lose her name as well. She had been "Anari Gambini" for as long as she could remember.

"Tony here was with them that day," Kent said, pointing to the scarred man as he continued the story. Tony looked away from them. "But he was half-alive when they returned, and he couldn't remember anything when he regained consciousness. His partner had also vanished, and we were told they'd all been killed by wild Pokemon. Henry suspected foul play, but as his father's heir, Antonio was now our leader. It wasn't our place to question him."

"Which he made abundantly clear," Tony added grimly, fingering a series of long scars on his arm. He remembered exactly what had happened on that plane, but he'd never told anyone about the horrific events of that tragic day. Antonio had beaten him almost to death and threatened to cut out his tongue.

"Did he give you ALL these?" Anari asked him softly. He was within arm's reach of where she was sitting and she reached out to touch a scarred arm.

"Yes," he replied curtly, and backed out of her reach. Anari had no scars of her own, and she suddenly wondered if having one was like having cut or scratch that never healed and went away. Did his old wounds still hurt him?

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

"You don't remember anything?" Giovanni asked, gazing at Tony.

Tony began to shake, and he gripped his arms in an attempt to control himself.

I'll cut out your tongue to keep it from wagging, Antony, remember that!

For five years he had kept silence; kept in fear with threats and physical abuse. Every scar he bore told a story of pain inflicted on him to keep that fear fresh in his mind. Even dead, Antonio Gambini ruled his thoughts and actions, as if the man might rise from the grave and seek vengeance on him.

"Answer me," Giovanni commanded. "You know something."

Tony stared at the man, who stared back, unblinking. He felt like a Pichu cornered by an Arbok. He had no doubt that his deceased employer's uncle was capable of inflicting great pain on him to get the information he wanted, and the morbid irony that the information Giovanni sought was the very thing Tony had been tortured for years to keep from revealing did not escape him.

If you cross me I'll make you wish you were never born!

Strange how he could have no fear of Giovanni's gun, but the memory of a dead man's threats made him want to crawl under something and hide.

"Yes, I do," he admitted slowly, deciding that attempting to deceive the man in front of him would be both foolish and futile. He tried to quickly decide how much of the story to tell to satisfy Giovanni without going into details that would not be in his- or the child's- best interest to reveal. Giovanni would kill him for his involvement in the matter and as for the girl...

I'll break her arm if you don't. I'll tell them you did it.

He didn't have the heart to tell the seven year-old child sitting on the desk in front of him that her brother had threatened her personal safety to get him and his partner to cooperate.

"Go on," Giovanni said in an even tone, careful not to betray any emotion.

"On that plane," Tony began slowly. "I... I saw."

"Saw what?" Anari and Giovanni both asked.

Tony closed his eyes, replaying that dreadful day in his mind. He'd been 17 at the time, eager to prove himself and confident that he could handle anything. Oh, how quickly he'd learned differently! Now in front of him sat another young soul who was about to receive a rude awakening. Life could be very, very cruel.

"The old boss and his wife- they were forced out of the plane at gun point."

"Forced out where?" Giovanni asked, suddenly hopeful that perhaps Antonio had merely taken them to some remote area and abandoned them. If that were the case, he could deploy every resource under Team Rocket's command to find them and bring them home.

"Over the ocean," Tony responded, dashing Giovanni's new-found hope. "They were forced out while the plane was in mid-flight."

Anari began to weep silently, as did old Henry. Giovanni clutched his fists so hard his knuckles turned white.

"Why didn't you ever TELL us?" Kent shouted, causing Tony to cringe.

"He shot my partner and dumped his body out of the plane!" Tony told him, gripping one of his scarred arms with his hand. "After he beat me senseless and threatened to cut out my tongue!"

I can't take anymore, please stop, stop hitting me I can't breathe...

He tried to shake the memories, and failed.

Too much blood. Someone help me, I'm going to die!

He remembered gasping for air, choking on his own blood until he finally vomited. He'd been certain he was going to drown in it. He'd grown up in an abusive household, but his alcoholic father and mentally unstable mother couldn't hold a candle to Antonio Gambini. He had no doubt Antonio could have easily beaten his parents to death. Gambini had only been two years older than Tony himself, but the difference in physical strength had been substantial. That day, and the many, many miserable days that followed, he'd felt that power; forced to submit to it over and over...

I'll do anything, please don't kill me!

"Antony, you're shaking," Henry observed. He put his hands on the younger man's shoulders. "That's enough, calm down."

There was more to the tale, but Tony was done talking. He neglected to mention that he'd been holding one of those guns, albeit against his will.

Do you think they'll believe YOU over ME? If you don't do as I say... I'll tell them I saw you both with her, that you broke her arm trying to... Father would kill you two long before the cops had a chance to lock you up!

Tony repressed a shudder. He'd always wondered what would have happened if he and his partner had chosen to call the madman's bluff. He almost had; but his partner, several years older with an infant child of his own, had been unwilling to risk baby Maria's safety. The fool had always been too soft for his own good. He'd tried to save his employers in the end, and had been killed for his efforts. None of them could possibly understand what Tony had lived through, and he feared if they knew of his full involvement in the matter they wouldn't even try.

I didn't want to do it... I tried to save them, but...

Suddenly he felt small arms wrap around his waist. He opened his eyes, not even realizing he'd shut them, to find Anari embracing him.

"It's not your fault, Tony," she whispered.

But it is...

"I'm sorry," he whispered, stroking the child's hair, before turning again to face Giovanni. "These men knew nothing. If you want someone to blame I'll take responsibility. Let them go."

Giovanni stared at him, and for a split second Tony saw the face of Antonio Gambini staring back at him. He blinked and the image was gone, much to his relief.

"Bring Viper in here," Giovanni ordered Marco, who promptly left the room. He turned back to the dozen prisoners standing in front of his desk. "For the love of Anari the lot of you are standing here instead of being used for target practice or sent down to labs- we've had a severe shortage of specimens as of late- and for the love of Anari I'm giving each of you a choice: Join Team Rocket, or die."

"Uncle!" Anari exclaimed, but Giovanni was resolute.

"It was oversight on my part that you were left undealt with for so long," he continued. "I will not continue to feed you at my expense, nor will I release you into the world where you can contact the authorities or otherwise jeopardize my operation. Against my better judgement I'm erring on the side of generosity, for the sake of my niece who wishes for you to live."

Marco re-entered the room joined by a stern-looking man sporting a purple mohawk.

"This is Drill Sargent Viper," Giovanni told them. "I've ordered a jet fueled and ready to go. Viper here will escort any new recruits to Team Rocket's training academy. Anyone who chooses to reject my very generous offer will follow Niko and Marco... elsewhere."

Anari's hands gripped Tony's shirt nervously. "Uncle Giovanni..." Her uncle ignored her.

"Understand that this organization does not conduct business in the same manner as your former employer," he continued. "I will not tolerate incompetence, nor will I allow the sexual... infractions apparently committed on a regular basis by my nephew. You will be paid according to your worth upon completing Team Rocket's training program, which Viper here is in charge of. Prove yourselves and you will be given full agent status, and will suffer no discrimination based on your previous employment."

"And if someone here fails?" Henry asked.

"Failure is not an option."

"Some here might not be physically able to complete the training course," the old man argued. "Myself included. I worked for your brother, I know the requirements at Team Rocket's training school. I'd have to be thirty years younger to have any hope of completing the course, and I doubt Lou here would be able to fit under that barbed wire."

Lou turned red, rubbing his round stomach. Bookkeeping wasn't an occupation that included a lot of physical activity, but it had provided him with plenty of time to pursue his favorite hobby: snacking.

"Other accommodations can be made for those not suitable for the field," Viper told him.

Anari didn't know what accommodations were, but she hoped they didn't involved Marco, Niko and their guns.

"The choice is yours," Giovanni finished, with a tone of finality that made it clear that the interview was over.

Anari held her breath, silently praying that her brother's former employees would be willing to convert. She'd done everything she could to convince her uncle to spare their lives, but if they refused the offer he'd made even she wouldn't be able to save them. Everyone, please...

Giovanni expected them each to answer seperately, or perhaps huddle together and discuss the matter. Instead, the entire group looked at the eldest of their number, waiting for him to speak. His decision would be their own. Henry closed his eyes and sighed, before opening them and looking Giovanni square in the face.

"Where do we sign up?"

To be continued in Chapter 5: "Mondo's Assistant