Chapter 14

After staring agape for a few seconds, Jack finally came back to his
senses.  "Come on, we have to help them!"  He said, running for the
gym.
"Jack, wait!  Look at the size of that thing!  You could get killed!"
Bob yelled after him, but to no avail.  Jack just kept running towards
the gym.  Bob sighed, then took off after him with the other two.

Tossing out his Growlithe's pokeball, Jack yelled for it to do a
flamethrower, straight at the Cloyster.  The dog pokemon breathed in
deeply, then let loose with a large blast of fire, straight at the
Cloyster.  The flames soared through the air, getting closer and
closer to the giant pokemon, when they suddenly deflected away from
the air, still several feet away.  The Cloyster itself took no notice,
continuing to bombard the gym.
The other three members of the group ran up, just in time to see the
failed attack.  "What happened?"  Bob asked.  "That attack should have
hit and done at least some damage."
"I don't know."  Jack responded, puzzled.
David, meanwhile, had pulled out a pair of binoculars from his
backpack.  He stared through them at the place where the flame had
deflected.  After searching for a few seconds, he found something.
"Look at that."  He said, handing the binoculars to Bob.  "Look right
there."  He pointed at a certain spot between the Cloyster and the
group.
Bob stared.  "What?  All I see is a little yellow spot.  Maybe these
things are dirty."  He started rubbing at the lenses with his sleeve.
David snatched the binoculars out of Bob's grasp.  "No they're not
dirty!"  He said.  "That speck is some sort of pokemon, probably using
minimize and barrier."
Bob thought for a moment.  "That probably makes it a psychic.
Probably an Alakazam or Kadabra."
Jack added his idea.  "It's probably protecting the Cloyster.  If we
faint the protector, then we can faint the Cloyster."  Suiting actions
to words, he commanded his Growlithe to use a flamethrower, directed
at the unknown psychic.
"Psychics are weak to ghost and bug pokemon, so we should-"  Bob
noticed Jack ordering flamethrower after flamethrower attack at the
psychic.  "-Use those attacks, not fire ones."  He continued smoothly.
He then threw out his Butterfree.
"Hey, I think my Poltergeist is at least part ghost."  David said,
looking at it's pokeball.  "We haven't really been able to get to a
pokecenter to have it analyzed."  He tossed it out and commanded it to
use nightshade.  The waves of purple energy radiated out from the air
shimmer, and blasted the psychic.
The other pokemon were also let out, to contribute as much as they
could, even though psychic wasn't weak to them.  David even let out
his Kakuna.
"What are you going to do with that?"  Jack asked.  The psychic was
being bombarded with various attacks, but it still wasn't fainting.
In fact, oddly enough, it was just floating there passively, not
retaliating, just using barrier.  "Kakunas can't even attack."
David grinned, then told it to harden.  "I'm going to use your
strategy.  Watch."  After the Kakuna had hardened to his liking, he
picked it up.  Winding up, David launched the cocooned bug at the
psychic.  It soared through the air. before swiping the miniature
pokemon from the air.  As the psychic fell, fainted, its form expanded
into a large Alakazam.
"Whoa.  We defeated that!"  Jack said.
"I wonder why it didn't fight back, though."  Bob mused.
Suddenly, the steady rhythm of the Cloyster's attacks expending
themselves upon the psychic barrier, which had faded into the
background for the group during the fight, faltered.  Spinning around
to look at it, the reason why could be seen.   The golden bubble of
psychic energy that had protected the gym had reconfigured itself into
a long, stabbing spear of intense golden light.  It had jabbed
straight into the Cloyster, freezing it in place.  Slowly,
majestically, the gigantic pokemon fell over, smashing several nearby
buildings.
"Let's see if anyone at the gym can tell us what's going on."  Bob
suggested, starting over towards the building.

Bob pushed open the door of the gym.  "Is anyone here?"  He called out
into the blackness filling the large building.
"There has to be someone here."  Lauren said.  "Otherwise, who was
making that screen of psychic energy?"  She waited expectantly.  After
several minutes over waiting, Jack cleared his throat.
"Um, what are we waiting for?"  He asked.
"Well, what I said was THE PERFECT ENTRANCE LINE."  She said, glaring
accusingly into the darkness.
From out of the darkness came a cough.  "Oh.  Sorry."  A voice said
sheepishly, right before the lights flickered on.  The gym turned out
to be a large, cavernous space, with a woman sitting in a large chair
on the other side of the gym.  The woman sighed.
"Good help is so hard to find these days."  She commented.  "Anyway,
I'm Sabrina, the gym leader here in Lavender.  I'd like to thank you
four for saving my gym."
"You're welcome-" Jack started, but Bob cut him off.
"What's going on here?"  He asked.  "Why is this town such a mess?
What was that thing attacking this gym?  Why didn't the Alakazam fight
back?  Why was that thing attacking the gym?  Why-"  Sabrina cut him
off.
"It all has one simple explanation.  Team Rocket."
"Actually, that doesn't explain much of anything."  Bob said.
Sabrina scowled.  "Ok, let me rephrase that.  It all has one simple
explanation that has a much more complicated explanation behind it."
"And?"
Sabrina took a very deep breath, then began lecturing.  "Team Rocket,
a criminal organization that has been working underground for some
time now, furthering an unknown goal, has finally emerged into the
light of day.  Two days ago, it made a bid for world domination by
simultaneously attacking the bases of Pokemon League power, the gyms
and Indigo Plateau with genetically engineered pokemon, made in many
secret labs scattered in out of the way places.  Their first move in
attacking us was to disrupt our communications, so we don't know how
everywhere else has fared, but now that their main force in this town
has been defeated by you, we should be finding out shortly.  The
Alakazam was completely occupied by blocking our psychic attacks on
the giant Cloyster, preventing us from breaking out, so it might not
even have noticed that it was being attacked.  Once it was fainted, we
were able to dispose of the Cloyster.  It actually wasn't completely a
Cloyster.  It had been genetically combined with a Blastiose, causing
it to have those cannons you saw it using."  She gasped for air,
having said the entire speech in one breath.  "Does that answer your
questions?"
"Um, yes."  Bob said.  "Now, is there any place we can heal our
pokemon?"
"Yes.  The local Nurse Joy took refuge with us when the attacks
started.  She's set up a pokecenter in the gym.  It's down the hall
and to the left."  She pointed.  "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to
go see if I can contact the other gyms."  She left, through a
different door then the one she had directed the group to.
"Well, I guess that shows that a lot has happened in three days."
David said wryly, before walking down the hall Sabrina had shown them.

"I should have these pokemon healed soon."  Nurse Joy, who the group
had found in a makeshift pokecenter down the hall, said, taking their
pokeballs from them.  Then she looked at one of David's more closely.
"Oh, this one appears to be a new kind of pokemon.  Would you mind if
I ran a few tests on it after it heals?"  She said, smiling at him.
"Well, ok, I guess."  David said.  Then he smiled a little sheepishly.
"Do you mind if I watch?  I've always been sorta curious about how
those tests work."
Nurse Joy continued smiling at him.  "I'm sorry, but no."  She quickly
turned and walked off with the pokeballs before David could say
anything else.
"I wonder why she wouldn't let me watch?"  David said to the other
three.  "I really would like to know how those tests work."
"I don't know why, but oh well.  Let's just wait here for her to come
back after healing our pokemon."  Bob said sensibly.
David sighed.  "I guess we should."  He said disappointedly.  "But I
really would like to see those tests."
Several minutes later, a Chansey waddled out with every pokeball
except David's Poltergeist.
"This means she's about to do the tests."  David mused aloud.
"Give it up.  She doesn't want you to see the tests, and she'd
probably get angry if she spotted you spying on her."  Bob told him.
"Yes, she probably would get mad if she saw ME spying on her tests."
David said, chuckling.  "But she won't."
"Huh?"
"Just wait."  David walked off into a dark corner of the hallway,
vanishing from sight.  After several moments, an Eevee walked out of
the corner, dragging David's clothes.
"Oh, so that's his plan."  Jack said.  "She won't see him.  She'll see
an Eevee."  The Eevee nodded, and said "Eevee!" as affirmatively as it
could, with it's mouth full of clothes.
Bob sighed, and stuffed the clothes in David's backpack.  "Well, I
don't think anything I can say will stop you from doing this."  David
nodded, then ran off.  Staring at his retreating brown tail, Bob
sighed again.

David walked through the halls, nose to the ground, tracking Joy's
scent.  It was a rather normal human scent, as human scents go, with
barely anything unique about it.  The most unique thing, in fact, was
a strong scent of some sort of pokemon that David had never smelled
before.  It wasn't a Chansey, he knew what those smelled like.  The
mystery of what the scent was, however, was driven out of his mind
when he caught sight of Joy.  She was sitting in front of his
Poltergeist, which was sleeping, apparently sedated.  Oddly enough,
not only was she in a small, secluded room with no one else around,
she wasn't even holding any tools or machines.  In fact, there wasn't
a single thing in the room that could be used for tests.  There was
only her, the pokemon, and, strangely, a picture of a Nurse Joy.
Wondering at how she was going to perform a test with no equipment,
David kept watching.
After a moment, Nurse Joy started shimmering.  David's mouth dropped
open as her shape slowly changed.  The shimmering vanished, revealing
a pink blob that looked like it was made out of jello.  Also, right
after the transformation, a blast of the strange scent that David had
noticed early registered on his nose.  The pink blob considered the
comatose Poltergeist for a moment, before saying "Ditto!"  and
starting to shimmer again.  The shimmering slowly faded, revealing an
exact duplicate of the Poltergeist.  It sat there, motionless, for a
few moments, before shimmering back into a Ditto.  Then, the Ditto
stared at the picture of Nurse Joy, shimmered, and reformed back into
the nurse.  She then pulled a clipboard and pencil out of nowhere and
began muttering to herself while she wrote.
"Hmm.  Let's see."  She started writing something down.  "A ghost and
psychic type.  Named Poltergeist.  Likes to make itself invisible, and
play pranks on people by using its psychic powers to make objects fly
around."  She continued writing notes, but David had stopped listening
and was leaving.
He followed her scent out of the maze of hallways, until he got to a
point that he recognized.  A few minutes later, he caught sight of
Bob, sitting against the wall and reading a magazine.  (Yes, even when
the pokecenter was a small place relocated to the back of a gym under
almost end-of-the-world-conditions, they still managed to have
magazines in the waiting rooms.  It's just one of those universal
laws, all hospitals, dentists offices, and pokecenters have magazines
in the waiting rooms, usually several years out of date.  In fact, on
the methane atmosphere planet Glxxyzr, where the written language is
inscribed on gigantic salt crystals 20 feet tall, several words to a
crystal, artists have labored for millennia just to make out-of-date
magazines for waiting rooms.  It's just one of those things.).  Lauren
and Jack were napping a little farther down the hall, with Jack
resting his head on Lauren's shoulder.  David walked over to Bob,
grabbed his clothes, which were sitting in a wadded-up ball right next
to him, in his teeth, and dragged them off into the bathroom, farther
down the hall.
Several minutes later he walked back out and sat down next to Bob.
"You won't believe what I saw!"  He said excitedly.
Bob looked up from his magazine tiredly.  "What could be so
interesting about a few tests that Nurse Joy performed?"  He asked.
"You have no idea-"  David started to say, but just then Nurse Joy
walked back out, carrying Poltergeist.
"I finished running my tests."  She said cheerfully, and then handed
David his pokemon and a small disk, about the size of a fingernail.
"This disk contains the information that I found.  Just insert it into
the reader slot on your pokedex, and it will automatically download
into memory."
"Wow!  Thanks!"  Nurse Joy turned and left.  David walked over and
woke up Jack and Lauren.  "Come on, we need to get going.  We don't
want to have to sleep in the halls."  He said, then grinned.  "And
besides, you'll never believe what I saw!"


"So Nurse Joy is a Ditto?"  Bob said wonderingly.  It was about a half
hour later.  The group had found the gym cafeteria ands was discussing
David's discovery over lunch.
"That's what it looked like."  David responded.
"That would definitely explain a lot of things."  Bob said
thoughtfully.  "Like why all the Joys look the same."
Jack blinked.  "Wow.  That's a lot better then the explanation I came
up with.  But it doesn't involve aliens or parallel dimensions.  Are
you sure that it's right?"
Bob glowered at him.  "Yes I'm sure.  Explanations don't have to have
aliens in them, Jack."
Jack slumped in his seat, disappointed, then returned to eating his
meal.
"But really, this explains so much."  Bob mused to himself, seeing how
no one else seemed to care.  David was concentrating single-mindedly
on his food, while Jack and Lauren were holding a conversation.
Unfortunately, with all the hormones running through their respective
heads at the sight of each other, the total IQ of the conversation was
about 7.  Maybe 7.5.  8.14157 at the greatest.
"Mmm.  Food is good."  Jack said intelligently, staring at Lauren.
"Yes.  Food is good.  That's why I'm eating it."  Lauren responded.
Bob sighed.  "And this is why I should try talking to myself."  He
said to himself, not noticing that he was talking to himself.  "I'm
the only one that listens."
A nondescript young man, who was sitting at a table nearby, suddenly
paused in his eating.  His eyes glowed purple for a few seconds, then
he walked over to the group's table.  "Sabrina wants to see you."  He
told them.
"How do you know?"  David asked.  "You've just been sitting there.  No
one told you anything."
"Sabrina sent me a psychic message.  This is a psychic gym, most of
the trainers here have psychic powers of one degree or another.  Now
come, I will lead you to Sabrina."  He walked away, leaving the group
with no choice but to follow.

David stepped into a room behind the man, and paused in awe.  The room
he had stepped into was large, about the size of a school gym, and was
filled with electronics.  Consoles of various sizes and shapes took up
the most space in the room, with light of all colors blinking and
flashing, or in some cases just glowing, on them.  The hum of
machinery filled the room, with the counterpart of fans working to
keep circuits cool, and the occasional beep or whistle.  On the far
side of the room, a gigantic TV screen was embedded deep within the
wall, with a map of Pokemon Island displayed on it.  Various dots, of
different colors and sizes, were scattered around the map, mainly
clustered near the cities, but still scattered over the island.  There
were ones in the forests, in the mountains, and even a few in the
ocean.  The whole room was bustling with activity, and the buzz of
excited conversation rose above the noise of the machinery.  In the
center of the room, right in front of the wall screen, sat a gigantic,
extremely complex-looking computer console.  Sabrina was seated here,
talking on a phone.  At the sight of the group, who had crowded in
behind David, she excused herself and hung up.
"You're probably wondering why I asked you to come here."  She said,
waving for the group to approach her desk.  "The pokemon league is
under attack.  It is going to need brave trainers to help it defeat
Team Rocket.  As a gym leader, in this time of danger I am allowed to
recruit trainers into the pokemon league to help.  Your defeat of the
pokemon besieging this gym has suitably impressed me, so I'm asking
you to join and fight for the pokemon league.  Will you help?"  As she
concluded her speech, she fixed a penetrating gaze on the group.
The group conferred for a moment, before pushing Bob forward.  "We'd
like a few moments to discuss this, please."  He said.
Sabrina smiled slightly, as if she already knew the outcome.
(Actually, she did.  She's psychic.)  "Of course.  Take all the time
you want."
The group formed into a huddle and talked furiously.  The occasional
comment could be heard.  "We'd have to stop our journey-"  "We could
be killed-"  "-do you want to just let Team Rocket take over the
world-"  and so forth.  Finally, Bob was pushed forward again, after a
small scuffle over who would be the spokesperson.  Bob lost, of
course.  With a slightly bruised face, Bob took in a deep breath.
"We've decided that we can't just sit around and do nothing to stop
Team Rocket.  We'd like to help."