Chapter 9: Team Rocket on the loose

“Quickly, Julia! This place is scaring me!”

“Shut up, you imbassal!” Julia sawed harder. Lucky some careless idiot dropped this piece of metal on the floor. She had sawed herself out of her cell and was now working on her brother. He would be useful to have around, anyway. Annoying, but he was easy to exploit.

“Listen,” whispered Julia. “Once we get out, we fool the guards by pretending we’re Machokes. We do that by acting kind of stupidly- well, you can just act how you normally are- and making Machoke sounds. Once we’re in the town, we make for the tree where we hid the rest of our treasure. And then... we will...” She thought. What would Mother and Father have done? Go for someone with rare Pokemon, of course. “Find that freak who broke into our house and run off with her Pokemon. Sound like a plan?”

“What about our Pokemon, Julia?”

Julia paused. He had a point. Their old Pokemon would be at the pound, of course. So... maybe they could raid the pound first, taking all the Pokemon there, and then...

“I’ve got an idea,” she said with a kniving smile.

Aaron sat down. “If only we had Meowth with us,” he sighed.

Meowth! Of course! When Mother and Father were taken to jail Meowth had went off somewhere, but if they could get him to help them, then...

“I’ve got an even better idea,” said Julia. There was a plang. The iron bar was sawed through.

“Yay! I’m out! Come-”

“Shut up! Remember, act like a Machoke when you hear a guard.”

“Oh yeah. Machoke, choke, choke!”

“WHEN YOU HEAR A GUARD,” snarled Julia.

“Machoke?”

“If you get us caught, I will kill you. And I mean that.”

Aaron looked sad. “Mach... choke?”



Julia’s heart pulsed. They were out into the night. There was enough moonlight to guide them but not too much for them to be seen. It was perfect.

“The pound,” she said. “We want a flying Pokemon or two.”

“Mach,” replied Aaron.

“You can quit that demented Machoke thing now!” Julia spat.

“But I like being a Machoke!” whined Aaron.

Julia swore violently at him.

The pound was somewhere downtown. The sign on it had a little Growlithe looking like it had been dumped out in the rain. Underneath it were the words, “All I need is an owner like you.”

The door was locked, obviously, but that was no problem for Julia. Any good criminal knew how to pick a lock. They were in soon, listening to the whimpering of the homeless Pokemon in their sleep. Julia turned to Aaron.

“All right,” she said softly. “Do noth-ing. Just stay here and don’t even move.”

“Ok,” agreed Aaron.

Julia was a little worried that Aaron would have some difficulty not doing something completely stupid that would cause trouble. In fact, she almost felt it. And she would regret it later that she ignored herself.

After opening a few doors to strange rooms (she was delighted to find some money in one of them), Julia reached the pound. There was a half-dead looking Houndoom lying to her left, and to her right an Elekid...

First she would find the Fearow of hers. It would listen to her, anyway. Yes, get all her old Pokemon first and then work on the rest. She approached the sleeping Fearow and opened the door-

“Julia!” Aaron yelled from down the aisle. He was holding a leash in his hand. “I thought you might need this-”

“Put that away! NOW! Quickly, before-”

But the Houndoom had already noticed. It sprung awake and began barking loud enough to wake all the other Pokemon up. And it soon did, and the air was filled with the noises of the Pokemon. The Fearow became startled and fluttered up to the ceiling as Julia jumped on its back.

“Julia! Wait for me!”

But Julia had had it. “So long, looser! I won’t have to pretend I had an idiot of a brother like you again! Fearow, Drill Peck that window and fly through!”

“Julia!” yelled Aaron, but Julia was on her way out.



The town was starting to wake up. Julia quickly slipped into a bedding shop to steal a few sheets and a fabric pen. “Go north,” she said to the Fearow.

When they landed, somewhere with a lot of trees and tall grass, Julia got to work. She took out the fabric pen and wrote on the sheets, “MEOWTH I NEED YOUR HELP PLEASE HELP ME YOU KNOW WHO I AM”. The letters were mangled and sloppy. Julia had never gone to school.

She gave the bedsheet to the Fearow. “Hold a corner of this in your beak,” she instructed. The Fearow bit down on a corner an Julia took another so when they flew it would wave like a banner. “All right, fly!” she yelled.

The Fearow took to the air. The bedsheet immediately began rippling hard as the breeze rushed past. Soon they were over a large lake.

Suddenly, there was a gigantic blast of wind. The Fearow lurched sideways and let go of its corner of the sheet. As it moved abruptly, Julia let go of hers. “No!” yelled Julia as the sheet sunk downwards onto the surface of the lake.

A Gyarados emerged from the bottom of the lake and took the sheet in its mouth. “Down, Fearow!” Julia screamed as the Gyarados looked up. It began to move away.

“Get back here, you stupid Pokemon!” snarled Julia.

“Yasha gya yasha,” responded the Gyarados happily. It lifted its head high and began to cruise about the lake, the sheet rippling alongside it, within its powerful grasp.

Julia ordered the Fearow to follow it. It swooped down on the Gyarados but Julia grabbed the sheet. The Gyarados yanked in turn and not only did the sheet come out of Julia’s grasp again, but she fell off the Fearow into the water.

The Gyarados with the sheet looked happy. It finally dropped the sheet, which floated on the water. The Fearow began to return for Julia, but at that moment, a very large Gyarados jumped out of the sea and caught the Fearow. Several other Gyarados smelled the blood that spilled as the Gyarados bit down, and came to rip the carcass apart. The water around them soon turned red.

Satiated, most of the Gyarados turned away, but some were still hungry, and suddenly concentrated on Julia.

Oh, no. No. This is bad. How nice it must be to die by being torn to pieces by a bunch of hungry Gyarados.

It looked like the end.

Until, like an angelic messenger from heaven above, there soared a small tan machine. It shot a net at the Gyarados, who dodged it, but all the same they went away. The matching pulled out floating devices and landed on the water.

“Meowth!” exclaimed Julia.

“I saw the sign,” Meowth explained as he opened the door. “Ya look like a wet Growlithe. Get in.”

“That was nice,” muttered Julia as she clambered in.

“Jessie and James and I were woyking on rebuilding this the past few months,” Meowth exclaimed.

“Mother and Father? But I thought they were-”

“Nah, they’re still out there. Officer Jenny’s tryin’ to cover everything up. But-”

“Where? Where are they?”

“Somewhere in Kanto. Where’s Aaron?”

Julia gulped. “Well... we were caught by the police, and I escaped and helped him escape, and then we went to the pound to get our Pokemon, but Aaron screwed everything up. So I stole this sheet and marker in hopes to find you and the Gyarados ate the sheet and they ate my Fearow too.”

Meowth piloted the craft a little and it went into the air. “So... where is he?”

“Still in Maghony, for all I know.”

Meowth sighed. “He’s his father’s son.”

“I probably should have saved him.”

“I’ll tell ya what. Let’s find a big bomb and blow Maghony apart, capture the Gyarados in the Lake of Rage, and-”

“Meowth, face it, every time you and Mom and Dad tried to get rare Pokemon it never worked.”

Meowth scowled.

“I have a better idea. There were some people Aaron and I met in our house. They took some valuable treasure. Let’s go get the treasure and sell it. Then we might actually be able to afford the bomb.”

Meowth thought about it. “Okay,” he said. “One treasure, comin’ right up.”