smash_logs | Pokemon! Genie! Kanto? It's a thing that's happening!

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Pokemon! Genie! Kanto? It's a thing that's happening!

Who: Shantae and Sonny Moe!
What: Kanto Adventures!
Where: Kanto! You know! The place where everyone wants to be the very best like no-one ever was!
When: Mid June
Warnings: Pokémon Battle Shenanigans
Music: You know which music you need to listen to.

The train ride from FDC was always pretty pleasant. The scenery was nice and it was a fairly long ride which allowed time for both gazing out the window at things flying by and also napping. Sonny, of course, insisted it was his treat whenever the snack trolley rolled past. The snack lady on the train had never made so much in one shift before...

...anyway. Kanto in Summertime is a wonderful place. The sun is shining, the Pidgey are Shin--er, singing, the Rattata are looking at their masses of squabbling children and regretting each and every life choice that led them to this moment. Today, they are joined by a portly, young, blue haired gentleman and his beautiful purple haired companion who just so happens to be a Genie.

"So! This is Pallet!" he said, turning to her and grinning. "I know it doesn't look like much, but it's a great place!"

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"I don't remember Marie, but Vinnie and Bulba are familiar. I get you."

She finished off her drink and set the can down.

"Well! Let's not keep 'em waiting, huh?" she asked with a big smile.

"You got it!" Sonny said, putting her sandwich in the fridge... and grabbing a bag of apples while he was in there.

"Something for us to eat on the way!"

To. The building that was within sight of the house they were... currently in...

"All starter Pokémon in every region are fire, water and grass and they all have three evolutions. Kanto is the only place where they're all reptiles, though!"

"You're certainly a fountain of knowledge," Shantae laughed as they set off for the lab, shutting the door behind them. "So you said you weren't from this city. Where were you from originally?" she asked, walking in pace beside him, arms crossed behind her head.

Sonny locked up and put the key back where he'd found it.

"I come from the mountains!" Sonny replied, looking around for a second. "I've never tried to see if I can spot my home range from Pallet... which I can't." he decided after a moment. "But! It's north-east from here! There's a city called Celadon with a HUUUUGR department store? And it's just north of there. I used to live alone there, just eating pine trees and bamboo and stuff."

Shantae smirked a bit at his humorous admission. "Pine trees and bamboo? How the heck did you ever survive?" she asked him, poking at his stomach. "I can't imagine you without a huge sandwich in your hand!" she teased with a laugh as they finally arrived at the doors to the lab.

"We don't have a lot of time here, and it sure sounds like there's a lot of ground to cover," Shantae said. "But that definitely sounds like an interesting sight to see! But that's the problem with visiting another country, so much to see, so little time."

"Trust me, it isn't easy OR fun OR tasty. But if you live in the mountains and that's all that's there..." he replied with a shrug. "Sandwiches are great, though. And Pizza. Burritos. I wouldn't want to live alone in the mountains again."

He opened the door to the lab for her.

"I don't know if it's really an interesting place to go! But what WOULD be interesting would be showing you the Department store near where Red caught me. I could even show you some of the restaurants inside it? If you wanted? For dinner."

Like a date sort of. Despite his seeming unwillingness to drop the D word.

"Sure, why not? Sounds like fun!" she replied.

Sonny had a Not!Date. It was official.

She followed him into the lab, and was immediately awestruck by all the machinery and equipment everywhere. She had issues with technology, to say the least, and made sure to keep her hands to herself while she looked carefully around, trying to figure out what each item did.

He mentally fistbumped himself for asking and for her not asking if his intentions were romantic. He'd get there. E-eventually. Probably.

"Tadaaa! This is where Green's Grandpa lives and works! His name is Samuel Oak, but if you meet him, please be careful to call him Professor. He likes that more than Sam."

He looked around, but saw no-one in the lab except for a few aides who he waved at. They waved back, remembering him from prior visits.

"Maybe the Professor is in Johto doing his radio show. He won't mind me showing you through here, though!"

He walked them towards a door in back which had a 'Live Pokémon!' sign on it. "You have to be careful not to let them run out and escape, OK? There's two doors. This one, which we go through and let it close4, then another one on the other side which we can't open till this one shuts. OK?"

"He has a radio show too?" Shantae asked, looking up from some gadget she didn't recognize, pulling back a curious finger at the sound of his voice. "Scientist, and radio star. Pretty cool job."

She followed Sonny out to the back, a skip in her step at the idea of seeing all the cute baby Pokemon. But when Sonny opened the door...

"...Um... It's empty," she said, disappointed.

"...oh no."

Sonny jogged into the room, grabbing at some plastic carry cases. They were made of hard, thick plastic and had many half-sphere indentations in them.

"These are for Pokéball storage but they're empty! Someone must of put them all in their balls and then taken them out but why? Professor Oak wouldn't... let me see something."

He went back out the door and latched on to the nearest PC, pulling up the boxes marked 'STARTERS'.

"...these are empty too. I don't know why that would be, though? It's way too early for all the starters to be given out."

"Well... Maybe those guys working in the lab know," Shantae suggested, looking around. "I mean, what else could it be? It's gotta be for some research thing. Who would want to steal a bunch of baby Pokemon?" she asked, clearly unfamiliar with the way the Pokemon world worked.

"There are people who would do it." Sonny said, frantically rifling through desk drawers, checking in trash cans and looking under cabinets to see if they'd maybe all miraculously been misplaced in a spot like that. "I've fought them before! I--"

"All Hail Giovanni!"

"Team Rocket will Rise Again like a Moltres from the Ashes!"

Sonny froze before turning around to look at the lab techs. Each had undone the buttons on their coats to reveal black clothing underneath emblazoned with a big red R.

"....Team Rocket!" Sonny yelled, incredulously.

Shantae... was confused.

"...What the heck is a Team Rocket?" she asked, having never heard of this mysterious organization before, pointing at the two revealed spies. "So they DON'T work here?"

"I THOUGHT they did!" Sonny growled, stepping forward and shaking a fist at them. "You better not have hurt the baby starters!"

The pair discarded their lab coats and pulled Pokéballs from their belts.

"We didn't, but we sold them at a hugely inflated rate to a region where they ain't native. This kind've cash is sure to bring Giovanni out of hiding!" the girl cackled, tossing her Pokéball in the air and revealing... a level seven Rattata.

"And you two twerps had to get in our way, huh?" sneered the man, also dropping a Pokéball to reveal... a level six Zubat.

"Shantae, these guys are bad news." Sonny said, eyeing the low level Pokémon as he spoke. "Red and our Team took them down years ago, but it seems like they're trying to make a comeback! They use Pokémon as tools, sell them, mutilate or even kill them if they can't get their way... We need to stop them here and now and get those little Pokémon home! But I'll need your help!"

His face was darkened by anger. Something he rarely felt and expressed even less frequently. His gaze was sharp and his teeth were bared.

"So they're the bad guys, huh?" Shantae asked, cracking her knuckles. So much for a peaceful vacation! "Kidnapping, mutilating, killing... You're not getting away with this!" she declared angrily. "Time to see what happens when you pick a fight with a Guardian Genie!" She leaped into action...

...running right up, jumping over the Rattata, and swinging her magic ponytail for the girl Team Rocket trainer.

Who was so surprised, she barely had time to gasp "What are you even...!" before she was caught in the face by a magic slash of violet hair and fell backwards on her ass, skidding across the floor.

"...wow." Sonny said, blinking at the Team Rocket guy who was just sort of staring at his companion in her newly sprawled state. "Hey, sorry! Shantae is new to this! She doesn't know how this is supposed to work."

"You're tellin' me!" the guy said, returning his Pokémon to its ball and booking it out the big double doors.

What? This was how you beat bad guys! Not realizing she was doing anything wrong (because seriously), she charged after the other guy. "Get back here!" she shouted, activating a fireball spell and lobbing it right after him. She'd had enough of letting bad guys get away from her. She had something to prove now!

One flaw to the Team Rocket uniforms produced after the organization broke up was that they were no longer expensive, protective gear. They were now cheaply purchased polyester blend tracksuits that, unfortunately, went up like kindling when hit by flames. (...Team Rocket rarely trained fire types to begin with.)

"OH ARCEUS NO!" the guy yelled as his clothes went up like gas soaked newspaper.

Sonny sprinted out the doors, changing into a Snorlax on the way and smashing the door frame with his heft. He unleashed a Blizzard attack directly at the guy, icy winds and hail the size of golf balls slamming into the poor unfortunate and pinning him to the grass under a sheet of frost.

....so he was pretty much naked, singed and locked to the ground by a slab of ice infused with wood chips from Oak's broken building. This was not Team Rocket's finest hour.

Team Rocket, no. Shantae, on the other hand, grinned triumphantly. "And that's how it's done!" she proclaimed at the sight of the defeated baddie frozen to the ground. Perhaps she went a little overboard? If he was as bad as Sonny said, he had it coming.

"So this Team Rocket stole all those baby Pokemon. We've gotta get them back! Is that girl still in the lab? We can interrogate her!" she suggested, already getting right into the spirit of action.

Sonny switched back into a Human and placed himself between her and the door.

...he could hear the Team Rocket girl sniffling in the lab and asking 'what that purple haired girl's problem was' and 'how can hair break my nose? I'm pretty sure it's broken.'

"You did a great job! Really, really super!" Sonny prefaced by saying. "And if we were back at the school maybe, that would be... um.. see, the thing is... it works a little bit differently in this world?" he bit his lip and scratched at his stubble. "Did you see the Pokémon they released while we were talking to them?"

"Well, yeah I did," Shantae said. "So what? They're just minions! Take out their boss, and you win!" she explained. "What did I do wrong?" she asked, trying to get past Sonny to go interrogate the villain.

"See, that's good logic and stuff? But, um, in this world, we sort of handle things a different way? And again, you did a great job! I think what you did was super awesome!"

"I don't." croaked the Team Rocket guy from his icy prison.

"Oh, hush you. You'll defrost eventually." Sonny replied before turning back to Shantae. "See, in THIS world, the Pokémon do the fighting. The way probably we could have handled that? Is I turn into a Pokémon and you give me a move to use on the enemy Pokémon. Soooo, you could say Blizzard! And I'd do That."

He pointed to the guy. Who just looked up, face a mask of sourness.

"And then the Team Rocket person is defeated and they might tell us what we want to know? That's... I mean, that's just how it works?"

Shantae held her hand up, and started counting on her fingers. "One, if I can fight, why should I be making you do it for me? Two, that's ridiculous that humans would let Pokemon do their fighting for them. Three, what's to stop them from running away as soon as their Pokemon are defeated? Four, I caught the bad guys!"

"Well, one - yeah! You fight REALLY well! I did say that, right? I think that you did an awesome job! But Two? In this world, that's just... it's my job, I guess? Like, you told me that you protect your town once. Scuttle town? Because it's your job to fight monsters that come to town. You could kind of think of this the same way. It's my job to fight Team Rocket's Pokémon, knock them out, and then you get them to tell you what you want to know. Which... I mean, if Three becomes an issue? I just grab them and block their way. I can do that. Four? Yes! You did! Did I mention I thought that was REALLY awesome of you, and you looked super cool doing it and I think you're amazing?"

Phew. Deep breath, there Sonny.

"...It's just the culture here."

...Well, that was a very long winded explanation, chiding, and compliment all in one. She was impressed. And not quite sure how to respond. "...Um. Well okay then. Long as we understand each other," she finally said. "So what so we do now? We still need to figure out where they've taken the baby Pokemon."

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