-The Dragon King-

  -Shock and Awe: Ch 5-

  Staravia was slowly dragged back into consciousness with a horrible headache and an intense feeling of nausea.

  The nausea part was quickly solved. He was still tangled in the net, which was tied to two ends of a long stick, and he was dangling upside down, swaying to and fro as the two dumbasses named Shawn and Sheen (who have never been named before in this story and likely never will be named again) carried him along.

  Staravia started to struggle and cut the net with his beak, but he went slack as they entered a camp of some sort, and his attention was absorbed by the place he had been taken to.

  Dozens of tents filled the clearing, some of them were for sleeping, but many others were pop up canopies and gazebos, for shade and light rain.

  Bidoof were everywhere, working to chew down trees to expand the clearing, dragging logs around, and acting as grunt work to set up a more permanent base.

  Rowdy humans were all over the place, laughing, drinking, battling with each other, or throwing captured pokemon into cages.

  And the cages- the cages! There had to be a hundred thick steel cages of all shapes and sizes, littered around the camp.

  Most were empty, but many weren’t. Some smaller pokemon weren’t even given the dignity of having a cage to themselves, such as a colony of wurmple that had all been crammed into one metal box together.

  In the largest of the cages was a massive Mightyena, that was thrashing violently against the bars. Terra stood off to the side of the cage, bearing a few bandages on her right arm and a proud look on her face.

  “Haha! Oh you’re a mean one aren’t you!” Norvin laughed as he banged on the bars with his cane, causing the Mightyena to get even angrier and try to bite him through the bars. “Yes, yes, that’s exactly what I’m looking for!” He hit the cage a few more times, making the Pokemon trash even harder. “I’m going to put you in an arena with a bunch of punk nose brats, and people are gonna pay me lots of money to watch you tear up their pwetty pwecious little starters.”

  Staravia felt sick, he tore his eyes away from the sight of the cages, unable to bear looking anymore, but instead of the grass below him, he found himself looking at the polished black shoes of a man who had walked over.

  Musterman crouched down slightly to look Staravia in the eye. The flying type glared at the man, and he knew it was a good glare because his reflection was the only thing he could see in Mustermann's sunglasses. But it had the opposite intended effect.

  “I want this one.” Musterman said with a smirk as he stood up and adjusted his tie. “Put it in the truck with the rest of them.”

  Staravia attempted to peck at the man through the net, but fell short, and could do nothing more than continue to glare as the two goons carried him over to a truck that was being loaded up by Rocket grunts.

  In that moment a match of undying hatred was lit in Staravia’s soul, and he would be able to recall every single inch of Musterman’s face with perfect clarity until the day he died, but on the other hand the pokemon slipped out of Musterman’s mind only a scant few seconds later.

  Musterman made his way through the camp, towards the large command tent at the center of the camp. It was a dull army green, with a flat face and a round tunnel-like body.

  Inside the tent he found Marcus hunched over a metal desk, fighting the greatest foe that any leader has to inevitably struggle with.

  Paperwork.

  “Why is there an invoice for one cent? Who bought something for a penny? What the fuck can you even buy for a penny??” Mark asked, sounding flabbergasted, confounded, and increasingly at his wits end. “It’s a penny! What, did they actually give someone a penny for their thoughts? What retardation is this?”

  “Excuse me.” Musterman knocked on one of the aluminum support beams as he leaned in through the open door. “Am I interrupting something?”

  “Ah! My favorite money printer! Come in, come in, the only thing you're interrupting is my slow decline in sanity. Coffee?” Mark offered, already reaching over and putting a styrofoam cup on a plastic coffee machine. “We only have the cheap instant stuff for now, and no sugar or caramel crap, but it’ll still wake you up.”

  “Please, and thank you.” Musterman accepted the environmentally unfriendly cup with a smile. “I actually prefer my coffee black and without any additives.”

  “I like mine cheap, and not 25 bucks a cup. I need something to help with the paperwork.”

  “You haven't punched something out of frustration yet, so you're clearly a natural. You should consider a backup career in accounting.”

  “That is a vile joke. I am pawning off all of this to someone else, the moment I find someone I can trust to do basic math.”

  With one sweep of his meaty arm, Mark shoved all the paperwork off to the side of his desk, and gestured for Musterman to sit across from him.

  “I have to admit, I’m impressed with just how quickly you got everything set up.” The Rocket executive said as he took a seat. “You’ve gone from one man struggling to pawn off a few cubs you risked your life for, to selling off a litter of Shinx you had other people catch for you, to a full blown operation with a chain of command and a base of operations. Usually that takes years.”

  “Its called generous start-up funding paired with realistic goals. I needed people to catch pokemon, tools for them to use, and a place to store pokemon before selling them. It doesn't need to be any more complicated than that to work. We can polish it later, and clean it up as we go, but every day that the company wasn’t running I was losing money. Better to have it running bare bones, then not running at all.”

  “Trust me, I could understand your angle in a few minutes of getting here.” Musterman said as he took a sip of his coffee. “The quality of your offerings is lacking, for a man of your talents.”

  “As I said, polish later. I can’t do that without money, and I can’t make money if the business isn’t businessing.”

  “What’s your plan for the near future, if you don’t mind me asking? I want to know how you plan to expand.”

  “I get money, I invest in the company, the company makes more money, which I then reinvest in the company to make more money- all while being able to put it down as a tax writeoff. It’s basic business sense.” Mark held out his hands, as if gesturing to the entire camp around them. “I’m literally just following the steps that have made other people filthy rich. I’m not reinventing the wheel here- attempting to reinvent the wheel for venture capital investments is how people blow billions without making a dime.” He scoffed then, after a moment, added- “And I would like to make a lot more than a dime.”

  “For something you call basic business sense, this kind of… grounded approach is rather rare to find these days.”

  “Yeah, well, my competitors in ‘business sense’ are either A) big companies where every decision has to make its way through 15 different departments, get screened by PR and HR, and then debated by a board of execs that have never even tasted the sauce their company sells. Or B) the Galactic Corporation which, I mean, duh. Of course they don’t have any business sense, they make money off science-techno-SciFi-bullshit and spend it all funding a criminal organization, and archaeological dig sites to figure out how to summon legendaries.”

  Musterman’s coffee cup paused an inch from his lips, and slowly was set down without taking a sip, making Mark realize he had just said something he probably shouldn’t have.

  “Summing legendaries…” Musterman whispered, gears turning in his head. He looked around, reached into his pocket and fully powered off his phone, before leaning forward. “...Are you certain? What’s your source? Do you have an inside contact we need to get out of the region if they’re exposed?”

  “Uh, no, no, no.” Mark sputtered and waved him off. “I don’t have any contacts or evidence, just uhh… Uhm… I mean, what else would Team Galactic be digging up all those old sites for, while also funding research into the Sinnoh lakes? It just kind of makes sense. Uh. You know?”

  The Rocket executive didn’t say anything. He just sat there, leaning slightly forward at the desk, elbows planted firmly on the cluttered surface, hand clasped together in front of his mouth.

  Mark shifted in his seat, uncomfortable in the sudden oppressive silence, and the fact that Musterman’s expression was hidden behind his sunglasses.

  “Just leave it be. They’re spending a shit ton of cash that could be used to make our lives difficult, to dig up old rocks. Let them waste their money, it ain’t gonna work out for them.”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  And Mark wasn’t even lying. Yeah, they would figure out what they needed to know to track down and catch the three lake spirits, and make something capable of not only summoning Dialga and Palkia but completely ensnaring them to Cyrus’ will- BUT, and it was a big but, they would be stopped by Giratina because they accidentally punched a hole into the distortion world or something.

  …Wait… Gira-

  That train of thought caused a sudden burning pain in his head, and when his ears stopped ringing, his memories of the last ten or so seconds were gone.

  Musterman watched all this with a perfect poker face, not giving anything away.

  “I see.” He said as he slowly relaxed back into his chair. “I must admit, you’ve begun to grow on me Marcus. I see a potential long term partnership that could make both of us a lot of money. You remind me of myself, back before I was forced to settle down. So I’m going to tell you this in confidence.

  “The higher ups of Rocket have been, let’s say, unnerved by what our friends in the League have sent to us during their post mortem investigation on Teams Magma and Aqua. I buy and sell much more than just Pokemon and illicit goods, I can pay handsomely for good information as long as it can be verified.”

  “Right. That’s good, that’s great.” Mark nodded slowly. “But I don’t have a contact in Galactic, and I don’t have any way to verify information from them.” He ended his sentence firmly, but Musterman didn’t say anything, turning it into an awkward silence. “I mean, unless you want to take I know the future as a form of verification.”

  “Yes, well, if your nonexistent contact sends you any nonexistent information that’s particularly worrying, you have my card.”

  -The Dragon King-

  Musterman left his meeting with Mark with a frown on his face.

  Legendaries.

  Galactic was after Legendaries.

  Previously everyone had written off all the money that Galactic’s legal front had been pouring into archeology and research of old Sinnoh myth just as a PR stunt, or even a passing fancy of Cyrus. The only person who had ever shown any suspicion that it might be more, was Giovanni, but the CEO was a busy man and didn’t have the time for matters that were not only unrelated to the business, but were all the way over in Sinnoh.

  But if Galactic was instead looking into how to find and catch legendaries, then suddenly everything not only lined up, but became much much more dangerous.

  Giovanni had not been happy to learn that the entire world had almost ended because of some environmental wackjobs in Hoenn. And not only had the world almost ended, killing every member of Rocket in the process, they hadn’t had a single inkling about what was happening until after it was all over and their moles in the International League passed it onto them.

  Musterman walked over to the black painted moving van in deep thought. He wordlessly took a seat in the passenger side, and let the Rocket grunts finish loading up the captured Pokemon into the back.

  Team Rocket was stretched thin at the moment. First they had to deal with Kanto’s missing champion gutting their power structure a decade ago, during his rise to fame, then Mewtwo went rogue and made what Red did look like child’s play. It was only thanks to Giovanni’s management abilities and ability to seemingly find ways of squeezing money out of rocks, that the organization had stayed in one piece. He could not imagine a timeline where Giovanni had left and Rocket survived for any reasonable amount of time afterwards.

  But that is to say, while their resources and manpower were vast, they were most certainly not infinite. (Something not helped by two of their very best operatives seemingly going mad with obsession over some stupid yellow rat, and abandoned nearly all of their other duties.)

  A group with the resources of Galactic messing with Legendaries was a problem for everyone. Problems for everyone were bad for business, and the world really didn’t need a Mewthree swearing revenge on humanity.

  So then. What to do?

  If they were in Kanto, getting rid of Galactic permanently would have been doable. Not easy, not cheap, but doable. But in a region on the other end of Jinzu, where Rocket only had a scant few trading outposts, and Galactic was playing on their home turf? It just wasn’t happening.

  They would have to play this smart. Maybe pay off some Sinnoh officers to fabricate some evidence that Rocket could slip to their contacts in the international Pokemon League.

  “No, that wouldn’t work well with Sinnoh.” Musterman mused. If the Sinnoh League was stonewalling Hoenn’s demands to deport Magma and Aqua, there was no way the region would cooperate with a crackdown on its largest company that was also a descendant of the Galactic Expedition.

  This would have to be solved through unofficial means.

  Rocket couldn’t afford the resources to fight Galactic in their own home, nor honestly did they really want to. What would be best is if they could somehow just get someone else to do it for them. Ideally it would be someone with manpower at their disposal, who wasn’t tied to Team Rocket in any real way that the authorities could track, who wouldn’t quit the fight easily, and wouldn’t mind Rocket seeping into the region after Galactic had been displaced.

  The truck rumbled to life as a grunt sat in the driver's seat, and Musterman watched out the window as the camp slowly retreated into the distance.

  He smiled.

  Yes. They needed a proxy.

  -The Dragon King-

  Dawn was, for all intents and purposes, a bit of an anomaly.

  She was a Lab Trainer, vouched for by the regional Professor himself, so she (and Berry) got to skip Trainer School. Not only that, but she also was given a small fortune in the shape of a cutting edge Pokedex, AND got to pick a regional starter.

  That already put her in a small group, but what really made her stand out was the fact she was competing in both the Gym and Contest circuits. At the same time. And winning in them.

  So what was her secret? Really it was simple, and she tried to tell everyone she possibly could.

  She loved her Pokemon.

  “Eep!” Dawn squeaked as her Pachirisu jumped up onto her head, pulled her beanie over her eyes, and then leaped back off into the tall grass.

  “Oh, I’m going to get you for that!” She shouted as she dove after her electric squirrel.

  Everyday she would set aside a two hour minimum to spend time with her team outside of training. She’d go shopping with them, dress them up with makeup, sing group karaoke with music on her phone, play games with them, or even just lounge around and cuddle with them.

  It might have sounded cheesy, but the bond between a trainer and their pokemon was the most important key to success. And she had statistical evidence to back it up!

  So after a long day of practicing their performance for the Hearthome contest, she had made the executive decision to spend the rest of the day playing hide and seek tag with her team.

  “Come back here you!” Dawn laughed as she chased Pachirisu through the grass, just barely able to keep track of the bright blue stripe on her tail as it occasionally flicked above the foliage. In the distance she could hear Buneary laughing at both of them, but she would get her later!

  “Pip! Pip pip!”

  “Woah!” Dawn skidded to a stop, having to swerve to the side and nearly fall over to avoid trampling her best friend, as Piplup frantically ran into her path.

  “Pip! Piplup Pi!”

  “Piplup? Why aren’t you hiding? What’s going on?”

  But Piplup didn’t answer her, he jumped up, grabbed her hand with his flipper, and led her further into the grass.

  Once she saw what he was talking about, though, she completely understood his excitement.

  It was a disc that seemed to glow ever so faintly with TE, and had a thick ring of dark metal around the edge to protect from chipping.

  A TM! What was a machine worth hundreds of dollars doing just laying on the ground in the middle of nowhere?

  “Great work Piplup!”

  “Pip!” The little penguin puffed up his chest in pride.

  Dawn couldn’t help the goofy grin that split across her face. Talk about lucky, this was the second one she’d gotten for free! Not counting the ones as a reward from the Gym Leaders, of course.

  First she got Rock Smash from a kind old man in a cave, and now she just finds one in the grass? She must have charmed something up above!

  Wait.

  Rock Smash.

  “Okay, so I could, hypothetically, teach Bagon a TM for Rock Smash by getting him familiar with other fighting moves?”

  “Hypothetically yes. But pushing a Pokemon’s move pool to its true limits takes years of training and a deep understanding of how Type Energy works.” Dawn answered, happy to show off the knowledge she’d gotten from Professor Rowan. “Wait, hold on, I thought you were broke! How did you get a TM for Rock Smash?”

  “I didn’t.” Mark admitted grumpilly. “There’s supposed to be a hiker guy in a tunnel West of town, who I could talk to about rocks until he gave me one, but I just couldn’t find him.”

  Dawn’s hand stilled just inches away from the TM as the memory of her conversation with Mark came back to her. She had never gotten an answer out of him about how in Arceus’ name he knew exactly how she got Rock Smash.

  …

  No. That wasn’t right.

  “What makes you think someone would just give away a TM for free?” She asked wearily.

  “The knowledge I hold would make you question reality.” Mark said in a dramatically sarcastic voice, before standing up with a stretch. “Besides, you wouldn’t believe me anyway. Thanks for the info, but I gotta go stop Bagon using Bidoof1 as a target dummy for his Ember. We need everyone at 100% for the Gym match later.”

  He’d given her an answer, just not one that any sane person would actually take seriously.

  “Pip?” Piplup tilted his head in curiosity as he watched Dawn stand back up, leaving the TM where it was.

  “Someone must have lost it, I want to wait a bit to see if the original owner comes looking for it.” She lied to herself. “We’ll keep playing in this area. If no one else comes by sunset, we’ll take it with us.”

  -The Dragon King-

  “There’s no way…” Dawn whispered to herself from her spot behind some bushes.

  “AHA!” Marcus fucking Cross triumphantly lifted the same TM Dawn had found hours earlier into the air. “Things like you are a lot more difficult to find when the city is the size of an actual city, and it’s not all top down, you know that? I mean the walk was great to get away from that desk, but you could have at least been by some kind of landmark, you know, like the statue.”

  Mark winced slightly as he said that, like he had bitten into a lemon.

  “Still not sure how I’m going to grab the Dragon Plate thing from there without anyone noticing.” He shrugged, gently put the TM into his bag, and wandered off the way he came. “But that’s problem for later, problem for now is what I’m gonna get for dinner.”

  …

  Dawn stood up from the bushes and watched him go, while the gears in her brain turned, and a sickening feeling began to gnaw at her gut.

  Just who or what was Marcus Cross? The man who had seemingly just popped into existence one day, without anyone questioning it.

  -End Chapter-

  Ruh roh Raggy