[X] My Assistant

[Yzarc Drowsnam]

Discussion Topic

It was in the middle of the day, just another weekday, but not for Justin Smart. He was sitting in a jail cell, along with a few other men, two of whom had the stench and demeanor of alcohol on them. Arms crossed, eyes open, he simply watched them, hoping none of them would assume he gave them a dirty look. Drunk people, particularly those who were recently arrested, had a tendency towards violence. Should it come to that, Justin, being sober and strong, would be easily able to protect himself, but he feared that would reflect poorly on his comfort for the remainder of his stay.

"Justin Smart," came the voice of one of the officers, who opened up the door. There were a few others beside him, all armed with batons in case one of the other guys decided he was going to make a break for freedom. They all seemed to be smarter than that, though, and so Justin walked out of the room with no problems. They didn't bother cuffing him but simply escorted him through the station to a private room with no windows or mirrors. There stood a well dressed man with two officers by his side. In the middle of the otherwise empty room was a table and two chairs and on top of that table was a pokeball.

"Leave us," the well dressed man said. All the officers nodded and closed the door behind them. "Take a seat, Mr. Smart."

"I feel like I'm at a disadvantage," Justin replied, taking the aforementioned seat. "I don't know your name."

"We'll probably keep it that way for a while," the man smirked, sitting in the opposite seat.

"So I take it you're not my lawyer."

"I might as well be," the man smiled. "I can walk you out of here right now. Moreover, I can make sure that the prosecutor doesn't even charge you."

"But you're not my lawyer."

"I'm not. I'm a simple business man, Mr. Smart, and I'm here because of a certain incident that happened a few weeks back. Perhaps you remember a certain expedition near the underground town of Under Hill."

"I'm aware of it,"

"You and Pandora Gibbs took it upon yourselves to put an end to that expedition."

"The man in charge forced us to do it by attacking us," Justin shook his head. "All I did before that was ask him to make sure what he was doing was legal."

"Well, it wasn't," the man said. "That man worked for a crime syndicate known as Team Deception. Do you know them?"

"I don't."

"They're fairly small in numbers, admittedly," the man said. "Quality over quantity seems to be among their mantras. They - I should stop bullshitting, shouldn't I? We have more power than any other criminal organization here in Furoh."

"Apparently not enough if two dumb kids could stop you." Justin laughed.

"A fair point," he nodded his head. "That man has been dealt with, I assure you. Anyway, my point is that after you and Miss Gibbs parted ways, we've kept a few eyes on you. We didn't want to resort to drastic measures, and it seems we didn't have to. Neither of you knew what it was you put a stop to, and so our worries were relieved. However, there is something else we gained out of keeping an eye on you. We found out that you've recently taken it upon yourself to become a regular burglar, haven't you? A pretty good one at that."

"Well, I did get caught."

"It was a fluke," the man smiled. "You're good, this I know."

"Is this a good time to ask what's in that pokeball?" Justin asked.

"Do you know the pokemon 'Pinsir,' Justin?"

"I've heard of it, yeah," Justin nodded. The man picked up the pokeball and summoned forth a pinsir, but there was something different about it. It stood still, looking at both Justin and the well dressed man, perfectly obedient. "What's special about it?"

"It's a shadow pokemon, Mr. Smart," the man said. "What that means is that, while it cannot learn any of Pinsir's normal moves, its attacks are effective against everything. This pinsir has the potential to be one of the strongest pokemon in the world, as do all shadow pokemon."

"Interesting."

"Do you want it?"

Justin raised an eyebrow and looked at this man, smiling his devilish smile. "I imagine it comes with a few strings."

"Everything in this world does, Justin," the man said. "But I imagine you know that already."

"So, what? You want me to join Team Deception?"

"That's the notion," the man nodded. Justin looked over at the shadowy pinsir and then back at the man. He probably would have accepted even without the pokemon, mostly because of the treatment he was getting. He knew that accepting this man's offer meant avoiding felony burglary charges.

"So what's the pay like?"

The man grinned. "We take care of our own. We can discuss the details once we get to a more secure location. Basically, though, you'll get paid per job you complete, rather than by the hour. We'll fill you in on the details of your first assignment and introduce you to your partner. I think you'll like him."

"Oh my god will you shut up for like five minutes?" Justin practically yelled at his new partner, Nate Guzman. Nate was a year older than Justin, but about half a foot shorter and significantly skinnier. He had plenty of stories, that's for sure, most of which were about sex or violence, all of which were very clearly exaggerated if not outright false.

"Sorry, man," Nate laughed awkwardly. "I thought we were getting to know each other and shit you know?"

"Dude, I haven't talked a quarter as much as you have. I'm getting to know you, sure, way more than I want to."

"Okay, well, damn, why don't you say something? You got a girl?"

Tina... "I did," he sighed, but left it at that. She left him when she found out he was breaking into homes and stealing people's stuff. Luckily she didn't know he officially made the transition into professional crime by joining Team Deception, meaning she couldn't do anything to really hurt him. You know, any more than she already had.

Nate didn't say anything for a little while, taking the hint that Justin really didn't want to talk. He shrugged it off and about two minutes later, continued talking. "You know, we're partners now, whether you like it or not," he said. "And we're gonna have to get to know each other to make this whole thing bearable, you know what I mean? We gotta become friends."

"I am not your friend," Justin stopped and turned to his right, looking Nate dead in the eyes.

"Then that's gonna make this partnership suck a lot more than it has to," Nate shook his head and kept walking. Justin thought of himself as above Nate, not only physically (which was true) but in most other aspects as well. He was smarter (debatable, since Nate at least graduated high school), stronger, more mature and generally just way cooler and better in every way. His perspective of course. Basically, Justin was a little offended that Team Deception considered these two equals.

Justin continued to walk near Nate (who took the lead at this point) but not next to him. They were in an open field about a day's walk northeast of Petropolis. The grass was beautiful and the city from this distance ceased to remind the two of the hard lives they had lived there previously. They were more alike than Justin cared to realize.

In any case, they were looking for a pokemon called Seviper. It was a dangerous and poisonous snake, one which could be brought down, hopefully, without too much trouble. The trick, though, was that their goal was not to kill it or even to capture it in a pokeball. It was to knock it out and tie it down in the wagon Justin was pulling behind him. The reason for this was that one of their bosses had plans to open up a pokemon zoo in Petropolis and you can't use domesticated pokemon in zoos. It just defeats the purpose.

Another problem with the zoo plan is that, with rare pokemon at least, you can't take them from the wild either, because that's illegal. Few people know this, but many species of pokemon are actually banned from being captured in pokeballs with the exception of them attacking. If a rare pokemon attacks a human and your options are to kill it or to capture it, it is legal to capture it. This loophole makes it effectively impossible to enforce that law. But if a zoo were to be opened up, you can bet that a little more than local law enforcement would be looking into it. So the plan (which barely concerned Justin and Nate) was to say these rare pokemon were taken from the wild by Team Rocket and rescued by a fake private corporation, the CEO of which happened to be an officer in the enigmatic and barely heard of Team Deception.

Nate and Justin, should they be caught somehow, were to pose as members of Team Rocket so the seviper could be rescued by Team Deception.

"Look, there's one," Nate uncharacteristically whispered.

"You're sure that's not an ekans?" Justin asked.

"Definitely," Nate nodded. "Look, it's bigger. And see that blade on its tail? That's a seviper." Justin looked at the wrinkled up picture of Seviper he had in his pocket and nodded, then looked back up. It was laying in a muddy area by a small pond not too far from where they stood. This needed to be handled delicately. "I got this shit," Nate stood up tall.

"Wait! No!" Justin shook his head and chased after Nate, who ran towards the snake, one of his pokeballs out. The seviper lifted its head to see Nate coming and opened its mouth to reveal its fangs. Nate didn't stop, though. Instead, he summoned his numel from its ball.

"DaBomb, use Magnitude!" Nate had stopped a few yards away from the snake, his fiery camel pokemon out in front of him. Justin caught up in time to hear its name.

"Da Bomb?" he asked facetiously. "Really?"

"Shut up, it's a cool name."

"Yeah, ten years ago," Justin shook his head. "What are you, twelve?"

"I'm older than you, kid,"

"You been alive longer, but you're not older than me."

"Shut up. I'm gonna nab us this seviper."

Da Bomb focused intensely for a few seconds as the seviper moved in. The snake stopped, though, as the ground beneath it began to tremble. It was a pretty strong attack, and on a pokemon very not defensively inclined, not to mention one who takes particularly strong damage from earth type attacks, it was enough to severely weaken it. However, it was a much stronger pokemon than Da Bomb, and launched a powerful poisonous attack with its tail. Da Bomb got knocked down, but not out for good. As it tried to get back up, though, the seviper wrapped itself around the fire camel, keeping it from using its attacks. "Damn it!" Nate yelled.

Justin sighed and summoned his favorite pokemon, Tyrogue. Named Tyrogue. "Fake Out," Justin said. Tyrogue used its favorite move, Fake Out. He ran right up to the seviper and Da Bomb and made a loud CLAP noise with its hands right in front of the snake's face. Stunned at the loud noise, it released the camel and focused on its new target, the fighting type. Tyrogue jumped towards the snake, though, and the tackle was enough to knock the weakened pokemon out.

Nate and Justin stood over the fallen beast, not quite sure what to do. They were both scared to actually put it on the wagon, which Justin had left off in the distance. "Right," he sighed, running towards the wagon and bringing it back.

"It's heavy," Nate said when Justin got back. "I, uh, I tired to lift it."

"Well, lucky for us," Justin cracked a smile. "My arms aren't spaghetti." He leaned over and wrapped his behemoth arms around the snake's head, hoping so hard that it stayed fainted. He lifted and realized that it was, in fact, very heavy. "Um," he continued. "You wanna grab the tail?"

"No," Nate said, looking at the sharp blade on its tail, which had just gotten finished putting poison into Da Bomb. "Not really, no."

"Don't grab the sharp part, then, dude, come on."

"Fine!" Nate put his arms under the back end of the snake and lifted, watching the poison blade like a hawk as he did so. Finally, they got it far enough off the ground to drop it into the wagon, both jumping back, just in case. Luckily, it stayed down. "Tie it down," Nate said. With snake like speed, the duo used the few ropes they brought and tied them to each end of the wagon, making a sort of net above the creature. Hopefully it would be strong enough to keep it in place long enough for them to knock it out again, should it wake up. More hopefully, it wouldn't wake up.

"Here's to an eventless trip home," Justin sighed, holding his fist out to Nate, who bumped it with a fist of his own.

Justin Smart received a level 11 Shadow Pinsir.

This post has been edited by Yzarc Drowsnam: Jun 12 2010, 05:13 PM