Hard Enough - Chapter 340 - Airships Ahoy!

James and I bounced our way into the hangar while Sabrina, Kirlia, Jessie, and Meowth followed along at a much more sedate pace.

When James and I got into the hangar, we paused and observed the giant airship.

“Ain’t she a beauty?” I announced like I was showing off my weekend vehicle rather than a literal floating fortress.

Around us various members of the Guardians were moving about, bringing out various artifacts and rare finds. Everything was being documented and laid out for inspection and I had to hand it to Lawrence, the guy had some impressive skills with how large his collection was.

Which now belonged to us.

I held back the urge to cackle at the thought. 

Barely, but I still managed it. 

Meowth stepped up next to us. “Damn! That thing must cost a lot in fuel and maintenance!” he squawked as she held up his paws and framed a ‘shot’ of the airship. 

That caused me to blink and consider the practicality of the airship. It probably would cost a lot for things like repairs. Fuel on the other hand was usually not an issue in the pokemon world.

You had lots of ‘green’ environmentally friendly options with solar, wind or some rare pseudo-science I suspected that would work to keep it aloft. 

I caught a slight scent of fuel so there must be some gasoline involved. Probably jet fuel by the smell. I eyed a few greasy areas around the floor which were shaped like hatches. “Looks like fuel lines,” I murmured. 

I rubbed my chin and brought up the details that Janine had been able to send through, beginning to pour through them properly.

Along with having the technical information on the airship being able to travel up to ten thousand kilometers at least before needing to refuel, it also had a cruising speed of two hundred kilometers an hour that topped out at two fifty with good winds. 

Meowth made a face. “Hope they’re not also plugging Electrodes into the power grid, those things are volatile,” he muttered.

James and I shared a grimace. That, that was also another option that some less than scrupulous power companies used. Typically it was seen as a short term method but I suspected there were plenty that still employed the tried and true ‘plug an electrical pokemon into the grid for providing power’.

I glanced at a man standing nearby with a clipboard. “They worked out the power source?” I asked pointedly. 

The man blinked and looked up. “Oh! They use solar, wind, and a fuel reservoir to move around! There’s also an electrical discharge collection system all over the spires of the frame of the airship that channels electricity collected from storms. It’s rather fascinating how they designed it!” 

“Hmmm storms huh? I suppose a target like Zapdos that can create storms would be quite the two birds one stone situation?” I surmised. 

“More like two birds one storm,” replied Meowth with a smirk.

I snorted. “That was terrible.” I noted that Sabrina had turned her head away and was biting her lips to hold in a laugh. 

The Guardian member nodded slowly and coughed like the joke had hurt him to hear it before giving James, Meowth, and Jessie a long assessing look. “These are the security experts you mentioned were in the region?” 

James, Jessie, and Meowth adopted a pose. “That’s us!” they chimed like they were about to break into song only to twitch and break apart.

Damn, I wouldn’t have minded a bit of levity, but I suppose they couldn’t sing about being Team Rocket anymore even though to me they were the face of Team Rocket. 

The man coughed again. “Alright, well follow me please so we can supervise your work.”

Sabrina stepped forward and waved her hand. “That won’t be necessary. This is also a test of your systems. These three are professionals and will document everything they do.”

The man shifted, gave Sabrina a look only for her to raise an eyebrow which caused him to drop his gaze. “Ah, alright then,” he muttered. 

I flicked my gaze from Sabrina to the man with a questioning tilt of my head as he moved away. 

“He’s looking to perform well here. He’s already done well and is hoping to earn a bonus with this job. Typically, his posting in the Orange Islands has been rather quiet but he is hoping to move to a higher position. Nothing nefarious, just promotion hunting,” she remarked.

“Huh,” I replied. Weird to think of the guardian members being like that but then again we had to keep their loyalty with more than nationalist pride. To get in the door I imagine they’d need loyalty to Kanto as a prerequisite, or to have skills that required them to work as consultants who had no idea of the greater organisation. 

Money worked for a multitude of reasons such as retention or it worked as a good joining incentive.

I, and the other ‘Leaders’, or ‘voices’ of the Guardian organisation weren’t paid, but we directed what happened and that was something money just didn’t measure up to.

Not that there weren’t ways to profit, it was just I wasn’t doing them.

I couldn’t speak for Sabrina and her investments but again, it wasn’t something I worried about. 

Meowth sauntered up to the main down ramp and began inspecting it. “So this is all artisan work from the looks of it. These parts? They aren’t just plug and play which means this Airship is already doing better security-wise as people are going to be unfamiliar with how to get in.”

James began to follow along, his transceiver out as he recorded Meowth’s commentary. 

Meowth scratched the hull with a claw, sniffed it, and even licked it. “Hard metal all the way around on this entrance,” he mused as he began inspecting the various parts of the airship.

With how big it was it was going to take a while. 

I moved over to a railing that I leaned on eying the entire structure.

“You know, seeing it now… I kind of feel bad handballing this to Janine like I did. This… it’s huge.” 

“But she did it,” Sabrina replied, moving next to me as Kirlia peered over the railing at the various people moving about like ants beneath us, moving in and out of the main entry of the airship. 

I nodded. “Yeah, yeah she did.” I gave Sabrina a knowing look. “Should we keep listing off your good points and praisings of you or would you like to come out now Janine?” I asked. 

Janine stepped out from behind a crate that hadn’t had anyone behind it moments ago when we’d walked past it. 

Kirlira waved merrily, not at all surprised by her appearance, but then again it would have been hard to hide from an empathy pokemon while hearing people sing your praises like I’d done.

Janine straightened and coughed, a small blush on her cheeks. “You can stop that now,” she murmured politely.  

I nodded and looked back. “I think you out did yourself here Janine,” I said honestly. “I think this has to be up there with taking down Team Rocket this year in terms of significance.”

“It is a rather large material gain, yes, but I wouldn’t understate the importance of uprooting Team Rocket,” she demurred. 

I smirked, her mouth was saying one thing but I got the impression from how her hands were fidgeting that she was all but asking me to ‘praise her more’.

“Hmmm, different achievements but still significant,” I replied.

I nodded towards the Flying Palace, “Care to show us around?” I asked. 

Janine bounced up and down rapidly with how happy she was to lead us around. She jumped over the railing and darted to the ramp leading into the airship where she made hurrying gestures. 

Sabrina and I shared an amused smile as we laced our hands together and appeared next to Janine with a Teleport.

Janine pouted before shaking it off. “So the cannons on the side are used to blow any territorial flying type pokemon away and they use a metal slug measuring in at—”

Sabrina and I shared another amused look as Janine started her tour or the airship with the outside armaments. 

It would seem our friendly Architect-otaku had evolved into a Warship-otaku.

It was adorable. 

Janine marched us up the ramp and indicated the cargo hold that was the rather large space leading up from the ramp. There were several support elevators.

“The amazing part is that most of the ship is in fact automated!” Janine looked up. “Isn’t that right Flying Darkness?” she declared. 

I tilted my head. “Isn’t the ship called the Flying P—”

“Yes, that is correct, Captain Janine,” announced a robotic voice. 

I stiffened as a small fact about this airship announced itself with all the grace of a Munchlax leaping at a lunch table. “Oh… this airship has an A.I.?” I asked.

Janine nodded smugly. “It does indeed!”

I put a hand to my head. Oh dear. I really had done Janine dirty with not being there to help her out with this. “I’m sorry Janine,” I said as I dragged a hand down my face in annoyance. Stupid! That was so stupid! Why didn’t I remember that this airship, with all its weapons and capture devices had an Artificial Intelligence?

Janine gave me a confused look. “You’re forgiven?” she offered easily. “It wasn’t an issue, I was able to handle things!” she declared. 

“Still we should have been on call to support you,” I said feeling like an idiot. 

Sabrina gave my hand a squeeze and a look. “It’s alright Brock, we didn’t know.”

I grimaced. Except I did. I just hadn’t recalled that… I’d been too focused on how annoyed and tired I’d been after having to deal with the first sub base and then the fight against Team Aqua…

I nodded as it was the only real thing I could do. 

Janine coughed. “You did help by the way Brock,” she offered. “I… used some of what I learned while interning at your Gym to suborn the system.”

I blinked. “You did?” I asked. 

Janine nodded and held out a handful of rather familiar looking treats towards a nearby computer. Within moments a small digital duck pokemon leapt out of the screen to gobble the treats. 

Kirlia twitched only to growl in annoyance at the sudden emergence of the digital pokemon.

I smirked. I’d forgotten she got twitchy around Porygon. I gave Janine a slow nod. “Huh, I hadn’t even considered that.” Then I frowned. “Hang on, I didn’t spend time discussing my digital security with you!” I said, leveling an accusing finger at her.

Janine shifted guiltily only to raise her hands in a ninja-like pose. “Nin-nin, " she declared shamelessly. 

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Of course you investigated that,” I muttered. I should have expected that. Why wouldn’t she poke her nose into my security system to see how it worked while she’d been there. I hadn’t even considered that at the time, I’d been so busy with the trainer Surge and then William… 

“Well copying is a form of complement I suppose,” I offered. Then I smirked and nodded to Janine. “Excellent work adapting.”

Janine beamed at me and her smile grew as Sabrina offered her own praise.

Janine continued to lead us around, showing off the various features of the cargo bay while highlighting just how much the A.I. did for the running of the ship. “Lawrence pretty much had the ship running all of this without him needing to input anything beyond repairs to the system.”

“Incredible. I didn’t think we had this technology,” I muttered. 

“We did, it’s just that it has mostly been directed in a different direction,” Janine said as she tapped her Porygon on the head lightly. 

I blinked. “Huh, so what, from a Porygon Lawrence got himself an A.I.?” I asked as Janine led us into a holding area with metal rings that looked very familiar. If I wasn’t forgetting things, those were the tools used to capture the Legendary birds. 

“No, the A.I. predates Porygon. Porygon is actually more advanced and thus why it was able to take over the system,” Janine replied as she led us to an elevator. 

When we entered, I stared at the various buttons on display. 

Movie room, Library, fuel reservoir, engine room, Trophy room… he actually had four such rooms, dining, Gym, and even a holoroom.  “This place is nuts,” I muttered. “He had all of this and he needed to resort to crime?”

Janine bobbed her head from side to side, “We’re suspecting it's a case of severe kleptomania.” 

“Ah, that might do it,” I replied. It also rather explained all the items that Lawrence had gone out of his way to collect.

Janine led us through the various rooms, some of which had people poking around in them such as the library where people with soft gloves along with psychic types were going through the shelves double checking what appeared to be a digital catalog.

“Found anything interesting?” Sabrina asked.

“There are some famous play scripts that were thought to be lost years ago along with numerous historical texts and biographies that got banned in the early days of the League’s formation.”

I blinked. “Oak’s League banned books?” I asked. That, if anything, felt like the opposite of what he stood for.

The man grimaced. “A lot of these biographies went into pretty explicit detail of the people committing various acts, whether it be firebombing a town or taking part in certain battles. Oak was fine with them reprinting the books if they took those out. These are original prints and considered both priceless and very… touchy still. A lot of the people mentioned in them are pretty old these days.” 

That got an appreciative ‘Ah’ of understanding from me. I hummed in thought. “Any that reference what happened around Pewter?” I asked, wondering if there might have been some mentions of Flint and Lola. 

Sabrina glanced at me, all too aware of my line of thought most likely. 

I got directed to two books that I considered borrowing before shaking my head. “Later,” I said aloud. “Let’s look into some of those other items that Lawrence had that you needed me to check over or to refer to an expert.”

Sabrina lingered. “What is happening with the books?” she asked.

The Guardian member that we’d been working with coughed. “Seeing as how this is going to be converted into a mobile base it has been deemed that all of the relics and artifacts will be moved to another facility. Depending on the nature of the items they might be exchanged back to specific groups, or they might even be used to create a new museum in Kanto somewhere.”

The man shrugged. “I hope for the latter, but that’s going to be someone else’s call.”

Sabrina turned away at that and gestured for us to lead on.

Janine led us into a long room that held glass display cases that housed old weapons, suits of armour, artworks, sculptures, ancient tools, and even an entire wall dedicated to just diamond jewelry. I wasn’t surprised when the next few rows showed off emeralds, rubies, sapphires and more.

“It’s a bit eclectic,” I muttered as I noted the different time periods and styles in the various cases. “Don’t museums usually like to keep things relatively contained to specific time periods or societies?” 

I lingered near a rusted-looking gauntlet that had a written blurb next to it. Apparently this gauntlet was found within Viridian forest which was an oddity as this style of armor was not known within the area.

Janine nodded. “It’s had more than a few historians up in arms. Lawrence has everything displayed to his desires instead of what would be accurate historically,” she gestured towards one of the jewellery cases. 

“Just that display case will apparently take a week to accurately assess.”

“Huh, well it will keep some archeologists and historians employed,” I offered, looking to the positive.

Sabrina snorted and shot me an amused look that had me smiling while Janine just huffed.

“Ah, here are the samples that we wanted you to look at,” she announced as she waved a hand towards what at first glance looked like rocks and some shiny quartz. 

I leaned closer though. I’d already gotten lucky on this trip and Lawrence, if he was as squirrely as he appeared, was sure to have some interesting rocks.

Or in this case, fossils. 

“We’ve got a pair of Root fossils here, an armor fossil, a helix fossil, two old ambers, and…” I paused on the last rock that had my interest. 

Lawrence had labelled it as a wing bone fossil but that wasn’t right. Something was wrong. 

“Sabrina, can you rotate that ninety degrees for me?” I asked so the narrow part was pointing to the side rather than up and down.

The fossil rotated, and I stared long and hard.

“Brock?” Janine asked, leaning in. “What is it? Is it a wing bone?”

“It’s a jaw,” I announced as my hand twitched. Sabrina blinked like it meant nothing to her, but I caught the way she looked at me before looking back even as I stared at the jaw fossil.

I wet my lips. “I think we should get these to Crowley…” I hummed. “We’ll need to come up with an excuse for where we found this. Perhaps we sneak this into a Mega Rock dig site or two?” I suggested. That line of thought caused me to consider something else. “Do we know where Lawrence found these?” I asked.

“Nothing as yet but we can look back through the flight logs in the holoroom,” Janine announced. 

I hummed at that before giving the other rocks a look over. “Lot of these are just quartz from what I can see.” I opened the case and put my finger on them to run some rock energy through them just to be sure. None of them had the gem-like shape of a Z-crystal.

I sighed and shook my head. “While they might be worth something to a collector due to their colours and the way they catch the light, I don’t think these are all that special.”

Janine blinked. “In what way?”

“Hmmm?” I asked, glancing up.

“What way would they be special?” Janine asked. 

I blinked. Damn, I’d done it again. I couldn’t just up and outright mention Z-crystals to her as there was no information on those in the Guardians database. 

“Oh, you know like everstone or other type specific rocks such as Rock Gem or such,” I replied as my mind accelerated to give a plausible enough answer.

Janine hummed and looked away while Sabrina raised an eyebrow at me. I shrugged, knowing I’d been caught out. I coughed and put the stones back, still sad that I hadn’t found any more of Alola’s signature powerup method.

Alola itself was seen as a bit of a non-entity in the war staying purely on defence according to their records. 

The one thing that had stood out to me regarding the Guardian’s information of Alola was the list of families that had been ‘lost’ to Alola when the region shift occurred. Oak’s uncle had been marked down as one group.

The fossils were set aside for later ‘discovery’ at some Mega Rock dig sites. I could hardly wait until Crowley received them. 

Would it be too telling for me to coincidentally wander in and recommend he revive the Jaw fossil first?

Perhaps, but I could probably find a reasonable enough excuse by suggesting it was the newest fossil and therefore the one that would draw the most interest.

The trick would be pinching it and holding it before Lance could learn it was a rock-dragon type pokemon.

I buzzed with anticipation. I’d decided to step back on adding any more pokemon to my roster but there was no way I was saying no to a Tyrantum joining the fold. The trick would be managing it.

I’d gotten lucky with Gible being so jolly that he was easy to handle at this stage. That might change as he grew stronger but I’d need to stay on top of Tyrunt. Cranidos had certainly proven himself to be a handful at times.

Hmmm my future schedule was looking suddenly much busier from this trip with training my pokemon along with testing out the Rockium Z. 

I’d need to find out if Z energy was something I could tap into in Kanto. That, and I’d need to remember the stance that helped to ‘activate’ the Z-move.

Of all my pokemon Rockium Z would best work with Bertha if I was using the strongest move to get the most out of ‘Continental Crush’. That or Head Smash but none of my pokemon… well the only pokemon who knew that would be Cranidos.

Bertha with her signature Rock Wrecker would be able to scale the most damage straight away. Which… well did she need any more powerful moves in her arsenal at this point? She already had Seismic Twist and Impact Driver for One Hit K.O. moves, would another powerful move matter?

Oh who was I kidding? It would be awesome to watch her unleash that sort of move and leave people gobsmacked when she did it without any build up.

Then again,I didn’t always have to go for ‘best’ option. Good enough would suffice with a Z-move if I could pull it off. Stone Edge would apply more than enough power to Continental Crush.

“Computer! Show us the last year of Lawrence’s flight data!” announced Janine as soon as we entered the holoroom.

I pushed aside my ideas of boosting my pokemon even further into overpowered monsters as a hologram formed in front of us that showed what looked like a three dimensional satellite image of Indigo.

“Rewind from today!” Janine commanded. Within moments the icon indicating the Flying Palace began to shift north as it moved in reverse. Behind the icon a small red line was added to the map, highlighting where it would go. 

I watched Lawrence sweep up through the bay of Kanto, passing directly over the cyclist bridge at one point only to take a hard detour west as he approached Vermillion, or rather a small island that appeared to have a hurricane centred around it.

I blinked as a vague memory of some of the last episodes of Pokemon that I’d gotten to watch had shown what was there.

I held back a smile, knowing that the Dragonite island would be a bit of a sore point for Lance, or rather, the entire Blackthorn family if they ever realised that there was a large natural cluster.

Not that I was going to tell him. 

He could keep wondering why the occasional Dratini or Dragonair turned up in the Safari zone waterways instead. 

The airship cut across the cyclist path once more and made its way up to the east of Mt Moon where it rotated around the mountain itself.

“Computer, what items were obtained during the recent Mt Moon trip?” I asked.

“User not logged within the system, please talk to an administrator for access rights!” chirped the computer.

I blinked and glanced up towards a camera. “O-oh…” I glanced to Janine who ducked her head. 

“We’re still working that out,” she said as she pointedly didn’t meet mine or Sabrina’s gaze.

I didn’t need to be psychic to know Janine was lying. I considered pushing her on it before sighing and waving a hand at her. “Can you ask the computer my question?” I asked and she immediately perked up and recited my earlier question.

“Computer, name items discovered during Mt Moon trip!” she commanded. 

“Mt Moon trip on the seventh day of the eleventh month. Moonstone Meteor was discovered and extracted along with several gold nuggets, a helix fossil and one amber!” chirped the computer.

“Huh, so there is more to Mt Moon,” I muttered, deciding I’d double down on having Mega Rock scour the mountain sometime in the future. As they said, there had to be fire where there was smoke. 

My pleased smile slipped off my face when the airship arced around Pewter, moving into the mountains for a time only to move to the western side of Pewter City. 

Or, precisely where my Gym was. 

“What date was this?” I asked.

Janine relayed the question quickly and the computer chirped back a response that had me growling.

He’d been targeting my Gym. Worse, he’d moved in when I would have been away in Hoenn. 

“Did he take anything?” I demanded. 

The computer fed off a list of precious and non-precious metals that had apparently been stolen from the smelter for later processing. I didn’t ask where that would happen as the presence of this airbase indicated that there was more to this facility, that or Lawrence had more air bases. 

Still, it was relieving to know nothing had been taken from me, for as much relief as you could get upon discovering that a Mightyena had been circling your campsite the night before only to vanish without your notice.

It rattled me to know that despite all that I’d done, Lawrence could have swept in and stolen from me. I would have been entirely reliant on the pokemon I’d left at home, my gym trainers, Flint… and Lola to defend my gym. 

I sighed. “Suppose it was good that we returned when we did.”

Sabrina nodded but a frown marred her own features. It seemed I wasn’t the only one vexed by the knowledge of how close Lawrence had come.

“How long did Lawrence linger near Pewter?” Sabrina asked. 

“Six days were spent in the local Pewter environs,” announced the computer. Sabrina’s lips twitched. “We would have been home for the last two days of that period,” she muttered. 

“I didn’t sense anything from this airship,” she said with an annoyed look. 

I hummed, knowing that for Sabrina such a large airship being able to effectively ‘sneak up’ on her was something of a nightmare. I reached out and squeezed her hand which she repeated back at me. 

“We’ll need to look into seeing if any other vehicles were made like this or if this is one of a kind.” 

Janine coughed. “The dark emitters are actually copied from submarines.”

“Ah,” I replied, knowing that meant Team Aqua would have such features, but then again it made sense. You couldn’t be a stealth submarine if a psychic could pick your position out by merely passing by. 

“Any other bases that Lawrence had made for docking this airship?” I asked and the map slowly zoomed out to highlight two additional sites. One to the north of New Bark Town, and another northwest of Olivine City.

The positions made a good deal of sense to me, from Newbark Town, Lawrence would have access to most of Indigo, while from Olivine would allow him a rest point away from most prying eyes with how undeveloped the lands were. 

This site was therefore all about granting him access to the Orange Islands. 

“We securing those?” I asked of Janine and she nodded. “We will. We’re pulling access codes and passwords to make it easier but we’re going to wait until I’m free as my Porygon is specialised in digital insertions.”

“Good to hear,” I said. “What about other islands not on the official map or noteable site Lawrence was aware of?” I asked. 

Janine hummed. “We’d need to review his map more closely, but there might be something there,” she replied thoughtfully. 

I gave Janine a nod. “Great work.” I held up a hand to forestall any commentary from her. “I know that I already said it but the more I learn about this… the more impressed I am.”

I tilted my head. “Did you have any trouble taking down Lawrence?” I asked.

Janine shook her head. “No, we had him secured with me knocking him out straight away. There was a brief issue where he might have been woken up due to the A.I. triggering an alert about our intrusion to the airship but by then we already had Lawrence in custody and it was easy enough to frisk him.”

“Hmmm,” I said thoughtfully. “Can I talk to him?” I asked casually. 

Some of my intent for said ‘talk’ must have shown through, that or I was just an easy read, as Janine gave me a flat look. ”No.”  

“Could I talk to him?” Sabrina asked and this time Janine hesitated before shaking her head. 

I rolled my eyes at Sabrina at the different reactions. Don’t they know that out of the two of us Sabrina is way scarier?

Both of us dropped it, for now and instead moved about learning more about what I felt was sure to become ‘Guardian HQ’. 

As Janine led us into the command deck I had an evil thought. “Wonder if we could do a false flag operation and pretend to be Team Hurricane, the newest threat from Hoenn?”

Janine giggled at the idea while Sabrina considered it. “No, there’s no need. Steven is already facing pressure. The recent reveal of Team Aqua submarine bases going public with the recent incidents has also seen some international pressure on him.”

“Oh?” I asked, having not kept up to date with global news. “Do tell.”

“Yuji, the Orange Island Champion is being extremely vocal and talking with Lance about extending certain trade deals while embargoing Hoenn which is causing friction. Now that we’re soon to have new markets with the Trinity Nations, Hoenn is feeling the pressure, which is culminating in people demanding Steven Stone’s resignation.” 

I whistled out loud while inwardly wondering if this was how Wallace became Hoenn’s champion, politics more than a challenge.

“Worth watching,” I murmured as I indicated Janine should continue the tour.

It was as we were passing a wall that we all got a fright as a section of the wall popped out and slammed into the ground.

“And it comes out right here!” announced a familiar voice, only for Meowth to emerge moments later out of the wall.

Janine lowered the dagger she had in hand. “What are you doing?” she barked. 

Beside me Sabrina relaxed causing me to blink. She hadn’t detected Meowth in the walls? I gave the metal plate another look over and spotted a small dark emitter in the service tunnel Meowth had used to reach this point.

Meowth walked out of the tunnel without any issues. “Huh? Oh hi there! We’re the security consultants testing your airship.” 

He grinned at her smugly. “We’ve found some faults.” A moment later and with a good deal of grunting, James crawled out of the tunnel.

“Urgh! I need to lay off the cakes!” he lamented as he made a show of patting his hips down. He then typed something out on his transceiver. 

“Speak for yourself!” snarled Jessie as she emerged like an angry Arbok out of the tunnel.

Meowth grinned at us, only to shriek as klaxons rang out and the A.I. spoke up.

“Intruders! Intruders! Activating countermeasures!”

From other ports in the wall small machines popped out and turned towards Meowth who nonchalantly held out a hand to James who produced a pack of what looked like water guns.

I blinked. Would that work?

“Computer! Stand down, they are not intruders!” Janine ordered and the Klaxons cut off.

“Understood.”

Meowth puffed his chest out as the machines returned to their docking ports. “Yeah that’s right you run away!” 

Sabrina and I shared a look. Was it too late to ask Janine to let them fight it out?

Today was taking a lot of twists and turns that I hadn’t expected but all of them were positive.

Here’s hoping that we could keep it that way.

[hr][/hr] 

A.N. Thanks go to my patreons for your continued support!

It also goes to Twmmy for proofreading this chapter!