Just Another Mission
"Well, well, well, look what the cat dragged in," Aiden says, grinning. He leans up against the white board at the front of the conference room, presiding over a conversation with the tittery quality of nothing important going on. Only a couple people even glance at the newcomer as he slinks to the last remaining seat, square in front of Aiden. He flops into it and slides into a slouch so low his head's nearly level with the back of his chair. The grunt in the seat next to him, a pimply boy maybe around fourteen, gives him a brief, curious look-over, then returns to keen and eager, staring at Aiden with almost Christmas-morning-level excitement.
"Now that the most important member of the group's here, I guess we can start," Aiden goes on. "Now, you've all heard of the Lavender Town radio tower project, right? The company in charge of the renovation cut a deal with us, so they've got exclusive rights to haul off any valuable artifact shit they find in there, so long's they kick back a cut."
"They been skimming?" the keen-looking kid in the front row pipes up. "Do we got to collect?"
"No, no, they pay their taxes," Aiden says, waving the comment away. "Or they did, anyway. They've been acting mighty strange the past couple days. All kinds of activity going on at their warehouses, radio silence, kind of thing you'd expect from people who've made a pretty interesting find they're thinking of moving out of the city before certain other people get word of it. So we're headed down that way just for a little chat, right? Make sure they're doing all right."
Fabric rustles and chairs scrape as grunts shift, exchange glances, or underline vehemently, in the case of Torrence, the nerd who's literally taking notes. Two of the girls are heads-together already, awhisper with excitement.
"Now, our little family has a few new members, so we won't be leading the charge or nothing, but this is a serious mission. You'll want guns for this one--be sure to visit the armory on your way out." The girls' whispering takes on a frantic, sibilant quality. "Here's how it's looking."
Aiden calls up a map on the board next to him. "The main warehouse is here, but that's the main assault squad's problem. We're going to be securing one of their subsidiary properties, here, make sure nothing gets in or out until the main squad's got things sorted with the leadership. Fall back here, we've used this spot before, park across from the Circle Theater. Troy, you're our transportation. Lafferty, Torrence, Kennedy, and Elnu, you're with me"--here the girls whoop and share an enthusiastic high five--"we'll handle any action. LaPaz, you're on lookout with Morgan."
"Uh." The teen in the front row stiffens, casting a quick look at the grunt next to him. Morgan stares straight ahead, stony frown unchanged. "Ah, sir, um..."
"Meet here at seven for a quick debrief with the other teams. Troy, have the van ready, and the rest of you, remember what I said about the guns. I expect to see all of you here promptly, seven on the dot. Except for you, Morgan."
Aiden leans back against the board, arms crossed over his chest. Morgan continues to stare right at Aiden, as though unaware that everyone in the room is paying attention to him now. "I expect you to show up twenty minutes late, just in time to catch the worst round of discipline you've experienced in your entire miserable life. I suggest you surprise me."
"Sir," Morgan says, somehow managing to compress "fuck you and the horse you rode in on" into a single syllable.
"Exactly," Aiden says with a smirk. "Now, any questions? LaPaz?"
LaPaz has been trying to examine Morgan without being obvious about it. He starts and turns back to Aiden. "Uh, umm. N-no."
"Excellent. Now get out of here, all of you. Get some food or something. You'll all have to earn your keep tonight!"
He saunters off, leaving the grunts to chatter and laugh and rise in a great scraping of desks. The squad filters out in an untidy gaggle, Troy now blatantly fiddling with the nav he'd hid under his desk the whole meeting, and Kennedy and Elnu loudly discussing who's going to pop more smugglers, ending with another high five. LaPaz is left alone with Morgan, who is at least no longer staring at quite the same spot.
"Umm, hey," LaPaz says. "We haven't really been introduced, but I'm--"
"Go to hell," Morgan says, and leaves without ever looking at him.
"Not sure what her problem was," LaPaz says more or less to the air, not even really aiming for the hunched shoulders of his partner up ahead. "I mean, it's not like I was saying she was ugly, that's not what I meant, she's just too uptight is all..."
Morgan walks with his head down, staring now into his pokénav's screen, which shows a map of the city. Occasionally LaPaz speeds up from his meandering stroll, and Morgan speeds up more.
It's cold in the city, an evening that feels like it wants to frost the last crumpled brown leaves off the trees lining the sidewalk. They're oaks, old and twisted and straining at the boundaries of their metal-ringed plots, and this is an upscale part of Saffron, its night brightened by the lights of hip bars and all-night taco stands. Both Rockets wear jackets, although not precisely for the cold; underneath are the usual Rocket-issue shirts, black with one single letter on them, and the guns, of course.
LaPaz's story peters out as they pass a gated park, a patch of dark foliage and deep tree-shadows in the neon-washed street. He considers Morgan's back with distaste. Why'd he have to get stuck with some grumpy jackass for his first real mission? Not to mention lookout duty, of all the boring things. At least if he'd gotten paired with Torrence or Elnu it would've been cool, they could've hung out, but this guy--all the fun of talking to a brick wall, with the added bonus that sometimes the wall cursed you out for no fucking reason.
LaPaz is so wrapped up in thinking about how much he doesn't like Morgan that he doesn't notice the guy turning off into an alley. It's not until the pansear riding on the shoulders of the office drone ahead of him turns to look back that LaPaz realizes his partner's gone.
"You could have said something," LaPaz snaps, jogging to catch up with Morgan, who's standing under a fire escape and gazing up at the building above. LaPaz looks up, too, and sighs at the sight of all those steps. "Well? You're so eager, you go first. Be my guest."
Instead Morgan takes a pokéball off his belt. LaPaz squints against the flash, and when it clears finds himself staring up again, and this time not at the building. "Whoah. You have an onix?
The huge pokémon rumbles, a gravelly noise LaPaz can feel in his chest. He thinks Morgan might actually smile, just for a moment, as he rests a hand against the onix's rocky side. "Going up," Morgan says, and points at the building above. The onix lowers its head, and Morgan climbs aboard, wrapping one arm around the spike rising from the onix's skull. The pokémon stretches up, and up, and then Morgan hops off onto the building's roof.
The onix brings its head down again, rocky body grinding and scraping against concrete as it shifts. A loud crack sounds when its tail crushes a stack of two-by-fours piled on one side of the alley. LaPaz steps back from the pokémon's huge face. "I've never seen an onix in real life before," he says.
The onix moves closer, head lowered so LaPaz can, presumably, climb aboard like its trainer did. He does not. The onix says something, another rolling grinding noise that sets LaPaz's teeth on edge. "Why's it growling at me?"
"He's saying 'Quit being a pussy and climb on or I'm gonna see just how far I can ram this horn up your ass,'" Morgan calls, distantly. LaPaz looks up to find him leaning casually on the low wall at the edge of the roof, and the onix looks up, too, making a long, low groan. Then it puffs out an immense gust of air, a sigh that ripples LaPaz's hair even from where he's standing some three meters below its mouth, and swings its head down again.
LaPaz grits his teeth, staring into the one of the Onix's huge eyes that he can see, then looks to Morgan again. The other grunt is by now wearing a definite smug smirk. "If your pokémon fucks with me you better believe I'm gonna take it out of your fucking hide!" LaPaz yells up at him.
"Just get on, you pissant."
LaPaz puts one foot against the side of the onix's face, leaning his weight on it. It feels just like stepping on a boulder or something--doesn't shift under him, not even a tiny bit. With one last warning look into the Onix's eye he climbs up, wrapping both arms around the horn. His grip tightens when the pokémon moves under him, much too smooth and quick for something he can hear grinding like an unoiled hinge. LaPaz's stomach swoops giddily as the street swings away below, and then he's standing just above Morgan's scowl, the onix resting its chin on the edge of the roof.
"You can get off now," Morgan says, standing with arms crossed. LaPaz loosens his grip on the onix's horn, freezes under a wave of vertigo granted by an unwise glance into the ally below, then forces himself to get it over with, jumping down and stumbling on landing. Morgan recalls the onix, only to send it out again a second later, this time on top of the roof. It curls snake-style with head resting on its own coils, watching the two humans.
LaPaz watches it in return, frowning, while Morgan sits down at the edge of the roof, alternating between looking at the map on his phone and through a pair of binoculars, figuring out what buildings he was supposed to be keeping an eye on.
LaPaz takes the pokéballs off his belt, releasing a chatot and a koffing. "Go wait over there with the onix. I'll call you if I need you," he says. The chatot hops over to perch on the onix's horn, twittering at it. The onix responds in its usual landslide-sounding tone. Koffing, meanwhile, remains exactly where it appeared on being sent out, smiling vacantly and occasionally venting a plume of gas.
"Man, how'd you get such a cool pokémon?" LaPaz asked, measuring his own against the massive onix.
"Spent my time actually training instead of jerking off. Get your fucking nav out. You're the one calling if this all goes to shit." Morgan peers solely through the binoculars now, examining nearby roads.
"What, you're telling me you do more training after all the shit they make us do? Man, get a life." LaPaz slouches over to the edge of the roof and slides down with his back against its concrete wall, sitting with elbows hooked over the edge, hands dangling. "Still, though. It ain't fair. Pierre's okay, I guess, but I had him before. Koffing I got from the team, and it sucks. I put the thing through conditioning twice, and still I have to yell at it to get it to do anything. Otherwise it just floats there all creepy." He considers the koffing, thoughtful and oblivious to the way Morgan's grip on the binoculars has tightened to white-knuckle. "I'm thinking of sending it to conditioning again, but I mean, if they couldn't turn it into something useful after two tries I don't know what--"
"Shut up and get your fucking nav out now or so help me God I will push you off this fucking roof," Morgan snarls.
"Jesus Christ, fine." LaPaz roots in a pocket and pulls out a standard-issue pokénav, which he brandishes at Morgan. "See? You happy? Now I won't have to take half a second to do that if we have to call later."
"Just keep an eye on it. I don't want to miss no important messages because you were busy jabbering about stupid shit."
LaPaz makes a face at him, which Morgan either fails to see or ignores, then leans against the wall again, letting his head fall back and squinting into the starless gray-black nighttime sky. "Lookout duty sucks. I wonder why Aiden picked us to be partners."
"Because he's trying to get me killed," Morgan mutters.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
He doesn't get an answer, and for a while actual silence descends, LaPaz dozing while Morgan watches the streets with the kind of zeal only the alternative of having to converse with his partner could produce.
After a while Morgan's onix shifts stealthily, reaching out and experimentally closing his jaws over the concrete wall next to him. "Onix," Morgan says warningly, without even looking back, and the rock-type lets out a great bellowing sigh, slumping over with head lying on the roof as though about to perish from hunger or boredom or both. Pierre the chatot hops along the edge of the wall, doing his unsettling imitation of a human laugh.
"It's pretty funny how everyone kept going on about Red liberating Pokémon Tower from Team Rocket and all, and now we're tearing it down and stealing all its shit anyway," LaPaz says, and Morgan closes his eyes, briefly cursing whatever set the kid off again. "I mean,damn, the boss likes her revenge, doesn't she?" Morgan grunts. "You don't steal from Team Rocket! We always get what's ours in the end!"
Morgan turns towards LaPaz, maybe to say something, but if so forgets about it completely on finding the other grunt with his gun out, trying to spin it around one finger like a movie gunslinger. "What the fuck are you doing?! Put that away!"
"Cool it, man, I got the safety on."
"You know what? Here. Take the fucking binoculars. Obviously if you have your hands free you're just going to find some way to blow your fucking foot off or some shit."
"I don't want the fucking binoculars!"
"Then put away the fucking gun, and shut the fuck up," Morgan snaps. He stares pointedly out at the city again, then draws back, blinking. "I said shut the fuck up," he snarls over the LaPaz's continued complaints, and this time the other grunt does shut up, perhaps hearing the twinge of nerves in his partner's voice. Morgan peers hard through the binoculars for a few more seconds, then says, "There's one of them company vans pulled up outside the warehouse. Reinforcements or some shit. Get on the goddamned nav."
"Okay, okay." LaPaz sets the gun down on the roof next to him and picks up the nav again, poking at the screen while Morgan alternates between staring nervously through the binoculars and glaring at him. "They aren't picking up," LaPaz says after a couple minutes.
"The fuck do you mean they ain't--"
"I mean they're not picking up. You think you know how to use this thing better than me, you try it." He practically throws the pokénav at Morgan, who stares at the tiny screen himself, goes through the same series of button-presses and flicks, then tries the same with his own pokénav. Finally he grimaces and passes the nav back to his partner.
"Fuck. So they ain't picking up. Guess we're going in, then."
"All right! Finally some action!" LaPaz crows. Pierre flits over to circle above his head in whistling, chattering excitement. Morgan's slower to his feet, tucking the binoculars back into his jacket while he casts a last look towards the distant warehouse.
"Fucking great. Aiden really is trying to get me killed," he grumbles, then recalls Onix, brushing aside his unease and stomping off after LaPaz.
The warehouse is actually a converted garage, a long, low brick building among all the long, low brick buildings of Saffron's old industrial district. Its huge corrugated-iron doors are big enough to admit long-distance trucks, and there's enough space inside to hold probably five of them. That's plenty of room for storage, and the smugglers have been working on filling it for a while now, judging by crates stacked so deep Morgan can't even see the left-hand wall.
No sign of whoever did the stacking; the van Morgan spotted sits square in the middle of the garage, idling. The driver's side door stands open, and there's no one in the cab. That or they're hiding down behind the dash, waiting for the Rockets to draw near. No sign, either, of the rest of Aiden's squad. Morgan and LaPaz have already been around the building three times, looking for evidence of either their compatriots or their targets, and there's been nothing.
Now LaPaz has his gun out, advancing on the van in a kind of stiff-legged gunslinger's stance. Morgan can tell he's remembering all his lessons but has never been in a real shoot-out before.
Morgan takes a pokéball off his belt and releases a mightyena. LaPaz whirls at the noise, and Morgan bares his teeth at the other grunt as the muzzle of LaPaz's gun tracks across first Morgan and then his mightyena. LaPaz opens his mouth like he wants to make some comment, maybe something about who uses a pokémon instead of a gun, but leaves it unsaid and resumes his creeping progress towards the van.
"Okay, Poochy--M-Mightyena," Morgan begins, then seems to lose his train of thought. He flicks a glance at LaPaz's rigid back, then flashes his pokémon a brief grin, which gets a tail-wag in return. "Mightyena. Go see if there's anyone in that van."
LaPaz starts again when the mightyena trots past him, all business as she peers through the van's open door, then rises up, paws on the seat, nosing around in the cabin. She drops down again and makes for the back, sniffing at the tires as she goes past. A second later she appears around the far side of the van, tail wagging, and gives a short "whuff."
"It's clear," Morgan says. He walks past LaPaz himself, the other grunt now with gun lowered, looking put out that there's no one to shoot. Morgan hauls himself up to hang in the truck's doorway, looking for clues. Probably-empty soda and crumpled fast food wrapper in the cupholder, eevee charm and beads dangling from the mirror, road map of Saffron shoved down between the seat and the center console. After a moment's consideration Morgan turns the engine off, leaving the keys in the ignition. "Must've fucked off somewhere," he says as he shoulders past LaPaz, who's coming up to do his own inspection.
The back's open, revealing nothing at all beside some linty stuff around the edges, like dirt and dandruffy little paper scraps and some kind of gray dust. Morgan dabs a bit of it up with a finger and examines it. Grave dirt? He rubs it off against his other fingers, staring pensively into the empty space.
"Where'd they go, Mightyena?" he asks. The pokémon's already got her nose to the ground, either anticipating the question or curious herself. After a couple wide arcs back and forth she raises her head and whuffs at her trainer again, a couple low half-formed barks.
He swings around to face her. "You don't know? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"
More growly noises, but the mightyena doesn't sound offended.
"I mean they didn't fucking fly, did they? Or teleport right out of their fucking seats?" Morgan gazes across the floor, at its lack of shoe-scuffs or other signs movement, at the silent ranks of crates, at the high-up ceiling of the garage, hung with long rows of halogen lamps. There are a couple statues mounted above one set of big doors, gargoyle kind of things. They're pitted and round from exposure to wind and rain, but Morgan can still see that the one on the left is supposed to be a murkrow, feather-hat brim half broken off but the three spikes on top clear as anything. On the right a gengar, mouth wide and jagged-edged. Pieces of the old tower? But why the hell would they put them up in here?
"Can you get anybody on the nav?" Morgan asks LaPaz, who's leaning around one of the open van doors.
"Do it yourself, man," he says.
Morgan bites back some kind of venomous comment and takes out his own pokénav, slowly, glaring black death at LaPaz. The other grunt watches the mightyena snuffling around, oblivious. Not only does Morgan get cool pokémon, but they're actually well-behaved.
"So, like, your mightyena can't find 'em?" LaPaz asks while Morgan's pokénav rings, and rings, and rings.
"I don't fucking know, that's why I asked if you could get anybody on the nav," Morgan says. "If the team came through here Mightyena shoulda smelled 'em, even if the smugglers fucked outta here somehow."
"So maybe they didn't get here yet," LaPaz says.
That would be sign enough that something is deeply wrong. "Maybe."
Morgan abruptly swings into a brisk walk, setting off towards the far set of doors. "Come on," he throws back over his shoulder. "We at least gotta try and find these bastards. If Aiden shows up and we're just standing around like a couple fuckwits we're gonna catch hell."
"Who died and made you boss?"
"So fine, stand there like a fuckwit. I don't give a shit." By now Morgan's veered off to examine the crates up close. Mightyena wanders around behind him, apparently still looking for any scent of the missing smugglers.
LaPaz stands behind the truck with arms folded, looking around at the mostly-empty garage. Street sounds filtering in from outside, horns and engines and then the wail of a siren, too close, that momentarily makes his heart speed. But no, the bray of the siren rises too high for a cop car; it's only an ambulance. Inside the garage the only noises are Morgan's footsteps, the tiny clicks of the mightyena's claws, and, LaPaz realizes with an unpleasant jolt, his own breathing.
"Okay, okay," he says, moving to join Morgan at what no one could claim was more than a brisk walk. "What's over there?"
"Fucking nothing." Morgan leans against a crate, frowning pensively at the floor. "The hell were they doing? They brought something in a van here. Why? I don't think they dropped it off." He waves a hand towards the crates. "All this shit's dusty, it's been a while. And if they were moving something, how the hell'd they manage without tracks all over? Or smell."
"I dunno." LaPaz shrugs and takes a look around the big room, probably seeing the same thing as Morgan: a whole lot of nothing. "Maybe it was, like, a decoy? Like they made sure we saw them run here, then teleported out or something. Take pressure off the real team or whatever."
For once Morgan doesn't scowl at LaPaz's contribution. "Yeah. Or I was thinking, maybe they switched vans, you know? If they knew we were watching that one. And we can't tell the others to fuck off and not bother with this place if the nav's--"
A noise from somewhere within the crate-mound, as of a person banging a shin on a crate, and a curse quickly stifled. The Rockets stare at each other blankly a moment, mouths half-open in cartoonish looks of surprise, and then LaPaz scrambles off, already drawing his gun. He nearly trips over Mightyena as she shoots off in the direction of the noise, running silently with head down, tail streaming out behind.
Morgan's left clinging to his crate, twisting around to catch sight of his companions before they disappear in the direction of the noise. One hand goes into his coat, gripping his own gun, but he pauses for a second, taking a last look around the room. Nothing's changed: the half-open door they came in, the empty van, even the fucking weird gargoyles, murkrow on the right, gengar on the left.
Morgan finds himself watching that one, almost like he's expecting it to come to life and leap down at him, and then of course he manages to trip over empty air and nearly fall on his face as he starts in after LaPaz. Morgan rights himself with a growl and speeds up.
There are lanes between the crates, and Morgan keeps making turns that take him right, towards the wall. LaPaz and Mightyena are both long out of sight. "Hey!" Morgan yells.
"Move your ass!" LaPaz shoots back from somewhere ahead and definitely left. Morgan scowls and tries to adjust course, but he's at the mercy of the twisty passages between the crates, which will lead him where they will. Just how many of the damn things are there, anyhow? Morgan swears he should have reached the wall by now, but it looks like there are just as many ranks of crates between him and it as there were to begin with.
He's in the midst of a tight right turn when the lights go out, and then of course he can't stop himself before he goes crashing into the wall of crates, banging one shin hard on a corner.
"Power's out!" LaPaz yells.
"No shit!" Morgan yells back, clutching his throbbing leg with both hands. "Mightyena, get him back here."
"Wh--hey, let go! Hey, come on, you can't just order me around like--"
"It's a fucking ambush, we can't split up!" Morgan snaps at the dark. One hand's on his gun-grip while Morgan rummages haphazardly with the other, finally fumbling out his nav. He tries the Team channel again, but still there's no answer. Morgan flips back to the main screen and shines the nav around in a circle like a flashlight, illuminating a small greenish circle on walls, floor, then jerks up before he forgets, ceiling. Nothing out of the ordinary. No one waiting to pounce.
This is all wrong from the start of it. If they're gonna cut the lights, they oughta be ready to go, ready to jump their enemies while they're disoriented and confused. Otherwise no reason to make it dark other than to fuck with them--and why would a bunch of smugglers running scared do that?
LaPaz is panting somewhere nearby, clomping through the maze with his footsteps getting all mixed up with Mightyena's double footfalls. Morgan shines his nav at them as they come around a corner so they don't simply crash into him, and the narrow lane between the crates is abruptly crowded.
"Man, what gives?" Lapaz gasps. "They think it's funny to watch us run around in the dark?"
"I don't fucking know," Morgan says, grim. "We're getting the hell out of here, and fuck anybody who gives us shit for it. This is all fucked up."
LaPaz nods, slowly. Apparently he's feeling okay taking orders now--will probably claim that's all he was doing when shit hits the fan back at base. And, Morgan realizes after a couple of minutes, he's waiting for his partner to go first.
Morgan turns away and says crankily, "Come the fuck on, then. And don't go waving that fucking gun around. You ain't shooting nothing you ain't seeing properly, you get me?"
LaPaz nods, and Morgan can hear him following along behind. Morgan leads him back, going left, and left, and left again. It seems to take a long time. It didn't take so long going in, did it? Fuck, he probably took a wrong turn somewhere, and now they're going to wander the crates for the rest of their lives.
And it's too quiet, Morgan thinks. Nowhere in the city should be this quiet. Where the fuck is all the street noise?
Something icy cold brushes down the back of LaPaz's neck--fingers, he's sure they're fingers. Four distinct tracks, pressing lightly but bitterly cold. LaPaz screams, stumbling forward and banging into a crate.
"What? What the fuck is it?" Morgan asks, and despite his earlier warning now he's the one with his gun out, muzzle pointing into the empty dark. He looks underwater-pale and unwell in the light of LaPaz's dropped nav.
"I don't know, man! Something touched me!" LaPaz swallows hard and gasps, lungs feeling like they're taking nothing in, the breath knocked out of him and knee aflame from contact with the crate.
"Wha--something touched you? What is that--"
"I don't know, man, it just, it was this thing on my neck and it was all cold..." LaPaz gasps again and blinks tears out of his eyes.
"What? Oh, for fuck's sake. Get moving!" Morgan barks. LaPaz tries to join him, but his limbs are shaking-weak and won't go straight, and he has to grab a crate for support, shivering and still feeling the cold lines down the back of his neck. "Don't even fucking do this. None of this ghost shit, come on," Morgan snarls. "Get up. Fucking get up! We're almost out of here."
"What? No, man, I swear it was real, I felt it and it was just cold, I ain't making it up. I swear!" LaPaz babbles while Morgan walks back and hauls him to his feet.
"Just get behind me," Morgan snaps, and his gun stays out this time as he leads the way.
LaPaz limps. His knee hurts.
Stacks and stacks of crates rise up on either side. They should be out by now, Morgan knows they should be out by now. He doesn't share his concern with LaPaz, who stumbles and whimpers along behind, but Morgan's jaw clenches tighter and tighter as they go on.
LaPaz follows Morgan automatically, but he's focused on the crates around him, which are refreshingly solid, refreshingly normal. They're labeled with bold black stenciling, each one in its place. Like this one. It's number 24951. And this one has the number 28533. Next to that it says, "CANDLESTICKS." Candlesticks. Fancy. And this one, this one says, "THE GIFT OF SLEEP IS NIGHTMARE'S SEED."
LaPaz chokes. "Morgan!" he hisses. "Morgan, this crate, it says--and that one, that one has my name on it."
"What?" Morgan's distracted. He's almost sure that--yes, up ahead between those two crates, he can see empty space. They're at the end, finally. He must have gotten turned around somewhere in there, that's all. Relief rolls over him like a soothing wave, and he speeds up, eager to finally be done with this maze shit.
"My name!" LaPaz practically shrieks, his voice gone high and shaking. "And that one, that one says, 'DID YOU THINK WE WOULDN'T NOTICE?'"
"I don't give a shit what they say. It's just fucking words. Now move already."
"But it says--Morgan, did the crates even have words on them before? Did they say--"
"I say fucking move it!" Morgan doubles back to grab him, hauling him away by the shoulder. LaPaz allows himself to be dragged stumbling until he trips over something on the floor, except when he looks there's nothing there, and then Morgan is leaving without him, and LaPaz's nav's gone skittering off somewhere and Morgan's taking the light with him, too.
"Wait!" LaPaz staggers up and after Morgan again. "Wait, Morgan!" he yells, then recoils as his vision goes white, the garage's lights coming back up all at once. The frigid hand seizes the back of LaPaz's neck again, not caressing but sinking claws in, and LaPaz can feel the heat of his own blood running down the back of his cold-numbed neck.
"Morgan!" LaPaz screams. "Morgan, it's got me! Morgan!"
Morgan turns, and through watering eyes LaPaz can see him squinting against the light, focusing on something over his partner's shoulder. LaPaz reaches around to try and strike whatever it is, but hits nothing but freezing air.
"Mightyena!" Morgan yells, and she's there even before he finishes getting the name out. LaPaz feels the light brush of her fur as she leaps at something just behind him, and then the claws are ripped from his neck. He falls to the ground amidst ugly, discordant laughter, too wild to be human, too clear and piercing.
"Your pokémon!" Morgan bellows. "Send out your pokémon!"
LaPaz struggles with his belt and knocks his pokéballs to the floor, but it's all right, it's still all right. The pokémon appear when he calls them, Pierre and Koffing both.
"Go," LaPaz says. "Attack--" And only now does he turn around and see the darkness swirling behind him, and the eyes in the dark, the mouths and gleaming fangs. Gastly, haunter, gengar. They laugh when they see his face.
Pierre doesn't need more than that and throws himself at the massed ghosts, screeching. The knot of them bursts, ghosts tumbling through the air in all directions, laughing, laughing. Pierre dives after one and then another, slashing with his beak. Koffing floats in place, expression blankly content as always. "Go, go! Smog. Do something, do something! You know what'll happen if you don't, you worthless--"
Koffing's expression doesn't change, but it does begin expelling noxious gas. The flow cuts off immediately when a gastly swoops down and engulfs LaPaz's head, silencing him.
Meanwhile Morgan goes to follow his own advice but finds his belt clips empty. Dread stabs him in the chest, and he pats again at empty air, as though he could have missed his pokéballs the first time, somehow, like he could ever miss them. A hoarse peal of laughter sounds above even the background clamor of ghostly mirth. Morgan turns to look behind him and finds a haunter floating there, out of reach above his head, juggling three pokéballs between its disembodied hands.
"Mightyena, get those back!" Morgan snaps. She's been keeping the ghosts off him, leaping and biting, the dark energy sizzling on her teeth shredding ectoplasm with a sound like tearing cobwebs. Turning to focus on the haunter leaves her trainer unguarded. Ghosts dart in, raking Morgan with briefly-solid claws that leave him scratched and bloody. Mightyena turns back, and the ghosts fall away, taunting, but she can't defend Morgan and go after the haunter at the same time.
Morgan grits his teeth and edges towards LaPaz, who's barely visible between swirling ghosts. His chatot's shrieking from somewhere in the crowd, too weak to hold them back all by itself, and the koffing is just hanging there like it doesn't notice anything amiss. LaPaz isn't shouting anymore, which considering it's basically impossible to shut him up can't be a good sign.
Then the haunter with Morgan's pokéballs croaks, and ghosts stream over to crowd around it, forming a wall in front of Mightyena. She pauses, ears swiveling while she chooses a target. Even as she leaps for a gastly near the edge of the group, the ghosts widen their eyes to bulging, strobing epileptic flashes of bright color. There's no way for Mightyena to avoid the mass hypnosis, and she hits the ground already asleep.
Cold fear radiates through Morgan's chest, and then the ghosts swarm down at him. His vision dims as a gastly's dark body engulfs his head, and Morgan gasps at the freezing shock, then gasps again when the first breath does nothing but suck cold into his lungs. The deep primal part of his brain blares that there's no air, only choking, freezing gas. The gastly's ectoplasm fills his lungs so full it feels like feels like they might burst, but still there's no oxygen, only foul toxins that set his throat and lungs aflame.
Morgan tears at the gastly in blind panic, tears streaming from poison-burned eyes, but of course gains nothing but numb-frozen fingers and arms. He can hear his heartbeat in his ears, drumming fast as he gasps, chokes on thick nothing-gas with his brain's screams for oxygen drowning out coherent thought. He runs, acting on instinct alone, and of course he trips again. Morgan hits the ground hard, but the impact briefly jars the gastly out of place. He sucks down a couple partial breaths, which only seem to make it worse when the gastly clamps down over his nose and mouth again.
Morgan screams, but it comes out as no more than a desperate grunting noise, the gastly's inert ectoplasm stopping up his throat, resisting the efforts of his diaphragm.
The cold of the gastly's body is giving Morgan a splitting headache, or maybe that's the poison, or oxygen deprivation already. The ghost's laughter booms even louder than Morgan's hammering heartbeat, shaking the world around him. The ghost lifts the illusion from Morgan's eyes, and now he sees that this entire time he's been falling over the bodies of the smugglers. They lie in various poses of agony, eyes popped and bloodshot, faces blue and swollen. The gastly'd masked the smell of them, too, the septic odor of sphincters released in death, so strong Morgan can catch it even through the cloak of the gastly engulfing his head.
LaPaz is on the ground, too, a gastly having settled itself so its face lies roughly where the Rocket's should be. In the background a haunter and a gengar tumble through the air, laughing, always laughing, tossing the limp body of LaPaz's chatot back and forth. Now and again laPaz twitches, crabbed fingers jerking as if in some woefully inadequate attempt to rip the ghost away from his face. The gastly around his head stares straight at Morgan, smiling horribly wide. Morgan knows what his own gastly's trying to tell him: This is what will happen to you. Its laughter redoubles as Morgan's heartbeat races still faster.
With the illusion dispelled Morgan can see that the van isn't empty, either. There's a big hunk of rock in the back, wedged in diagonally. It's been wrapped in heavy blankets for protection, but where they've fallen away, the stone underneath looks like it's glowing, or maybe that's a hallucination, like the spots swimming across Morgan's vision when he moves. Ghosts pass back and forth through the stone, a cloud of them circling it lazily. It's probably some ancient artifact or something, something that could give a bunch of gastly enough power to leave their tower and warp reality to the extent that they did here.
Should've figured ghosts, Morgan thinks. That's what would want to scare a couple of grunts instead of just killing them: pokémon that feed on fear. Or maybe not, nobody can really agree if ghosts actually got nourishment from fear, or whether they just love tormenting their prey before killing it.
Morgan takes another reflexive, pointless gulp of gastly-stuff, pain beating in his head in time with his slowing pulse. Ghosts. Aiden even said something about ghosts. Aiden said, "This is what it means to be a Rocket." Aiden said... Aiden said... third floor bathroom's for new recruits, new recruits sleep on the third floor... or fourth...
Morgan hears something from outside the dark, stifling globe of the gastly's body, from the distant world outside, something even louder than the soothing slosh of blood through his veins. Morgan breaks out of scattered thoughts and tries to focus, to try to make sense of his fracturing vision.
Mightyena. Morgan recognizes her even now, with her half obscured by ghosts. Surrounded. They swoop in one at a time and draw long, pink, dripping tongues wetly across Mightyena's side. She whimpers and spasms in her sleep, paws fake-running against the floor like she's having a nightmare. She cries out, and Morgan's asphyxiation-addled brain is suddenly convinced she's crying out for him, for her trainer who's suffocating on the floor while she's being tormented by ghosts.
Morgan tries to stand but can only flop stiffly against the floor. The haunter with his pokéballs floats much closer now, taunting. Still Morgan doesn't think he can reach it. He stretches out an arm but doesn't seem to come close. It's hard to tell. He doesn't seem to be very good at judging distance right now. The haunter gurgles with delight and puts the pokéballs on its tongue and swallows them, then pulls down one lower eyelid and fishes them out from beneath, all the while laughing, laughing.
Morgan's tingling fingers fumble for his dropped pokénav, vague thoughts of knocking the pokéballs out of the haunter's hands scudding around his brain. He takes an involuntary deep breath of gastly-stuff, one that makes his vision go black for a second, and throws.
The pokénav makes a pathetic arc that doesn't come close to hitting the haunter. Morgan can't tell if the ghost is laughing at him or if it can't even tell he was aiming at it.
Need a bigger target, Morgan thinks blurrily, and for a long time that's all. He lies still, aside from the occasional spastic twitch of an abortive breath. It takes years for him to move, decades and several false starts to extract the first thing that comes to hand from his pocket. There's no plan, really. He's simply hanging onto the fuzzy concepts of "throw" and "Mightyena." He takes aim, for whatever it might be worth.
There's no chance of the wallet actually damaging the ghost artifact, not even much chance that it'll hit. But a ripple of agitation goes through the ghosts as it flies through the air. The haunter in front of Morgan snaps around to look, and two of the pokéballs clatter to the floor. One bounces and rolls towards Morgan, who watches its approach with one eye, uncomprehending.
A gengar dives in and snags the wallet before it comes close to hitting the van, which makes the haunter laugh. Then again, it's always laughing. And now it's turning back, beginning to look for the lost pokéballs, and recognition strikes some flickering circuit in Morgan's brain. He gathers everything he has left and throws himself clumsily sideways, slaps out a limp hand and bangs the pokéball against the floor. White light spills out, and grows, and grows.
Onix creaks and groans in confusion, twisting this way and that. He can hardly see in this light, and the ghost's laughter batters at him from all sides. The familiar vibrations of his trainer's voice aren't there to direct him. He knows well enough how to defend himself, though, and lets out a shattering roar that rises in pitch until Morgan wouldn't be able to hear it even if his senses weren't failing. The screech sends harsh ripples through the ghosts' ectoplasm. The one around Morgan's head draws in on itself, convulsing in pain and leaving his airway clear at last.
Not that it makes much difference; Morgan can only lie there deliriously, trying to make sense of what's happening. Onix slams his tail into the floor, so hard chunks of concrete actually pop up into the air, and swats them at the ghosts. A couple hit gastly dead-on and explode them in little puffs of ectoplasm.
"No," Morgan croaks, so softly no one standing next to him would have been able to hear. But Onix's entire body is an ear, adapted to catch the vibrations of other onix tunneling miles and miles away. The rock-type leans down towards his trainer, listening. "No fight. The van. Get it... out. Take it. Drop it. Come back." Morgan gasps. He knows Onix can't fight so many ghosts, no more than Mightyena could.
Onix might think he can take them, but there's no way he can ignore the pain in his trainer's voice. He pushes right through the roil of ghosts, moving in his deceptively-fast snake-slither that lets him dig for miles and miles, and seizes the van in his jaws.
The ghosts keen, flinging shadow balls and streaks of dark energy and rippling distortions the onix's way. He ignores them all, though, doesn't even try to fight back, and hefts the van along with him while he flees. An immense screech and crash of metal indicates that he's shown as much regard as usual for the garage's doors. The sound of grinding stone that accompanies Onix's every movement fades into the night, the shrieks and wails of the ghosts going with it.
Morgan chokes and coughs, eyes and nose streaming, every brush of air agony over tissues inflamed by the gastly's noxious body. Sensation returns painfully to unfreezing flesh. Slowly the attack fades away into the occasional cough, and actual thoughts begin to return around the edges of the terrible drive to swallow down as much air as possible, as fast as he can.
Even so, Morgan's brain is sludgy, thoughts rising like viscous bubbles that burst to give him slow, disconnected flashes of insight. The ghosts are gone, he thinks. He's alone. Alone with the street noise filtering in through the sundered door. It contains more car horns than usual, as is typical when Onix goes out and about in the city.
Morgan laboriously rolls his eyes around in his head, taking in the scene. He's alone but surrounded by corpses.
Then he remembers LaPaz, all in one jolt like he's been struck by lightning, and Morgan tries to stand just as quickly. That goes about as well as can be expected, leaving him sitting up, at least, with head resting against knees while the room sways around him. It takes everything he has not to vomit, the very thought of what that would do to his inflamed throat and mouth too horrible to contemplate.
Many careful, patient breaths later Morgan tries to move again, shifting himself by ginger stages until he's crawling on all fours to his fallen partner. He can see that LaPaz is dead long before he actually reaches the grunt's side; if he weren't, he'd be twitching and gasping like Morgan himself, not lying there quiet.
It's not a surprise. He was in bad shape last Morgan saw of him, and he didn't have anyone to protect him but the poor, struggling chatot. Or--not quite. Morgan tips his head back very slowly and, yes, the koffing still hovers near LaPaz's body, vapid smile firmly in place. Morgan shudders, thinking of it floating there while LaPaz twitched and choked his last, wearing that same smile, oblivious, or worse, knowing full well what was happening and not caring. Being happy about it, even. The gastly left it alone; because they sensed some wrongness about it, or simply because it wouldn't have been fun to torment?
He's getting distracted by stupid shit. Morgan puts all thought of the koffing, of Rocket conditioning, of the fact that the body in front of him is LaPaz, out of his mind. It's just a body. Could be anybody's. And anyway, it wasn't like he knew the guy even, not really.
Distracted by stupid shit. Morgan drags himself over and laboriously removes the pokéballs from LaPaz's belt, trying extra hard not to fumble them. One recalls the chatot that lies like a discarded toy on the floor, one wing visibly broken. The other takes the koffing and puts its smile firmly out of sight. LaPaz's gun lies nearby, dropped, not that it would have done any good at all against what they were facing.
That's what belongs to Team Rocket, and to Team Rocket it will return. Morgan looks down at the pokéballs, then stuffs them into his pocket. He crouches in front of LaPaz for a while longer, debating, then then fishes the dead grunt's wallet out of his pocket, trying to touch the corpse as little as possible. Morgan takes LaPaz's cash and returns the wallet to its original place, then turns away as quickly as he can. Might as well, after all, it's better than the police getting it.
And now Mightyena. She's knocked out, obviously, left lying as carelessly as LaPaz's chatot was. It makes Morgan's insides churn with anger, and then with nausea, any time he looks at her, any time he even thinks of her collapsed and helpless and abandoned. The first pokéball he struggles over to has the telltale weight about it that says there's a pokémon inside, so that's Rattata. In the end Morgan can't even see another free pokéball, no matter how he (slowly, carefully) cranes his neck, and begins to worry the haunter might have taken it along when chasing after Onix.
And there's worry left to go around for Onix, too, of course. Onix, who he sent off with barely-coherent orders and no backup, Onix who may be surprisingly fast for five hundred pounds of solid rock but who certainly can't outrun a fucking gengar, Onix who would never even question such fucking stupid orders and would go running off to fetch the fucking moon if his trainer asked for it. Morgan tries to get up, but only retches and falls back into a miserable seated position. He could swear his headache's getting worse, not better. Jesus, did he actually die and go to hell?
He sits slumped and brooding until something needles his subconscious, what he doesn't even recognize as a familiar rumble building and building as what can only be his Onix approaches. And here Morgan feels a surge of actual happiness, tries to rise without thinking about it and actually makes it to standing, waiting eagerly until Onix ducks his head through the breached garage door, slithering back towards his trainer.
"Onix!" Morgan yells. It comes out as a hoarse bark, but Onix understands well enough, and his answering bellow might have knocked Morgan over if an attack of vertigo hadn't already taken the grunt to his knees. Onix lowers his snout until he can shove it up under his trainer's chest, and though the usually friendly gesture now makes Morgan wince and clench his teeth against a surge of protest from his stomach, he drapes his arms across Onix's head nonetheless, half lying across the rock-type's snout in a companionable way.
"I'm fine, Onix, I'm fine," Morgan says, briefly resting his forehead against the cool stone of Onix's face. "So you dumped that van off somewhere? All the ghosts stick with it?"
Onix nods faintly, enough so Morgan can feel it but not so much that he gets pitched off his feet. And that's good, then, that's grand; if the ghosts didn't keep after Onix, then he was probably right and they're way more concerned with protecting the artifact than anything else. Hell, maybe they can't go too far from it, same as they usually can't leave their tower. One way or another, fuck 'em.
Morgan tries not to think about what unsuspecting people might've just got a nest full of angry ghosts dropped on their heads.
"You outran all those fuckers, really?" Morgan asks, and Onix makes grumbly onix-noises in response. Clearly he didn't, the dark splotches, chipped stone and long fissures down his sides show he took plenty of attacks. But still. He tanked all those like it was nothing and he outran all the rest. "You're incredible, you know that?" Morgan says quietly, running a hand along the angular edge of Onix's face. "I'd be fucking dead if you weren't around. Thank you--I mean, fucking thank you for everything, for tonight and all the other times. I'd be fucked without you."
Onix hums, his noise of pleasure and contentment, and the sound vibrates deep inside Morgan's body. It's almost like getting massaged by sound, if that even makes sense, and God knows he can use it now. His oxygen-deprived muscles ache as badly as though he's just run a marathon, and Onix's vibrations make them relax, maybe, just a little bit.
"We gotta go out," Morgan says, waving a hand near Onix's horn. Morgan doesn't really get how it works, but Onix have magnetic thingies in their horns that let them feel electrical fields, and humans apparently make electricity, so waving at an Onix's horn like tickles or something. Onix's humming deepens, turning into a sort of rumbling purr, like he's some kind of strange, massive cat. "We gotta get out of the city, you know? Do something fun. It's been too long, am I right? And you deserve it. All of you." Onix nudges Morgan lightly with his snout, what would ordinarily just be a harmless, friendly shove but tonight makes Morgan clench his teeth again in pain.
"But for now, we gotta move," he gets out after a moment. "Don't want to be around here when the cops finally get their asses over here. Can you find Mightyena's pokéball?"
It takes no time at all, Onix simply blowing across the concrete floor until the force of his breath sends the pokéball skittering and he's able to feel its bouncing vibrations through his stones. The rock-type leans down to pluck the pokéball up, frightfully gentle, and drop it into his trainer's hands.
"Thanks, Onix." Morgan recalls Mightyena and holds her pokéball for a moment before returning it to his belt. He needs to thank her, too, because of course she saved his life as much as anyone. And he has to do something for them, all three of them. With all the training bullshit, missions, whatever, they don't get enough time just to be together. To be a team. And they deserve it. They deserve way more than what Morgan can give.
Now, though, what they need to do is leave. Morgan pointedly doesn't look back at LaPaz's corpse. He lets Onix get his snout up under him again, and is content to let the rock-type do more or less all of the work of getting his head under his trainer. Morgan grabs Onix's horn once it's in reach, and arranges himself so he isn't completely sprawled out in all directions, but that's as much as he can manage. He never would have imagined not dying would feel so shit.
He just needs to tell Onix where to go. That's obvious: the park, the fall-back point. That's where everyone will be going, assuming they aren't all fucking dead.
Or he could... go...
Like, he was totally fucking murdered by ghosts, right? Nobody'd be surprised. And if they don't find a body, well, that's ghosts for you. Probably best not to ask. So he could go, he could leave Team Rocket, he could go and make some kind of life somewhere, him and the pokémon. He's got a bit of cash, can stretch it a week, maybe two if he's really trying hard.
Or he could go back, to where he knows a hot meal and a bed and even a shower, should he muster the energy, wait for him. He can go back knowing he's got a day off tomorrow at least, because they ain't going to ask nobody to work right after all this traumatic shit. He can rest.
Morgan swallows, what feels like a lump of needles going down his inflamed throat. He has to breathe through his hot, dry mouth because his sinuses are all closing up and clogging with mucus, whether a reaction to the gastly's poison or a nasty stress-cold deciding to make tonight even more fucking delightful Morgan doesn't particularly care. Everything hurts, and in the fresh absence of terror it feels almost overwhelmingly tiring to think of anything but sleep and maybe food.
Morgan leans up against Onix's horn and lets his head hang. It was never really a serious question, was it? "Go to the park, Onix. You know the one, it's right across from the theater." Onix rumbles acknowledgement, then turns and slips back out of the garage, keeping his head carefully level and still so as not to disturb his passenger.
"Ah, now look who it is!" Aiden's smiling broadly, for once seeming amused that Morgan's shown up late. The grunt doesn't acknowledge him, just stumbles over to stand with the rest, too tired even for his usual slouch. The commander's the only person smiling; the rest of the squad stands scattered around him, none acknowledging Morgan's arrival outside of a brief glance. "Thought we might have actually lost you this time. But you're like a bad penny, aren't you? Just keep turning up. Where's LaPaz?"
Morgan attempts to retract his head into his jacket, turtle-style. "No... He's..."
"Ah." Aiden's expression darkens. "Two, really? Fucking ghosts. You got his gun?"
"Yeah," Morgan says, distracted. His gaze flicks between the gathered Rockets while he steps forward to pass over the gun, mouth moving slightly as he counts. Five, plus him and Aiden. Who's missing?
"And his pokémon?"
That brings Morgan back to attention. He should simply take the pokéballs, hand them over, and be done with it, but somehow he finds himself confronted with a mental image of the koffing's dead-eyed smile. He shakes his head hurriedly, LaPaz's pokéballs feeling somehow hot where they rest in his pocket. Even as Morgan's opening his mouth to make some excuse, though, Aiden's moving on.
"Ah, well. No great loss. We're done here, then." Aiden checks the safety on LaPaz's gun and stows it in his backpack, which he then shrugs higher on his back. To the rest of the grunts he calls, "All right, let's move! You want some sleep, you better be in that van in five. Let's go!"
Morgan stands near Aiden and watches the rest shuffle towards the exit, moving with the automatic rhythm of people following herd instinct alone. He's counting again, looking for a gap in the group. It's too quiet. Even after a rough night, he'd expect--but he can only find Elnu, walking with her eyes down. The last working streetlight sets the tear-tracks on her cheeks gleaming, and she hugs her espurr to her chest, which everyone politely pretends not to notice. Morgan diverts his gaze, too, studying instead the graffiti carved into the battle-scarred old tree that presides over the little spit of park, like any grunt not thinking about things above his pay grade.
Aiden's watching, too, and drinking from a cup of the enamel-peeling coffee that sustains the actors at the theater across the road through long, late rehearsals, cheap stuff bought from an all-night stand just outside the stage doors. He alone seems animated, almost smiling as he watches his group pack together in shell-shocked solidarity to climb into the van Troy's parked up the street. "Well, that was a royal cock-up, wasn't it?" he says almost boisterously. There's a streak of blood across one of his cheeks--not his, Morgan thinks. "Who'd have thought those idiots would manage to dig up something so powerful half the Tower's ghosts'd follow it all the way into the city, huh? Guess there was more stuff in there than just bits of 'historical interest.'"
Morgan nods dully, but Aiden surely would have gone on even without his audience's interest. "Boss' gonna be pissed," he says. "Never mind the casualties, we were supposed to have it in with the ghosts. This little snafu probably fucks with all kinds of plans." He turns and shares a conspiratorial smile with Morgan, who's blandly fixated on a bright blue candy bar wrapper nestled in the dead leaves near his foot.
"You never showed up," Morgan says after a moment, in a voice that sounds like he's been smoking three packs a day for fifty years.
Aiden grimaces. "Sure we did. Then we got a runner from the main group, saying they needed backup, and with the comms all fucked we couldn't get ahold of anyone to let them know the plan was changing. That went as well as you'd expect, and then they ended up running out to where we'd been in the first place." He shakes his head, and then his smile reappears. "Another real cock-up, and you right in the middle of it. You know, Morgan," Aiden says, pointing at him with one finger off the rim of his coffee cup, "if I didn't know any better, I'd say were cursed."
Aiden laughs like that's the funniest thing anyone's ever said, head thrown back, then takes a last drag of coffee and tosses the empty cup aside. Morgan watches him go, walking briskly to catch up with the rest of the group, but doesn't move himself. Instead he sneezes miserably and ends up almost doubled over with what feels like his entire respiratory system on fire, poison-scarred membranes protesting the abrupt burst of air. Suddenly even walking a few yards to get to the van feels like far too much effort. He could just stand here instead, feeling the dull throb of his headache, and not think. It's a good night for not thinking.
That's just what he does, for a couple minutes at least, watching his breath fog out in the uncertain streetlamp-light. Funny how easy the whole breathing thing seems up until the point it really isn't. Morgan puts his hand over the pocket where LaPaz's pokéballs reside without really knowing why. God, like he neededs more shit to worry about.
Morgan can feel another sneeze coming on and can't tell whether he ought to fight it or just resign himself to another round of fiery head-scouring. It's cold. If one of his arms or legs or whatever just fucking fell off he's convinced it might hurt less. And, he decides finally, he wants to go home.
He has maybe thirty seconds before the van up and leaves without him. Stifling the sneeze and still getting a blast of head-splitting sinus pain for his trouble, Morgan forces himself to get walking, then even into half a jog. On a night like this, who wants to get left out in the cold?