Unbroken Disguise

“I still think this is a bad idea.” Meowth reminded them yet again.

“We heard you the first time! What are we supposed to do? Just give up on catching Pikachu? We’ve been after that little menace for… well, forever! Do you want all of that hard work to just go down the drain?!” Jessie berated the Pokemon.

“That’s just the sunk-cost fallacy!” Meowth complained. “If you’re gonna make me deal with that creep again you could at least give some solid reasoning!”

“Would you two be quiet?!” James tried to shut them up. “I can’t focus with the two of you talking!”

Reluctantly, if their grumbles were anything to go by, his fellow thieves kept any further complaints to themselves. Focusing on the lips of twerps and company once more, he did his best to read their lips.

“With the one in black facing away from us, I have to rely on the owner of that Gardevoir…” Long violet hair done up in a ponytail with an orange ribbon holding it together, a blue dress with white hems, and an off yellow apron didn’t make the woman look like much of a trainer, but looks could be deceiving. “She’s telling Gardevoir to escape. Do either of you recognize the device on the scary one’s wrist?” He watched as a flash of light overtook the Psychic Pokemon’s form and it teleported away.

“Never seen anything like it, must be some in-house gear or something.” Meowth answered him, looking through some binoculars of his own. “Wait a minute, just how weak is that Gardevoir?!”

While that was quite rude, James couldn’t blame Meowth when he realized that it had taken several seconds for the Pokemon to Teleport a few meters away at best. Was it that inexperienced at using the move or had it stayed nearby in hopes of protecting its trainer?

Either way, it didn’t seem to matter. In less time that it had taken Gardevoir to complete the Teleport, the figure in black had used the strange device on her wrist to shoot out a beam that froze Gardevoir into a statue of some sort.

James started to feel a bit uneasy. “That’s certainly impressive. What do you think it is? A coating of some sort? It looks a bit like chocolate, but that doesn’t make any sense.”

They weren’t given time to inspect it very thoroughly. With no warning, a gray vehicle with six wheels that was slightly larger than a minivan sped into view from over the hill. The roof peeled back and a metallic disk flew out, carried in the soft blue glow indicative of some sort of Psychic ability. With remarkable precision, the Gardevoir’s frozen form took on the same glow and was lifted just enough for the disk to slide beneath it. Glass that hadn’t been there before suddenly surrounded the Pokemon, like it was some sort of trophy on display, before the whole thing rose back into the air. The vehicle, which had not slowed down at all throughout the process, waited just long enough for the captured Pokemon to get inside before the roof closed back up. It drove past the house and tied up trainer just as the twerps reached the scene.

“She’s calling out for her Pokemon… asking the twerps to save it… twerp number one agreed…” he explained to his friends.

The vehicle started to make its way down the winding mountain road and towards where they were hiding, twerp and Pikachu right behind it. But they watched as instead of following the road like a normal person, the twerp ran straight down the steep hillside, quickly falling on his face and rolling to a stop at the next patch of road.

“That moron just never learns, does he?” Jessie complained, somewhere between annoyed and exasperated.

“He wouldn’t be the twerp if he did!” Meowth answered her rhetorical question.

The vehicle rounded the curve, coming straight for the kid. Pikachu leapt into the air, using Thunderbolt on it… but to no effect.

“No effect at all?” Meowth asked in surprise. “If they have it properly insulated against Electric attacks it must have cost a pretty penny!”

Especially if this wasn’t a group focused on catching Electric types in particular. Probably more of a generalized approach… whoever funded them must have deep pockets.

The twerp and Pikachu jumped out of the way as the vehicle drove right through where they were standing, screeching to a stop shortly after. Before the kid could do anything, he found himself the victim of a pincer maneuver, the figure in black landing her Salamence on the other side of him, her Ariados still at her side. James focused as the two humans started talking.

“Let’s see… you can’t just steal… wait a minute! She’s trying to steal Pikachu!”

“The nerve of some people,” Jessie complained. “Can’t she tell that Pikachu is ours to steal?!”

The dirty thief released a Pokemon that he’d never seen before. A large segmented body that alternated between light and dark purple, the Pokemon walked on four legs that ended in single claws, had two arms that ended in pincers, and a tail that might as well be a third arm.

“What’s that Pokemon?” Meowth asked.

“I don’t recognize it, I’d have to check my cards.” James lamented the fact that he hadn’t studied the Sinnoh Pokemon quite enough yet.

It looked like the battle had started though, as Pikachu’s form was overtaken by electricity, charging at the new Pokemon with a Volt Tackle. The lumbering thing was a lot more dexterous than it appeared, however, and it jumped right over the Electric type, dodging with ease. The thief pointed her arm towards Pikachu, looking like she was about to subject it to the same fate that she had Gardevoir… when James suddenly felt a shiver go down his spine.

“It’s not too late for us to get out of here!” Meowth tugged at his pant leg, urging him to leave, and Jessie’s frustrated growl suggested that he was trying to pull her away as well.

But this was a perfect opportunity! James watched as an unnatural shadow stretched down the side of the mountain. If they knew more about this Mimikyu’s capabilities, working around it while trying to capture Pikachu would be made easier!

The thief looked like she had noticed the new arrival, but she kept her focus on Pikachu, shooting a beam from the device.

Black tipped ears, red cheeks, and a yellow body gained that strange chocolatey sheen.

But it wasn’t Pikachu who had been hit.

“Mimikyu!” Even from the distance they were at, they were able to clearly hear the green haired twerp’s angry shout. The rest of the twerps were actually following the road down with the Gardevoir’s trainer at their side, but their newest member had stopped in his tracks while halfway down the first slope. “How dare you!” Apparently not one to sit back and watch, he decided to follow in his friend’s footsteps, though instead of a tumbling freefall he took a slower approach of sliding down the steep hillside feet first.

The thief frowned before adjusting her aim, firing at Pikachu once more.

And once more she missed her target.

“Wait, how is Mimikyu moving?” Jessie asked. “That Gardevoir looked rock solid when it got hit!”

James was just as puzzled. Mimikyu had definitely been hit the first time, as made evident by his current appearance, but had somehow taken the second hit for Pikachu as well. He was stiff as a board, not having changed his posture at all since the initial freeze, but it looked as if he was using Shadow Sneak to move around. Could it be that…

“Maybe… her little device only got his disguise?” Meowth reached the same conclusion that he had.

The thief looked to be confused by it as well, though only for a moment. The problem that Mimikyu presented was quickly solved by having her Ariados use String Shot on his frozen disguise, keeping it grounded in one spot. With his living shield no longer able to save him, Pikachu was quickly frozen by the third beam shot at him.

“Pikachu!” Twerp number one echoed his friend’s sentiment. The green haired twerp finally hit the same level of road that the thief was on, but having spent so much time trying to follow the actual path he found himself still a decent distance away from the action.

“She’s saying something about protecting her investments,” James relayed to his fellow Rockets as they watched the twerp get stuck to a rock behind him with yet another String Shot.

The truck behind Ash opened its roof once more, two Psychic assisted disks floating out to the frozen Pokemon. Pikachu and Mimikyu were scooped up and hauled away, just like the Gardevoir had been before them. The thief returned her Pokemon besides the Salamence, flying after the vehicle as it drove away, leaving the main twerp behind and the green haired one eating her dust just as he was about to reach her.

With the action over with, the Rockets put their binoculars down.

“When it comes to slippery fingers, she rules!” James remarked, impressed by the fact that she’d managed to nab three Pokemon in one go. The fact that two of those had given his group trouble in the past only widened the divide in their skill levels in his eyes.

“Unlike the looks department, where I rule.” Jessie added, as vain as ever.

“Well I’m not gonna take her trying to take our target right out from under us!” Meowth complained. “Let’s take her down a notch!”

“And once we’re through working our magic, she’ll beg to work for us!” Jessie tacked on.

James wasn’t too sure about that last part. Even with the little they’d seen, this thief very obviously had access to better tech, more money, and stronger Pokemon. Team Rocket was a pretty sweet gig in his eyes, but someone like her would likely see it as a downgrade. He knew better than to point that out though. Best to let Jessie’s delusions run wild, if only to motivate her.

His doubts about Jessie’s idea didn’t change the fact that Meowth was right though. It was time to show that thief who the real thieves were!

N felt like he was going to be sick.

A Gardevoir, as the Pokemon’s trainer had called it, had been kidnapped by a criminal right in front of him.

Ash, living up to the praise he had been given by others, had practically thrown himself head first down a cliff in order to apprehend the criminal. How he hadn’t broken a bone on the way down, N didn’t know. N had continued down the path and waited for a less steep area before attempting to do the same, and on some level that made him feel like a coward. How could he question Ash like he had been when he wasn’t willing to put himself at risk as quickly when Pokemon were in danger?

Even Mimikyu had thrown himself into danger.

In his panic, he hadn’t even noticed the little ghost leaving his shoulder until he glanced at the criminal and saw her turn his friend into a statue.

And now three Pokemon were gone, and he had been left powerless to stop it.

He had not carried out his plans yet. He did not have the power of a legend on his side. He was a mere human. A worthless human who had allowed such an atrocity to take place and-

“N!” Ash pulled him out of his spiraling thoughts. “I can’t reach my pokeballs! If you can call one of them out they can cut this String Shot and we can go after them!”

Right. Focus right now. He could chastise himself and hate the state of the world once the Pokemon had been freed.

Kneeling down next to Ash, he tried to reach beneath the String Shot to get at the boy’s pokeballs, but had no luck.

“It’s too tight, I can’t get my hand deep enough!” The panic he had tried to suppress was seeping back up.

It was then that the Gardevoir’s trainer and his travelling companions caught up.

“What happened?!” Brock asked.

Before N could snap at him for asking such a stupid question, Ash answered with “They got Gardevoir, Pikachu, and Mimikyu!”

Dawn released her new Pachirisu, who cut Ash free with ease.

“Uh, not quite, actually.” N heard a quiet, but all too familiar voice call out, making his eyes widen in surprise.

“Mimikyu?! Where are you? I thought she took you away!” N quickly glanced around, searching for his friend. The other humans joined him, and he saw Pachirisu go to check behind the rock that Ash had been strapped to.

“Don’ look for me! Stay away from the rock!” Mimikyu called out in a panic. “Stop righ’ now!”

Confused and worried, he and Pachirisu stopped, and he got the others to do the same.

“Mimikyu, what's going on? We don’t have time for this, they still have the other Pokemon!” N urged him along.

“They took my disguise with ‘em! I snuck over ‘ere in the shadows, but I ain’ got nothin’ on!”

They took his disguise? Why did that matter, they could just get him a new…

Mimikyu was completely exposed.

Mimikyu, the Ghost type who radiated fear and distress, who had sent the Rocket’s Meowth running away absolutely terrified with just a peak under the disguise, who didn’t know how to properly control his powers, who could potentially kill someone if they saw him exposed, had nothing to shield the rest of the world from him.

The panic and fear he was feeling right now wasn’t natural. At least, not to the degree that he was feeling it.

“I… what do we do? I don’t… I don’t know what to do, Mimikyu.” He tried to breathe in deeply, to calm his racing heart.

“We need to get moving, what’s the hold up?” Brock demanded, a hint of fright laced under his stern tone.

“Mimikyu is exposed.” N tried to explain. “We need to.. We need…” He couldn’t think straight. Every time he tried to come up with a solution his mind slipped back into the terror he felt, the worries about his failure and the Pokemon who had been taken away.

“Ask for somethin’ I can hide in!” Mimikyu suggested. “A hat, a bag, anythin’!”

When N relayed that information, Ash wasted no time in tearing his backpack off, throwing it behind the rock he’d been strapped to. The sound of a zipper being undone, a bit of shuffling, and then quiet.

His racing heart started to slow before a shadowy thumbs up reached out from behind the rock. He could feel the weight of the terror being lifted off of his shoulders.

But while the rest of the group was trying to recover, Ash was already springing back into action. He scooped his bag up, putting it back where it belonged as he ran in the direction that the criminal had gone in.

“Come on guys! We might still be able to catch them!”

They ran after him.

How was he able to handle it so easily? Now that he thought about it, had Ash been affected by Mimikyu at all? He’d been focused. The level of worry he showed actually seemed reasonable for the situation.

His contemplations on the matter were cast aside as they saw a giant airship rise up into the air. His heart started to sink once more, naturally this time, as some sort of cloaking began to hide it from view.

Ash kept running, so they followed after, passing by… were those the Rockets? The two humans and a Pokemon he’d been told was a Seviper were bound to a boulder with a String Shot. That likely meant that their Meowth had been stolen alongside the other Pokemon…

The squealing of tires drew his attention. In all the commotion, he hadn’t noticed the Officer Jenny pulling up beside him on a motorcycle, a Pokemon bigger than her vehicle at its side. Quadrupedal, with orange fur, black stripes, and big, fluffy tufts of tan-ish yellow fur around its face, neck, and tail, he thought it looked a bit like a cross between a Stoutland and a Darmanitan. The woman herself looked just like all of her relatives. Greenish blue hair, a blue uniform with red hems, and a cap on her head bearing a pin with the local insignia. He wasn’t quite sure what it was meant to represent, looking a bit like an upside down funnel with two mail envelopes in front of the left side.

“Damn it! She got away again!” The officer smacked her bike in frustration. “I came as soon as I could, but too little too late,” she admitted with a sigh. “She didn’t get any of your Pokemon, did she?”

“She took my Pikachu!”

“And my Gardevoir…”

“Hold on, who is she?” Brock asked her.

Pulling a wanted poster out of a compartment on her bike, she held it up for them to see. It certainly looked like her. “Her real name is unknown, but she operates under the name J.”

N frowned at the similarity between them, however small.

“She’s got a fearsome reputation as a Pokemon hunter,” Jenny continued.

“What’s a Pokemon hunter?” Dawn asked, obviously out of her element as a new trainer.

“They’re scumbags who kidnap Pokemon and sell them for profit,” N explained to her. When compared to some of the other evils lurking out there, it wasn’t the worst kind of person that a Pokemon could end up with, but they’d never spend too long in the hands of someone like her, and given the legality of it, it wasn’t a bad guess to assume that the buyers weren’t the sort of people who would treat the purchased Pokemon right.

“Exactly,” Officer Jenny agreed. “J has her own method for stealing Pokemon as well, which I’m sure you saw for yourselves. We haven’t been able to figure out the details on it, so trying to fight against it has proven to be all but impossible.”

Now that was surprising. Surely with all the resources the League had, they could figure something like that out with ease. Unless maybe it was a matter of not being able to get their hands on it in the first place? Researching something you only had second hand information on was a difficult thing to do.

Ash had been strangely quiet beside him, but that stopped when the boy began to practically growl in anger. “She’s not going to steal another Pokemon,” he stated as if it were simply a fact. “I’m going to get my Pikachu back, or else.”

This might be the first time he had seen Ash genuinely angry. But his justified anger would do him little good if they had no outlet for it.

“How are we supposed to track her down? Her ship turned invisible and there’s no telling how far away it is by now.” He pointed out.

“We can’t chase after her, but if we could predict the next place she’ll show up…” Brock floated the idea.

“And how do you propose we do that? Last I checked, none of the Pokemon between us can learn Future Sight or anything of the sort.” N dismissed the idea.

“Yer forgettin’ someone, N.” Mimikyu spoke up from Ash’s backpack. “She had a Gardevoir, she might ‘ave another Psychic as well.” A shadowy hand reached up out of the bag, pointing at the purple haired woman from over Ash’s shoulder.

“I do, actually!” The woman corrected him. She seemed a bit confused by the shadowy hand pointing at her as if Mimikyu expected to be understood, as did Officer Jenny, but neither thought to comment on it when time was of the essence. She pulled a pokeball out from behind her apron, releasing a Pokemon that must have been an earlier stage in the evolution line of Gardevoir. Significantly shorter, the Pokemon looked like it was wearing a skirt or maybe a tutu instead of a flowing dress, and had two red crests jutting out of its head rather than one in its chest.

Dawn pulled out her Pokedex. “What is that?”

“Kirlia, the Emotion Pokemon,” the pink device read out in a robotic voice, “Kirlia uses the horns on its head to amplify its psychokinetic power. This Pokemon can create a rip in the dimensions and see into the future.”

“A rip in the dimensions?” Kirlia repeated in a soft, feminine voice. “What a horrible way to put it, but I suppose it gets the point across…”

Officer Jenny showed Kirlia the wanted poster. “This woman took Gardevoir and some other Pokemon. We need to know where she’ll go next.”

“You all feel afraid and angry…” The Psychic type seemed quite upset about that, but got to work anyway. The crests jutting out from her head began to glow with psychic power, and the next thing he knew, his vision was distorted.

A slight migraine began to gnaw away at him as he saw things that weren’t in front of him. A waterfall. A river. A water wheel. J on her Salamence.

The visions abruptly ended and Kirlia collapsed. Her trainer caught her before she hit the ground, dropping to her knees to hold the Pokemon. “Kirlia! Are you okay?”

“I will be fine. I should have known better than to share with one of distortion.”

One of distortion? Did she mean Mimikyu?

The rest of the group, not having understood the Pokemon’s words, had already moved on.

“...small water wheel right at the forest’s edge, it looks just like what we saw in the vision.” Officer Jenny informed them.

“Then let’s get over there right now!” Ash demanded as Jenny pulled out her radio.

“This is Jenny-”

Weren’t they all Jenny?

“I have determined the Pokemon hunter’s next strike point. I want the area completely surrounded! Get the whole force down there if you have to! The location is-”

He let her words wash over him as he prepared himself mentally.

He had no Pokemon that he commanded.

He wasn’t even very impressive physically.

But he would make certain that J couldn’t continue stealing Pokemon.

No matter what it took.