From: Jose L. Solano (jsolano199@aol.comlink) Subject: [PW!] The POKEWARS OAV: Introduction! Part Two! Newsgroups: alt.games.nintendo.pokemon Date: 2003-12-25 11:59:59 PST The POKEWARS OAV: Introduction! Part Two! By Dreadite and Jose L. Solano Garret was running for his life. He pondered why he let himself be put up for this kind of work as a massive beam of shot out towards him, and he hit the ground rolling. The beam shot barely over his head, blasting rocks and pebbles into the air at dangerously high speeds as the road around him was blown to shreds. He stumbled to the ground, unprepared for the shockwave that followed. Garret looked over his shoulder, and rolled to the side quicker than he himself knew he could as Regirock stomped down where he was lying just moments before. "Woah!" Maxie was clutching his side on one knee, glaring up at the monster from behind an overturned car. He pulled a Pokéball from his belt, and with the safe swift movement activated it. With a snarl, a large Charizard emerged, rushing the Regirock with incredible speed. It reached the hostile legendary before it could react, and tossed it into the air with a rather impressive fighting technique. Maxie grinned, but only for a moment. Regirock hit the ground, but not with a painful thud. A wave of incredible power caused the road to swell up, crashing into Charizard and knocking it into a building with a sickening thud. The Regi began to glow with a dark, hazy energy, and it redoubled its efforts, battering the remaining Magma pokemon around like rag dolls. Garret leapt to his feet, seeing the Charizard crash into the wall. He wasn't going to sit around and take this. "Don't you people have ANYTHING not fire related? Idiots!" The noise attracted another beam of energy, and he wasn't so lucky this time. Garret barely had time to dodge when the ground underneath him exploded, sprawling him into an unmoving heap on the side of the road. Maxie on the other hand, was more than fine. He was seething mad. "How in the world!?" He watched helplessly as the Regi slowly tore a path of destruction away from them. He recalled his Charizard, and walked over to rejoin the rest of his team, none of which appeared to be in better shape than he was. He took a strange comfort in that. "Report!" One of his lieutenants shook his head solemnly. "It destroyed our rock containment device. I think we need something stronger... our efforts to restrain it conventionally failed, sir." Maxie rolled his eyes, and nodded. Sometimes he wished he could have just one well-planned mission go off without a hitch. Between the interference of annoying children, and general incompetence of his men on occasion... "All right, thank you. Let's get out of here before the cops show up. We're probably already on the evening news if we're not lucky." Maxie and the Magma team started walking off towards their helicopter. Maxie's pilot had the foresight to park well away from the battle zone, but it was an agonizingly long walk. The sound of rock crushing rock and exploding gas lines had almost ceased, replaced with the sound of Magma's lone remaining helicopter flying into the distance. Maxie looked down at the trail of destruction that led off into the desert, then suddenly ceased. "Looks like he headed home." "Do you think it went back to sleep?" The Magma pilot mused, almost to himself. "No, it was imprisoned there. Didn't you read the old legends when you were a child? This is like that," Maxie chided him, half-serious. "It's probably headed someplace to recharge itself, I'd guess. We need to track it down before it finishes recharging, but I imagine we've got some resistance to that idea." The pilot's radio crackled on. "Reading me up there?" Maxie quickly reached out and grabbed the radio. "We read you. Identify yourself?" "What, you forgot me already?" the voice sounded mockingly hurt. "Garret, mind flying back down to pick me up?" Garret coughed a painful cough. He patted his rib cage gingerly and winced. "That'll leave a mark." He looked up towards the sky, waiting for the helicopter to arrive. He sprawled himself on the ground gingerly, feeling none the better for it. He mused thoughtfully as the sight of the helicopter descending towards the earth nearby caught his attention. "We need water next time..." ***** Somewhere in the ocean between Hoenn and Johto, an small fishing boat pushed through a fierce storm, intent on getting its two passengers to their destination. The storm was too brutal to use a helicopter or a flying Pokémon as they usually did. The boat's captain found himself between a rock and a hard place; his boat's chances of surviving the storm were slim, but if he turned around, Trent Retwin, hell-bent on earning his prize, would surely kill him. Even if he survived Trent's wrath, his boss would have his head. All he could do was pray that the storm killed him before either one. The boat's destination was now in sight: an offshore oil rig, abandoned for years. The rig showed no sign of activity, but it was abandoned, after all. "We're just about there," the captain said to Mushiburo, who now wore a heavy blue cloak around her, but was otherwise dressed the same. She sat next to Trent, who was not wearing any sort of extra protection against the weather. With the sky darkened, almost no light came into the boat, and the passenger's face was obscured, but two red eyes stared at him from the darkness. He was not an ordinary man, the captain guessed, that much was certain. "Just about there..." The captain motioned to one of his younger crewman to step out onto the deck of the ship as they arrived at the rig. The young crewman held on to the ship's railing and released a Sharpedo into the water with a rope tied to its dorsal fin, which swam around one of the stilt-legs of the rig and made sure the rope tightened around it before cutting the rope with its sharp teeth and returning to the crewman's Pokéball. "It's secure!" The crewman waved to several others standing on the rig platform, who dropped a rope ladder down to the boat. Unfortunately, it didn't reach the ship; it would need to be twice as long to do so. "We need more ladder!" "That's all we got!" one of the rig crewmen yelled back." "I think I have a grappling hook with me somewhere around here," Trent said, digging through his pockets. "Hmm. Guess not." Having so many things on him, Trent had somewhat lost track of his inventory. "Alright, I'll handle this." The captain took a Pokéball and released a Gyarados onto his deck. One the captain's signal, the Gyarados lowered its head. Mushiburo quickly jumped on and motioned for Trent to do the same, but he stood there, looking at the Gyarados's giant eye. Yes, the new gray trenchcoat was looking rather sharp... but that was enough. Trent stopped using the giant eye as a mirror and jumped onto its head. The Gyarados rose up as high as it could, stopping just a few feet short of the rope ladder. Mushiburo jumped high enough to reach it and scaled it quickly. Trent took a little longer. He jumped up and grabbed onto the latter. His feet were no longer touching the Gyarados's head, so he had nothing to jump off of to help himself up. He swung his feet and raised his other hand to grab the next step. The rig crewman didn't want to wait for him to get his act together and just pulled up the ladder. "I could've made it by myself," Trent told them. He followed Mushiburo into a door near the platform where the crew members stood, and following that, through a hallway leading to a large, poorly-lit steel room filled with many blue-bandana Team Aqua members, training with various Pokémon. Trent noticed that Mightyena were fairly common in the room, despite not being water-types. Were they water-types? Trent wasn't sure. At the far end of the room was a small staircase leading up to a catwalk, and up there, a large, black-tinted window next to another door. "You made it," Archie said with a grin to them from behind his polished marble desk. Archie sat leisurely at his desk, which was adorned by various shells, but aside from his desk, the room had no decorations. Various higher-level Team Aqua executives stood around him silently, but they all seemed to be very casual, leaning against the walls, arms crossed, hands behind their heads, one was even petting a Poochyena. Mushiburo nodded to Archie, who nodded in return, and she stood behind him with her arms behind her back. "Nice to finally meet you," he said to Trent, standing up and holding out his hand. Trent looked at it, but didn't take it. Realizing this, Archie smirked and held it away. "How was your trip?" "Wet." "It's the Team Aqua way! My agent has already briefed you on the details," Archie said as if he had a way of knowing that she had, "But now we get to the good stuff. I'll be taking a short trip. I want to see the seas, smell some ocean air, maybe sit on the deck of a cruise ship with a drink in one hand and a beautiful blonde in the other... lots of ice on that drink." There was a collective snicker among his executives. "I have to keep my traveling party to a minimum, so I'm taking my most trusted executives. Unfortunately, that means that the majority of Team Aqua will be left without a leader. Sad, isn't it? "Many of our agents, like Mushiburo here, can work freely in the field without direct command, but there's still a large portion of Team Aqua that will be left without a leader. I want you to take this portion under your wing." "Me...?" "Yes, you. Like I told you before, there are rumors that the man known as Dreadite is working with Team Magma. We know less about him than we do about Team Magma's actual plans, but we do know that he's a very dangerous man, and any agents who have been sent to investigate him have gone missing. If we want to compete with Team Magma, we'll need someone on our side who's capable of dealing with Dreadite. In addition to your already impressive resume in Kanto, word is you've actually survived a battle with Dreadite. Your mission is to use whatever resources Team Aqua has to take down Dreadite and make sure that he doesn't get in the way of our plans, or help Team Magma out with theirs." "So you want me to help one terrorist organization stop another terrorist organization who's got Dreadite on their side." "Whoa, whoa, Team Aqua is not a terrorist organization," Archie said, half-offended, but half-sarcastic, "We feel very strongly about the oceans of the world and water Pokémon inhabiting them, and our methods might be a little extreme, but we are in no way terrorists... we prefer highly-motivated ecological activists." "Hey, I don't care, I liked the idea," Trent said honestly. "You've got yourself a new leader." "Good, good. Shake on it? No? Didn't think so, but your word is good enough. My entourage will be leaving tomorrow morning. Mushiburo here will stay behind to advise you... you know, make sure you don't do anything that's... ah... un-Aqua." "Tell me about that big Pokémon you have," Trent asked. "Well... that's sort of a secret, Team Aqua business, I'm afraid..." Archie paused for a moment. "Oh, alright. We've got a real beauty." Archie got up from his desk and led Trent, as well as his executives, out of the office and into the training area. The various crew members all stopped what they were doing and saluted their leader, who casually waved for them to put their hands down. "It was a tough job just finding it, keeping it here is even tougher." Archie motioned for the lights to be dimmed and walked to the center of the room and one of his executives quickly opened a trapdoor in the black floor and pressed a several buttons in succession inside. He dashed away as the trapdoor shut itself quickly and sunk into the floor. A larger area of the floor, among which was the trapdoor control itself, raised from the floor, revealing a glass box with several mechanical devices attacked to the edges and producing a blue light. Frost had built up in the glass and Archie wiped it away, revealing a brilliant ice sculpture inside with several yellow eyes. "This, my friend, is Regice." "Reg-wha?" "Gaah..." Archie was shocked that Trent didn't even recognize it, let alone cower in awe. "It's REGICE! Come on, this thing is legendary!" "It's a Hoenn legend," Mushiburo told Trent. "Oh. So what's so great about it?" "WHAT'S SO GREAT ABOUT IT?!" One of the female executives put her hand on his shoulder. After a few deep breaths, Archie calmed down. "Well, I guess it's not important, but we'll be taking it with us on that trip, so it doesn't really matter if you know anything about it or not. Maybe you'd better start getting ready for that. Mushiburo, brief Trent on all the information we have on Team Magma and Dreadite. The rest of you, follow me back to the office. We have a few things to sort out." ***** To Be Continued! (Dreadite's note: I’m hoping to have another installment done by January 1st, but this is taking quite a bit of time. Rest assured they will be regularly released until the story is finished.) Jose L. Solano ------------------------------- A devious, degenerate defender of the devil