From: RobfromVoid <RobfromVoid@prodigy.net> Subject: Re: [PW!] Speed Isn't Everything Date: Tuesday, December 14, 1999 5:36 PM Adrian Tymes wrote: > "We'll have to get you a Rocket uniform if our plan is to succeed. > While we're getting stuff, why don't I get you an Earth Badge? I've > seen where Giovanni keeps them, and the inside of the gym isn't guarded > nearly as well as the exits." > > "How about because I'd rather earn my badges?" > > Doppler waves Robert's concern off. "You've seen the evil in the > League. A small part of it, anyway, and I have no doubts you'll see > more. And take exception to it, too. For that, I think you've earned > your eighth badge." He sighs, staring at some far away point. "If > there were more like you in the League's elite...maybe ones like me > wouldn't have to exist." "The only person I'll accept an Earth Badge from is Giovanni. He is the Gym Leader, not you!" Robert crosses his arms. Doppler sighs. He effortlessly Transforms into the Leader of Team Rocket and bows, "Is this better?" "You don't get it, do you? I don't want to earn my Earth Badge just because you think I'm a great guy. Anyone who earns their Badges like that should be cursed to wander the earth with a soul mate who always hits him and a friend who does nothing but offer useless information." Robert snarls at the pseudo-Giovanni, grabs the key ring off the nearby Porygon's polygonal nose, and starts walking back towards the Viridian Gym's basement prison. 'Giovanni' blinks, "And where do you think you're going? There's no secret way out inside the jail. We already checked." "I'm not going anywhere." Robert walks into the jail cell and slams the door. He then tries to lock the door from the inside, "Your plan involves me dressing up like a Rocket, and I'm not a Rocket, so I can't go along with your plan." "Put your fears to sleep, my friend..." 'Giovanni' walks up to the jail cell where Robert is trying to trap himself within and snatches away the keys before he succeeds, "...Rockets are stupid. They won't recognize you." Robert sits down in a corner of the prison and hugs his shins, "I'm not afraid that they'll recognize me. I don't want to do it because pretending to be something you're not is dishonest, and I'm not. I'll just wait here for Giovanni to show up, then explain what happened and hope he understands. Some Gym Leaders like Sabrina and Lieutenant Surge were mean to me in the past, but I haven't even met Giovanni yet. I think it would be unfair to judge someone I don't know anything about." "He's the leader of Team Rocket!" 'Giovanni' tries to keep his cool, despite Robert's ignorance, "Besides, just look at the way he dresses. It's atrocious!" Doppler motions down to his red suit and smirks, but Robert keeps on frowning, so Doppler tries a different approach, "You want Giovanni to show up? He's not going to come back to this Gym until he knows that I'm gone or dead. Unless you help me, you're going to be sitting in that prison until one of us dies, and if you ever studied anything about Pokemon, you'd know that Ditto can go weeks without food and water, whereas humans..." Doppler shakes his head. Robert feels a headache coming on. He usually doesn't have to make important decisions... he always lets Mithril-rama make them for him. Feeling utterly hopeless and alone, Robert just starts weeping in his prison cell. The Porygon who is Doppler's assistant floats over to Doppler, "The human appears to be leaking. This does not compute." The Hypno who is Doppler's assistant joins the Porygon at Doppler's side, "What? You've never seen a person cry before?" "I determined the human's age and gender. The probability of public leakage through the eyes of such an individual is zero percent." The Porygon pauses for a moment while it attempts to re-calculate the probability, "Correction, it is .0001%." The gray robed Hypno narrows one of his narrow eyes further, "Are you for real, Porygon?" The gray paneled Porygon pauses while it searches its databanks, then replies, "No. I am not real. I am virtual." Doppler opens the jail cell and approaches Robert, "Young man, as Porygon so unemotionally stated, you're one in a billion. I sense your sadness, and I'm willing to help. The frustrated have a special place in my organization. Help me and I'll let you join me. Your honesty and sincerity of heart is wasted on the Pokemon League. They can't appreciate such merits. I can. Open your heart to me, and I will cease your suffering, all in exchange for a single act of kindness - freeing me from this Gym." "Argh, stop talking!" Robert puts his hands on his ears and closes his eyes. Tears continue to roll down his cheeks. Doppler grumbles. He's tried the direct approach, the rationalization approach, the sympathetic approach, and now he's down to the threat approach. He closes his eyes and concentrates. It takes a while to find a slow mind like Robert's, but he finally does, #Hello. Do you think you can escape from me by closing your eyes and covering your ears? I am beyond the senses. As long as you don't help me, I'll just have to sit here and read your thoughts to entertain myself. Oooh! I just saw a particularly juicy thought. My, my, not so innocent in your mind, are you? Wow, I would've never guessed that you...# Robert opens his eyes and screams. He starts banging the sides of his head, "Get out of my mind! I've had just about enough mind rape from Sabrina! I'll help you get out of here, but I'll do it my way - the honest way. I'm not going to disguise myself like a Team Rocket member. I'm going to go up there as myself and honestly explain to them that I'm not an ATR... I'm sure they'll understand. I mean, it's not like Team Rocket murders anyone, right?" Doppler grins a Giovanni grin, "It seems that you've just added a new phrase to the multitude of 'famous last words' quotes. Oh well, it's your funeral. I had a fool-proof plan where we'd both survive, but you rejected it because it was dishonest. My pseudopods are clean of this whole affair." Doppler looks at the Pokeball on the floor that he knocked out of Robert's hand and Transforms into it, "Ugh, I get the creeps just from *being* one of these things. Let's hurry this up..." Robert removes the third Pokeball from his belt and drops it in his pocket. He grabs the Dopplerball and nestles it in the slot. He glances at the Hypno, "Are you and that robot thing coming too?" "Later, man. We don't want to make it obvious. Plus, I don't want you to see me naked." The Hypno adjusts his gray robes so they have less wrinkles on them, then leans on the gray paneled Porygon, "Good luck, Doppler." Robert mumbles about ungrateful Pokemon and cautiously walks up the stairwell leading to the ground floor of the Viridian Gym, holding his arms up in a sign of peace. The main Arena room is empty. No Rockets are to be seen. The front doors are slightly ajar, and cold wind blows it back and forth while Robert walks across the Arena. The squeaking noise that the door makes adds to the tension... Robert reaches the front doors. He grabs the Dopplerball and is about to toss it out, when he hears a familiar male voice from behind him: "Drop that Pokeball, scum!" A familiar female voice adds, "He's *ATR* scum!" Robert takes this moment to bowl the Dopplerball out of the Gym. Robert watches as it Teleports away the moment it is safely outside of any of Giovanni's scanners, "There! Are you happy now?! I dropped the Pokeball!" Robert turns around to see what he expects to - a man with short blonde hair and a woman with long green hair in white Team Rocket uniforms. An angry Diglett pops in and out of the floor in front of them, further ruining the already broken Viridian Gym floor. The male member of the Team laughs, "HA HA HA HA HA! We knew you'd do that! There's tons of Rockets surrounding the Gym, and I'm sure one of them is going to find the Pokeball! Might as well hand over the rest of your Pokemon to us, since we've been acquainted before. The Rockets you know are better than the Rockets you don't!" The female member of the Team slaps the man on the back of his head with a paper fan, "Doofus! Do you think that the guy remembers who we are?! He's ATR... He probably can't even remember his own name! Let's introduce ourselves..." The man rubs the back of his head and sadly says, "To collect every Pokemon on the earth..." "...that has some value and some worth!" The woman continues, shoving her paper fan back in her brassiere. "To take rare Pokemon from your hands..." "...rather than search across the lands!" "Jack!" "Jill!" Jack strikes a pose and says, "Give us your Pokemon, just don't fumble!" Jill slaps Jack for being in a corny stance and finishes, "Hand them to us, not Bryant and Gumble!" The angry Diglett, who has been building up rage during the motto, Growls and shouts, "What the *hell* do you think you're doing, you idiots?! Let's just KILL HIM and pluck the Pokeballs from his rotting carcass!" Jack rolls his eyes, "That's your solution to *everything*, Diglett... Pluck the Badges off the Gym Leader's rotting carcass; Pluck the Pokeflute off the old Hippie's rotting carcass; Pluck the dry clean only laundry off the Cleaner's rotting carcass..." Jill clenches her fists and a vein pops up on her forehead, "If you don't shut up already, I'm going to pluck you up the... Look, he's getting away!" Jill reaches into her shirt and throws out a Pokeball, "Exeggutor, go! Sleep Powder!" The giant psychic coconut tree that is Exeggutor appears in a red flash and blasts blue powder out of the leaves on its head! Some of it falls onto Robert just before he can make it outside, and he falls asleep. Jill is surprised that it actually worked, "I should have done that in the first place..." She pats her Exeggutor on its head and recalls it into her Pokeball. Jack rubs his gloved hands together, "Bwahahahahaha... Now we can take all of his Pokemon all for ourselves!" "Is that so?" An angry voice makes Jack and Jill jump and the Diglett sink into the ground! The voice belongs to the real Giovanni. He detected that Doppler had escaped and had his Alakazam Teleport him back to the Gym to see who was responsible, "Jack and Jill. Didn't I ban you from this Gym after you both abandoned it when I left you two to guard it?" Jill nervously nods and says, "Uhhh yeah, but... you see... the thing is..." She sweatdrops, "I knew that you... we saw all the... Well..." Jill looks around for a scapegoat and points an accusing finger at a sleeping Robert, "He's an ATR!" "Even so, I don't want Pokemon disappearances to be connected with the Viridian Gym." Giovanni narrows his eyes, "Put him in jail. I'll deal with him tomorrow morning. Right now, I have more important things to take care of." An Alakazam suddenly Teleports into the room with Giovanni's Persian. Giovanni pushes a button on his cufflink and a secret door on one of the Gym's walls opens up. As he walks into the secret passage, he says, "When he's locked up and tied down, leave the Gym." Jack looks confused, "Don't you mean guard him with your life?" "No. Not only is it too cliché, but I don't want him to escape when you screw up again. You two are worse than Jessie and James." The secret wall slams shut when Giovanni, his Persian, and his Alakazam are on the other side. Jill steps up to Robert's sleeping body and sighs, "All those Pokeballs, and we can't steal any of them or else the Boss'll fire us!" She bends down and grabs Robert's legs. Jack joins her and grabs Robert's arms, "Well, at least we ensured that the ATR didn't escape... That's gotta get us some brownie points!" The evil Diglett pops up under Robert after Jack and Jill have already lifted him off the floor. The Diglett narrows his eyes, "Damn you blasted fools! I wanted to break his spine!" -Robert