The Dark Type

2 Burned Tower

          The rain pummels my shoulders as I dare to cross its chosen kingdom.  Ecruteak in wet weather isn’t exactly the ideal place for anybody to be, unless they’re a Wooper or something.  Mud slicks the roads, mixed with the black of ash from the Burned Tower carried downhill.  I pass the building where the Kimono Girls are known to practice, and I am thankful for my hooded jacket—I shudder to think of what they should do if they knew that a Rocket wandered so close to home.  I’m not stupid enough to dismiss the rumors of their strong Eevee evolutions, and the idea of a Vaporeon/ Jolteon pair in this weather is a daunting thing.  I just wish the penalty of going out of Rocket uniform wasn’t so severe, but a guy has to be an Executive or something to be allowed that.  As a grunt, I have no chance for such a privilege.  Feeling sour in the weather, I trudge forward, imagining pursuing footsteps at every turn, extra splashes when there isn’t smooth water for miles.

          Finally my feet brush the threshold of the ash’s source.  I just hope my reason for coming is still intact.

          The legend is that the Burned Tower held these great legendary dog-things or something, and then this big rainbow bird Ho-oh descended and revived them.  It’s a great story, but I’m not dumb enough to believe it.  Some idiot was probably training his Charizard or something, and it got out of his control.  Happens enough to be a reasonable explanation, but I guess I’m the only one who believes that. 

          The soil beneath my feet alternates between wet and dry due to the uneven ground, soft as beach sand at one moment, gooey as fresh dung the next.  I find the usual little hole in the ground leading to the basement, small enough to allow a wiry guy like me to slip through, nimble on the beams as a Mankey.  The landing isn’t as great, since it would seem that the ground had warped downward a little, enough to play host to a sizeable puddle.  I clamber out as quickly as I can, imaginary ice shards piercing my feet to the bone. 

          I wish for a moment that I had some sort of fire pokemon to help me warm up, but it passes quickly.  Rockets love powerful pokemon, but most pokemon won’t stick around a Rocket for long.  Koffing, Rattata, Ekans—those pokemon are usually the kind that were willing to help, and the discovery of the dark type had been like a dream for the Executives.  They were often quite strong, and, as it turned out, were easily shown that they had a considerably sadistic side.  So now the executives have pokemon like Murkrow and Houndoom to lord over the grunts, who still have the more common pokemon to bully and boss around.  It’s sick.

          Unlike the others, I have a Cubone, given to me back around the time we had control of Kanto’s Pokemon Tower.  The pokemon was trapped by a bunch of grunts, and my father had given him to me.  It’s ironic, actually, that the only gift from Giovanni to his son was a pokemon that the Rockets always considered useless ever after, due to its dislike of the violence they committed, but they didn’t dare take away the pokemon that their leader himself had bestowed.  Even now, my Cubone is shivering in his ball, unfond as most ground types are of water. 

          After weaving through an unholy amount of wet rubble, I finally find the spot.  To my surprise, my charge isn’t the only occupant.  A Vulpix and Growlithe, united by mutual misery, are both curled up in one of the few decently-sized dry spots in the basement, cuddling a cream-colored egg with tiny green speckles.  At my approach, the fire type pokemon raise their hackles at me, but I coo softly to them and edge around them.  I reach for the egg, but the Vulpix tries to take half my fingers as toll.  When I flinch, I realize my hand smarts, and I realize that it used its Will-O-Wisp as an underhanded defense.  Apparently, the talk of Vulpix’s temperament wasn’t advice I should have turned up my nose at.  But it wasn’t like I’d ever actually been around one, either.