" Bzz." Kitty made some motions with her stingers while Misty followed her right as they ran into Yellow, Gold, and Kris. "Zz!"

Kitty buzzed as she flew right up to Yellow in concern seeing her unconscious.

"What happened?" Misty asked as Gold was carrying her on his back.

"Team Rocket had some sort of Super Muk that tried to kill us," Kris explained to her while Gold looked a bit taken aback when the Beedrill gave him an evil look for some odd reason. "Yellow fell asleep after the fight though as she was exhausted."

"Uh, can someone stop this Beedrill from threatening me?" Gold asked with a stinger pointing right at his throat. "What did I do?!"

"Gold just put Yellow down," Misty said knowing that Kitty was pretty overprotective of Yellow, especially considering how much like Brock Gold was at times with his flirting.

And with how they were all separated, chances were that Kitty was now paranoid beyond belief about her trainer.

"Pi?"

Heads turning they saw Pikachu running towards them relief in his eyes but he looked worried about not seeing his trainer.

"At least we're finding each other," Kris said with Misty giving a nod in agreement.

But she wasn't sure where the others were.

Xatee's eyes glowed once more as she looked down the hallway before she began to fly. "Alright, Xatee found someone else," Kris said running after her small bird, the others not too far behind her, finding Gary and Brock who looked relieved to find them.

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Inside the Banquet Hall, Executives Butch and Cassidy, who had arrived alongside Proton, were facing an angry Lorelei and her pokémon, who were lashing out angrily toward their own. The other trainers were fighting against the grunts, though with the poison spray from the dozens of Weezing, there were several who had fallen on the ground, poisoned by the gases, as they screamed, holding their burning throats.

"Deugong, Aurora Beam. Milotic, Water Pulse!" Lorelei commanded, the latter attack blasting open one of the walls, carrying several Weezing with it. "Blastoise, Poliwrath, use hydro cannon, full power!"

"Dodge that Weavile, and kill that Blastoise," Cassidy yelled, leaping to her left to escape a full-powered ice blast that would have frozen her.

"Hyper beam!" Lorelei roared.

"Supersonic!" Butch returned. "There is no escaping this, Elite four Lorelei. The Indigo League will be no more after this night."

"Over my dead body." Lorelei snarled, plucking out more pokeballs. "Beartic, Abomasnow, freeze them with Blizzard."

Where the hell is Lance when you need him?

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

[ Austin's POV ]

I tried to stop my anxious heart but given the current situation, I was in it couldn't be helped.

Glancing at my pokeballs, I thought that I should transfer them to professor oak's lab to get treated while I'll transfer them for Pokemon like Fearow and Clefable who would be more than able to fight these team rocket members.

Pulling out the Pokedex, I switched on the transfer but all I found on screen was static.

Just what was going on?

Why wasn't the transfer system working?

Was something interfering with it?

Did team rocket have some kind of transfer system jamming device

[ Three kilometers away from the present location of SS. Anne. ]

"Don't waste it, Champion Lance. You aren't going anywhere, tonight!" Executive Pierce snarled. "The ones at the ship will have to do it without your help."

"I'll be there, and you will be arrested." Lance snarled back, his fingers on his pokeballs. Dragonite had been having a hard time against the plethora of pokémon surrounding him from all sides. It was time to bring out the big guns.

Especially that Hydreigon. Lance thought bitterly. The dark draconic species from Unova was a real beast to deal with. Even Dragonite was having a hard time with it. Of course, it was easy to see that the beast was primal, untrained. But somehow, Team Rocket had infused it with all kinds of offensive attack moves—TM's obviously—and made it into a substantial threat.

Lance quickly recalled Dragonite. His starter had taken several hits from that beast of a Hydreigon, which needed to be dealt with quickly. The attack had proved to be a much greater threat than he had estimated.

At least the Ace Team will reach there in time.

" How… noble of you." A strange, unfamiliar voice reverberated all around him." Thinking about saving the ship even at the cost of your own life. Then again, you are the Champion, after all."

Lance stood agape, at the entity that had suddenly appeared in front of him. Levitating in the air, around twenty feet away, was a humanoid creature. Its entire body seemed to be enveloped in some kind of armor, while he could see a single cord-like structure connect its brain to its backbone as if the entire spinal cord had been modified into that structure. From the posterior, a rather thick tail-like protrusion extended out like an extended bulb shape.

"You…" Lance breathed, "-are that armored pokémon."

" Mewtwo," the voice reverberated once again. The surprising thing was, it seemed that despite being telepathically generated, the voice was audible, and could go as loud as Mewtwo wished it to be.

"Mewtwo," Lance repeated.

" Congratulations." Mewtwo returned. "You are the first person aside from my partner that I have deemed to share my name with."

Lance passively noted that even the Executives and their pokémon, even the Hydreigon, had stopped the battle to hear Mewtwo speak. Whoever this partner was, he was quite high up in the hierarchy, if not the Head of Team Rocket himself.

"Why me?" Lance asked, keeping his voice as casual as possible. Reaching the ship was still in the back of his mind, but getting out of the situation had a higher priority right now. Especially with the Executives around him.

" And humble too? I suppose you will give me a fair challenge."

'If you want a challenge, I'll give you one later." Lance answered firmly. "Right now, I have more important priorities at the stake."

" Hmm… interesting. I suppose you have a point. That means… you will have to be kept alive, to get me a decent challenge in the future…" Mewtwo pondered with an almost bored tone.

"Power plays are so… weird. "

His triangular slits in the armor above his eyes glowed bright blue, and suddenly, all of the Ace trainers were levitated in the air, all of them gasping as if someone had just grasped their throats tightly and raised them.

"Stop." Lance gritted his teeth.

The bluish shade turned a deep red before vanishing altogether, as several heads fell off from their bodies, the Ace trainers now decapitated, fresh, red blood sprouting out of their necks, as they hung lifelessly in the air. Almost instantly, Hydreigon was automatically summoned into its Pokeball which dropped to the ground as Pierce started screaming his lungs out, before falling to the ground, seemingly lifeless, just like the trainers, though there was no blood on his person.

" What..... kind of monster is this?" Lance shuddered, gnashing his teeth, as his fingers etched closer to his pokeballs.