The hyper fang that shall pierce the heavens (Pokemon SI)

Joey cautiously looked at his adversary, the grinning light blue-haired team rocket member with a Raticate.

They were set to battle, but for Joey, it was a weird situation because, in all previous battles, he'd always known approximately how tough his opponents would be. The gym leaders had clear standards, and trainers you'd meet on the road would also be of a certain ability depending on how many badges they had. Here, he knew nothing.

He only knew that Team Rocket Grunts in the games were usually pretty pathetic.

This particular Team Rocket grunt who'd initiated the mirror matchup of Raticate and Rattata didn't seem any different, simply staring hatefully. "If you're not going to start, then the honour goes to me future Team Rocket Executive Archer," he said with a puffed-out chest. "Just like Team Rocket, Raticate is on the rise, Quick Attack," he shouted.

The big brown rat jumped forward in a blur of motion; however, to Joey's eyes, it might as well have been standing still. He digested the fact that he was facing an actual future-named character, namely one of the Executives, but was okay with it because it was still years off before the man was actually a threat—unless he'd been stagnated as a trainer for a very long time. It didn't seem like it.

"Smash it," Joey said simply to his starter. Velocity and mass were what determined impact, and considering the Raticate was slow, even if it was big, it meant that the Quick Attack wouldn't be that threatening. In a clash between a normal-type and a fighting-type move, it was quite obvious which one would prevail.

Listening to his orders, Rattata stood his ground, pulled his fist back and met the Raticate head-on with a burnt-orange glowing punch to its torso as it crashed into the smaller Pokemon.

Time seemed to stop for a moment as the Raticate simply stood there with a fist buried deep in its stomach and its mouth opened in shock. Then, its eyes promptly rolled to the back of its head and it collapsed backwards onto the ground. 

Joey confusedly stared at the downed Pokemon while Archer sputtered with a red face. "God damned weakling," the man cursed and recalled the Raticate, clipping it to his belt with a few more threatening words. "You'll hear about this later you good-for-nothing. Being the thief of the team doesn't mean that you get to slack off in battle," he said harshly before quickly pulling out another Pokeball. Archer smirked deviously at Joey as he held it up. "Now let's see how you can handle some real firepower," he said and pressed the release button.

What came out of the Pokeball was certainly more impressive than the Raticate, at least in terms of rarity. It was Houndour. It was Joey's first time seeing that particular Pokemon. It was a dark and fire type from Johto, one of those canine-based Pokemon, but the dark typing man that wasn't as friendly as the average Growlithe.

"Give it some burn scars," Archer ordered, causing the Houndour to rear back its black head with the orange muzzle and spit out a wide barrage of Embers. It was similar to what Joey had faced in the past when he'd challenged that old man in Saffron. Back then, he hadn't had an answer to the move and had simply ordered Rattata to risk getting hit and dodge the small flames with Detect.

Now, however... "Dig," Joey said simply, at which Rattata disappeared underground as if he was sinking into it rather than digging.

Houndour, for its part, simply stood there confusedly as its embers dissipated uselessly in the air once they'd reached their maximum distance.

Archer was similarly at a loss at the simple tactic Joey had employed and just stood there stupidly.

Joey suddenly realised why this battle was starting to develop in a weird direction.

Criminals were trash. Those people who turned to crime because they failed to succeed in society. Considering that one of the most respected professions was battling, then obviously if someone was actually good at it, they wouldn't have needed to become a criminal in the first place. In the same vein that a thief stole grain from the field of a farmer, a Pokemon thief might be tempted to steal a better-trained Pokemon from someone else. The reasons were similar. It was because, just like how the thief was unable or unwilling to put into effort to grow the grain, the Pokemon thief was unwilling or unable to train the Pokemon himself.

That was probably why when the Rattata sprung up from underground to hit the fire type with the ground type move, neither Houndour nor Archer were truly able to react. The Houndour was unceremoniously punted into the air and was then hit by a barrage of Swift. Joey wanted to avoid a direct confrontation in which some burns might occur despite their opponent's incompetence.

This time, when Archer withdrew his Pokemon, he was silent. But through the way the muscles in his jaw were moving, he was most certainly gritting his teeth. Joey was very happy that the man didn't have a gun because this was the moment when he would have pulled it to threaten the youngster. Fortunately, this world was much more consistent in its themes than the anime had been, at least in the sense that guns were truly something rare.

"You think you're better than me, don't you," Archer suddenly said after a pause.

Joey glances to the side, where he saw Daisy and the other Team Rocket Grunt engaged in a more evenly matched battle of Starmie versus Ekans.

His lack of attention meant that he barely heard what Archer had said and thus didn't have a particularly deep reply ready. He contented himself with the truth.

"Quite frankly, I don't think about you at all," he said.

This finally caused Archer to pop a blood vessel and forget that it was Joey and Daisy who profited from the conflict dragging on as long as possible. The man dramatically swept one of his arms to the side. "This is the issue of this system: those who can pass the requisite tests, or should we say have the money and the ability to even attend the tests, get their Pokemon early and, with the support of the League, develop into someone who has a chance. But what about those of us who grow up in a society that shames us and rejects us at every turn? We have to scrape and bow for even the crumbs of the system, and once we do raise ourselves to achieve a higher standing, we are struck down for our insolence. Team Rocket stands against this unfair administration and allows even those of us who weren't born with a golden spoon in our mouths to achieve wealth and respect. You think you might have won today, but the truth is that our organisation has only started recruiting massively at the start of this year. What you're facing now is barely even the beginning, and in the future, you're going to all tremble at the mention of Team Rocket," Archer said proudly like a true brainwashed idiot.

It was here that Joey realised that the man had very clearly drunk his Kool-Aid. It pissed him off. "You think you're special?" the youngster replied back. "Every Society is constantly weaving a precarious balance of including some people into its cultural norms while excluding others. The most important part of any system is that it only excludes those who are either too incompetent to destroy it, or that it doesn't exclude enough of them to ever organise a revolt. You're a failure in the sense of a revolutionary if this is even how you think of yourself because the only thing you want to achieve is the usual garbage of money and being feared. You don't want to change the system; you just want to achieve the same things that it promises to its most successful members without any effort. In the end, your criminal band is just a conglomerate of leeches being led around by someone who, I presume, has entirely different goals but simply needs a bunch of fodder to fulfil them." The youngster shook his head. "I don't know how you can look at the society where most people are happy and thriving and think that it is something you are entitled to tear down. I guess you don't have a point of comparison, and you don't even know what true suffering is. You're just a child lashing out at being given a curfew and being forced to work for your success, not understanding that any system will have these requirements," Joey concluded. He was privileged to know that compared to his previous world, the Pokemon World was essentially utopian.

However, it was the human fault of only understanding things in relation to other things that caused the same revolutionaries and criminals to spring up. They thought they were being maltreated and perhaps they were, but that was only by the standards of this world. To Joey, they simply seemed like incredibly coddled children with no idea of how reality actually functioned. This world had free healthcare and no wars, and one succeeded in life according to how friendly one was to the local magical animals. The only people who failed in such a scenario were those who were either too stupid or psychotic to create bonds and learn useful skills. Thus anyone who unironically joined Team Rocket was clearly a moron.

Archer, for his part, most certainly did not agree with Joey's analysis and was even more red in the face than he had been previously, literally shaking with anger. His hand snaked its way to the third Pokeball at his belt, causing the youngster to wonder why the man had started acting as if he'd lost before he had even used his whole roster.

Joey glanced to the side to see that Daisy was now handily beating her own Team Rocket grunt with her Krabby.

"Who do you think you are, brat? You don't know anything about how the real world works!" Archer shouted. "I didn't want to do this. You won the battle, so you get to keep your Pokemon, but for that insult, you and your little rat can stay together in the afterlife," he said, throwing out that last Pokeball.

Joey wondered if the man had access to some sort of feral beast that he had managed to tame but thought that it would at least attack someone else if directed to do so.

He put a hand on Rattata's Pokeball, who had confusedly been listening to this conversation all the while, just in case what came out was too dangerous and he needed to take Daisy and run.

His blood froze as the red light coalesced into a double-headed purple Pokemon floating in the air, precariously close to Joey's position. He knew what was coming and started taking the necessary steps to survive.

"Weezing, Explosion," Archer shouted as he turned around to run away.

The Weezing started glowing white at the same time as Joey recalled Rattata. As the rat was recalled into Joey's hand, the youngster had a decision to make. Transporting other living creatures through Shadow Sneak exhausted him greatly and limited the usage of the technique. This wouldn't normally be an issue because as his team grew larger, so did his skills with the move. However, today was a special day in that he currently had three additional Pokemon. While their being inside their Pokeballs meant they would require less energy to transport than if everyone was out, it was still something that he wasn't too sure of.

Thus, making a cold-blooded gamble and trusting the structural integrity of the Pokeballs on his belt he promptly took off the last three that he'd hastily clipped on while fishing and threw them in the air behind himself.

"Weeeeeeezzziinnngggg!"

Just as he did so, the Weezing loudly shouted its name and started cracking at the seams, bright light spilling out. Joey threw himself backwards into his own shadow just as a wave of force comparable to that of a high-grade explosive suddenly shattered outwards from the floating poison type.

The explosion obscured his disappearance into his own shadow, and the loud noise distracted Daisy and the Grunt she was fighting just enough that when Joey popped up behind the other team rocket member, neither of them noticed.

It was the sound that hit them all next causing everyone to cover their ears in pain as the bang ripped through their heads. Despite this and the sudden storm of dust being thrown up, Joey kept his eyes peeled and sighed in relief when he saw the three Pokeballs flying high into the air propelled by the concussive force of the explosion, and breaking apart as they did so. Two Goldeen and one Poliwag suddenly found themselves flying in the sky and confusedly kicked at the world around before landing with a splash in the waters of the river. They had flown several dozen metres, but by how quickly the water around them churned as they swam off in three distinct lines of movement, they would be alright, if a bit traumatised.

It was just as all three of the present trainers started recovering their bearings that Joey, angry and exhausted beyond belief, jumped up at the Team Rocket Grunt, who was still facing away from him. With his aura-enhanced strength, Joey wrestled the man to the ground, gripping him by the neck, pushing his face into the dirt, and punching him as hard as he could at the back of the head.

From how he was straddling the man he felt him go limp in his fingers and let himself relax as he stood up. There was a knocked-out Zubat on the floor, and a victorious Krabby standing over it.

While Daisy goggled at his amazing MMA skills, Joey quickly turned around to check that Archer was truly running away instead of planning some sort of ambush.

That was why he was able to see the man who'd already covered quite a distance suddenly being tackled from the sky by an absolute unit of a Poliwhirl. The gigantic blue Pokemon wrestled the feral Team Rocket to the ground and put him in what looked to be an incredibly painful arm lock. Right behind the Poliwhirl on the river came what was obviously a trainer, and even from this distance, Joey could recognise that it was King riding on the back of Lapras.

"You had a second emergency button, didn't you?" Joey realised as he turned to the girl he'd mistakenly taken on his quest without knowing that she was the gym leader's daughter.

But wasn't Daisy supposed to be hanging out with her two sisters and practising water dance or something? He wondered as Daisy looked at him blankly.

"What?" she shouted at him, pointed to her ears, and then made a stop gesture.

Joey cursed, stood up and ran to the girl to check her ears, but thankfully found that they were not bleeding. It seemed that his ghost powers made him more resilient to even such injuries. The Krabby that she had fielded for her battle snipped at Joey's shorts as he got too close to its trainer during such a stressful time, making him jump away from the girl.

"I said you had a second emergency call button didn't you?" he asked once again in a more calm tone of voice. Being closer to the girl this time she seemed at least partially able to read his lips and so she nodded at his question.

"Yeah, I knew we just had to delay long enough so my dad could come get us. I didn't expect them to blow themselves up!" she shouted at him incredibly loudly while holding up her left arm which had a cute silver watch attached to it. Joey noted that it had one extra button, which was probably the distress signal.

He suddenly heard police sirens and turned around to see that a white, blue, and red car was coming towards them with Officer Jenny at the wheel.

King was not far behind and was jogging over with the Poliwhirl, who was carrying the knocked-out Archer like a sack of potatoes over his shoulder.¨

For a man who was slightly overweight, King was actually quite fast. He arrived at the same time as the car from which Officer Jenny had disembarked. The officer walked over to Joey at the same time that King ran over to his daughter and enveloped her in a hug.

"Are you alright, young man?" the blue-haired officer asked as she propped up a hand on her hip. She didn't seem particularly fazed at this dispatch, likely because there was a gym leader here.

In a world where battling prowess determines the capability to capture and defeat criminals, it was probably very reassuring to have one of the best trainers in the region there with you.

"You should see the other guy," Joey couldn't help but joke while King fussed over his daughter in the background.

The officer glanced at the downed Rocket Grunt that Joey had beaten unconscious before looking to the one that Poliwhirl had captured. She seemingly didn't find his joke very funny as she didn't grace it with a smile.

She simply went over to the downed grunt and handcuffed him, dragging him off with what seemed to be supernatural strength to her police vehicle, where she threw him in the back after divesting the man of all his Pokeballs.

She then went and did the same with Archer, cooperating with the Poliwhirl as if they'd worked together before.

"Thanks for being here with my daughter," King suddenly said to Joey after he'd left the poor girl's side, apparently finished with his helicopter parent routine. Daisy, if anything, looked if anything more traumatised from her overbearing father than she had been from her fight against the criminal.

"All in a day's work," Joey muttered darkly, suddenly remembering that he was technically on the job. 

"What's up, my boy?" the gym leader asked curiously.

"I lost all three of the water Pokemon I managed to catch today to the Explosion."

"You mean they died?" the gym leader asked aghast.

Joey shook his head. "No, I released them in a way that they wouldn't get hurt. They swam away last I saw."

King nodded. "Good, life is precious. We shouldn't waste it."

"Excuse me, could we all get to the station now? I think it's best that we go over the situation sooner rather than later while it's still on our minds," the officer interjected, obviously just keen on doing her job and getting this over with.

However, her doing her job went directly against Joey's job. The youngster held up a hand and noted it was shaking. Then he looked at Daisy, who seemed, now that the adrenaline had left her body, similarly afflicted, if not worse.

She wasn't going to be there to help him if he stubbornly stayed to continue fishing. Assuming she would let him borrow her fishing rod, he probably still wouldn't have enough time to manage… He looked up at the sky to see that it was already evening. It had taken him around four hours to catch those three Pokemon. Now that there had been an Explosion in the area, it would likely be even more difficult.

Similarly, the sooner he went to the police station and described the situation, the sooner law enforcement would perhaps have the necessary information to take further steps in protecting him and putting behind bars the people that they had captured today.

He sighed and slumped his shoulders. Taking off his cap, he ran a hand through his sweaty and messy hair. "For fucks sake," he muttered to himself, looking hatefully at the two knocked-out thugs at the back of the police car. "Fucking human trash," he said without any real emotion in the words.

There were always idiots running around ruining people's days. You just had to deal with it when it happened and take the setbacks as they came. Frustration wouldn't get you anywhere in cases like this since the dice had already been cast.

"Let's go," he said. All his Pokemon were healthy and didn't necessarily have to go to the Pokecenter, but it would still be good to get out of there and explain the situation to them. That everything was okay.

"I'll meet you at the station, officer," King said with a nod to Jenny, his big, meaty hand on the shoulder of his daughter.

"I'll see you soon, okay, Joey," Daisy said with a voice that was still slightly too loud for comfort.

The youngster cringed at the sound and nodded, assuming that since the police vehicle still had one seat in the front, he would be going with the officer rather than with the gym leader.

He assumed correctly, as in the next second, King led his daughter to the river where he summoned the Lapras he'd arrived with. The pair swiftly rushed through the river towards Cerulean.

Joey, meanwhile, was led to the police car, where he was seated next to Jenny.

He'd never actually been in a police car before, although the way that it was driven was the same as any other car he'd ever seen. The Pokemon World was seemingly still stuck on the manual and hadn't quite figured out automatic yet. The clutch was pressed down, the key was inserted, the ignition was started, and the car was put into reverse to turn around from where it had driven into the relatively narrow road of the new Riviera. The clutch was released to slowly circle the car before being put into first to leave.

Joey leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes as he heard the police sirens turn on, presumably to scatter the trainers who cluttered the Nugget Bridge so that the vehicle could pass.

"Glad you were there when the Rockets attacked," Officer Jenny said at some point. "I've known Daisy since she was a toddler, and I don't think she would have been able to handle it on her own."

"I'm also lucky that I was with her. Dealing with two of the idiots would have been perhaps beyond me. Although, they weren't all that dangerous," Joey replied as he dragged a hand down his face. He was still mourning the gym badge that he most likely wasn't going to get now. Unless he couldn't help but hope that King would reward him for his meritorious service in saving his daughter. It would be kind of a dickish move to not give him anything.

"Well, I say it like that mostly because they were probably after her. It's not easy being a gym leader's child," the woman in the car said as they pulled into the police station, where a unit of officers was already waiting for them so that they could take the two criminals into a holding cell.

Joey didn't say anything to that, simply getting out of the car. He didn't know how difficult it was to be the child of a gym leader. In this world, the only experience he had as a child was being an orphan. He slammed the door shut behind him and put his hands in his pockets.

He was feeling incredibly pissed off.

-/-

AN: Unexpected ending? I don't usually like dealing with rockets. prefer gym battles. But they are sort of an integral part of the setting. I WILL NOT SPEND A LOT OF TIME ON THEM. Just felt like I had to include something, my take on them

Yes they are fucking weak. Even the strongest exec was barely at sixth badge level, and that was in five years.

More chapters on patreon, I fixed the issue where tier 1 and 2 weren't getting notifications for updates. Free members now also get a monthly update schedule.