Open A Shadowy Past

Susan walked through the hall to the coffee machine, getting one of the styrofoam cups that was there and filling up the cup. She took a sip. It was bitter and burned her mouth, but the Shadow trainer seemed to enjoy it.

Coffee. Delicious.

Susan considered doddling, but went back into her office fairly quickly, as there was nothing to do in the hall anyway.

Ella strutted over to her. Susan picked her up and started petting her again. She sat down at her chair and drank more of her coffee, leaving about half of the drink left.

The Shadow Trainer looked at Xatu again, but nothing had changed. Susan monitored the security cameras.

Pulling a donut out of his back pocket, Chuck took a bite. Staring James down to preempt the inevitable questioning glance which reads "Aren't you fat enough already," he said, "I'm hungry. And you know I don't do fieldwork. I'll propose a trade-off. I get to work on making the DNA infusion one hundred percent effective at inducing loyalty, and you don't make me go on a diet. And before you ask where you get something in this trade, you don't." Laughing sadistically, Chuck headed off to the lab.
~~~
Descending the steps into the Well, Jon found himself stepping in something he didn't recognize. Pulling his foot out of the substance, he looked at his shoe. It was deep red.

"Oh, gosh, they never cleaned up all the Slowpoke blood? This is disgusting!" he said to himself. Watching his step, he continued into the well to find the obvious pool full of Slowpoke. Targeting one, he sent out his Scyther.

"Who says we can't get experience on our day off?" he asked. "Go get him, Slashem!" Surging forward at blazing speed, the Scyther readied his claws in an X-scissor. In typical Slowpoke fashion, the opponent took a full five seconds to recognize the threat and tried to run away, but Jon knew something was wrong when it staggered and fell on its head, its butt sticking up in the air. It had no tail. Feeling instant compassion, Jon called off the attack.

"Wait, stop! Change that to a False Swipe. Let's see if I can catch this guy and take him to a PC." Slowing down a bit, Slashem responded right before the hit and barely nicked the pink Pokemon. Pulling out one of the PokeBalls he just bought, Jon threw it and the Slowpoke offered no real resistance to being caught. He headed back to the surface and quickly went to a PC.

"I just caught this Pokemon." he explained. "I know you can't heal the tail, but can you at least give him a standard treatment? I bet he's still in a lot of pain. The Pokemon yawned indignantly. "She, I guess," said Jon as the Chansey started to patch up the Slowpoke's wounds.

James opened his mouth to object, but before he could say anything, Chuck was already gone.

"Sure, you can go do my job," James snarled under his breath, "you can go do the job of the researcher that's been painstakingly testing every single possible outcome for the Shadow Trainers, and unnecessarily ending the lives of countless subjects. Not that I have a problem with any of that."

Muttering some more, he took out his PokeGear yet again and dialed Placido's number. At the same time, he tossed a pokeball and deployed his Rotom known as Astat.
----
Placido had only been reading the newspaper for a few moments when his PokeGear went off again. He looked at the number, and was very tempted not to answer when he saw that it was James' ID.

He waited for it to ring a few times before finally answering. He opened the hopefully-brief conversation with: "What is it that you could possibly want this time?"

"There's been... a change of plans. My shift has been taken for the day, so it's been requested that... I, ah, go to Ecuteak with you."

Placido sighed, and signaled Skiel to come with him. Exiting the department store, he said: "I thought that position had already been taken."

Placido heard James mutter something that sounded like "so did I." Before he could inquire about that, James added, "The assignee got reassigned. Nobody's now going to Ecruteak, but there's still rumors of at least one Resistance member causing trouble for us up there, I don't think-"

"Perhaps, but there are rumors of that everywhere. Why should I care about one place from another?"

There was a sigh from the other end of the connection. "Look, I don't care if you want to go or not. I need to go, but none of my pokemon are flight capable. If it really bothers you that much, then just have one of yours drop me off there."

After a moment, Placido shrugged. "If you say so. I'll send Taiyo there right now." With that, he cut off the connection, and signaled the Salamence, who was still perched on the rooftop. The dragon flew down to the base, and after a few moments, flew quickly back up again, with a no doubt stunned James riding on its back.

"Return soon, Taiyo," Placido said, walking through the city streets, "we've a lot of work to do, you and I."