Title: Myamoto Project Story Three: Paths
Author: Shadowcat
Shadowcat's Note: PG-13, as always. This just keeps getting
weirder...you've been warned...
"Mya, you must have no fear!" shouted Giovanni over the Gym floor. He
stood with his pet Persian upon a balcony, watching a fierce battle
below. The young woman, Myamoto, had thin streams of blood trailing down
her face and determination in her eyes. She glared at the Growlihe
that was her opponent, raising her small wooden club, her only weapon.
The Growlithe had been trained to be vicious, to attack people. For
Myamoto, this human-on-pokemon battle was both training and punishment.
Giovanni set her to battle like a gladiator of Ancient Rome,
human-against-fierce-beast. "True" Pokemon Battles were not like this, but
Giovanni suspected that they would become so someday. He had a penchant for
all things Roman.
Her first assignment had gone well, but not well enough. She had
proven that she truly did have no memories of her predecessor - that she was
a perfect clone. She, however, had shown a weakness, Fear, causing her
assignment to remain incomplete.
Soon, they would be departing this place. Things had been based here
for too long. Team Rocket had already begun setting up the cloning
labs at a place codenamed "Isle Noir".
The Growlithe leapt for Myamoto again. She sent it reeling,
unconscious to the far end of the Gym with her club. She stood, sweating and
gasping for breath, awaiting her Master's approval.
"Well done, Myamoto. Well done."
Jessie swam across a swift river, almost getting pulled under by the
current. She emerged soaked and bedraggled on the other side. She had
escaped the Vermilion City Hospital five days ago. Both Jenny of the
Mount Moon Patrol and Jenny of Vermilion City with their packs of
Growlithes were after her.
It was not merely concern for her health because of the gunshot wound
that she had sustained, but because she was now a fugitive from
justice, fleeing the "house arrest" she had been effectively put under at the
hospital.
Jessie had learned of a secret Team Rocket base that the Boss had set
up from hacking into the Team Rocket main computer system through a
computer at the hospital late at night. It was somewhere in the Viridian
Forest.
There was a record Jessie had found. Most of it was encoded beyond
her hacking abilities, but it was titled "The Myamoto Project" and listed
a connection with the Viridian Base.
"Myamoto". Her mother's name. Perhaps she hadn't been hallucinating
about the face that she saw that terrible night when she and James got
shot. She knew that there was something up - something to do with her
mother - and she was going to sneak into that Viridian Base to find out
what.
Jessie parted through a tangle of young tree branches as she came to a
place in the forest where she had seen smoke. She had left the Jennys
and their Growlithes far behind, beyond the river. She thought she
could hear them baying in the distance. She would not be caught, not
until she found out what she had to know.
She felt ironic, being on a search for the truth.
What met Jessie's eyes in the woodland clearing was a great smoldering
ruin.
"Wha-" she said aloud as her orbs of sapphire were scanning the scene.
It was clear that the wreckage had been and enormous compound of some
sort. Jessie walked through the ashes, peering behind the standing
ruins of walls, hoping to find some wisp of evidence of what went on there.
Behind a toppled wall of brick, she did find something.
"Meowth?"
"Jessie?"
"Meowth, what are you doing here?" Jessie asked, eyes wide and mouth
agape.
Meowth ran to her with tears in the corners of his eyes and hugged her
tightly around the legs; "Jessie, you and James, I tawght you guys were
dead!"
Jessie went on to explain waking up in the Vermilion City Hospital,
James being in a coma, her escape, and the image of the assassin bearing
the face of her mother.
"Myamoto was your MOTHER?!" Meowth exclaimed. Jessie stared at him,
shocked.
"How do you know her name? Who she is?"
Meowth explained what he knew. Jessie sat down beside him. The
conversation lasted well over two hours. The cat explained the records that
he had seen - the secrets that Giovanni had shared with him when he was
his favored pet.
He told what he knew of the old Joy/Jenny Project...and of The Boss'
dream of The Myamoto Project.
"The perfect soldier;" Jessie sighed painfully; "Mom was the Best, I
constantly lived under her shadow. I joined Team Rocket, Meowth,
because - because I wanted to bring honor to my family - to honor her. The
Boss...said once...that I was a disgrace to her memory..."
Meowth saw something in Jessie's face that he had very rarely ever
seen before, true sorrow. She was an expert at hiding her emotions - except
her anger, which she readily revealed, often in some painful way, to
him and James. Things like pure, unsuperficial sorrow, however, were
expressions that he seldom witnessed in his red-haired human friend.
"She died...somewhere in the Andes when I was just a child;" Jessie
continued; "The body was never found...how would they - the
geneticists-have cloned her?"
"Da Boss has files;" Meowth replied; "Every human Rocket member is in
it, includin' him. His mother or grandfather or somebody set it up
years ago - when Team Rocket got started. Everyone's blood samples are in
dose files."
"Which means - it is true - they cloned my...mother...from a blood sample?
Why did my mother try to kill me...?"
Light tears were streaming down Jessie's cheeks.
"She...wouldn't be exactly your mother, Jessie;" Meowth spoke softly,
trying to provide some measure of comfort, though small; "She...is like
da Joys an' Jennys. Dey are all...a little different...an' different
from da originals. Myamoto who shot ya...wasn't really your mother."
"Whatever's going on, it must be stopped;" Jessie sighed, standing up;
"Perhaps we can find some clues here."
"It's a ruin;" said Meowth; "torched to destroy all evidence."
"Still, maybe there's SOMETHING." Jessie began sifting through ashes
with her hands, seeking some small thing that remained undamaged. She
wasn't sure what she hoped to find, but would know when she saw it.
"I wish I could see James;" Meowth muttered; "Is know that you said he
was in pretty bad shape, but I still wish I could see 'im."
"We could call the hospital;" Jessie suggested; "Get some news - like if
he's woke up. There's no way of knowing otherwise. I'll have to
disguise myself - we could use the phone at the Pokemon Center in Viridian
City."
Viridian City was not very far. Within and hour of leaving the
burnt-out Team Rocket Base in the Viridian Forest, Jessie and Meowth were in
the Viridian City Pokemon Center, dressed as and old woman and her pet
Meowth on a leash, respectively.
"Yes, is this Vermilion City Hospital?" Jessie asked into the
videophone as she was greeted with the smiling visage of a young woman
receptionist; "I wish to inquire about a patient under care there."
The receptionist put Jessie on hold for a long five minutes after
which she was greeted by a Doctor Jensen - Chief of Staff.
"I am inquiring about James Rochester in Room 204;" Jessie asserted.
"May I ask who is calling?" replied the young physician; "we are not
authorized to release that information to anyone but close relatives."
"I'm his aunt, Lois Rochester."
Jessie waited while Dr. Jensen checked through his computer data
records. She knew that the name would clear - James did have an Aunt Lois.
He mentioned it to her once. It seemed funny to Jessie some of the
weird little things she remembered James telling her around the campfire at
night. There was no logical reason in her mind why she would bother to
remember him mentioning his Aunt Lois, but she did.
"Ms. Rochester?" the Doctor asked, snapping Jessie out of her reverie;
"We regret to inform you...your nephew passed away at approximately
2:03pm today. I'm very sorry."
All color drained from Jessie's face. She stared at the blank
videophone screen after hanging up. Already weary from the grief she had
poured out to Meowth today, this pronouncement was too much for her. She
fainted.
Dr. Jensen returned to doing paperwork after getting off the phone
with "Ms. Lois Rochester". He glanced over his shoulder with a nervous
eye. The black-clad Team Rocket agent behind him had his gun holstered,
but that was little comfort.
*That James Rochester fellow must be SOME important guy.* Jensen
thought. Team Rocket agents had swarmed in and taken over Vermilion City
Hospital at precisely 2:00pm that afternoon. It was 6:00pm now and they
still hadn't left. They had already taken what they had come for - the
young shooting victim in Room 204, a Rocket agent himself.
Jensen wondered if all Rockets were given such treatment by their Team
when in need of hospitalization - kidnapped even when in Intensive Care.
Perhaps, it had been a mistake for Mr. Rochester to have been brought
here, perhaps Team Rocket had their own hospital of some sort for their
members - to best guard their secrets.
Dr. Jensen didn't know. All he knew was that, if anyone outside the
hospital asked; the official word was that James Kojiro Rochester in
Room 204 was dead.
James awakened upon a steel table, bright white light burning into his
eyes. He had been slipping in and out of consciousness for the past
four days after being in a coma-state for almost two weeks, but was
finally beginning to truly awaken. Images came back into his memory in
sporadic flashes.
He was in the woods, chasing somebody. Jessie had been shot.
He was on some sort of gurney, being wheeled into the back of a black
van-by people dressed in black.
He was getting some sort of needle thrust into his arm.
James tried sitting up, but found himself too weak. He lay back down
with a low groan. He was naked except for a pair of boxer shorts.
Tubes and needles were projecting from ever part of his flesh that he
could see.
*What is going on here?*
For a moment, James wondered if he might have been abducted by aliens.
This seemed a lot like some accounts of supposed "alien abduction
survivors" he had read about.
His eyes scanned the room he was in, as much as he could see of it,
anyway. A steel cage in a corner held a Jolteon. James felt a
not-unpleasant dizziness come over him.
*Not again!* he thought as he lost consciousness once more.
When James came to again, he was no longer upon a steel table, but
inside a small prison cell. He was still clad in nothing but his boxer
shorts and his body was racked with a tremendous ache.
He felt the greatest pain in his chest - his lungs felt as if they were
weighted down with iron. There were other spots of soreness in his
arms and legs, looking at them, he saw numerous small wounds, a few of
them slowly seeping small amounts of blood.
As James crawled around on the floor of the cell he noticed something.
As he stretched out his hand, sparks and small arcs of electricity
emanated from it!
He wearily stood, barely able to keep his balance. Delicate spirals
of lightning swirled up his legs, traveled up his torso and sparked off
his skin. It looked eerily reminiscent of an electric-pokemon's
attack, but James felt no pain from it.
"He's still alive and is no longer comatose;" James heard a voice say;
"It appears that the splice was a success."
James looked toward where he thought the voice came from. There were
three men and one young woman standing a few feet from the bars of his
cell. One of the men, James recognized. Giovanni, the Boss of Team
Rocket.
"His power shall have to be tested;" Giovanni said to the man who had
made the previous statement.
"Then;" whispered the young woman; "You will try it on me?"
"Yes;" Giovanni replied; "More tests will necessarily be done, but
with this breakthrough, Team Rocket will indeed have a race of perfect
soldiers - ones with true power."
He continued; "It actually turned out a good thing, Myamoto, that you
failed to kill him - he provided the perfect subject for this - the first
one to actually survive the procedure. I am pleasantly surprised."
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!!" James demanded; "WHERE'S JESSIE AND
MEOWTH?!!" Arcs of lightning flashed off his body, seeming to express his
fury, illuminating the interior of his cell.
"James, James, James. Calm down;" Giovanni sneered; "You should feel
honored. You have become a milestone of modern genetic science. When
you and your partner first told me about that incredible Pikachu that
you found, remember how pleased I was? How much I wanted you to capture
it for me? You never knew what I wanted to use it for, did you?"
He paused, then continued; "Well, I no longer need the Pikachu.
Cassidy and Butch brought me a high-level Jolteon several days ago. You
have been, shall we say, 'spliced' with that Jolteon, James. Your body is
now capable of producing powerful electric currents! If you continue
to survive, Team Rocket will have a new power on our side - human members
with the power and strength of pokemon! It will be a grand asset for
the army of perfect soldiers soon to populate the ranks. If you prove
useful and cooperative, perhaps there will be no need to terminate you
at the end of the experiment and you will be allowed to join them."
James looked at Giovanni balefully - in horror of what had been done to
him - of what The Boss and his secret scientists were doing to him!
"Perfect soldiers? With pokemon powers?" he whispered; "What have you
done with Jessie and Meowth?"
"You should be happy to know that, for the time being, we do not know
where your former partners are. I have men searching for them. But
they will be taken care of soon enough."
"We should leave him now;" said one of the two men beside Giovanni,
the one that had not as yet spoken; "Giving him more stress could
jeopardize his body's taking of the splice. We need to check the tanks
anyway - to view the progress of Mya's 'sisters'."
Giovanni, the two scientists, and the young woman slowly left the
room. As they closed the laboratory's heavy stainless-steel door behind
them, James' emerald eyes watched them from behind the bars of the tiny
cell in the corner. The young woman stared at him - the look in her eyes
very strange to James. It was as if she understood the confusion that
he was going through.
Author's Endnotes: Hang in there! I know that this is getting strange and perhaps even a
bit confusing, but I do have plans for at least one more story to this
Series, so, believe it or not, all this weird stuff IS actually leading
somewhere!
Shadowcat's author page
Myamoto Project - story index
Fanfiction: listing by title
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