Red the Conqueror 41

Red kissed the girl whose life had been turned around, giving her a toe-curler of a goodbye, as passed her Grunt uniform to Blue, knowing she wouldn't be needing it ever again, not after her life had been flipped, turned upside down.

Not everyone fell to crime because they were evil, after all. Some fell to crime because they found a place to belong, people who cared for them, or at least, people who appeared to care for them. Partners who supported them, friends that fought alongside them, and maybe even a retirement plan.

But she didn't need that anymore. Not when she had been shown so thoroughly, over several hours, just how much value she really had, that she didn't need to seek anyone else's approval nor did she need to have someone else validate her thoughts and feelings.

"Well, that was surprisingly easy," Blue hummed. "I mean not that I don't appreciate having an easy job once in a while, but, still, that felt way too easy."

Red balled up his fists and glared at her. They had collected their stuff from the cheap motel and made sure to impress on the owner the need for silence about their presence there, and then followed their partner for the night out.

As they stepped out, Blue adjusted her skirt and the spats she wore underneath. Normally, she wouldn't really wear shorts under her skirt, it was something she had done when she was younger and even up until recently, but traveling with Red had awakened her inner exhibitionist a long time ago. She even felt a little awkward wearing them again after so long.

But, well, she didn't have any clean pairs of underwear to put on.

"So, we've got two things to do here. The first," Blue hummed, "we gotta find Sabrina. With her help we can probably kick Team Rocket out of the city so it isn't so weirdly dour and full of thugs everywhere," she said.

Red nodded, then he raised a hand and pointed at the tallest tower in town, the skyscraper that housed Silph Co., their main administrative offices, and the production facilities for their most expensive products.

"Yeah, that too."

Team Rocket, apparently, was after two things. The Silph Scope, a tool which could overcome the powers of Ghost Type Pokémon, and the rumored "Maximal Pokéball".

"So do you want to go over to Silph Co. first, or-"

Red shook his head, then crossed his arms and glared towards the North East, in the direction of where they knew Sabrina to be held captive. Team Rocket had overwhelmed her and managed to take her prisoner, bringing her... exactly next door to her own Gym, to the former Gym.

Saffron, not more than a decade ago, had been a city with a Fighting Type Gym, but Sabrina had decided she wanted the biggest city in Kanto for her own and utterly crushed the Fighting Gym, rumor said that she defeated all of their trainers on her lonesome.

"Yeah, I figured, if you had to choose between a woman and objects," Blue laughed. "Okay! Let's get a move on!"

Getting a move on, as it turned out, meant trekking towards the north eastern edge of the city, which was surprisingly easy as they had already made a mess on other parts of the city and thus the Rockets were looking for them on the western side of the city.

"If anyone asks, we did that deliberately," Blue said.

Red responded with a serious nod and a thumbs up, as they approached the entrance to the former Gym of Saffron, literally right next door to the current, but closed, Gym of Saffron.

"Alright, Red, this is it," Blue said. "Once we go in there, we're probably gonna be battling for our lives against very skilled former Gym trainers, and possibly even the former Gym Leader. These battles are gonna be tough, they're gonna be hard, but I'll be right here with you, and-"

There was a moment's pause and she burst out laughing.

"Sorry I couldn't resist," she said, raising her hands and clenching them into fists before pumping her fist. "Alright!" she shouted into the air. "Time to challenge these bozos!"

Red took the first step past her, pushing the door to the gym open, they hadn't even locked it, and immediately walked into a recreation of one of those old fighting dojos. While the building was a modern brick and mortar building, the inside had been remodeled with wooden paneling, tatami mats all around the arena, and stands which were simple benches with cushions on them.

Near the center of the room was the arena, larger than normal to accomodate for the mobile fighting types it normally housed, a simple sort, a hard packed dirt surface with the classic rectangular design split down the middle.

On it, a pokémon from a foreign land, which the Pokédex named "Makuhita" was being raised by a Machoke over its body, before being flung away, much to the dismay of the blue haired foreigner, who cried out the name of his Pokémon as it was knocked out by the Vital Throw move it had just received.

A man in a white gi with a black belt, a red bandana on his head and bare feet shouted and raised his fist, crying out in victory, imitating the pose that his Machoke took, then both of them posed, curling their arms in opposite directions to look bigger.

"Alright, that is enough silliness for today," Blue mused. "After you!" she said, gesturing at Red to go forward.

Red nodded, and stepped forward, bouncing a Pokéball on his hand.

The blue haired foreigner grunted. "Alright bro, I'll take my loss," he said, shaking his head with a grin on his face. "Say, you wouldn't happen to know where I can catch some gnarly waves to clear my mind, would ya?" he asked.

"I still can't understand a word you're saying!" the black belt trainer said, huffing.

"I recommend going just west and north of Vermillion, when the big ships pass there's huge waves, you might find what you want there, but you know, it's dangerous and all," Blue said.

"Gotcha sis," the stranger said, turning around and passing Red and Blue as he went out of the Gym. "Oh, and by the by," he said, getting closer to Blue, "the League says hello. We'll deal with the cleanup," he said, winking at Blue. "Peace!"

She froze for a moment, but he threw up a peace sign and, well, peaced out.

Red frowned and clenched his free hand.

"Challengers! Come one come all, we'll show all you people why the Fighting Gym was the one that should've stayed!" the Black Belt crowed.

All the spectators, people in various colored gi with various belt colors on their waists all cheered.

Blue put a hand on Red's shoulder. "We've been had," she chuckled. "Though I guess having official backing's pretty nice now and then," she spoke. "With that we don't need to be careful anymore."

Red nodded. He brought his hand up to his mouth, then tapped Blue's chest, and she nodded.

"What's that? Persian got ya tongue lil' boy? What? Your lil' girlfriend's gotta speak for ya?"

Blue laughed. "Ohhh, boy, you really do NOT want to piss him off like that," she said.

A vein popped from Red's forehead, as he was reminded that, despite his recent growth, he was still quite vertically challenged. He threw his Pokéball in the air, and out came his loyal friend, partner, and fellow vertically challenged individual, his Charizard.

That Charizard was no less angry about the comments about height than his mater was.

Red pointed a hand at the Machoke, with his pointer finger at the ready to make sure Charizard understood who the target was, then clenched his entire hand into a fist, brought it back, and snapped it forward.

At the moment Red finished the motion, Charizard's mouth erupted into a flamethrower that impacted like a freight train against the Machoke and sent it flying towards one of the walls of the building, the powerful flames rapidly knocking the Pokémon out, fainting it outright in the first attack, and leaving a charred mark on the back wall.

The wood, unsurprisingly for a Gym, survived Charizard's powerful flame.

"Boy I hadn't even-"

Red stepped forward with a stomp, raising both hands and making sweeping gestures, pointing at each of the Gym Trainers that were sitting on the stands, observers beside the arena, before bringing his hands forward and slamming them together, his left turned into a fist, the right, open to catch that fist.

"Y-You- he won't talk!" the Leader guy said.

"He means he'll take all of you on at once," Blue said.

Red nodded, then gestured at Blue.

She rolled her eyes and passed him two of her Pokéballs.

Red then tossed out five Pokéballs at once, Latias, Nidoking, Nidoqueen and Latios.

Leaning slightly forward, Red sent an evil smirk at all of the enemy trainers, who were scrambling to throw out their Pokéballs, pointing his thumb at himself, then sweeping his hand across all of them, before once again bringing his hands together, except this time, they came together open, into a powerful clap.

The moment everyone was sending their Pokémon out, Red and Blue's Pokémon were in motion.

Blue swore she could hear the laugh from Red's heart, through her connection to Latios, and it sounded so bonechillingly evil that she even got a little bit wet.

"I really am a huge pervert," she muttered as she absent mindedly dodged around all the flying attacks as Red started to utterly slaughter the Gym fighters, sending a thanks to Latios for the information about where every attack would've gone with extreme precision, as well as reading the minds of the Leader to know where the entrance to the secret rooms behind the back of the Gym where, covered by some wall scrolls framed and attached to the wall.

It was a tunnel carved into the walls by the hand of fighting type Pokémon, and it bore the marks of Hitmonchan punches, and Hitmonlee kicks, which had been used to tightly compact the structure of it and make sure it was durable, and reinforced no doubt by Machoke builders.

She tried to ignore the slight shaking of the walls as Red had fun utterly stomping the people who dared make fun of his height, even if it might've well been totally an accident, and then found her way to the bottom of the dimly lit passage.

When she reached the end, she found a small cell, hastily built, where there was a barely visible woman. She at first seemed to be sitting on a chair, though Blue pulled out her flashlight and pointed it at her.

Immediately, it became obvious she was tied to that chair. Blindfolded, gagged and wearing headphones that no doubt blocked outside sounds. The cell was hastily constructed but solid, bars of iron anchored to the ground and ceiling.

Lucky for her, they had gotten a couple more things than just a really good time at Fuchsia.

While training Janine, they had also spent some time looking for possible new team members, and though Red was extremely careful about taking on new Pokémon, Blue didn't mind catching a couple for utility purposes, and she and he had returned to the Saffari Zone where she followed Grace's example.

She let out the Rhydon that had been a Rhyhorn in the Saffari Zone. A strong Pokémon, capable of digging, pushing huge boulders, smashing rocks, felling trees and squashing pests.

"Alright, Rhydie, be a dear and very carefully break this cage, would you?"

She hadn't had as much time as she would've liked training Rhydon, but he still answered by doing as she asked, using its relatively limited dexterity on its hands to grab at and pull apart the bars. Thankfully the tunnel was just about big enough for Rhydon to move, probably because it might've been meant to be a basement bunker at some point.

After her Pokémon destroyed the cage, she returned him to his ball, then walked into the now open cage. The first two things she did was remove the headphones and gag.

The prisoner was...

Asleep actually.

She removed the blindfold, and then untied her hands and legs, and only once she was free, did Blue slap the woman on the cheek.

Immediately, the dark haired woman was awake.

"Is it morning already?" she muttered sleepily. "You're not a smelly man," she reflected. "Explain."

"Can't you just read my mind?" Blue asked. "I heard you can do that."

"If I was in a better state, more relaxed, had several minutes to do so and you were receptive, I could read your surface thoughts," she spoke, "but just explain, it's faster."

"Fine. We're here to rescue you," Blue said.

"I see. You were sent by the league?" Sabrina asked. "The S.O.S. message must've finally reached."

"No, some other guy was here to do that I think but he just kinda left it to us," Blue said.

Sabrina huffed. "Whatever the case," she spoke, "we need to retrieve my Pokémon, once they're free I can easily defeat these thugs, without the Team Rocket Leader by their side they won't even give me pause!" she said, stretching her arms and shoulders.

"No need, my partner is currently making them regret their life's choices," Blue said, offering a thumbs up. "And trust me, you do NOT want to get in the way of that until he gets it out of his system."

"I don't need psychic powers to know when to fold my cards," Sabrina admitted immediately. "Very well. I really wish to change out of these clothes, I haven't been allowed to shower for the past week," she said, testing the range of motion of her arms and shoulders. "Come, I've no doubt the idiot that leads this gym keeps my Pokémon close to him in his office, thinking he'll get them to obey him at some point."

"Righto," Blue called. "By the way, just so you're not surprised, your underwear's kinda showing."

Her pants were torn up in several places and her shirt so threadbare that it was falling apart. Her outfit looked like it was a set of pajamas in the first place, and those hadn't survived being worn for so long nonstop.

"Bah. As if I care that some losers can see my body," she spoke. "Simpletons may gawk and drool at me if they wish, I invite it even," she said.

"Good, just wanted you to know," Blue said.

The duo then started to go up the tunnel together. Luckily, it was more than wide enough for them to walk side by side, and slowly, the sounds of a really one sided battle came down to them. When they finally came out, they saw the absolute massacre that had ensued, with defeated Pokémon and trainers strewn about, and a single man stood at the middle.

Adjusting his cap on his head and his jacket on his shoulders, Red pronounced the battle complete with his actions, having demonstrated who was really the small one in the gym.

Sabrina's eyes narrowed as she laid eyes on him.

"Is he your partner?" she asked.

"Yep," Blue replied. "Sabrina, Red, Red, Sabrina," Blue said, making the introductions.

Red looked at her, and Sabrina shuddered, hugging her body with her arms.

"What nightmarish power," the psychic muttered. "I see this is how it is then... I can tell why the league left this in your hands," she muttered. "Let's get my Pokémon back, and then, we'll retake the city."

Red nodded. Blue nodded excitedly.

The didn't need the connection through Latios and Latias to be on the same wavelength regarding what they would be doing sooner rather than later.