Getting Kidnapped

ROSE POV

“Argh!” You groan and smack your head against your keyboard. Another simulation failed. Despite months of research and modifying your parameters, you’ve only managed to bring the mortality rate down to 40%. You rest your head on your light-up keyboard, the RGB lights cycling through the rainbow as you try not to cry. What are you doing wrong?! Why won’t the freaking Butterfrees live?!

You let yourself continue your pity party for a few more minutes before straightening up. You fix your short black hair by looking at your monitor, retying it back into a bun until you’re satisfied with your appearance. You’d much rather have it flowing down to your shoulders, but long hair was a hazard in the lab. Expressive blue eyes look back at you, tears glimmering in the corners, and you wipe them dry with a sleeve before turning on your monitor again. Okay, what if you tried changing the Phenylalanine to Aspartic acid, the polar molecule being better at dissolving in water? Plus it could hydrogen bond with the compound, meaning that it wouldn’t dissociate and spread throughout the body. Maybe that would work.

You scribble down your latest changes and start the simulation anew. It would take an hour or so for it to compute all the changes, so you just have to kill time until then. You glance around your office, gazing at the place where you spend most of your time. It’s fairly large, about the size of an average living room with two white sofas and a table in the center. The walls have teakwood panelling, and a window makes up one wall, giving you a beautiful view of the sunset from your 20th-story room. On the other end, a small alcove contains a few drinks, from your favourite whiskey to other wines and sodas for Daisy. What isn’t covered by wood panelling is painted a warm vermillion, and a few of your research awards are framed all around. Your desk is made of pitch-black ebony wood, a gift from one of your father’s friends, and a picture of your family from when you were a kid sits close to your computer.

The picture was taken when you were 8, just before the accident that claimed your mom’s life. She was an amazing trainer and an even more amazing activist for female trainer’s rights. If it wasn’t for your mom, the **** clauses that allowed male trainers to enslave women would still exist. It was her efforts that made slavery illegal. And that day was also the last happy memory you had until you met Daisy. That stupid drunk driver just had to hit the two of you…

At least he and your mom died quick deaths…

Okay, that’s enough. You’re going to make yourself cry even more.

You wipe your eyes and look at your computer, your pride and joy and one of the only things that brought you meaning before you met your fiancée. In contrast to the otherwise professional office, your computer looks like it belongs more in a teenager's room. Your PC is completely hand-built from every single screw on the case to every single solder on the motherboard. With 64 gigs of ram, a customized Pwnvidia 5080Ti Super graphics card and the best CPU that money could buy, your baby could run anything several times over without the fans even getting louder than a whisper. And of course, you covered it all with the brightest RGB lights you could find. The entire thing glows rainbow, from the case, all the way down to your mousepad. Now, what could you do to kill time?

Daisy asked you to select your choices for the wedding cake, and you’ve been putting that off. Maybe you could do it now? You pull up the email she sent you and look at the choices. Hmm, you know that she likes chocolate cake, so you could get that. With little rose icing decorations…

“Rose! I have terrible news!” Your dad bursts through your office door, your bewildered secretary, Elena behind him, making apologetic faces at you. Amerelo Belladonna, your dad, is your direct boss and the owner of Golduck Biosciences. He’s in his sixties and looks his age, with a bald wrinkled head and a full white beard. He’s wearing a white lab coat, something that surprises you because he never wears it outside the lab. Brown chinos and black dress shoes finish off his look, and he adjusts his glasses as he waits for you to let him in. His brown eyes are filled with concern and panic as he stumbles in, out of breath from exertion.

“What is it, Dad?” You ask, waving at Elena. He enters and closes the door before looking at you with a sullen face.

“They’re ending your project, Rose.” He says in a dour tone, looking upset at the news.

“What!” You exclaim, shocked at the news, “Dad, you have to tell them to give me more time! I got the survival rate to 60%, I can get it higher! You can’t scrap my project when I’m making steady progress!”

“You don’t understand, dear.” He says, looking very depressed, “They’re not ending it because of lack of progress. They want to push it into production.”

Your mouth drops open in shock as you process what he just said. “Y-you c-can’t…” Shit, your stutter was coming back. You take a breath and compose yourself before you continue. “You can’t do that. Four out of ten Pokémon. Will. Die.” You say angrily, furious that he’d even entertain the notion. To his credit, he looks dejected about it as well, but you’re furious that this even passed.

“Rose, it was out of my hands.” He says weakly, sitting down on the sofa. “And they’re on their way to collect your data as we speak. I came as soon as I heard to give you a heads-up.”

“Screw them. I’m deleting everything I have. I won’t let them hurt the Pokémon like that!” You mutter, trying to log in to purge everything you have. You open the website and put in your login details and press enter, watching the spinning wheel go round and round. Come on, why is it taking so long?!

Login failed. Access Denied.

No. No, no, no, no! You frantically try again, only to get the same error message. NO! They can’t use your research to hurt Pokémon!

Someone knocks on the door and your dad darts to his feet, looking terrified. A look you’ve only seen on his face once before. When he came to get you in the hospital after the accident that killed your mother and nearly killed you.

The door creaks open and the temperature in your office drops at least 10 degrees as a man stands in the doorway. His pale icy blue eyes glint with an evil intelligence as he studies your office, every exhale releasing a cloud of steam from his mouth. And despite your office being climate controlled to a nice 30 degrees, you’re chilly all of a sudden. Elena is nowhere to be seen, and you’re worried about what this man could have done to her. Because everything about him screams danger.

His crisp and perfect black suit is matched by a red tie that has suspiciously darker red splotches across it and his very expensive watch screams of wealth. His sharp and narrow face is like that of a starving animal, with cunning blue eyes set up high, to give him a better line of sight and his pale pink lips are pursed in a disapproving frown as he looks at you- no through you, and you can feel him gazing into your soul as he studies you.

He walks in without an invitation and your father looks at you with silent pleading in his eyes before looking back at him nervously. The man glances at him for a second before navigating around your sofa to stand at your desk. His skin is ashen white, and despite his lankiness, he moves with the grace of a dancer, every move calculated to use the least amount of effort. You see him quickly scan you up and down, not lecherously but coldly and carefully, assessing if you’re a threat.

“You care a lot about Pokémon, don’t you?” He asks darkly, voice low and dangerous. His pale blue eyes look at you unblinkingly, waiting for your answer, and you know that if he doesn’t like your reply, something terrible is going to happen. Every nervous inhale sucks in more and more icy air, the cold wind prickling your throat as you freeze in terror. You glance at your dad in terror, begging him to help you because you have no idea what to say.

“She’s just very passionate about her research, sir!” Your dad bursts out, saving you from the deadly tension-filled silence. Thank you, Dad! Now, what the hell did you get us into?!

The man’s eyes never leave you as he replies to your father, “I can respect passion, but only cold hard facts should be used when conducting research. And the numbers you’ve given us are more than sufficient for our cause.”

You have to think of a way to stop him from using your research to hurt Pokémon! But you’re pretty sure he doesn’t have a heart, and based on his statement about cold hard facts, an emotional or moral appeal wouldn’t work.

“W-well… I-it it it would be best, it would be best if I could… I-improve..” You stutter and he tilts his head curiously. Come on, what’s a good reason to give him?! He rests a hand on your desk and frost creeps across the black wood, making your heart beat faster as you stare into his cold eyes. What is he?!

“I’m listening, but my patience is running thin, girl.” He speaks, voice dangerously dark. His mouth barely moves when he talks and a gust of cold air tickles your face, making you shiver again.

“COST EFFECTIVE!” You shout, making your father flinch. The cold man tilts his head in the other direction and waits for you to explain. His eyes are still filled with cruel callousness, but the glimmer of intelligence is back as he takes in your words. You bought yourself time, but you have to finish your reasoning and pray that it’s good enough.

“T-the, the, the Butterfrees… They take a long money- Shit! A long time and a lot of money to raise. If- if you, if you lose almost half of them… T-then it’ll- Then it’ll cost you a lot of money to keep-keep replenishing them.” You start to get into the groove of it as the man crosses his arms, actually letting you speak for once, and your words and sentences slowly smooth into something nice and clean, “If you let me improve the survival rate, then you can do a lot more with only a few Pokémon, instead of having to constantly breed more and more to keep up with their deaths.”

“Not bad.” He says and you sigh in relief, “I think what you’re saying makes sense.”

He pulls out a Master ball from his pocket and bounces it in his hand, tossing it up and down as he thinks, “But your progress is still far too slow. I don’t think you’re capable of continuing here.” He says coldly, and your heart sinks again. Your father’s face goes pale at his words, though he’s still not as pale as the ice man in front of you. He summons his Pokémon, a Kadabra that stands there menacingly, and you close your eyes in terror. The yellow Psychic type is around the same height as you, with three fingers on each hand and a spoon. Its fluffy tail has a gray band on it, and a protective fur coating covers its chest. Well, it was a good life.

You wonder how you’re going to die. Maybe he’s going to psybeam you, or psycho cut you, or he might even just have his Pokémon beat you to **** with its spoon! But to your surprise, you hear him softly chuckle and you open your eyes to see that you’re not dead! But you’re also not in your office anymore!

You’re in a massive cavern somewhere, with the ceiling so far up that you can’t even see it. The floor beneath you is smooth stone with veins of green, maybe emeralds running through it. And the cavern is filled with the quiet hum of machines. All manner of scientific tools, from NMR spectroscopes, incubators, fume hoods, vats of bubbling liquids, and more things you haven’t even seen before. But in contrast to the company you work at, this enormous laboratory looks abandoned. There isn’t a soul to be seen beside your group.

Your heart pounds in your chest as you freeze up in terror, petrified by the new location. And you feel your dad’s calloused hand slip into yours. He gives you a reassuring squeeze that slightly mitigates your terror, but it still does next to nothing to calm your fears. Ice-man just teleported you and your dad to a random cave, and no one would ever find your bodies if he killed you.

Speaking of Ice-man, you see him pull out his Pokédex and text someone before putting it back into his pants pocket. He quickly recalls his Kadabra and affixes you with a chilly gaze. He smiles at you, showing his pearly white teeth in a terrifying snarl and your dad protectively steps in front of you.

“Ha!” A rough bark of laughter escapes his lips, “A noble display, but a futile one nonetheless.” He creeps closer, somehow closing the distance without taking a single step, and you can feel the air freeze around you.

“B-back off!” Your dad stutters, “Your bosses won’t be very happy if you hurt the two of us!”

He creeps closer and closer until frost starts to build on your dad’s face and beard and you fear for his life. Shit, he’s going to die defending you. But he doesn’t waver, still standing in front of you to protect you from Ice-man’s wrath.

“Enough! Reykr, leave them alone!” A voice calls out, and Reykr backs off to look at the man approaching.

“You do not command me, doctor. Mind your tongue or I will-” Reykr gets slapped across the face by the more normal-looking man, who glares at him with fury.

“Shut your damn mouth.” The doctor spits, and Reykr growls at him, his hands glowing an icy blue as he puts them on the man’s chest. But the doctor doesn’t even seem bothered. “Go ahead. I don’t care.” He says flatly, looking Reykr right in his icy eyes. They have a silent staring contest for a minute before Reykr growls and storms off. The man sighs and brushes the frost off his coat before walking toward you. Your dad steps in front of you again, but the man puts his hands up peacefully to appear non-threatening.

“Don’t worry, I’m not like him.” He says warmly before offering your dad his hand, “My name’s- Heh, my name’s classified, but you can just call me Seaking.”

Your dad carefully shakes the man’s hand before introducing the two of you and you shake his hand as well. Seaking seems like a much nicer person than Reykr, who’s glowering at you, furious at being humiliated by Seaking.

Seaking is a man in his late thirties or early forties, with warm brown eyes. His hair is short and black with streaks of white running through it, and his weathered face seems so friendly when compared to the chilly Reykr.

“Lieutenant Frostflame. Return in an hour to take her back home.” Seaking orders and Reykr salutes before walking off. But despite his friendly aura, you can sense that he’s exhausted. From the way his posture slumps after Reykr gets out of sight, and from the look in his eyes. A hollow gaze that shows that he’s given up. But that expression only lasts a second before he looks normal again and he beams at you.

“Follow me, and I’ll show you your new workstation and set you up with your teleporter.” He waves you after him and you obediently follow the scientist. He quickly explains all the different machines and speedwalks to an alcove at the other end of the cave. You look into a small room to see a bed and a few personal effects, one of which is a picture of his family.

But you only get a small glimpse before he speeds you away to your workstation.

“Alright, I assume Reykr’s told you why you’re here?” He asks, and you and your dad shake your head. Seaking pinches the bridge of his nose in annoyance, “Okay. Your job is to help me with my research while I help you with yours. I believe you’re having trouble increasing the affinity of Butterfree’s proteins to the new molecules, am I correct?”

You nod your head and he continues, “I’m researching Pokémon DNA, and trying to figure out how to mix and match to create hybrids. And I- Well, high command thinks we can help each other. I’ll let you get oriented, and then we can discuss our research before Reykr picks you up. Any questions?”

You tentatively raise your hand and he nods at you, “Who’s the high command, where are we, who are you really, why are you researching hybrids, who’s Reykr, why does he have ice powers-”

“Woah, woah, woah, slow down, Rose,” Seaking says, putting his hands up. “Has your dad really not told you anything?” He asks, shooting a glare at your father, who looks away ashamedly.

Seaking sighs sadly before leading you to a coffee room. “What do you drink?” He asks, and you give him your usual order, coffee with 2 milks and sugars. Your dad takes his black, and Seaking adds some vanilla and caramel to his before topping it with a big heap of whipped cream.

You all sit down at a small round table to sip your drinks for a while, and when you’re all around halfway done, Seaking puts his drink down.

“Okay, so first of all. Welcome to Team Rocket. Second of all, congrats, you’re getting promoted. And finally, this is where your dad is going to live now.” He says with false cheer. And you reel back in shock. Wait what!?

Your dad, and by extension, you, were working for Team Rocket?! And now he’s getting fired and you’re taking his place?! You look at him with shock, beyond confused as to what’s happening. How could he be working for Team Rocket?! You want him to say something, to call Seaking a dirty liar, but all he does is look at you sadly.

“Rose, I-” Your dad starts, trying to place his hand over yours, but you recoil from him, betrayal in your eyes. You trusted him. He was the only person you trusted until Daisy came along. And now he just… He just revealed himself to be a horrible, terrible, monster, and you don’t even know what you’re feeling.

You have so many questions, so many things you want to yell at him about. But only one word escapes your mouth in a horrified whisper, “Why?”

“I-it’s a long story!” He bursts out, standing up and moving toward you as you frantically retreat. “I had ****, Rose, they made me.”

“Why..?” You ask again in a horrified whisper, your back against the break room wall.

“I-I- I don’t know how to explain!” He cries out, stopping in front of you.

“I do.” Seaking interrupts. “They killed your mom, and they would have killed you too if your dad didn’t make a deal with them.”

Well, shit. Your entire worldview is now collapsing around you. You can feel a panic attack coming and you crouch down into a ball as your breathing speeds up. What the fuck?! Your mom was killed, your life was threatened, your dad worked for Team Rocket, and you worked for them too? And now you’ve been kidnapped by god-knows-what, and you’re god-knows-where, and everything has gone to shit, and you have no idea what to do, who to trust, where to go, why this is happening, and how you’ve been thrown into this mess.

“I’m sorry, Rose. But I had ****. They would have killed you too if I didn’t agree to work for them. They already killed your mom for what she did, and I couldn’t lose you too…” Your dad says, crouching down in front of you. But his words sound like they’re coming from a million miles away. Your mom’s **** wasn’t an accident. You worked for the worst terrorist group in the world. And you didn’t even know it.

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Rose was supposed to have a LOT more character building during the “Bad things happen to Blue in Viridian Forest” storyline, but since I changed it we didn’t see as much of her. And I really didn’t want to write another 5-6 chapters focusing on her because I’m already so behind schedule of where I wanted to be :(