I took precautions.

Knowing our presence would be picked up as we approached the Nursery, especially if we hopped back on the route prior to reaching it, we took a little detour around the city and came in from the north.

We could have just avoided the place completely, but I had business there.

Xanadu Nursery had started as a ranch where a few breeders lived away from the cities. It also served as a pit stop for those who were starting their training journey. Over time, it had grown into a town. Not a large one, but it met the criteria. Really it would have been a village or hamlet if those terms had still been in use.

While it covered a decent amount of space, it had a low population. It was small enough that it only had a single stop light and gas station at the center of town, though there were a good number of hotels for all the trainers coming through.

As we passed through the town’s gates, I looked around. I could feel eyes on me, and the gaze held malice. It seemed that my arrival hadn’t gone unnoticed, even wearing a wig and with my partners not being in sight.

How sad.

Not.

The minds of my watchers were within my sensing radius, and they weren’t the oblivious pawns that were usually used, but the leaders, the ones who’d always escaped me before by being too far away.

Not this time.

Target located, I ‘disappeared’ while I took to the air and increased my speed, quickly overtaking them. They’d had the misfortune to be located in their base, rather than mobile, so it was much easier than I’d figured on. Only one made it to their vehicle, only to be met by me.

One down, I advanced into the base and disabled all of the agents and their hired minions who’d been gathered together to put an end to me once and for all.

Only ten were psychics, the other hundred or so weren’t. They were easy targets, especially when I stole their pokéballs from their hips before they could release their contents, stowing them in my backpack. Mostly. I had to disable a few slaves, but I did as little damage as I could, since they didn’t have a choice. I could feel their minds, obedient due to the influence of the balls, and the fear of the consequences should they even try to resist. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to do more than knock them out right now.

But minions and pokémon weren’t my true target, just a bonus. This was the best opportunity to get the information I’d been wanting for years. And I succeeded.

Letting all of my hate, anger, and fear loose, I made illusionary constructs to assist me, all of them similar-looking doppelgangers of Mr Doe, while I maintained the invisibility I’d been under since I felt their presence. True invisibility, light refracting, so as not to leave photographic evidence on the surveillance system this building had in order to try and catch me. Fortunately, I could see via clairvoyance.

I was draining my core of energy far faster than I liked, but I was able to succeed. No one escaped, all of them were disabled, being sent off to the land of nod, some more painfully than others.

And then that success was threatened.

The police arrived.

I really didn’t want to have to fight them, not when I’m low on power. There might be some corruption, but there’d be innocents among them. For all I knew, none of these ones had been bought, and would do their job seriously.

I couldn’t take the risk.

Reaching a point overlooking where the police were arriving, I dropped off a music player with a speaker. The song it played, a lullaby.

With luck, it’d be enough of a distraction, making them think there was a jigglypuff knocking people out, to allow me to get what I needed before I left the rest to the local constabulary.

I’d prevented their computers from having a purge started, and cutting external connections to prevent others from starting one, thus getting me plenty of files with incriminating evidence. Had it been up to me, I’d have copied everything, and made sure the honest officers were in charge of the original evidence, but I didn’t have the time and just took it all.

No tech was left behind, though the immense amount of military hardware was. I’d be releasing my own video evidence online soon, so if the police tried to sweep this incident under the rug, they’d regret it.

Finally, I gathered the leaders of the various groups and all the psychics together and teleported us out of there.

I barely made it in time, with officers arriving, gun drawn and pointed my way as we vanished. I regretted leaving the released pokémon behind, but I hadn’t have time to retrieve them.

Drained to empty, we appeared in a forest clearing a day’s walk away from the town. Had they awoken then while I was running on empty, I might have been caught or killed, but I had backup. As soon as we arrived, a somnolence field covered the enemies, ensuring they’d remain asleep long enough for me to recover.

I’d have been affected as well had I not gotten out of the way of the fields effect. It was low level and would usually be easily ignored for those not already asleep, but I was exhausted. I’d been ecstatic when Sakura learned how to make the thing, based off of the lullaby move, but acting in a specified area without needing to sing.

Ah, tired. Mind wandering.

Digging some elixir out of storage I downed it to help me regain my PP. Elixir was not a magic medicine to immediately recover PP, but instead increased regeneration. It wasn’t intended for human consumption, but while I had a human form, even fooling specialized genetic scanners, I was still a pokémon at the core, so it worked.

Taking a seat, I meditated, further increasing my regeneration rate. Fortunately, my core capacity was rather large, which influenced regen rate, since I’d been ‘flexing’ my power actively as often as I could to make it so.

It still took me an hour to get to a point where I was confident I had the energy to do what I needed to do.

No longer at risk of a stiff breeze knocking me over, I stood up and set about more firmly securing my captives. There were fifteen of them. Ten from the League’s corrupted PsyOps, and five leaders of the various mercenary or criminal groups that’d been supplying forces for their plan.

I started with the psychics. They were too dangerous to restrain long.

I dug out all of the useful information, then sent them to eternal slumber, dumping their bodies in a deep pit I’d prepared for this situation.

None of them were salvageable, minds too twisted to repair without spending years doing so, and then only by somehow wiping their minds back to a blank slate before trying to undo the conditioned responses.

It was too dangerous to attempt, and not worth the effort.

Regretfully, they didn’t have the information I wanted, the location and identities of the leaders and their ultimate headquarters, but I was able to obtain the locations of two bases and a training facility. The last being my first target. Not only was it in the nearby Viridian City, the second largest city in Kanto, but it had the best chance for exposing the organization’s evil roots and the possibility to save dozens of young psychics before they were shaped into cruel and obedient pawns.

I had to rest after I finished with them, having become depleted again, but without needing to ensure none of my captives woke up, my partners could also relax. Sakura was as drained as me, with Celestia not much better.

They’d been keeping the captives unconscious. At first, Sakura had been in charge, but she couldn’t maintain it forever, so Celestia had taken over. She couldn’t use the field type, so anytime it seemed like one of them might be approaching wakefulness, she hit them with another sleep move.

With the large threats gone, the only captives left were the criminals and mercenaries, though the latter was likely more black than grey if they were working for those axxholes. Them I had tied up, blindfolded, and gagged, while also stripping to their underwear to ensure they couldn’t be hiding anything to help them escape.

Some of them had woken up, but they were incapacitated, so could wait.

I took a nap. Restful sleep was better at regenerating PP than elixir and meditation, but one had to be relaxed, and I hadn’t been able to earlier.

An hour later, I got back up and finished sorting through the captives minds. Yeah, none of them were getting released. Their minds were completely corrupted, not worth attempting to redeem. While I found some useful information in my browsing, it was nothing I could act on immediately.

They joined the psychics in the pit, where a fire reduced them to ashes before the hole was filled in and the top that I’d carved out was returned, preventing the place from being immediately recognizable as a mass grave.

I wasn’t the only one to have recharged during my nap, my partners had been able to recoup their energy as well, so it was time to move on. We ‘ported twice, first to home to drop off the stolen pokémon in my room till I could deal with them, then to a spot a couple of hours south of the city, and walked into a designated battlefield.

We were obviously tired, so no one bothered us for a battle, but we were approached. One of my friends caught sight of us arriving, not hard to do as Celestia was very easily noticed, and approached me.

“Rynn? You’re only now getting here? Though you left long before us? Are you alright? You don’t look so good.”

I smiled at her.

“I’m fine, just tired. We took a detour for some more training and ran into some trouble. Nothing we couldn’t deal with, but we’re exhausted. I didn’t expect to see you again so soon. I thought you’d have stayed at the first waypoint longer.”

“We’d planned to, but all of the trainers we’d be able to fight were moving on, and we couldn’t handle the others, so we had to move on. We’re heading to the nursery tomorrow if you want to join us?”

“I’d love to. Can you show me where you’re staying so I can set up my tent? I want to get it up quickly, before I collapse.”

She guided me to where her group was staying, leading to more greetings and people asking after my health. Their caring was healing, enveloping our weary minds in gentle feelings, wiping away the negative feelings the day’s task had left on us.

There was a reason I hadn’t wanted my pokémon around me when I’d been fighting in town. They were gentle, and I didn’t want that to change. Yes, they could kill if needed, as had happened during training, but I wanted to avoid that when possible. Even the slight amount of negative emotions leaked by the sleeping captives had left them uncomfortable, emotionally draining them until the captives were taken care of.

We set up the tent, arranging our bedding, then fell into a deep slumber.

Telerean

Sorry, but I was feeling like some action. The corruption needs to be excised.