The next morning I’d finally fully recovered. But I wasn’t ready to continue my journey. While I hadn’t told my friends this, I’d have to disappear for a while. Not only had it been suggested to me by law enforcement, my mom really wanted me somewhere safe, especially once she’d realized the scale of the latest attempt on my life.

Plus there was the fact that I had the locations of some of the black ops bases, including a brainwashing facility, though they used the term training.

We got up and ready for the day, enjoyed a pleasant breakfast with my friends, then it was time to vanish. We left the town, walked a ways, then headed into the woods.

After making sure that there were no followers, we teleported home.

Appearing in my bedroom, I was reminded of another thing I had to do when I saw the backpack laying on the bed. It was the one I’d used as cover for the raid and was filled with pokéballs. Most of them had occupants, though there were some that wouldn’t. I’d taken all of the balls, even the used ones, but hadn’t had the time to get the released pokémon back in them since I didn’t see what ball went to which or have the time to figure it out. There were probably unused balls as well.

Sadly, I’d have to deal with them one by one, but I needed to get them somewhere to maintain them. The balls were tech, and while their charges lasted a long time, less for the higher level balls due to the additional draw, they needed to be recharged periodically to maintain their functionality.

If they ran out, the stasis would stop and the pokémon inside would be released, destroying the ball. Great for if the trainer died in the middle of nowhere since the pokémon wouldn’t potentially be lost and in stasis forever, but bad for those who abused those who should be cherished and neglected the charging.

I needed to go through those one by one since they were owned by some very bad people. While they might have been forced, some might have picked up bad habits or become or already been evil themselves.

Sighing, I dropped off my backpack, picked up the ball stuffed one and went to see mom.

This was going to suck.

---

And it did.

After being smothered in hugs and kisses by her, I came clean. Not about everything, just that I’d been behind the take down of the bad guys and needed some favors.

Her face went from teary and concerned to red and angry. The eyes being red from crying only made it worse. I’d always laughed at those scenes in stories where it’s written that someone’s face became an oni mask, but I wasn’t laughing now, or ever again in the future. I might be much stronger than my mother, but she was sooo much more powerful. It wasn’t literal strength, but there are some people you can’t beat, even when you can.

I didn’t tell her everything, cause that’d have just made the hours long lecture even longer, but I told her about what I’d gotten from the raid… including the pokémon I’d taken. It was technically stealing, but as the guys I’d taken them from were trying to kill me, neither mom or me cared about that.

When I got to the part where I found a location of one of the black ops training facilities, and the fact that I was intending to shut it down, I thought she’d pop a vein it was sticking out so much.

Fortunately, this time she wasn’t angry with me, but about the League. I’d seen some of what happened in those facilities and told my mom, hoping to garner her assistance.

I wouldn’t be able to handle potentially dozens of trainees, especially since the ones they’d had longer would resist. I didn’t want to kill anyone that I thought still had a chance at redemption, but I couldn’t keep them all under control myself, nor did we have much time.

Given that they would know that someone had taken their people, and possibly be working to extract information from them, there was a chance they’d abandon those facilities they felt were compromised. So time was of the essence.

Luckily, mom knew people and pokémon who could help, I’d even met some of them in the past. Mom had some of the unbound psychics come to give me training. It had helped a lot, not as much in gaining power, but in getting even better control over my power. As these people were among those fighting against the League’s corruption, they’d be more than willing to help.

Also among the resistance were those who were trusted and had strong psychic pokémon, even if they weren’t psychic themselves, mom and dad among them.

And so we prepared.

As part of it, I got to go on tour. I had a few places I could ‘port to, having visited during vacations, but most of Kanto’s cities were places I’d never been. And it was only to the major cities we went. If I needed to do anything involving a town, I’d have to pop over to the nearest city and travel to the place.

I’d gotten to do this since it took a few days to gather enough people. Those who were early helped in whatever way they could, including flitting around the country on a wave of psions.

Other people got to sort through the stuff I’d picked up at the nursery. I’d taken every piece of electronics I could find. I may have missed some, but even then, there was a lot to check over. We also had to be careful, since it included comm devices, including phones, and we couldn’t let those show up on the map, so everything had to be reviewed in a Faraday cage to ensure there were no leaks.

All transportation to and from where we were working was done via teleport. Too much foot traffic would have led to suspicion.

It took three days to get enough people ready for the mission. We were even officially tasked to do this by one of the uncorrupted League leaders in charge of law enforcement. Deputized and everything!

Well… I say we, but I technically wasn’t included, being a minor and all. But Mr Doe happened to show up when I was sulking in my room refusing to see anyone. While no one knew who he really was, he’d gained enough notoriety that he was accepted as a member and included in the deputization.

We’d had a team on surveillance duty watching the facility, and no unusual activity, including mass teleportations, were detected, so we felt secure in charging in.

We won, but there was a cost.

The place was not as unprotected as we’d hoped. A lot of the defenses were either automated or controlled from off site, leading to many wounds and a few deaths among the attackers. We’d cut the power, but even doing that hadn’t disarmed the place, it had a backup generator or it’s own power production.

The group had been advised to not underestimate the opponents, but not everyone took all the precautions they should have, like keeping shields up until the fight was over and safety was confirmed.

I had, and rampaged through the place. On mom’s recommendation, Mr Doe was tasked with extraction of any children the team came across, since his power would make multiple teleports within a short time frame possible. Most people had to build up the energy to ‘port, making using it in rapid succession difficult.

So I did damage and sought out those we wanted to save, making sure they were knocked out and dropping groups of them off with the recovery team, a group assigned to assess and control any children we freed or prisoners we captured.

There were no prisoners.

The defenders were mostly mundanes, with a few psychics in charge of the place and training, aka brainwashing, the kids. None of them surrendered, and if they were captured, they clenched their teeth, breaking poison capsules and ending their lives.

Not all of them died, sadly. Some of them escaped, taking with them those who were nearby when their defeat became clear. Which included some of the children, the older ones who’d nearly completed their training and would be activated as agents soon.

Due to the methods used, even those still in the facility being trained had lost their innocence, being made to kill at the orders of their teachers. It’d take the efforts of many to undo the programming, but I wasn’t going to be involved in that. I had other tasks to accomplish.

The operation was kept secret in the planning stages, with only a single law enforcement official knowing what and who was being targeted, and being protected from any mental foraging by some of our number. However, after we’d accomplished our goal, a press release was issued.

We couldn’t hide it. The facility was inside of the city, and the destruction of the assault was great. No one involved on our side was named or revealed in any way, not wanting the Evil League, as I’d taken to calling the corrupted organization, to be able to counterattack our members. We were just called Avengers, a secret task force involved in cleaning up an evil organization that’d taken root.

The name had been my suggestion. For reasons. I love comics, including both the big name ones of Earth, but being called the Avengers sounded cooler than the Justice League. Plus, we had no problem killing our opponents if we needed to.

That was something that bothered me about the JL. Sure being merciful and not killing people was nice, but when the villains escaped, they’d end up killing more people. In my opinion, those who refused to put down a rabid dog should share the responsibility for any destruction their negligence caused.

Sadly, during the raid we didn’t get any other information on the EL, since they’d wiped their systems before we could stop it, and the few physical documents we found were of no help. But we had other leads to work with on other criminals needing our attention.

We started with the take down of the EL facility, but continued to the bases of the criminals from my solo raid. This was aided by the police, since they’d gotten some information from their prisoners in exchange for plea bargains. These raids netted the group a bit more information leading to other locations, slowly stripping the EL of it’s underworld support.

I, however, despite technically being a member of the Avengers as Mr Doe, was stuck away from the action. Mom didn’t want me any further involved than I already was, not even knowing how strong I was, or that I was probably close to her age if we tallied up both of my lives. Not that I liked doing that. I was just fine being sixteen. Who wants to be considered middle-aged if they can help it.

Since I was unable to take part in the active parts on the group, I worked behind the scenes, starting with the pokémon I’d taken. It was boring work, but I was the only one who could reasonably handle it, since I could understand them. Add to that the fact that there were well over a hundred pokémon to deal with, and it took me a while.

All of the people there had at least one pokémon, and some of them even carried up to six. Since the League designated that teams consist of a maximum of six pokémon, those who made equipment for trainers only made storage belts with up to six slots.

While people could add other belts or use a bag to hold the balls, it was rather difficult to control many pokémon while in combat, so most people kept their numbers small. Those being completely forced wouldn’t fight without orders, so micromanaging a group would be a pain, though some would be able to.

And so I sat in a field far away from everything going through the pokéballs one by one. Releasing the occupant, talking to it, while reading its mind to make sure it was sane, then asking what they wanted to do.

Did they want to be freed? To join a different trainer?

Sadly, not all of them for to answer the question of where they wanted to go in the future. Some of them had to be put down. Among the many enslaved pokémon were those who reveled in killing and destruction. Those type could not be released, and it wasn’t safe for them to be placed with other trainers. Fortunately, there were only a few like this.

The balls were split up based on their choice. In order to make things most efficient, a label stuck to each saying what pokémon was within and if they had any requests.

It took a week to get through them all. Not because they were too difficult to talk to and sort out, but because I had other responsibilities as well. I was on the data mining team, dredging through all the information I and others had retrieved.

It was in this way I passed the next few months. In hiding, sorting through data, dealing with the captured pokémon that were brought back, occasionally making appearances as Mr Doe to handle things.

And then they kidnapped my sister.

Telerean

I’m going to write a chapter for each of my current stories today, then work on editing and posting the first of my other works. These won’t become immediately available, as I want the whole thing to go up at once. Gonna start with my short ones.

Warning! None of them are complete! I reached a point where I stalled out and couldn’t continue for one reason or another, though I occasionally get some inspiration and write a bit more. But don’t expect anything.