"Dispose of the subject. With this recent failure, the boss is rescinding funding for your project Ariana." A voice said over a video phone. "With no results after a year of experiments and research the boss wishes for you to work on more pressing projects, namely Project Mewtwo as it actually has a purpose," the voice finished, displeasure in his colleague's lackluster results and performance.
In the basement of the game corner in Celadon City a place where many come to risk it all to try and get their hands on countless prizes, be it money, Technical Machines (TM) both single and multiple uses, or by far the most alluring a chance at extremely rare Pokémon, such as Porygon, Scyther, or perhaps even a Dratini, the first stage of Champion Lances Ace pokemon, Dragonite. It is here beneath it all that the very first female executive of Team Rocket was about to completely lose it.
Executive Ariana Rosen, the very first female Executive of Team Rocket is one of many things. A powerful trainer who had- with the help of the boss- made her way through the Indigo circuit and competed in the Indigo Plateau Conference placing in the top 8, once her journey was over she devoted herself to the betterment of Team Rocket and her boss' dreams. Although she was a powerful trainer, her true skill lay in her mind, Ariana was a brilliant woman, who also had the beauty to go along with hit. So, with her genius, three years after devoting her life to the cause of Team Rocket and rising ever higher in the food chain, she became an Executive all in hopes to see her pet Project come to fruition.
Project Synergy.
And now, a year into her project she was being told to drop it, for not being able to show results in it.
She was absolutely furious. Had they just given her a few more months, she would have what she, no- what they desire. A human capable of analyzing and processing a Pokemon's true potential. In theory, having the ability to discern what a Pokemon's potential is, would mean that Team Rocket would not only grow more powerful but with gathering the apex of certain species, be able to breed them together and gather the progeny of potentially champion-level Pokemon. Nobody would be able to stop Team Rocket. With a Champion's army behind them, Indigo and the world would be theirs! That also doesn't include the human who would be akin to a supercomputer, being able to analyze any Pokemon, even the ones under the Team Rocket banner, they would be able to come up with the most efficient training regiment to grow the strength of their pokemon.
Ariana believed with her whole being; she would be able to create such a life. But all of her experiments up to this point had all been the same, failure. The subject was either too weak to survive the procedure, or those that did survive, the minority being roughly 5% of candidates would be unable to handle the neural load of the implant. After all what she was doing was trying to merge a human mind with that of the artificially created Pokemon, Porygon. Said Pokemon was one of pure human genius, the pokemon's power while not that strong, has become a staple in many mega-corporations and league databases, for their ability to protect them from outside hacking and infiltrators. Team Rocket also deployed their own use of the Pokemon to protect their servers.
See the Pokemon Porygon had some useful abilities. Download and its hidden ability Analytic. Both have some use in battle, but their main use comes when they are put into the internet or cyberspace. Being able to download and analyze any documents for information on the internet makes them a very valuable Pokemon for keeping track of gathering, and protecting information, something which the league and mega-corporations use frequently trying to protect their best interests after all. Team Rocket does the same, but normally just to steal information. But with how useful the Pokemon was, the league had to put a sanction on the creation of said Pokemon, and now monopolize the process of it, making it hard to acquire such a Pokemon, but for a genius like Ariana it was a simple process. By using her own code when infiltrating league systems, she was able to have the Pokemon's allegiance change to that of Team Rockets'. But all things came to an end when the league's scientists re-coded their porygon's to have eternal loyalty to the league, and if that code were to be changed in any way, they would die and unleash a virus on the system that was targeting them. Ariana had learned that the hard way when a couple of months ago her systems went down, but thankfully, she kept hard copies of all her research.
One of the main problems with integrating the Pokemon into the human mind came from the Pokemon's inability to adapt to the much more complicated human mind, despite the Pokemon's ability to analyze information it simply couldn't fathom the depths of the human subconscious. Instead of analyzing the outside world and the Pokemon Ariana so wished it would analyze, it would be stuck constantly analyzing the human mind. Something Ariana had become extremely mad at because no matter how many times she rewrote or added different programs and code to the Pokemon it would always analyze that of the human mind, almost as if the created Pokemon was more fascinated with the human mind than the real world.
Her test subjects ranged from male to female, young to old, smart to dumb, any and every form of human she had tried, in different combinations, all ways the same result.
Death
Only death of the human though, Porygon would survive, that was something she was grateful for. Seeing as how she had only managed to gain 7 of them before the league intervened. So with this roadblock, she turned to the ones that had shown more promise, the young. Children to be more precise, their minds had not fully developed and therefore had more of a chance to adapt to the technology inserted into their brain stem and nervous system. Where the Pokemon would be inserted and allowed to integrate with the host.
But even then, success still alluded her.
With frustration mounting she drank herself into a stupor and watched the poke channel to just numb herself to the failure she had become accustomed to. However, it was here at her lowest point during her research she came across the answer, by watching a children's TV show centred around that of a child and their Eevee, stuck in what to evolve her into.
Evolve.
That was the breakthrough she had, what if Ariana was able to evolve the Porygon into something new, something that could adapt to the human consciousness and finally break free from analyzing the mind on a constant loop and do what she intended for it to do?
That brings her to today, in the process of developing what she so desired, she had unintentionally killed 6 of her 7 acquired porygon, but it wasn't all for naught. Her last experiment had been the closest to evolving, having just missed one part of the code she needed, with that rectified, she would do it. She would finally accomplish her goals and see Project Synergy succeed.
But that wouldn't happen now, as her senior, Archer, had just told her to cease operations and move to another lab to complete the boss' pet project, Project Mewtwo. Ariana was furious, to say the least.
"Executive Archer! I'm so close! I just developed what I need to actually evolve Porygon! Sir, I can do-" she was cut off as Archer, spoke over her.
"ENOUGH! Ariana, you are to move to the base inside of the boss' mansion on Cinnabar Island. And that is final, you leave in an hour. Dispose of all your subjects. Maybe one day when you're smarter, you'll be allowed to come back to your project. Haha, I doubt it." Archer finished, cutting the video feed, which was promptly shattered by Ariana, throwing the chair she had been sitting on into it.
Her project would lay unfinished, she would never accomplish her goal, no. NO! I will finish the project if it kills me. I just need to evolve this last porygon and implant into subject Z-001. I have an hour after all…I don't need to bring anything with me.
Having made up her mind Ariana made her way to her lab, leaving behind the smoking monitor in her office, accessing the last porygon on her tablet. The door slid open and what awaited her was subject Z-001 lying face down on an operating table, the device successfully implanted in his neck, awaiting its occupant. Wasting no time, Ariana took out of her pocket, what she dubbed the Dubious Disc and inserted in into the computer porygon was in. The code seamlessly integrated in the system and approached the pokemon inside. Ariana had just watched with unadulterated glee as the code swarmed the porygon, in the process the screams of it coming through the monitors speakers. Its working…its working! Was all Ariana thought. Half a minute later, a new pokemon floated on the screen, one with which had the desired ability she wanted.
Adaptability.
Her smile threatened to break her face in half as she inserted a flash drive into the computer and download the pokemon into it. The pokemon she dubbed Porygon-Z resisted the initial attempts, but with being freshly evolved it didn't know how to properly use its newfound power, so Ariana was able to do and took the flash drive and inserted it into the base of the boy's skull, the pokemon all to eager to leave the small confines of the flash drive. But it didn't happen as Ariana had wanted it to.
Instead of the boy awakening with the newfound ability to analyze pokemon, he flatlined. The pokemon seemed to be to unstable and ended up frying the boys brain, much worse than before. It appeared to be that Porygon-Z was way too unstable. Ariana was angry once again, she didn't have enough time or porygon to spare to try again, let alone another test subject.
With rage in her heart, she summoned her partner, one who had been with her since the start of her journey.
An absolutely massive Arbok materialized from the light of the pokeball, she looked at her master and awaited her orders. She was a good Arbok like that.
"…destroy it all" Ariana said. Arbok listened and laid waste to the entire lab. Noticing her master's displeasure, she made her attacks extra potent. Multiple Gunk Shots came out her mouth, the poison and acid created by the move melted lab with everything in it. But even with Ariana seeing red, she did what any reasonable person would do…and disposed of Z-001 into the Grimer pit. Even though her Arbok's poison was at the apex of her partner's species, nothing would last in a grimer's stomach.
With all Evidence erased, Ariana made her way out of the destroyed lab and into the upper levels of the base, passing by disgruntled grunts and captains, all to afraid of the Miasma Monarch of Team Rocket, known for her brutal use of Poison and Dark type pokemon.
Ariana paid them no mind, with her project ruined she made her way to the teleporter placed in the hideout. With a flash she disappeared. Leaving the captains or grunts, to clean up her mess in the laboratory basement. But with what a state it was in, they would have to wait for some psychic and ground type pokemon to help purge the toxins.
So, with the executive leaving and nobody left willing to enter the lab. Nobody noticed the brilliant flash of light come forth from the degrading lab. The boy that had been deposited into the Grimer pit, glowed and had the wounds from the poison, seemingly disappear. Almost as if they were never there.
A loud gasp of air can be heard coming from the boy's body, as life was born anew.
...
...
...
"WHAT THE FUCK!"
Author Note:
Alright, trying my hand at Pokemon now. Not as if I have two other FICS I'm writing at the moment but have had this one on the backburner for a long while.
Now, I'm not the most knowledgeable of the lore pertaining to the game, show, or god forbid the Manga, which I didn't know was a thing until like last year. So, I'll do my best with how I plan on fitting everything into the world I plan on building, it will also be more realistic and mayhaps darker. We'll see how that goes though.
Another, this FIC will not be my primary focus as of right now, probably sporadic updates every week/other week kind of deal, until I finish the first seasons of my other FICs.
So with all that in mind, I hope you join me on 'A Journey of Grey' and will stick around for whenever I update this one next.