Chapter 11: Upping The Ante

November 15

Jasper couldn't remember where he was when he woke up. He felt a throbbing pain in the side of his head, and he felt warm blood dripping from his cheek. He tried to get up, but he couldn't, for an erupting pain in his shoulder kept him down, along with the straps that kept him on the gurney.

"Wait a minute," thought Jasper, "what the hell am I doing on a gurney?"

There was a loud whirring sound that Jasper couldn't identify. He barely had the strength to move his head to the left, to see if he could remember where he was. He laid his eyes on two of his dead grunts, who lay on top of each other. "Where's the third one?" he thought, "I swore there were three grunts with me."

It was then that he had remembered what had happened. How 'Xander' had betrayed the search party and left Jasper for dead, taking those trainers with him. And it was those same trainers that nearly killed him with that damned axe.

"Sir," shouted a voice, "are you alright?"

He looked up to see another grunt, one that he recognized from the Medical Department, standing over him as a helicopter was hovering overhead. "I think so," murmured Jasper, but the Medic couldn't hear him over the whirring sound, which grew ever louder.

"We're having you airlifted to Headquarters!" shouted the grunt, "you're gonna need some serious surgery done on that shoulder, and you may have a concussion, but we think you're gonna be okay!"

"Who's we?" thought Jasper, "you're the only one here." But then he saw more grunts, both on the ground and in the helicopter. The grunts in the helicopter were dropping down some sort of thick cable that Jasper couldn't identify, while the grunts on the ground attached to the corners of Jasper's gurney.

The grunts in the helicopter began winding in the cables, making Jasper's gurney rise into the air as it made its way into the hovering helicopter. The last thing he saw before he blacked out again was the grunts on the ground sealing the bodies of the dead grunts into black body bags.

Jasper was still on the gurney when he came to, but he was being wheeled down a bright hallway rather quickly. Instead of the Medic Grunts attending to him, he was now supervised by a team of surgeons in sky blue robes.

Jasper tried to say something, say anything in order to figure out just what was going on, but all he could do was moan something that the surgeons couldn't cipher.

"Get some more anesthesia in him!" said one of the surgeons. Jasper wanted to object, but before he could he felt the prick of a Sleeping Syringe in his right forearm. Whatever he was moaning before was nothing but silence now as he slipped under once more.

When Jasper fully regained consciousness, he was sitting upright in what looked like a hospital ward. Wires were protruding from his arm, and, alarmingly, he could only see out of one eye. He lifted his other arm to his face and was slightly relieved to feel coarse bandages wrapped around one side of his head. He was no longer in his light-gray jumpsuit, but a simple blue hospital gown. The thought of someone undressing him as he was knocked out unsettled him.

A nurse walked into the room at that moment. Jasper noticed her as she kept walking past him. "Excuse me, ma'am," said Jasper as the nurse noticed that Jasper had woken.

"Yes?" inquired the nurse.

"Would you mind filling me in on exactly what happened?" asked Jasper, "you know, during the…surgery?"

"I wasn't present during the surgery, but I can fetch Dr. Morstone for you. He was the surgeon who operated on you. He's the senior surgeon for the Empire in this sector."

Jasper nodded as the nurse walked away. He was the only one in the room now; all of the other hospital beds were empty. He replayed in his head the events from earlier. Xander, or whatever his real name was, shot the first grunt dead. Then he was tackled by Ash. He almost had him, but then that bitch lodged the axe in his shoulder, and that was all he could remember.

Jasper realized that that had happened this morning, not much past 8 AM. He looked at the clock at the end of the room to see that it was close to 3 PM. "Seven hours seems a little long to be airlifted to a hospital and be operated on," thought Jasper, "but I'm no surgeon. Who knows how long that operation took!"

The doctor walked in through the doors with sheets of paper underneath his arms. "Hello, Jasper," he said, "it's good to see that you're awake. I'm Dr. Morstone, senior surgeon of the Northern Sector." He looked jovial, almost as if he wasn't affiliated with an evil crime syndicate turned government.

"I've heard," mumbled Jasper, "so exactly what happened during the procedure?"

The Doctor's jovial expression quickly turned to one of seriousness. "Well," he began, "we began with the injuries to your head. It was a rather simple fix, just some stitches under your eye and painkillers for the head pain. There wasn't anything we could do for the concussion once you got here, however."

Jasper nodded. "And my shoulder?"

The Doctor sighed. "That's where things get complicated." He sorted through the X-rays until he found the one that he was looking for, which detailed Jasper's mangled shoulder. "As you can see, the impact from whatever hit you shattered the clavicle right in two. But the magnitude of the strike also damaged several of the other bones nearby, including the scapula."

"So what did you do then, exactly?" asked Jasper, who was unfazed by the sound of his injury.

"In order to optimize the quickest recovery possible, we had to transplant both of those bones with metal replacements. Consider it a full-blown shoulder transplant, except for a few bones that weren't harmed in the impact." The Doctor put away the X-rays and then turned back to Jasper. "You're gonna be incapacitated for the next few days before you can possibly get back to work."

"No, that can't happen!" Jasper angrily shouted, "I can't stay out that long! I don't care if you have to wheel this damn bed into my office, I need to work, the Empire depends on it!"

The Doctor refused to be intimidated by Jasper's attitude. "I'm sorry sir," he said sternly, "but early release from the hospital could hinder your recovery and lead to more complications."

Jasper wanted so badly to just off this man right here, right now, but knew that he couldn't, nor shouldn't. Even though it killed him to hold in his anger, he managed to do so. "Bring me Laina," he muttered, "from the Executive Office." The Doctor stared at him blankly, not knowing who Laina was.

"NOW!" shouted Jasper. The Doctor ran from the room in a hurry, not knowing who Laina was but knowing that she would be in the Executive Office.

Laina had been practically glued to her phone all day, trying to find any information she could about the dead grunts. She didn't even know if any of this true; she had heard a rumor that a group of Rocket grunts were found dead outside of Solaceon Town. None of the other grunts had paid much attention to the news, but Laina, worried that Jasper could have been among them, phoned him in desperation, but to no avail.

The fear and desperation became intensified when she phoned the other members of Jasper's search party to see that they weren't picking up, either. Laina went from desperation to panic, phoning anyone and everyone to see if they had heard from them. "Jasper was supposed to call once he killed those kids," she thought, "why hasn't he called back?"

At that moment, someone came bursting through the doors of the Executive Office, shouting her name. "Laina?" the man shouted, "Where's Laina? Is Laina in here?"

Laina pushed her way through the other grunts in the office, making her way toward the man. "What's the problem?" she asked when she finally got to him.

The Doctor looked worried. "Ma'am, someone named Jasper is in the hospital, he wants to-"

Laina had bolted past the doctor and into the nearest elevator before The Doctor could even finish his sentence. She mashed the button that would take her to the basement, which is where the hospital was. Well, the in-Headquarters hospital anyways, which was reserved for Rocket Grunts. She thought about the time she went to the one in Johto, for a sprained ankle on the job.

Her mind jumped back to Jasper as the elevator dinged and the doors slid open to reveal the main lobby of the hospital. "Where's Jasper?" she shouted as soon as the nurse at the front desk noticed her.

"Jasper, the Executive Leader?" asked one of the nurses.

"No, Jasper the Eight-horned Rhydon!" Laina sarcastically retorted, "where the hell is he?"

The nurse immediately thumbed through the patient information, trying to find the profile that belonged to Jasper. "Surgical Center, East Wing, Room 120" said the nurse when the nurse finally found it.

Laina brushed past the nurse and into the Surgical Center, which lay directly to her left. The hallway that she was in housed the rooms that began in the 100s, so Laina knew she was in the right hallway. She jogged down the hallway, eyeing each room number as she passed it. "114….116….118….120! I found it!"

When she entered the room, Jasper was looking at her behind a head that was half-covered in bandages. "Hey," he said calmly, as if nothing had happened.

"What the hell happened?" Laina asked hysterically, "your face, it's…it's…"

"Fine," replied Jasper, "just a concussion, and some stitches. But don't worry about me, we need to talk."

Laina brushed past Jasper's calmness. "How did this happen? Who did this to you?"

"I told you not to worry, Laina!" Jasper was visibly annoyed with Laina now.

Laina's mind jumped to Ash, and how she had warned Jasper about him the day before. "Jasper, don't tell me that it was Ash, don't tell me that he did this!"

Jasper breathed deeply, which Laina took as a "Yes." "What the hell!" Laina shouted, "When you called me you had him! How the hell did he get away?"

"One of the guys in our search party turned out to be a traitor," said Jasper, "He killed the two other guys."

"Traitor?" said Laina, acting as if she had never heard the word before, "what was this guy's name? And I heard there were four dead grunts!"

"He was calling himself Xander," said Jasper, "but it's kinda obvious that that's not his name. I'm not sure what you heard about four dead grunts, but from my search party there were only two deaths."

Laina didn't hear that last part, because she was pulling out her laptop from the moment she heard the name 'Xander'. She quickly opened it up and opened the Rocket database, which held information on every single grunt employed in the Empire. She typed in 'Xander' and immediately came up with one query before she could type in a surname.

As soon as she pulled up Xander's profile she could immediately tell that this man was no 'Xander', but Lance Luxforde, the dragon master from the Western Sector. His red hair and intimidating stare gave it away much too easily. How had Jasper not recognized him before?

"Looks like you're right," said Laina, showing Jasper the false profile. Jasper took one look at it and nearly punched the screen with his good arm in rage. Laina couldn't blame him; if she found out that a world famous trainer severely injured you and made the head of the world's largest government look like a complete chump, she'd be pretty pissed too.

"Alright," said Jasper when he calmed himself, "we can just add him to the Wanted list with those other kids. Speaking of that, though, we needed to talk about the bounty, and a few other things."

Laina pulled up a chair next to Jasper's bed and sat down. "Shoot," she said.

It took Jasper a few seconds to begin speaking. "The only people that are looking for these guys are our search parties. I don't think the bounty that we set yesterday is enough, because we can't get the people to get out and look!"

Laina wasn't surprised by Jasper's insistence. He had been going crazy over this egg, and he would do anything to get it, whether those kids were dead or alive in the end. "Is that really necessary?" she asked, "it took us not even a day to find them beforehand, what's the point of raising it now? It's not like it'll be any easier."

"But now we know that they're armed," Jasper explained, "and that we alone can't easily take them down. Which leads me to my next point. How many grunts are in each search party?"

"Two, sometimes four," answered Laina, "but I'm not sure if that has to do with-"

"We're doubling it," interrupted Jasper, "Now it's eight to a group, and no less!"

Laina couldn't believe Jasper's ridiculous requests. "How is any of this supposed to help the search when it's going fine as it is?" she cried.

"That's what you don't understand, Laina!" shouted Jasper, "it's not going fine! They've killed five people now, and having Lance with them doesn't make it any better. I said that we'd kill them and get the egg in a week, and I don't intend on breaking my word!"

Laina knew, much like everyone else, that it was near suicide to get on Jasper's bad side. At that point, however, she simply didn't care; he was being erratic, much too erratic for her to let it go. "I told you that this kid was dangerous, and you didn't listen! And now even after being almost killed you're chasing after him even more obsessively before! There's other work to do besides finding this goddam egg!"

"But there are priorities, Laina," shouted Jasper, "and this is our number one priority! So don't yell at me like I'm some basket case, because it's my assertion that's gonna get this job done, with or without your help!"

Laina was silent. She knew at this point that Jasper couldn't be any angrier without going on a potentially deadly rampage, whether he was injured or not.

But Jasper wasn't done. "You are to put out the order for an increased bounty of $ 100,000 on those trainers, and a bounty for Lance, also for $100,000. You are also to order all search parties to double up with the nearest search party in their area and to stick together. Is this understood?"

Laina nodded out of fear rather than understanding. "Good," said Jasper, who suddenly became much calmer, "now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to take a nap. I trust you know your way back to your office?"

"….and you want to be absolutely still, else you'll scare it away. It doesn't help that your clothing isn't camouflaged, they'll bolt on sight if you aren't still enough."

"But what're we gonna use against it?"

"I was getting to that. The gun will make too much noise, and I wouldn't recommend using that axe, as much as it helped. You'll have to do with your knife. Ash, are you listening?"

Ash was sorting what was left of the unpacked supplies as Lance was lecturing Brock and Dawn about hunting wild game. He was listening in on his lecture, but to be honest he found it hard to pay attention. "Yeah," he lied, "I'm listening."

Lance looked over his shoulder toward Ash. "What are you doing, anyways?"

"Packing all of this stuff," Ash replied, "I've barely had enough time in the past day to spend enough time doing it."

Lance chuckled as he dug around in his pocket. "After you see this, you'll wish you didn't have any time at all." He unearthed from his pocket a handful of Poké Balls; how many there were Ash had no idea, but there was definitely way more than six, which was the limit for a trainer's team.

He threw one of the Poké Balls at the pile of supplies that Ash hadn't packed. The Poké Ball emitted a red beam that, once it made contact with the supplies, transformed it into a red cloud of gas as it was sucked into the Poké Ball.

"I thought that only worked on Pokémon," commented Brock.

"So did I," said Lance as he tossed the Poké Ball to Ash. "I discovered it on accident a few months back. As far as I know, I'm the only one that knows about it."

Dawn didn't look particularly impressed. "Come on, Brock" she said curtly, "let's go hunting."

Lance grinned as he turned to Dawn. "No need to be so eager," he said, tossing her a walkie-talkie. "Use this to talk to us if something happens. Try to find a source of water while you're out there, we're running low."

Dawn shot Lance a mean look as she and Brock walked off, leaving Ash alone with Lance and Pikachu, who was still unconscious.

"While they're gone, I'm gonna teach you how to fire a gun," Lance said when they were out of earshot.

"Do I really need to be taught to use a gun?" asked Ash, "I mean, it can't be that hard, right?"

"That's where you're wrong," Lance replied. "There's a lot more to using a gun than just pulling the trigger." He walked over to a mud puddle and dipped his finger in it before smearing a dot the size of a quarter on a nearby tree."

"Here," said Lance, slapping a pistol he pulled from his backpack in Ash's hand, "try to hit that target from where you're standing."

Ash looked perplexedly at the gun. "Won't it make a lot of noise?" he asked, "I thought the point of going into hiding was to not attract attention."

"This one's silenced," Lance assured. "I kept it hidden, because the grunts used un-silenced guns, and using this one would have made them suspicious."

Ash nodded as he aimed the gun at the mud target. He held his finger over the trigger, waiting until he was sure his aim on the target was perfect. Once he had his aim down, however, he didn't fire. He continued to keep his gun raised, but he couldn't pull the trigger.

"Well?" said Lance.

Ash lowered his gun. "Would you have blown your cover? If it wasn't us, I mean?"

Lance looked confused. "What do you mean?"

"What if you hadn't found me and Brock and Dawn this morning, if it was just some group of trainers that you had never met before in your life. Would you have blown your cover for them? "

Lance stared off into space for far too long before slowly shaking his head. "No, I…I don't think I would've. Jasper-he's the leader of the Empire- he was on-

"Jasper?" inquired Ash, "I thought Giovanni was the head of Team Rocket."

"Yeah, he was," said Lance. "But he died a few years ago, and his son was supposed to take over as the leader. But he practically vanished off the face of the earth, so without a leader Team Rocket collapsed."

"But how'd they come back?"

"No one knows. They took over Kanto one day with no warning that they even still existed. The only thing that was different was that Jasper was acting as the Head. Anyways, he was on the search with us, and was going on nonstop about finding you, and something about some egg."

Ash pulled the egg from his backpack and handed it to Lance. "Yeah, this one," he said.

Lance raised his eyebrows when Ash handed him the egg. He observed it for a few moments, seemingly mesmerized by the sight of it. "I'm not sure exactly what this is," said Lance, "but it's pretty damn strange, that's for sure."

Ash looked back at the target, and raised the gun and aimed for it, firing after a few seconds. The bullet landed just outside the edge of the target.

He was somewhat disappointed, but Lance was beaming. "Not bad for a first shot!" he exclaimed. He was going to tell Ash to shoot again, but at that moment his walkie talkie buzzed.

"Ash?" said Dawn's voice, "Ash, are you there?"

Lance tossed the walkie talkie to Ash. "What happened?" asked Ash, "did you find any water?"

"No water," said Dawn, "but Brock found a patch of Chesto berries. We might be able to use them to wake Pikachu."

"That might work," said Ash, "we're coming over there."

Lance grabbed the walkie talkie from Ash. "But don't move," he said, "just stay there."

Dawn didn't answer back, obviously disdained at having heard Lance's voice. "She's moody, that one is," said Lance when they began walking in the direction that Brock and Dawn went.

"I can't blame her," said Ash as he slung the limp Pikachu over his shoulder, "she's scared for her freaking life."

"And you're not?"

Ash didn't immediately respond. Was he scared? Was he honestly scared at the thought of death, or being captured, or both?

"Well, I am a little," he finally responded, "but not of dying. I guess it's the thought of dying for no reason."

"I'm not sure I follow."

Ash sighed. "Let's say they find us and kill us."

"How lovely," interrupted Lance.

Ash went on. "Anyways, to make a long story short, I guess I'm scared of dying while the Rocket Empire is still around. If I have to die, I want to be able to say that I tried to do something about this, that I went down with a fight."

Lance nodded in understanding. "You can't say that you haven't done something. You were a big help earlier with Jasper and those other grunts."

Ash's mind jumped back to the grunts that Lance had killed, and shivered. "I only knocked one guy out," Ash pointed out, "you did pretty much everything else, including killing those grunts in cold blood." Ash paused. "Don't you feel guilty? About killing?"

"I've done a lot of killing in the past year," said Lance, "and to be honest, I don't think that I'm affected by that sort of thing anymore."

Ash looked at him as they continued their walk. "So you don't feel any guilt over killing? Or anything at all?"

Lance sighed. "Sometimes I might be a bit remorseful. Maybe I'll even feel sorry from time to time. But usually…there's nothing."

They walked in silence for the next few minutes. Ash thought of Lance in a different light now. He didn't exactly see him as a cold-hearted killer now, but he definitely wasn't the dragon-taming hero that he once knew.

"Let me put it this way," said Lance, breaking the silence. "You can't feel sorry for killing, not in this world. These grunts, well, they might not deserve to die, but when it comes to your life, you can't take a chance with letting them live. The way I see it is that I'm getting revenge."

"Revenge?" asked Ash.

"Revenge. For what they've caused. What they've done."

Ash had to admit that he had a point. "Well, anyways," he said, wanting to change the subject, "my point about dying is that I don't want to die if I haven't tried to stand up to these guys before they kill me in cold blood."

"So…what are you saying?"

"That if I have to die, I want to die after I've tried to take down this Empire."

Lance fell silent. Then he slowly nodded, saying, "I think we might do something about that."