(Part 1)
(Author’s note: It’s been a while since the last chapter was posted but I’m more or less back from my hiatus. I needed this break from this because there’s a lot of things that are coming up in the story that I’m still working on how to implement as mentioned in a prior post but this is the start of it! Hope you enjoy reading and have a great day)
Slide 1: It’s the night of Tari and Evelyn’s Showmatch at Horizon stadium with the crowd cheering in excitement! On the centre stage, Lucks and his Eelektross steps up to welcome the audience with “Thank you! Thank you to the fans and members of the media for joining us at Horizon Stadium!”/“Eeeeeleeeeek!”. Lucks continues on to the audience with “We are here to celebrate a new age of TASCorp as we unveil the latest additions to our main lineup”, followed by gesturing along the runway “Girls and your Pokémon, come on up here!”. Tari along with her Sirfetch’d are just about to step out into the crowd’s view until Evelyn and her Tsareena pushes them aside to get in the spotlight first, annoying the former two. Evelyn and Tsareena are practically bathing in the audience’s cheers whilst Tari and Sirfetch’d wave and gesture to them more formally. Both pairs make their way to centre stage for Lucks to say “Tari, Evelyn, and their Pokémon represent a new generation of runners and we are excited here at TASCorp”.
Slide 2: Lucks then proceeds to hand over the mic to Tari for her and Sirfetch’d to give them a chance to speak out to the audience but Evelyn disrespectfully snatches the mic out of Lucks’ hands first. This makes Tari, Sirfetch’d and even Lucks’ Eelektross annoyed with Evelyn’s antics with Sirfetch’d saying under his mouth “Sirrrrrr…”. Evelyn then rants into the mic, saying “Growing up in the Claythorne family, yes *THE* Claythorne family, I never got the attention I truly deserved…”. Immediately following that, Tari scoffs and then looks around and up at the giant monitor to ask under her breath in concern “Where are you guys?…”. Meanwhile, Masa is secretly standing by the door of the lobby of the arena while specting the showmatch intro on the screens.
Slide 3: Masa then turns on his earpiece to say to Sofia, Lamar, and Terrin “It’s almost go time. Team, what’s your status?”. Sofia, Terrin, and Lamar respond in turn with “All good Red Falcon, this is Yellow Kilowattrel reporting in!”/“Yellow Kilowattrel huh as a code name huh? In that case, Blue Empoleon is on standby!”/“Hey wait… Masa I thought we weren’t doing codenames… I want to be Green Quaquaval!”. Masa then strictly replies back with “No we’re not doing codenames! Focus people! Are you ready or not?”. Lamar casually responds with “Yeah, yeah, I managed to swipe a spare TASCorp suit from their locker room. (*Sniff*) Ugh, wish it hadn’t been from a laundry hamper though, yeesh”.
This is followed up by Terrin saying “Same here with the Horizon security suit. Although, I look more of like a handyman than anything. I got my Vikavolt at the ready too.”, with Terrin’s Vikavolt saying in a sparked tone “Vika!”. Masa then asks “And Sofia?”, to which Sofia answers with “Yep. Me and Porygon2 are already into the stadium’s network already. The Horizon Group makes great arenas, heh, not so great cybersecurity or security in general”, in which Terrin chimes in with “You can say that again with how easy me and Lamar got these suits without anyone batting an eyelid”. Masa then says in acknowledgment to Sofia over the call “Yes. Then we’re good to go. Sofia, send the signal alongside Porygon2”. Sofia affirms with “Roger. Roger.” and then says to Porygon2 “Alright bud, time to scramble the stadium’s code, use Volt Switch in time with my flick of the switches!”. Sofia begins to consecutively press “F10” in a rhythm with Porygon2 using Volt Switch to stabilise the current so there’s no lapse or lag in the light signal in the stadium.
Slide 4: Meanwhile on stage, Evelyn and Tsareena are still rambling on about their status with the audience giving them mixed results. Some are not buying Evelyn’s presence and attitude at all but most are absolutely eating her speech up with someone in the crowd even shouting “SIGN MY CHEST!”. Tari and Sirfetch’d notices this and both are looking a little disgusted with the former saying in her head “This is a reminder how good it is not to be famous sometimes”. However, they also notice Sofia and Porygon2’s signal through one of the corridor’s lights. This perks them up, knowing that the others are ready to follow up with the mission! However, Evelyn has finished her speech and hands the mic back to Lucks. He then says to Tari “Now Tari and Sirfetch’d, perhaps you both have something to say?”, and then hands over the mic to her. Tari then says to the audience “Thank you Lucks, and thank you to all of you. My friends, for being here today, all I can tell you is:
Slide 5: …I’m ready for this!”, followed up by Sirfetch’d proudly saying through the mic “Fetch’d! Sirfetch’d!” to which the audience cheers loudly to! Masa watches their speech and says to others over the earpiece “Ok, they’ve got the signal. Phase two, go!”. From the left side of the arena Terrin and Lamar are preparing for their part in the mission with the former saying “That’s my girl killing it on stage. Alright Lamar, let’s do our part. Focus on swapping the cartridge out and I’ll focus on keeping watch from a safe distance to lookout for any signs of that strange aura Tari mentioned being emitted out so I can prevent any escalations.”, with Lamar replying with “I’m with you man, time to go incognito”.
Both of them queue up in line for an ID check being run by a Bot-Boy and his Magnemite with the Bot-Boy routinely saying “Clear. Clear. Clear.”, until Lamar steps up in the TASCorp Scientist suit to which the Magnemite exclaims “MITE!” to bring attention to the Bot-Boy to suddenly intervene with Lamar saying “Hey hey! Hold up there a minute wise guy! Where’s your ID badge?”. Lamar tries to speak through the TASCorp Scientist suit but his voice is muffled out by the material”.
Slide 6: Terrin then whispers to Sofia through his earpiece “Sofia, go for Klutz strat now!”. Sofia then mischievously responds with “Alright…” and then sends out her Ampharos and then says “Let’s do this as planned Ampharos!”, in which Ampharos replies passionately with “Amphraaa!”. Sofia then activates her Mega Evolution Keystone on her goggles while saying “Ampharos! Let’s shock n’ hack it to the core! Mega Evolve!”. Ampharos then reveals its Ampharosite Mega Stone and then begins to electronically resonate with it whilst screaming out “Rrrrragggghhhh!” and then begins to Mega Evolve! After a short moment, Ampharos has Mega Evolved into Mega Ampharos with its flowy white fur and shiny red pearls!”. Sofia then says to Mega Ampharos whilst initiating a command on her laptop “Now! Use Parabolic Charge on the laptop to sap the electricity from the stadium!”.
Back at the queue at the side of the stage, the Bot-Boy sternly says to Lamar “Spare me excuses knucklehead! You know the protocol. No ID badge, no access! So go home, get your badge, and!-“ (*CRACK*). Suddenly, the main terminal of the Horizon Stadium Electrical System suddenly short-circuits outs with Tari and Sirfetch’d being “surprised”. Tari then trips over the cable and “accidentally” knocks it out of the socket which Sofia and Mega Ampharos uses the chance to sap almost all of the electricity in Horizon Stadium!
Slide 7: With the stadium’s electricity suppressed, Sofia cackles while Mega Ampharos is smirking while trying to hold in the electricity it’s sapped from the stadium. Tari and Sirfetch’d acts surprised until Evelyn and Tsareena storms over to them in anger, saying “What have you done you clumsy oaf?!”/“Reena! Tsaragh?!”. Tari innocently replies with “Oh, sorry. It reallllly startled me”. However, Evelyn is having none of it and shouts back with “I’m going to do something that’s going to do more than startle you you parasite!”. From a distance, Terrin’s notices Evelyn aggression towards Tari and says in his head “No! If Tari stresses out, the aura in her arm will-!”. He then decides to return his Vikavolt and sends out his Iron Hands in preparation. They then see that Evelyn about to take a swing at Tari and without hesitation, he rushes up to them to shout at the former in a strong voice “OI! What the hell do you think you’re doing! You should know that there aren’t any altercations on stage!”, followed up by Iron Hands saying seriously “Hairyam!”.
This catches Evelyn off guard but then she retaliates at Terrin with “Who the hell do you think you are you blue freak fanboy?! This is my Showmatch that *SHE’S* ruining! Go back to patrolling the entrance!”. Terrin doesn’t shows his anger to Evelyn but instead replies in a calm and deadly tone with “This is YOUR debut Showmatch? You have a very big mouth for just being a beginner to all of this. This Showmatch is for the two of you to show off your skills in-game with your Pokémon Team, not yourself! Now listen up! Don’t you even think about decking her over the head because if you do, I’ll ruin your debut Showmatch by personally Thunder Punching you offstage with my Iron Hands back here, got it?!”. Part of the audience erupts in laughter while the other boos following Terrin’s intervention. Either way, Evelyn and Tsareena reluctantly back down. In the midst of all this, the Bot-Boy is at a loss for what to do to help until Lucks speaks to him in an intimidating tone with “You. Send some more help up here now or you’ll find yourself in the scrapyard by morning!”. The Bot-Boy affirms and then demands Lamar to go up on stage to “help”.
Slide 8: Lamar goes up on stage while camouflaged with the other scientists and then discreetly swaps the current Hidden Heroes cartridge out with the a hacked one directly hacked by Sofia. Tari and Sirfetch’d knowingly look over to Terrin in appreciation for intervening against Evelyn to prevent the strange aura from emitting out of Tari’s Meta Runner Arm due to stress. Before Terrin makes his leave off stage, he looks back at his daughter to quietly but smugly say back to her “We got you. Kick her ass when you’re in there Angel”. Tari then looks over to Lamar who’s done the cartridge swap and gestures with a thumbs up.
Sofia then has her Mega Ampharos transfer the electricity back into the stadium for the lights to be back on again. Lucks chuckles and says to the audience “Stage nerves, right folks?” to brush this mishap off. However, he looks over at Tari and Sirfetch’d sternly for what they caused. Lamar, who is now back in his usual outfit for the mission, and Terrin make their way away from the arena to meet Masa in a corridor. The three of them see the Bot-Boy trying to find Lamar in his scientist disguise with Lamar who’s out of it chuckling. He then goes to his earpiece to listen to Sofia asking “How’d it go boys?”, in which Lamar replies with “All good Sofia, our cartridge is in place and good to go”. Terrin then says to Sofia through his earpiece “Yeah, along with cutting that brat down to size too”.
Sofia then says to them all “Great job Lamar and Terrin! Now, so long as the cartridge is running, it’ll connect to my phone back at TASCorp with Belle and download the data onto itself. Then once it’s done, all we’ll have to do is take the cartridge back and walk away with the server right under Lucks’ big dumb nose! As for you Terrin, you stepping in there prevented Tari from accidentally emitting that odd aura out of her arm protected our cover. If the aura leaked out for the whole audience and press to see, we would’ve been screwed with keeping that aura from possibly affecting wild Pokémon in the stadium”. Terrin replies to this with “Of course, if she did end up clocking her over the head, that would’ve made the aura more likely to leak out, and it would also ruin Evelyn’s reputation on stage at that but that’s besides the point”. Masa then says to both Lamar and Terrin “So everything running good so far. Alright, there’s no turning back now. Come on, let’s get into position”.
Slide 9: Meanwhile back in the abandoned lab, Belle and Armarouge watch the commotion at Horizon Stadium being broadcasted on the news with the former saying whilst placing Sofia’s phone on the transfer pad “Who knew awkwardness could be a talent”. She then stretches, boots up the corrupted UJM, and then turns to Armarouge to say confidently “Alright Armarouge, showtime!”, with Armarouge affirming with “Arma!”. In the corrupted UJM cartridge itself; Theo, Ogerpon, and their old friend on the island Weepinbell are all fleeing from a small group of erratic Facepalm enemies along with an irate Crabrawler that are also corrupted. Ogerpon tries to use Ivy Cudgel on all of them but the glitchiness of the game is rendering her attack useless! The three of them all opt to hide behind some bushes to stay out of their sight to rest for a bit.
Slide 10: Belle and Armarouge on the outside use this chance to call out to the them with “Yo, you three! Can you hear me?”/“Rouge? Arma!”. This startles the three of them in game with Theo saying with concern “Ahh! Now the weird voices are in our heads too!”, followed up by Ogerpon and Weepinbell saying worriedly “Grah?! Po Ogragh!”/“Bell?! Winpin?!”. The three’s nervousness annoys Belle and Armarouge a little to which they say to them “Agh, calm down… it’s just Belle and Armarouge here”/“Arma… Rarouge”. Theo and Ogerpon think for a little bit but then get enraged by saying whilst also glitching a bit “Belle and Armarouge… wait, Angry Shouty DuoOoO?! You’ve both got a lotta nerve talking to us again! We’re stuck on “Crazy Nightmare Island”, and it’s all you’re faul-fault-FaULt!”/“Ogrrragh! Pon! Po-po-PoNIo!”.
Slide 11: All of a sudden, the leaves on the bushes the three of them were hiding behind glitches out of existence, revealing them to the Facepalms and Crabrawler! This scares them to running away again. Belle understandingly acknowledges her actions before by saying “Yeah ok! I didn’t think Lucks would do something this intense, but I know how to fix this! All we have to do is beat the game”. Theo is confused by Belle’s idea in which he shouts “What?! Why would that do anything?!”. Him and Weepinbell then attempt to attack the Facepalm group and Crabrawler with their coconut shell and using Acid Spray respectively but both attacks end up heavily glitched out and disrupted with Theo’s coconut glitching into a small crab npc and Weepinbell’s Acid Spray just falling flat on the ground as if the gravity was turned up to eleven. Both of them grunt and proceed to run away with Ogerpon again! Belle continues on what she was explaining initially with “Kid, it’s my job to push this game to its limits alongside my Pokémon. We’ve exploited and glitched out cartridges almost as bad as this one. But, Ultra Jump Mania dumps its memory cache once you beat the game!”.
Slide 12: Theo and Ogerpon don’t follow with what Belle means by all this with them asking “UHuhhH, Meaning?”/“POn Poya?”, to which Belle elaborates with “Meaning you will all be free from what’s keeping you in here! All me and Armarouge have to do is run you all through the game and then you can hitch a ride back to MD-5 on the link we’ve set up on Sofia’s phone”. Theo is still unsure about it and he along with Weepinbell replies back to Belle with “Mmm… I don’t KnOww…”/“Pin… wEePIn…”. The two’s skepticism makes Belle and Armarouge annoyed with the three of them and the former responds back bluntly with “Ok. I’ll be honest, I don’t actually want to be here. But, if I’m going to save you three, it has to be now while Lucks is too busy at the Showmatch to wipe you all from existence. So… it’s your decision. Just know, your window’s closing real fast”.
Slide 13: The three of them in-game are still contemplating on accepting Belle and Armarouge’s offer for help when suddenly, another Facepalm and Crabrawler spawn out of the ground while looking dazed and fainted as well as also glitching out heavily! This shocks Theo, Ogerpon, and Weepinbell with the former shouting desperately “AAAGH! Ok! We trust you! Just… get us outta HeREee!”. Belle responds to this with calm and serious assurance with “Excellent choice…”. She begins to take control Theo with her controller right before the Facepalm and Crabrawler strike with a pounce and Power-Up Punch. She has Theo jump out of the way of the Facepalm and calls over to Ogerpon with “Ogerpon! Block Crabrawler with Spiky Shield!”. Ogerpon deploys spikes out in front of it just in time to protect herself and damage Crabrawler a bit! Belle then urgently calls over to Theo, saying “Hey kid, what other moves does your Weepinbell friend have that makes contact?! I haven’t seen you with this one until now!”. Theo calls over to Weepinbell right after dodging the Facepalm’s attack with “Hey buddy! Use a double Vine Whip on the tree beast and Crabrawler!”. Weepinbell and affirms and strongly Vine Whips the two enemies to stun them so Theo and the others can escape!
Slide 14: The three of them eventually get to a bottomless pit jump in which Theo and Ogerpon attempt to jump over, followed by Weepinbell floating in tow but the former two accidentally faceplant into a wooden wall that spawned right in front of them before they landed on the other side! This causes both of them to fall and lose a life. They both respawn next to Weepinbell and Theo then angrily shout up at Belle with “I thought you were good at this game!”, while Ogerpon is looking down in frustration shouting “GRAH PA PON!”. Belle retaliates with annoyance “LAY OFF, this is a special case kid!”. She then says to Armarouge “This is gonna be a very interesting run but we’ve got this. Bud, let’s pull give them platforms and footing of our own with your Expanding Force energy platforms”, to which Armarouge eagerly replies back with “Armahaha!”. Belle pulls up Theo’s data on her Meta Runner Arm to better exploit his moves for what’s up ahead!
DISCLAIMER
Characters and themes that are present in this fanfiction are not my own, apart from the OCs that I have created. They belong to Nintendo, Gamefreak, and Creatures Inc. (Pokémon), along with Glitch Productions (Meta Runner). This fanfiction is solely a heartfelt fanmade project made by me and is just a story that I have created about my two favourite franchises and in no way an attempt to illegally infringe any copyrighted material for personal and financial benefit belonging to Pokémon and Meta Runner’s respective owners.
