The beginning of the end.. (Continued)

[Tara]

(Continued from here.)

Tara brought Claudia to a room just towards the beginning of the laboratories, which contained a number of machines. Most of the machines seemed to be devices that had been meant to capture pokemon, most of which had been destroyed by meddling trainers. They were currently undergoing repairs.

She stopped in front of a larger machine, which looked like a more rough version of a pokemon center's healing machine.

"It may not be as sleek and new as the ones at pokemon centers, but it'll get the job done."

[Claudia Donovan]

Claudia gazed around what appeared to her a technology graveyard. It was fascinating, but she wanted to heal her team before she started investigating this cool stuff. "This place is pretty cool, so steam-punky and retro..." she sighed. Claudia put her three Poke Balls into the healing machine and wondered briefly how they managed to fit the thing through the door.

[Tara]

After showing her how to turn the machine on, Tara waved away the complement on the technology, responding,

"It's mostly junk. They're all from when our first leader had it in his head that to take over the world, you needed an army of incredibly rare pokemon. No, I've found that the easiest way is to undermine the authority of the strongest person in a region, and then, when there's no one left to stop you, simply take over. Or amass enough money to buy the whole place out, that works, too. But, either way, that means that this stuff is obsolete."

[Claudia Donovan]

"So if it's junk why keep it around?" Claudia asked.

[Tara]

"They could be useful for spare parts, one of these days. Eventually, we'll have them out of here and used for something useful." she commented, before putting the poke ball containing her Mewtwo in the healing machine.

[Claudia Donovan]

{Tara, your character hasn't actually told my character her name XD}

Claudia took a mental inventory, she might be able to use some of these things to make an interesting gadget.

[Tara]

(...Lol that's true. Thanks for pointing that out. xD;)

Tara was quiet for a moment, taking her poke ball from the healing machine when it had finished. Then she turned to Claudia, considering her for a moment, before speaking.

"I didn't introduce myself earlier. I am Tara, the leader of Team Rocket, and your new Boss. And, if you'd like, your mentor."

[Claudia Donovan]

{lol thanks, eventually my character would have to refer to her by name XD}

Claudia reclaimed her Poke Balls. "Nice to meet you, Tara. I think I'd like to be mentored by the leader." she said.

[Tara]

Tara nodded, glancing around the room for lack of a subject to speak on. She wasn't very good at small talk, so she kept to her role as leader and mentor.

"It shouldn't be too hard to find your way around the headquarters. Everything is plainly marked by the signs near doorways, so you shouldn't get lost. By the way.. how did you like Saffron City? It's quite the place, isn't it?"

[Claudia Donovan]

"Yeah, although I don't really get why it's named after a spice. Well, I suppose there are lots of things I don't quite get." Claudia replied. "So, um, now what?"

[Tara]

"I don't mind what it's named for, but what I do know.. is that we own the city. Not an obvious thing, of course, but in our own way, we do. The people of the city respect the truce we have with them; if they stay out of our way, we'll let their town run as it normally does, in peace. They give us no trouble, and so we do not cause problems. It's a mutual thing, because we cannot have too many members of the Police running around and snooping in our affairs. You may be wondering why I'm telling you this... mostly, it's because I'm advising you not to cause trouble in the city. We need to keep the suspicion from the police down as much as we can, for now, at least until I can get some experiments done. I have a new pokemon that I'm working with, but he has quite the temper... so I need time to be able to train him to accept my commands, at any cost."

[Claudia Donovan]

"Don't do anything obvious or stupid in Saffron, got it! Do we control Celadon too, or is the Rocket Game Corner a coincidence?"

[Tara]

"The Game Corner is there because it's a place with the greatest profit to us. We have a small hideout there, where we keep the majority of the stock that we steal for the Game Corner's prizes, but no, we don't control that town.. yet." Tara told her with a small smirk. Yes, she was sure it wouldn't be too long before they could safely assume a takeover. It hadn't taken much for them to control Saffron; all they'd had to do was publicly "replace" the old owner of Silph Co.

[Claudia Donovan]

"What's it take to take over a town? Do you have to replace the Gym Leader? Do you replace important people? Do you release hundreds of psychic Pokemon at night to hypnotize everyone?" Claudia sprinkled the air with questions, a takeover sounded rather fun.

[Tara]

"Mostly it's psychological warfare with the townspeople. If they won't break when we 'replace' the important people with my own hand-picked officials, then it may require a show of force. Usually they go along with us after that, if not when we run the police out of the town. Afterwards, I try to make things rather more peaceful with our public relations, which happened easily with Saffron. The last thing I need is to be putting down half-formed rebellions once a week, so it's best to keep things peaceful with the locals. And that way I won't have to contend with the police... as much. After all, it's merely a change in management, with legally signed documents and everything, so.. there's nothing to indicate that we did anything 'too' illegal." she replied with a small smile, fondly remembering how they had taken over Saffron.

[Claudia Donovan]

"So, um, what's next for me? More battles? Some sort of Rookie mission? A uniform?" Claudia asked, starting to get bored.

[Tara]

"For now.. get acquainted with your new home. I'll let you find your new quarters on your own, and get settled in. Then you can do whatever you'd like. We can start some of your training sometime tomorrow, if you'd like."

(Continues here.)