Within moments of the alert going out my Xtransceiver began exploding with messages.
“Huh? These shouldn’t be working,” I pointed out, confused.
Rachel stared back at me. “Brock, there are phone towers… those are separate from the pokenet,” she pointed out reasonably.
That made me pause. Oh, right. These are early days of the pokenet with phone towers still widely in use rather than relying on apps and other items that were routed through the internet.
“Oh, right I just thought that with the pokenet being down surely…” A rather worrying thought occurred to me and I sent it off to Lance, and then after a moment’s consideration, any other League worker I had the displeasure of knowing.
I phoned Sabrina a moment later.
Sabrina picked up, but the image didn’t display her so much as a room that was flashing red. There were sounds of pings and shrill alarms. “A bit busy right now Brock! Someone is—”
“Tear the cables out of the sockets, we were just attacked and the Porygon retreated once the connection was threatened,” I stated, cutting her off.
There was a moment of silence.
Then a loud trill sounded out, and someone cursed. I heard the sound of multiple pokemon emerging from pokeballs followed by general violence as bodies hit metal walls and a sound that I’d long since learned were Psybeams rang out.
Lights flashed again and again and at one point, the image shifted to show a small troop of Porygon attempting to blow through a Barrier that Alakazam was holding while another Porygon-Z was attempting to connect an unplugged cable.
The Porygon-Z trilled once in victory only for a pokemon to Teleport next to it and slash through the cable.
Other pokemon like Hypno and Kirlia made appearances then, smashing aside the rest of the opposing Porygon.
Sabrina huffed. “That got them,” she declared.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I unplugged all the cables for outside connections when you pointed out the issue,” Sabrina stated. “It left some of the Porygon plague within my systems. It appears they panicked with my shutdown and exited the servers.”
“Huh,” I muttered. Was it a good thing that I hadn’t been as quick to rip the cables, or that I’d been sloppier? I wouldn’t have been able to handle the sudden appearance of dozens of Porygon in a tight space.
Sabrina, it seemed, had her plague of Porygon penetrate deeper while also denying them their exit faster than they could react.
Resulting in the spill over.
“They attacked here as well,” I declared. “If they attacked you… and the rest of the pokenet, then I should probably ring around for the other Pokemon Gyms.”
“I will see to Erika and the Cerulean Gym,” Sabrina stated. She kept her phone line on as she teleported and I caught sight of the Celadon Gym with multiple women battling a group of Porygon while a small shed like building smouldering.
What had they done, pour water on it to stop the infiltration?
I hung up before I could see the end result, but I suspected with Sabrina on the field, Erika and the girls would be fine.
I instead called Visquez.
“Hey Brock,” Visquez answered with a smug, knowing grin. “Having an interesting day?” she asked.
I blinked. “You’re alright?” I replied, eying the lack of alarms.
Visquez grinned. “Pops ain’t smart, but there are some things he ain’t stupid about. Apparently when he was installing all of the network he demanded they dumb it down. They must have dumbed it down enough for him to see it as a possible weak point in his home system so he installed some doohicky that fried the systems if too much data was forced through at once.”
“That… that worked?” I asked.
Visquez shifted her transceiver to reveal a pair of unconscious Porygon while behind her a set of servers sat blankly with no power to them.
“Yup! You best call someone else to check up on them. I’ve sent someone down to Manny, but yeah.”
I nodded and continued the ring around only to blanch when I realised that the ransom note from Hack3rman wasn’t just threatening Kanto, but all of Indigo. What were the Johto Gym Leaders doing?
I got through my initial list of friends and fellow Gym members.
Manny, Sophia, and Kaede were all fine. Janine had likewise defended her Gym easily with systems that she’d installed after her father had handed the Gym over to her.
Kong, the other Gym Leader of Saffron City, while the last person on my list to call, had answered quickly only to reveal that nothing was wrong.
I’d stared at him for a long moment. Honestly I’d been kicking myself for forgetting him for so long only to see nothing but tranquil Gym grounds around him.
“Kong…. You don’t have any pokenet servers or computers in your dojo do you?”
“No, why would I?”
I nodded slowly. Suddenly the reason why his tax returns caused him such trouble made a tremendous amount of sense.
Kong wrote everything down.
He was an idiot, but in this situation, he was an idiot who was going to get out of it with absolutely zero issues.
“Try opening the pokenet app on your transceiver. Something big has happened. I gotta keep calling around. Suffice to say you’re one of the best off, and other Gyms have been ransacked of digital data,” I informed him before hanging up.
“Brock, what are we going to do with our system down?” Rachel asked only for me to stop her.
“I’m sorry, talk with Dennis and Rocko. For now keep whatever we can off record. I know Dennis insisted on having hard copies of schedules, rosters, and work shifts so secure that. Maybe see if Bethany, our older than dirt receptionist, wrote down all our future appointments in a diary. That will shore up some things but I can’t help out. I need to call around the Johto side to see how things are going there.”
Rachel nodded, and with some tasks assigned, she set off to see them completed.
Nearby, the Security guard fidgeted. “Do a sweep of the Gym with some other trainers, make sure no Porygon slipped through and are hiding out in our Gym,” I suggested.
That got him moving as I started calling Goldenrod Gym.
It took a while to get Whitney on the line but when she did she appeared with tears streaming down her face. “Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrooooooooooooooooock! The computers attacked and everything’s flashing and I don’t know what to do!” she wailed.
And I had to give it to her, if this had happened within the first two weeks of my being a Gym Leader, and I didn’t have another life’s questionable knowledge on how to stop hackers brute forcing themselves through a security system I too would have been pretty upset.
“Whitney, there might still be Porygon in your computers. I need you to turn everything off, rip all the power cables out of the socket and disconnect your internet cables.”
“I’m not sure where any of those are?” she cried.
“I imagine Norman would have shown you a big folder regarding building plans?” I said, hoping that Norman had been thorough in his hand off.
“He did, yeah?”
“Those folders would be a good place to look for where the server is and any internet casting devices.”
I spent the next ten minutes coaching Whitney on what to do to shut her systems down. By the end of it she was still shaken, but the alarm was off, and her gym was as safe as I could make it. I offered her a few suggestions before continuing my call list.
“Jasmine of Olivine here!” chirped Jasmine, the other new Gym leader in Johto.
The lack of alarms instantly had me relaxing. “Oh, your systems held?”
Jasmine scratched her cheek sheepishly. “Actually… ours were already down for scheduled maintenance to upgrade them when the plague hit. We’re not connecting until things are safe.”
That got a chuckle from me and a nod. Heh, scheduled maintenance. I sure hope others were as lucky as Jasmine.
My next call was to Pryce.
“Brock,” he answered with his usual brusque manner.
Once again, there was a lack of alarms. “Oh, good, you handled the Porygon plague.”
“Hmmm, of course I did! I called Lorelei when it started and she told me what to do,” he declared. “The girl’s a whiz with computers!” he shook his head.
I blinked slowly at that before holding back a snort.
Oh Arceus. Pryce hadn’t known what to do with his computer system glitching out, and he’d called his granddaughter. If that wasn’t the most old person stereotype playing out I didn’t know what was.
It was made all the more hilarious by the fact that it worked out for him.
“You know you’re the fourth person to call and check in on me?” he pointed out.
“Who were the others? Young Clair Blackothorn, Jasmine from Olivine, and even Morty!”
That had me sighing with relief. Good, good, other people were checking around on each other. That was excellent.
“Right, well I guess I’ll stop calling around then, and see to my own problems,” I stated with a wave of relief.
“Hmph, you should do that!” Pryce grunted before hanging up abruptly.
I shook my head and gave the trio of Porygon, who were all still hanging their heads at their ‘poor showing’ against a small horde of pokemon. “Hey, you three did great. I’m not sure if pokemon battles are the same in digital space as in real life, but the fact that we didn’t get overwhelmed and purged is a great sign. You held the fort until I could get there to help out.”
That got them perking up a bit, and I made sure to take the time to pet all of them and offer them another round of berries. “Let’s get you all to Chansey while we can.”
The trio nodded and followed me down to the infirmary, where an annoyed looking Chensey was trying various methods to get the message from Hack3rman to go away.
In the space of time that I’d been calling people around, the five hundred million counter had ticked up to five hundred and fifty million.
Hmmm the League would be feeling the heat with that.
The question would be what could they do?
Paying would be a terrible idea, but it was something they could do. The risk would be if the person turned around and demanded more. A huge chunk of money would basically go up in smoke.
It might be that the money was the objective.
Or… it might be that while all this fire was being spread around, something else was being auctioned quietly, but that was the part of me that had been trained by Koga for months on end rearing its head up.
Still, it wasn’t a bad instinct.
I toggled the radio system. “Please be advised that the Gym will be entering a lock down state with heightened security in case of other breaches or security risks. Please comply with all protocols going forward by our security members.”
I considered the radio system for a moment. “If anyone is unfamiliar with the security protocols, please find them in your employment manual, either in the office, or in your personal booklet you were provided outlining your responsibilities.”
It… had been a while since I’d retrained anyone on those protocols, so it was probably fair that some people might slip up on them.
Urgh, there were going to be a ton of security systems reviewed because of this.
Damn Hack3rman!
From this act alone, I suspected he’d become enemy number one within Indigo.
A call from Lance was quickly answered before I could check in with Flint and Lola who’d probably been seeing the rest of our family.
“Sup Lance?” I asked.
Lance looked tense. “Brock. I need your Porygon.”
“Huh?” I replied.
“Under section eight of the Indigo charter I need to requisition all pokemon that can respond to this National threat. While it was originally written with regard to having a fighting force assembled it doesn’t specify that only physical pokemon are required. I know you have a trio of Porygon, and I’m sorry to do this, but the League nee—”
“Sure,” I replied. “My systems connection cables are cut though so I can’t forward them like normal. I shouldn’t need them from another outside hack. So they’d just be mopping around here.”
I gave him a look as he blinked and a wave of relief flooded through him at how I wasn’t fighting him over this. “I’ll need someone to pick them up,” I pointed out.
“I’ll have a pick up there in minutes.” Lance locked eyes with me. “Brock. I’m also going to have to use an Upgrade on them. There were simply too many normal Porygon’s and that new evolution for me not to boost them. I hope you—”
“Oh, you have access to that? I thought that was still restricted. Cool, go ahead,” I replied, once again cutting him off.
Lance smiled as more weight came off his shoulders. “Thank you.”
“Need me to come in as well?” I asked.
Lance shook his head. “For now, no. That might change, but for now I need your Porygon, soon to be Porygon2.”
“Champion Lance, the Ceo of Silph and his technicians are here,” chimed a voice off screen.
Lance glanced over and nodded before looking back to me. “Thank you again Brock. I need to go find out what I can about this. We’ll talk soon,” he stated, and I nodded as the screen went blank.
Hmmmm, to be a fly on the wall in that room.
Huh, what was the equivalent in pokemon speech? I hadn’t heard that. To be a beedrill? Nah that didn’t work.
Gastly maybe? They were tough to notice.
Ah… I hope Karen called Agatha.
She would have… right?
I pursed my lips before nodding. Yeah, she would have.
Just to hedge my bets, I sent her a message to check in.
Then I realised that there was someone else in that age range who might not have handled the issue as well as I might assume.
I dialled for Sam Oak.
He answered on the third ring, steely eyed and looking like a man who had emerged from a hard fight.
His face split into a huge smile. “Oh! Hello there Brock! I’m assuming you’re calling about the Porygon Plague? Don’t worry, Daisy and Gary along with my research assistants already made sure I was fine.”
“Your shoulder is smoking,” I pointed out.
He swatted it and the smoke went away. “Hahaha, Tri Attacks eh?”
“You got hit pretty hard I take it?”
“Indeed! Quite a flock of Porygon came through. Two I’d never seen before! Apparently, Porygon2 is out now? But that other one…”
“They’re calling it Porygon-Z,” I said, deciding to add my two pokecents.
"Oh, that’s a good name!” Sam muttered as he reached for a pen and began jotting it down.
“So you’re safe?”
“For now! I’ll be seeing to the reserve, however, as this is one site that is always a prize for anyone with daring and this Hack3rman certainly doesn’t lack for that. Make sure your family is safe Brock!” he suggested.
“I will,” I replied before hanging up.
With that done, I turned my attention to shoring up my family Gym and as much as I could for anything that might come from this digital assault.
I had to give it to this Hack3rman, he’d hit us right where it hurt, and barely anyone had seen it as a vague possibility.
What sort of mad genius had thought of this method of bringing Indigo to its knees?
______________
“I’m going to need some answers gentlemen,” Lance declared as he swept into the boardroom that had served as the meeting room for the group of distinguished guests.
Two in particular were of more importance than the rest.
There was no doubt in Lance’s mind that most of the men were the sort that were used to sitting in his position, giving orders instead of receiving them. Well, actually that wouldn’t be true of one of them, seeing as they were only a regional manager.
An elderly man in a suit made to rise and speak, “Champion Lance I’m sorry but that is simply—”
Lance held up a hand. “Under the League Charter, situations that threaten the integrity of the nation may confer emergency powers to…enforce compulsory acquisition, or eminent domain.”
Lance’s tone was absolute and his words cut through everyone.
They all straightened up and stared at him like he’d just revealed himself to be a vicious Migthyena.
“You can’t be serious?” muttered one of them.
Lance gave a thin, toothless smile. “I’m deadly serious, gentlemen.” He pointed at the main perpetrators.
“Silph co and the Devon Corporation are two of the major developers of digital pokemon known as Porygon. Other firms, such as Poketech, Technoware Retail, Kaiba Corp and Goldentech, have just started dabbling in Porygon production and sales, so you’re here, but not entirely culpable.”
Lance stared at each of the CEO’s that had been dragged to meet him. Usually this would take weeks to organise in less stressful circumstances.
Today that hadn’t been the case.
Specialist Psychic trainers with pokemon more than capable of transporting others with them via Psychic had been sent out and the various men had been summoned without delay.
They were rumpled, annoyed, and going to be generally unhelpful.
Thankfully Lance had more than a few sticks to hit them with if the situation called for it.
“What I need is a sale of any information pertaining to Porygon that has occurred since its development. I also need any access logs so the League has an idea of who had access to this sort of information in the past.”
“You can’t do this!” growled the Regional manager of the Devon Corp.
“You’ll find that I can and will if called to. A vital piece of infrastructure has been hijacked and while we’re accessing it at the various physical locations it is going to be slow going. To speed any investigations you will submit all the requested information, as well as anything that might be pertinent. If I find later that information was withheld, destroyed or falsely presented to us I will be leveling severe restrictions on your companies.”
“Steven Stone will not stand for this!” blustered the Devon Rep, still stubbornly digging his heels in.
“Steven Stone is no longer the Champion of Hoenn, therefore affording him certain legal… freedoms,” Lance grit out. “If Devon Corp does not comply it will be treated like everyone else.”
Alright, there might be a part of this meeting that Lance had been looking—
“HA! IN YOUR FACE DEVON CORP!” shouted a man from Goldentech near the far end of the table.
The man blinked, only to flush in embarrassment. “Apologies Champion! I don’t know what came over me!” he bowed low and resumed his seat.
“I’m quite sure,” replied Lance as he kept his own smirk small.
“Technicians will return with you all to your respective companies. I require all of your information along with any Porygon and Upgrades you can supply,” Lance stated. “Fair prices will be paid for your goods, as set by the provisioning board,” Lance said, more than happy to pass the buck on to someone else.
“Champion you can’t be—”
The room darkened and the shadows gained eyes for a moment only for Agatha to appear next to Lance. “You wished to discuss something with me?” she announced.
Lance stood. “Gentleman, I’m late for my next meeting. Help us in this moment,” his eyes slid to every other man in the room, “Or don’t. We will remember and act depending on your actions either way,” he stated as he turned and marched out, making sure to flare his cape just so.
He could only hope that none of the CEOs noticed how his shadow had copied him while smirking with red eyes.
“Perfectly timed as always Agatha,” Lance said, nodding to the former Elite Four member.
“Hmph, as if it would be anything else!” she declared, floating next to him rather than walking herself. Lance didn’t look down, knowing that her feet weren’t touching the ground. She’d either been hiding her tricks when acting as an Elite Four member, or she’d grown stronger by retiring.
He wasn’t sure which idea he preferred.
“How are the Channelers?” he asked instead.
“No issues for us. We stuck to paper and pen with phones being the only innovations we’ve taken on in the last few years,” she replied.
On any other day Lance might have pointed out how that was a terrible business model to have as it was so behind the times. But today wasn’t like any other day/ Today had been flipped on its head and spiralled so far so quickly that Lance wasn’t even bothered that today was actually tonight.
Soon it would be tomorrow.
And still that damned counter was ticking over.
It was made worse by the fact that no other sites of points of vulnerability were being assaulted. Lance had been quick to have teams in position for any of the prisons where the High profile or most dangerous members of Team Rocket had been stored away.
Other sites where the Executives and even Giovanni had been settled had also quietly been updated.
There were power plants with guards, water filtration plants, sewage mains, telephone companies and stables for pokemon that had Rangers pouring into the cities to defend the vital points of infrastructure.
They were up to seven hundred million pokedollars now. A sum that the League could pay, but… no. It could never be seen capitulating like that to a threat.
They needed to be strong and grow stronger from this challenge.
“You’re going to have to pull at least a dozen Teleporters off the rotation you have them on,” Agatha suggested.
“We need all of them right now. Speed is all we have.”
“And that might be what they target,” Agatha said calmly. “Wear you down so you can’t respond when they strike with overwhelming force at one crucial position. If you don’t have a rapid response team ready to deploy, you’re going to be in a world of strife.”
“I’m already in a world of strife,” Lance growled, but nodded his head. “I’ll have Lorelei pull ten Teleporters off the rotation,” he said, conceding the point. He rubbed his jaw and shot Agatha a look. “Any other observations?” he asked.
Agatha considered him for a long moment. “Hmmm, so this is what it takes to get you to listen eh? I suppose I always was a wartime appointment to the Elite Four,” she muttered. “You should act swiftly. These servers that host most of the internet… why are we not shutting them down and flushing out the porygon like the others?”
“That has caused extensive damage. If we do that… we’re going to have to rebuild everything from scratch.”
“Hmmm,” Agatha pursed her lips. “They’ve pulled a battle of Prosecco then?”
Lance shut his eyes. Prosecco… that was a battle in Kalos wasn’t it? It had been among the records for the war. “The attackers of the city were caught by reinforcements in that battle weren’t they?”
“Yes, and in response to being trapped the attackers chose to use the entire population of the city as hostages. The defenders thought it a bluff. It wasn’t… at least, not for one man.”
Lance stared at Agatha. Questions rose to the fore.
How did she know this restricted history? Was it first hand, or through word of mouth?
She hadn’t said who the attackers were but if Lance was a gambling man he’d play short odds on Kanto being the instigator.
And if there was one man in Kanto’s history known for weighing numbers and coming to a cold hard result that he would pursue…
“Blaine? You think this Hack3rman is him?” Lance asked.
Agatha drummed her fingers on her cane in thought. “It has his flair, but for him to attack like this through a digital landscape. Blaine is one of the most intelligent men I have ever encountered, Lance. But most of his skills were battling, tactics, or sciences…”
Lance raised an eyebrow. “Computers aren’t science to you?” he asked only for her to scoff.
“Alright so he might have picked up on this! But I feel like his interests would be elsewhere! He could be the person calling the shots is the main idea I had!”
“It has merit,” Lance agreed. “What would his follow-up action be?”
“With the pokenet held hostage? He’d hurt you, as much as he could in as many ways as he could.”
“Not what I wanted to hear,” Lance replied. “But it does make it more likely that the bribe he is demanding is just there to screw us over.”
“Indeed, you cannot give that to him! Don’t even think of something so fooli—”
“I’m not!” snapped Lance as he turned and locked eyes with Agatha, only to sigh. “My apologies. Today has been testing for me, and I suspect there are going to be many more trying days ahead.”
Lance stared out the window. “Did anyone beat Blaine during the war when he did things like this? Heck! How did Oak stay on top of that guy?”
“He kept Blaine very close and busy in ways that could be tracked. Blaine played a very long game with us however as he began presenting a more… relaxed stance that I suspect was now a persona.”
Lance frowned. “The man threatened to burn the Hoenn Champion alive… that was more relaxed?”
“He didn’t actually do it, did he?” Agatha countered. “Blaine, during the war, did not forgive slights. When you interacted with him, you had to be very careful. Or oak who was an idiot savant until he showed everyone that he wasn’t just an idiot but able to back up his… stupidity.”
Agatha huffed only to find Lance eying her incredulously.
“What?!” she barked.
“Just… funny to hear you talking of Oak and Blaine like this I suppose. You make it sound like you feared Blaine which kind of surprises me.”
“Oh, I wasn’t an idiot like Oak who’d wrap his arms around the man without a second thought. I did fear Blaine, but I made sure he feared me as well.”
For a moment, neither spoke only for Agatha to break the silence, “As for people beating Blaine? Pryce did it on a few occasions, much to Blaine’s annoyance, even if Blaine did count it as his win for escaping with his life. Oak, and I beat him once, both together, and then on separate occasions. And I think I heard him mutter something about a knight but that was when we got drunk once, so I might have misheard him.”
Lance nodded, glad that he had what amounted to a Blaine expert with him. He just had to hope their read on the situation was right and this was Blaine, or a group led by Blaine.
Lance considered all of the options available to him and then began typing in orders to be sent out.
“I have a bit of a plan,” he began.
“Oh? That always helps, go on.”
“I’m going to pull back the defences on several sites. Or at least make it appear so. The rapid response team will be ready to go with the other Elite Four and me. I’m going to call in Brock, Sabrina, Clair, Erika, and…” Lance considered the current Gym Leader roster as well as the other Rangers or strong pokemon trainers he knew of. They really needed a water-type trainer in their corner.
The Cerulean sisters were right out however, as while they were improved they weren’t the sorts of people to drag into a fight like this. He’d need one of the ocean patrol rangers to come in. But who could he afford out of rotation?
Jasper? Silvy? Fran?
“Call Lola from Pewter,” Agatha said suddenly.
Lance frowned only for his frown to deepen into a scowl as he recalled where he knew that name from. “You want me to bring her in?”
“Don’t be butthurt that she drifted past your coastal defences! With the Cerulean Gym passing to the girls she is the strongest water type trainer around bar none! She also continued to get into fights with criminal organisations during her… explorations. Bring her in. Brock and Sabrina can ride herd on her.”
Lance clenched his jaw, hating that she was speaking so much sense. “Fine,” he grit out, knowing that Brock would hate this idea and probably blame him.
If he wanted to push Brock’s buttons, this was a great way to do it, making it all the more likely that Brock might one day mount that challenge for Lance’s position as Champion.
A small part of Lance almost welcomed the idea of handing over this clusterfuck to someone else but he smothered that part quickly.
A chime on his wrist let Lance know that everything was in place.
“We’ve assembled fifty Porygon from the various Gyms and companies that were able to defend their digital servers. They’ve all evolved into Porygon2, which should make them stronger again. With them, we’re going to launch a counterattack on the servers soon. I want you at the Lavender server bank. We’ll set up a rolling assault to salvage what we can. If we can trace the point of origin, you’ll be sent to capture the hacker and their group.”
“Hmmm, good,” Agatha stated.
Lance inhaled and adjusted his transceiver once more as he sent out messages. He really hoped that the idea that this was Blaine, and not some other group was true, because if Blaine had nothing to do with this… well that was concerning that they potentially had another group to contend with going forward.
Lance rubbed his eyes.
Operation Pokenet purge, as well as Operation Flame catcher, was a go.
He hoped he’d done enough.
___________________
A.N. Thanks go to my paterons for their continued support!
It also goes to Twmmy for proofreading this chapter!