The perfect place to have Alakazam place his teleport zone turned out to be a garden. Near a hospital.
Alakazam needed an area that fit a variety of criteria. The garden was well guarded, groomed and cleaned regularly, and didn't have much chance of someone coming by and burning the place to the ground. At the least, we had a way to go back to Honolulu. The last thing I wanted was to take a boat ever again. Or at least, not unless the chances of meeting gangsters was far lower.
I also took the plunge and bought a mobile hotspot. One of those big hefty ones that gave you internet access even in the furthest jungles of deep Africa. I'd had a choice. I could take the cheaper one, which had a relatively sedate advertising campaign written on it, or the expensive one that screamed about what an incredible machine it was.
I took a look at the expensive one. LexCorp. Then the cheaper one. WayneTech.
I went with the cheaper one. If I was choosing a crazy billionaire to finance, I knew the right choice. I also picked up a laptop. Nothing crazy, just one that any person could grab. Those were the big ones, but I made sure to add some odds and ends that would be more useful. USB drives, chargers, that sort of thing.
I ran into a bit of a slowdown at the cashier stand when I had to pay cash. The cashier went over each hundred dollar bill with a fine-toothed comb. I let her do it. They were real after all. She called her manager over, they discussed, then they bagged up my purchases and let me leave.
With that, I made my way back to the teleport point, where Alakazam was waiting.
"I'm worried," Alakazam said the instant I got there.
"You tend to do that. Should I have you talk to a therapist, work on those issues?"
"When you deal with your anger first, then you can make those sorts of comments," Alakazam said. "Let us go home and discuss the issues with the others. We may have to prepare for more problems than we believed."
I nodded, knowing what he was talking about, stepping forward to place a hand on Alakazam's shoulder. He closed his eyes. The world seemed to spin around us.
In a flash, we disappeared, then reappeared in the cave. Just like that. Teleport really did live up to its in-game counterpart, in terms of speed. I looked around. We'd shown up in a corner of the harbor area, a section that Slugma had placed volcanic dirt on, with some budding plants growing out of the black soil.
"Slugma!" a small red body hit me in the chest. I grinned, hugging Slugma tightly.
"Heya."
"Slug, slug!" Slugma rubbed her head against my chest. She hopped onto the ground when she'd been still for just long enough, before she could harden up too much, giving me a grin.
"Where is everybody?" I asked Slugma, heading towards the center room. She followed along, bopping happily, Alakazam placidly floating along with us. I took out Mudkip and Mimikyu's PokeballsPokeball's and released them, allowing the pair to show up in flashes of light. The four of us entered the center room. I stopped, staring.
"It seems some changes have been made," Alakazam noted.
There was a big metal grate in the center of the room. It was around eight feet across, shaped in a circle. I walked up to it. It was very rough, looking as though it had been made by a blacksmith who's only tools had been rocks. I looked through the gaps of the grate. Some stairs were going down in a circle along the walls of a pit that went down for… well, until I couldn't see anything but darkness at the bottom.
"Mimikyu?" the little yellow-clad Pokemon stood on top of the grate looking down at the same pit I was. She reared up, then called down into the hole. "Mimikyuuuuu!"
Her voice echoed into the shadows.
"...TYRUNT!" came a roar from the pit. After a moment, a beam of light came from the side of the wall. A familiar head poked out of the beam of light. Tyrunt gave us a saurian smile. Gurdurr came out next, wearing his hardhat and twirling his I-beam in his hands.
"Gurdurr!" he gave us a smirk, waving proudly.
"Dude, how deep does this go?"
"...Gurdurr?"
"You asking me or telling me?"
He hesitated, looking down at the pit. Then back up at me. "Gurdurr."
I sighed at the number he gave me. Well, I had promised his next construction project would be to his specifications. Hadn't really given him a time limit on how long he could do whatever he wanted with that.
"Is the room I requested ready?" Alakazam asked.
Gurdurr grumbled at the comment, before raising a reluctant thumb. He still had a complaint about Alakazam's placement of the room. "Gurdurr. Gurdurr."
"Aesthetics?" Alakazam blinked. "What are you-"
I tapped Alakazam's forehead. "No fighting," he gave me an affronted look. "He made it for you. You guys can argue about how it messes with the Feng Shui of our little Pokemon Gym."
"Mudkip?" the little guy gave me a look.
"...Yeah, why not?" As Gurdurr and Tyrunt came up to join us, pushing the grate out of the way. "Guess this place does need a name other than, 'The Cave'. I still think you could come up with something better."
"Mudkip," he gave me a stubborn look that made me smile. It was no surprise. My sister and brothers had the same stubborn look. So did I.
"Fine. Let's embrace the cliche. As of today, this base will be known as Kīlauea Gym. And if Lance pops out of a wall and kicks my ass for claiming a gym without a license or whatever you need to be a Gym Leader, I'm blaming you. Now show us what ya made here, Gurdurr."
"...Gurdurr?"
We all looked at Mimikyu. She preened in her Batman-themed costume. "Mimikyu!"
Gurdurr gave her a thumbs up.
He'd made quite a lot, as it turned out. Gurdurr's focus had been on just making the rooms, but he explained what they were as we went down the steps on the sides of the pit and entered each level.
He'd made it so the pit he'd chopped out of volcanic stone had caverns on each side of it, three levels, two large spaces on each level. For the top level, a room for recreational activities, with a large section chopped out to have space for things like small basketball matches and such, and a room that would become extra living quarters.
The second level had training facilities, with the weights I'd bought strewn about as well as a makeshift bunch of rings, and a room across from it for research and development. I don't know what Gurdurr was expecting us to research and develop in a cave with a bunch of scra- Okay, cutting off that meme before it goes too far. Whatever the case, Mudkip was interested in the training room, while Alakazam gave our new R&D department a greedy smile.
The bottom had the prison. I didn't know I needed one. But I might. So Gurdurr had built a room just in case we needed to imprison people. Complete with a floor that could be removed by the right Pokemon move to send villains into lava. Vicious. But it was there.
Across from that was a room for Alakazam's project. He took a long time in there, measuring the shape of it, before calling it 'somewhat adequate.'
After we held back an offended Gurdurr from punching him in his triangular face, it was back up top to talk over the issues of the hour. This led to me taking my shirt off to change first, then Gurdurr catching sight of my wounded chest and back.
"GURDURR!?"
I stopped, looking over at him. He looked shocked, then worried. Tyrunt was slowly chewing at some goat jerky, while Slugma stared at me. She was still for so long that Alakazam had to give her a telekinetic push to get her moving again, her body dancing in place to keep her blood moving.
"So… I got shot," I said with a small grimace. "But uh, only a little bit, so it was okay."
Tyrunt swallowed his meal. Then he nodded calmly. "Tyrunt."
He apparently didn't know most people weren't able to shrug off bullets, and just thought I was bragging about a normal everyday thing.
Gurdurr gave his friend a dumbfounded look, then back at me, walking over to look closely at my bandages.
"So. It turns out, I'm at least a little bullet-resistant," I said. "And the reason I know that is that I ended up fighting a bunch of gangsters. Mudkip and Mimikyu took most of them down though."
Mudkip nodded grimly. "Kip."
"Gur!" came an accusatory yell, Gurdurr pointing at my wounds.
"Mudkip," the small blue Pokemon said, narrowing his eyes.
"You know he didn't let this happen," I agreed with Mudkip. "Let's call it lucky I didn't die, and figure out where to go from here, because three of us are on the internet now. Alakazam, we hooked up?"
"Barely," the psychic-type was floating near the generator, laptop on his lap and plugged in and the WayneTech mobile hotspot up and running under his hovering form. "This hotspot is more powerful than I expected, but the laptop is not acting as I wish."
"I'll update the Amazon review page," I said with a sigh. "Just be thankful Batman made sure he could get wifi in a cave."
"Yes, but remind me to learn how to build something that does not complain when I change the default browser," he typed quickly. He was doing pretty well for only having three fingers on each hand. Then again, I had a friend who typed damn fast with just his index fingers in my old world. "For now, I have several sites open. Twitter has been quite… interesting."
He said that in a tone like the website had slaughtered his family.
"You three have obtained some fame, though I don't believe many outside of Hawaii have any interest. There is some speculation."
"What's confirmed?" I asked seriously. "The stuff people guessed right?"
"They know of Mudkip's strength, durability, and control over water and ice abilities, Mimikyu's ghost powers, and your durability and strength. Though they are calling Mimikyu's powers either shadow-control or magic."
I thought about that. "That's all fine. I'd rather we weren't seen in public at all, but I'm glad you two have some tricks up your sleeve no one guessed at. Were those guys we fought arrested?"
Alakazam nodded seriously. Gurdurr grumbled, though he seemed happier at that. "They were called the Silicon Dragons."
"I heard. God that name sucks. I don't remember them," I admitted. They sounded somewhat familiar, but who the hell memorized everything in every comic ever written.
"They have a reputation for being obsessed with a code of honor. For never escalating a fight beyond the amount of force needed to defeat it."
I thought about that for a moment. "... Like the Power Rangers? I swear, if we end up fighting giant mecha animals I'm gonna get pissed."
Alakazam opened his mouth, likely to reprimand me, then closed it when he realized I was being serious despite that joke. "Would you like me to compile a file on their capabilities, then? Or simply write Power Rangers under their name?"
I chuckled, nodding slowly. "Anything that's public will work. Mudkip, work with him. Assess every threat and come up with counters, note everything we might need to prepare for."
Mudkip nodded slowly, frowning. "...Mudkip?"
"I agree. Do you plan on fighting them, or simply preparing defensive measures?"
"Hn," I crossed my arms, looking around. "That's my first instinct," I admitted. "It's how we dealt with Team Rainbow Rocket. But gangsters in this world are a lot more ruthless than those idiots."
"Because Giovanni left them," Alakazam said.
"...Yeah, that's fair," they were a lot less of a threat without their badass leader in charge. "Regardless, I don't want to go attacking a bunch of gangsters anymore than we have to."
"So not a third time," Alakazam said with a smirk.
"Yes, we're gonna avoid our third strike. So. Who's the pissed off police commissioner?" I asked with a sigh.
Alakazam showed that his intelligence was legendary for a reason by turning the laptop immediately to show a stern faced man. A blue placard under his face said his name was Sam Mokoa. An FBI agent. Dope, I could make more references that way. I listened to the grumpy man talk for a moment, then shrugged.
"I mean, he's not wrong. I was a vigilante, as far as he knows. Personally I think this was more of a citizen's arrest type deal, since we were protecting Kalini. Any news on him?"
"He has not appeared in the news. Are you truly so unfazed?" Alakazam turned the monitor back towards him. "This Mokoa seems quite ready to arrest you."
"I'm not going to take that personally," I mean, kind of. "He's a cop, and gangsters are fighting metas in his streets. At least he's still arresting the Dragons. For now, we need to think about our next plan. Now that you have an internet connection and a teleport zone in Honolulu, our options have exploded. We can start doing some crazier work."
"I'm already getting started on that. I-"
"Tyrunt!" the small dinosaur said happily.
"Dinosaur documentaries?" Alakazam gave him a look like he'd never heard anything so dumb. "We brought this in for work, you stone-headed dolt, not for this obsession you have with-"
"Mimikyu!"
"This isn't so you can watch cat videos. The internet is to study, not to-"
"Mudkip!"
"You don't need to play video games!"
"Slugma!"
"...Well, that might be all right-"
"Gurdurr!"
Alakazam stared at Gurdurr, affronted. "What use could we have for wrestling!?"
Huh. Somehow, despite everything, I'd forgotten how distracting giving everyone an internet connection might be.
"This is all a waste of time," Alakazam sighed, looking at me. "...They've given you names, by the way."
"Really?" despite everything, I couldn't help a bit of excitement at that. Hopefully I wouldn't be stuck with a name like 'the Blur' or 'the Streak' or something. "What are they calling us?"
Mimikyu shook slightly, nervous to hear about public perception of her, and Slugma went over to bump heads with her, the two small Pokemon hugging each other close. Mudkip was much more confident, sitting on his haunches and waiting.
"Mudkip has been called Mako."
"...As in a Mako shark, or the Japanese name that means sincerity?"
"Both, apparently. You speak Japanese?"
"Only a little. But I know what the name Mako means. One of my favorite actors has the name. Or, did, I suppose," I said sadly, giving Mudkip a look. He looked back at me solemnly, before nodding. "What about Mimikyu?"
She perked up, eyes blinking excitedly, the Batman head of her costume waving.
"The Shroud," Alakazam said, the word foreboding in that tone of voice.
The Batman head stilled. She looked so crestfallen. "Mimikyu…"
She was disappointed to have a name that sounded so serious and scary. Slugma bumped heads with her again while I thought about that. "...Alakazam, what are the cuter ones?"
He looked at her. At the hopeful look she gave him, he started typing fast. Curious, I looked over his shoulder. I held back a smile at what I saw.
He wasn't looking at what the internet named her. He was google searching a good name to give her. When he saw me looking, he tried to glare, but I let it wash off of me.
Funny, how a psychic was so protective of a ghost at times. After a second, he found a name he seemed to like, looking over at her.
"Aumakua. It's a Hawaiian mythological deity, a spiritual ancestor that protects families and loves children."
It sounded rather pretty. Mimikyu thought about the name for a moment, before wiggling happily. "Mimikyu!"
"Alakazam," the psychic mumbled under his breath, sounding like a parent who'd been dealing with a precocious kid. He coughed, continuing. "So. Mahmoud. You have a codename that has been given to you as well. Kahu Kiaʻi."
"That sounds kinda cool. What does it mean though?"
"Several things. Although the writer of the article said the translation they're using is 'Red Keeper'."
"Red Keeper?" I asked, surprised. "What does that even, why call me that?"
In answer, he turned the screen around. Set above the main article was a picture of me. I was in front of Mimikyu and Mudkip, at an angle from the camera. I had my red and white mask on. I was also soaked in blood. Well, not 'soaked' per se, but enough that my tanned skin was covered in red. So, a red goalkeeper mask, protecting small animals, chest bloody. Fine. That was fair, as names went. I was terrible with names anyway (It's why I didn't nickname my Pokemon), so it was better than I would have made.
"You have yet to, as they say, 'trend' on the internet, but you have all become memes in Hawaii," a click on the keyboard, and another image of me popped up. It was a gif of me lifting a gangster up and tossing him into the harbor, with the word 'YEET!' flashing under it. The next one was of Mudkip glaring at the camera, and then one of Mimikyu using protect, though Alakazam went too fast for me to figure out what those two were.
The one he came to a stop on made me chuckle though. It was Mimikyu popping up behind the guy in shadows, her eyes edited so they were flashing red. The words below her were very familiar to me. "OMAE WA MOU SHINDEIRU." The gangster's eyes widening was perfect for the next part. "N-NANI!?"
God, that brought backme so many memories.
"Yay, we're famous," I said with a sigh again. "Okay, so now we need to figure out our next step. I need an identity, so that I can get things like debit cards. Hopefully, with the magic of the internet and ways to buy shit with those fat stacks over there, we can actually make a portal home. To both our homes. And I think I have an idea for that. After all."
I lifted my bag onto my shoulder. "I figure Kalini owes me a favor. And he might know a guy."