May 9

33 Days until Torrent Day

Dear Journal,

No, that still doesn't sound right. Oh well. It was worth a shot.

Anyways, it appears as though you're snooping through my book again. Good for you. The only explanation I can think of as to why you're reading this is that you're wondering what Team Magma life is like.

Well, I guess you should know that whatever happens, you can't say I didn't warn you. Team Magma does have an ugly side, but it isn't world domination like people assume. We don't want that.

See, the members of Team Magma take our jobs very seriously because one mistake, one slip up, one tiny little error can cost us our job. Yesterday, I made the mistake in leaving Courtney because she and the other grunts were gossiping for the most part. It was giving me a headache.

Being that I get headaches a lot, I try to reduce the amount of times they occur. It's a reasonable explanation.

Because of what happened, I got a called out of the dinning hall during breakfast. I didn't even take a bite out of my toast. It was then I realized I was in huge trouble. Let me tell you, dear reader, that isn't a good thing.

To be in trouble before breakfast has even started, well, it's scary.

I was alone in the room with our leader, Maxie. For the first couple of moments, it was just complete and utter silence. His eyes were glued on some papers. He was looking for something, and I wasn't sure what. All I could do was watch him.

Not once did Maxie acknowledge me. No. He just kept his head down. My eyes stared into the wrinkles indented into his face as I cautiously took a seat across from him. Even then, I could feel my body shake.

Maxie's office is usually clean. There isn't a speck of dirt on the ground to be found. He didn't keep pictures of loved ones up on the wall, or any personal belongings for that matter. All there was were the deep red walls of his office, with a map of Hoenn hanging behind him. His papers, that were usually tucked away in one of the drawers in his sleek marble desk, were now scattered across his desk.

Eventually he cleared his throat. Realizing that I was staring down at his desk, I snapped my head up to stare him in the eyes. Maxie adjusted his rectangular glasses as his lips pressed together. It was rare to smile, so rare, I've never even witnessed it. If he were to ever smile, he would still look intimidating.

See, Maxie always wore this red turtle neck-suit that looked uncomfortable. At least, it would on any other person, but Maxie had this sense of authority surrounding him. He could wear this turtle neck sweater underneath a matching suit, with our Team Magma logo printed on the lapels. If that wasn't enough, he kept his hair long.

People would look hot in that outfit, but Maxie didn't even break a sweat.

"You wanted to see me, sir?" I questioned.

"Yes, Courtney gave me the reports from your mission yesterday," Maxie said as he folded his hands on his desk. "Would you like to explain where you went?"

Normally, I'd tell the truth, but this wasn't my first offense. I don't get in trouble often. In the past, my sneaking off has usually been useful. The last time I was caught sneaking off, I pulled some plans out of Scott's back pocket, helping my team figure out where they'd strike next. Before then, I was able to slow a group of them from attacking the rest of our group (even though, my Pokémon ended up fainting in the process...I did manage to stop three of the members from battling the rest of them), and before that, I stole the Blue Orb so they wouldn't have it.

Call it luck, but my sneaking away usually saved me from getting into trouble.

Except for this time. If I told the truth, I knew how much trouble I was getting myself into. I mean, Courtney loved Maxie, but I wasn't exactly as blind as people thought I was when it comes to love. While she had feelings for our leader, Maxie had other things to worry about. He had a mission. Love was just going to have to be put on hold until we stopped Torrent Day from happening.

Despite that, if I accused Courtney of gossiping, it would be her word against mine. There was no way he'd listen to my word over hers.

I had to think fast.

"I—I thought, well, you see..." my words weren't coming out. It was more like a baby trying to talk for the first time as nothing was making sense.

As if knowing that, Maxie shook his head. "Ms. Flame, you know why you were put on that mission?"

"To help find the Red Orb," I answered.

"To find an upper hand in all this," Maxie disagreed. "You're bright. You see things before anyone else does. Don't get me wrong. Courtney is an admin for a reason. She's good with command and is one of our toughest battlers, but you're smart."

I didn't say a word. Was Maxie complimenting me? I mean, whenever someone is kicked out of Team Magma, it was as if it was the worst day of their life. It still bothers me slightly that he was complimenting on my skill set when I had done nothing to contribute on this mission.

During that time, when he was talking to me, I was kind of scared. I mean, this is Maxie we're talking about, and let me tell you, dear reader, he doesn't take failure lightly. Everyone is punished in some way.

All I did was wait for him to give me whatever punishment I had deserved for being disobedient.

"So," he concluded, "where did you go when Courtney and your group searched for the Red Orb?"

"Well, um, you see sir, I, uh, I went on—on a walk?" my voice was shaking the entire time. "I knew we weren't going to find anything there, sir, and, well, you see, I decided to take a look around. It was very unsuccessful, and I—I didn't get anything from Team Aqua like I should've or—"

"Team Aqua?" Maxie sneered, "What was Team Aqua doing at Mt. Chimney?"

My mouth dropped.

Remember how in my last entry (at least, I think I wrote about it then) about how I encountered Team Aqua? After they all left, I took some time in catching my breath before going over to Courtney and the others. While I didn't exactly make sure that they stayed away, and seeing how angry Courtney was, I thought that she had found them. Of course, that meant I assumed that Maxie knew about this too.

Oh Mew, I was wrong about that.

"Yes," I said, "I—uh—I ran into them and well, it didn't exactly, well, I lost, and while—"

"I don't want to hear it," Maxie interrupted me as he stood up from his desk. "I don't know whether I should be disappointed in you or pleased with your work, Ms. Flame."

Once again, I wasn't sure I heard him correctly that I just remained silent.

"You snuck off and prevented Team Aqua from intervening," Maxie explained before looking down at his desk, "but you did nothing to get us ahead. Don't you realize how much is at stake here if one variable is—"

I did something really stupid at that time. See, common sense would say to shut up and listen. It's what I'd normally do. Whatever happened that moment, I regret, even if it did keep me in the organization a bit longer.

"What if I snuck into Team Aqua's hideout to find their plans, or to at least check up on their progress?" I asked. "I—I know it's a stupid idea, and maybe it's not the best idea to bring it up..."

Maxie raised his head to stare me in the eye. "I'm listening."

"Well, I—I noticed, one of the grunts," I said, "he—he seemed a bit, new? Out of place even. He—he didn't seem like them. He was, well, how do I put this..."

"You're point?" Maxie asked.

"My point? Oh yes! My point. Well, it got me thinking, how are they recruiting new members?" I asked. "Have we ever stopped to think that maybe, I mean, just maybe, they might be trying to overwhelm us with members? Or that they're undercover somehow and...and maybe that's how they're getting ahead. Well, what I'm getting at is two heads are better than one, so maybe they have loads of plans in their hideout since, uh, since there's so many?"

I wasn't sure what my point was. At this point, I knew I was rambling on about nothing. I mean, the idea was nonexistent and I was really just digging myself into a hole.

For some odd reason, Maxie thought differently. I said a few more of my points and when I was done, I remember biting my bottom lip, shaking in my chair, waiting to see what his response was. He didn't answer right away. All he did was stare at me as if he wondering what was going on in that brain of mine.

Or maybe he was wondering if I even had one. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if he wondered what kind of idiocy I had

Yet...

"I'll give you a week" he said. "Get a small group together if you want, but the less people that know about this, the better. Figure out how to get in. Find some information there. If you fail, you'll be out of the organization for good. Succeed, and you may find yourself a promotion."

A promotion.

Dear reader, there is only one thing that means. I nearly had a heart attack when I heard that word: promotion.

I didn't want to be an admin. I didn't want to be kicked out either. Naturally there was only one thing I could do, despite feeling my stomach feeling as though someone had just punched it. After all, it wasn't every day someone heard this sort of news. No one did. There wasn't one person in Team Magma that had ever received this opportunity.

If I fail, we would fail. If I succeeded, we could win this thing. My main goal is to prevent Torrent Day from happening, just like everyone else here in Team Magma. I just had more motivation than anyone else.

Maybe it wouldn't have been such a bad idea to be promoted.

So, as you can guess, dear reader, I took his offer. Well, I guess I didn't really take it as much as I had to accept it. Seven days. We were already on a countdown until Torrent Day hit.

Thirty-three to be exact.

I kept track on that sort of thing. Torrent Day is something everyone should fear. It was like the end of the world, but in the worst way possible.

Just imagine sitting at home, curled up on the couch reading a good book when out of nowhere thunderstorms crashed around you. Moments afterwards, the floors start to be covered with water as the roof starts to crack, causing the water to burst through. Within an hour, flash flooding happens all over, drowning everyone in twenty feet of water in just a matter of hours.

It's not just Hoenn that'll be effected either. Kanto, Sinnoh, Galar...every region you can imagine will be under the sea.

Why Team Aqua is trying to make that day come true with Kygore is terrifying to even think about. I take my job here real seriously.

Hearing that I had been assigned this assignment increased the amount of care I had to put into the assignment. I locked myself in my room, writing ideas out as to how to make this work. Nothing was coming. The first problem I ran into was how I was going to figure out where to find someone who was in Team Aqua. That's all I really had to do. Find one person, send a Pokemon with them to spy on them...

But then there's another problem. I would need a Flying-Type to follow them to their hideout. I only had two Pokemon: Cami and Mikie. Cami is my Numel, a Fire and Ground-Type, so if their hideout was somewhere that had a lot of water, or somewhere high up, Cami wasn't the best bet. Then there's my Mightena, Mikie. He could easily swim a few hundred yards without breaking a sweat or even climb the tallest of mountains.

It almost seemed as if he'd be the perfect Pokémon to send in that mission, but that's where the problem was. If I found someone who flew, Mikie could easily lose them.

I would've been locked in my room for hours had there not been a knock at the door. While I didn't answer it, it was the number one person I should've gone to for help on this sort of stuff.

Asher.

How do I explain Asher? We joined Team Magma on different accounts, but at the same time. For me, I joined at the age of nine to help out. He joined at the age of eleven to get away from his parents. It didn't make sense as to why his parents would dislike him. Honestly, Asher was the best kid around.

Er...he was the best kid. Guess he's twenty-one now, so he's technically an adult.

Anyways, Asher stood out among the other members of Team Magma. First glance, and most people would probably mistake him for a member of Team Aqua due to his dark skin and dark clumpy hair. I mean, at least these features would make him him look like he was a member of Team Aqua if it wasn't for his dorky glasses.

I insisted that he got a haircut and contacts, but he insists that he keeps them cuz that's his style. It wasn't uniform, which bugged me. He knew it bugged me too. I mean, I kept my hair at the same length as everyone else's. The least he could do was cut his hair so it would hide under the hood of his uniform.

Who was going to listen to me anyways?

"Hey Em, missed you at lunch, so I brought you back a sandwich. Everything okay?" Asher asked as he placed the tray of food on my desk right beside my journal.

I did what any normal person would do when someone barges into a room: I ignored him. Planning for this mission was the most important thing right now. It required my full concentration. Food, Asher, and other variables that would distract me would just have to wait.

Of course, I had to realize, this was Asher we're talking about. While I sat at the desk in my room, he pulled up a chair from the other desk. The rooms were doubles. I shared mine with a girl named Lynne. She was usually trapped in one of the training rooms being that she was one of the stronger members of this organization.

Asher plopped his chair next to mine as he leaned over to see what I was writing.

"Are you...leading an assignment?" Asher asked in disbelief.

"Yeah," I muttered as I ripped the page out of my notebook and tossed it in the trash can behind me before starting over again. "Just have to find a way into Team Aqua's hideout and steal some plans or get some sort of information off of them."

"Ember, that hasn't happened since Brodie was a member, and even then, he ended up leaving the organization, stealing the information found for himself," Asher reminded me.

I didn't bother looking at him. Instead, I just concentrated on the task at hand.

Asher was right. Long ago, Maxie hired a grifter into Team Magma to do the same job I'm doing right now. He was very successful at his job, but when Maxie couldn't give him a raise, he let, taking all the information he stole from them with him.

Team Magma hasn't had a spy like that since.

"I know, which is why this is so hard! I have to succeed. If I can..." I stopped talking as I ignored Asher and went back to my work.

It wasn't the first time I'd block him out to do my own work. Asher and I have known each other for a long time that he knew when I just stopped, he should leave me alone. I just needed to concentrate.

Unfortunately (or maybe luckily, as you'll see what I mean here in a few moments) Asher tore my notebook away from me. I was about ready to steal it back when he hid it behind his back and had already held his hand on my should to prevent me from attacking him. Guess being friends for a while, he'd predict that.

"I want in," he told him.

My eyes widened. "What? No. This is my mission. If I fail, I get kicked out. You're not getting kicked out too because then Team Magma will have less people to tear down Team Aqua."

"Em, we're friends," Asher argued, "if they kick you out, then they'll have to kick me out too. Besides, I want in on this mission."

"What mission?"

Asher stood out of his chair so that we could both see my five-feet tall roommate walking in the room with her Poochyena in her arms. Of course now would be the time Lynne would come in. It was almost hard to tell her apart from the other Magma grunts as she had dark purple-blue hair and wore her outfit perfectly.

Or at least, that's what she looked like. See, being her roommate, I've found out a few secrets about Lynne. She doesn't actually have the stereotypical hair color, but she dyes it all the time to blend in. Lynne offered to do the same to mine, but don't trust those chemicals mixing into my naturally dark hair.

"Ember's trying to find Team Aqua's secret base," Asher blurted out.

Oh Mew, this wasn't good. How was I supposed to keep a top secret mission when Asher couldn't keep his mouth shut?

Lynne looked surprised. Her Poochyena even yipped at the idea and jumped out of her arms. The small Pokémon ran up to me and started wagging her tail as she ran around my chair.

"Count me in," Lynne said. Before I could interrupt, she walked into the room, tore my notebook out of Asher's hands and looked at it. "No offense, Ember, but you're going to need a team of people. You're a strategist. You know better than anyone if a plan is going to work or not, but with a good plan, you're going to need a team to help you out of there. What if you get caught in there? That's one versus one-hundred, three-hundred Aqua goons?"

"Lynne, I can't exactly take every member of Team Ma—" I started.

Lynne interrupted me. "But you can take a team of three to strategically get you in and out. Asher and I are the strongest battlers in Team Magma. Well, are if you don't count the Admins. What I'm saying is that we can help with that. Plus, you're going to need a disguise, and we all know I'm the only one here that can do that."

Asher glanced at me and shrugged. "She has a point."

Damn Lynne for being right.

You know, I hate working in groups. There's always someone who doesn't do their end of the work. When Courtney's in charge, she does nothing! Us grunts do all the work. That's not fair.

I'm always under her leadership. I do most of the work.

As I looked at Asher and Lynne, I realized the logistics of their hard work. Lynne had a point. They were the strongest members in Team Magma. Asher's team consisted of a Blaziken, a Donphan, and a Torkoal. Lynne has a full team of Mightyenas as she used to be a breeder before joining. The Poochyena just happened to be her sixth member she was training at the moment.

They were strong though. Both teams could crush multiple members of Team Aqua within seconds.

Not only that, but both Lynne and Asher had a skill set I lacked. Asher could communicate with people. He could get information out of anyone. No lie. Even I knew I was awkward when talking to certain people. At least having him on board, he could do the talking.

As for Lynne, well, she was right. She was the master of disguises. Looking at her now, no one would ever guess she used to have blonde hair, working at her father's store. Honestly, she could deceive anyone,

Together, we brainstormed ideas on how to do this. We needed this to work, otherwise, we'd be in big trouble. I'm afraid, dear reader, that if I don't succeed, Torrent Day will be approaching faster than ever. I can't let that happen. It's why we have to succeed and stop Team Aqua.

Signing off,

E. Flame

Author's Note:

Picture above is the first fan art ever received, made by the amazing an-tan_ . Fun fact: the cover was made less than 24 hours after the Forward was posted. Eeep! You have no idea how happy that makes me. Awesome new cover artist here on Wattpad, so I feel honored to have a fan-made cover made.

Chapter Question: Do you prefer working alone (like Ember) or in a group (like Asher and Lynne)?