[PRP] You've Got Mail

[lZAYA ORlHARA]

Grunt Nakura finished his breakfast rather quickly before heading to the supply closet to grab the essentials for cleaning duty. For that day he had been assigned to clean out some of the old storage rooms in the most remote areas of the outpost. The claim was that they were in dire need for more room to function as an organization, but mostly Nakura suspected that they wanted to keep him away from other Rockets for the time being.

Whether out of worry he would distract them or out of further punishment for having allowed himself to be caught, he wasn't sure. They might not have even cared who did the job as long as it was done and he might have just been looking too much into things, but the bottom line was that he wouldn't be around other people. That meant more boredom and agonizing time to himself and his own thoughts.

The first couple hours he was okay to simply be keeping his body active and hands busy with work. That, at least, was better than his isolation in the solitary confinement of Kodo's jail. After a while, though, his irritation and restlessness began to press in on him, begging for something more. At last he remembered that he had brought with him the tablet that Faleen had given him a while back and decided to check on the data as well as the pokemon stored inside.

Seating himself on an old box in the corner, the grunt woke the device from standby mode only to find an application already open. It was some sort of instant messaging service. Had Faleen been contacting him? But no, there were lines and lines of seemingly random characters like this:

"...@#@#*!!!!#&!%!%!!!@..."

They were not letters, but symbols, which made Nakura all the more curious. This meant it was unlikely the text had been made by his accidental pressing of buttons.

As he stared at and tried to make sense of the symbols before his Porygon, Chrome, suddenly popped up on the screen, presumably to greet him. The grunt became somewhat annoyed as his vision of what was going on behind the virtual pokemon was mostly obscured, but before he could open his mouth to say something, he noticed something else. The most recent line of characters typed out in the text box behind Chrome was rapidly being deleted.

"Wait, stop! What are you doing?" the trainer cried, gripping the tablet tight as he yelled at the screen. The deletion of text stopped and the Porygon looked away, making a few strange sounds. If Nakura didn't know better, he might have thought the virtual pokemon was acting a little guilty. "...Were you the one chatting, then?"

In response, Chrome closed the application and returned the monitor to the default screen.

"No, go back," his trainer demanded. "Open up the message you were sending. Who were you talking to?"

The virtual pokemon did as he was told and re-opened the instant messenger. Nakura's eyes scanned the screen as he tried to find the identity of the correspondent. No such luck. "...Who is this?" he asked absently.

Flustered, Chrome quickly picked up its trainers words and inputted them into the text box before pressing send. Its trainer blinked at the action. "What?! No, I was asking you! Who were you talking to? And what were you saying?"

Chrome peeked out from behind the application, looking a little ashamed. Evidently it had been enjoying itself and its time to do as it wished in the tablet while Nakura had been away.  

[insidiousEnigma]

Blip....Blip....Chirp!~

Zacharie Dubois, newly appointed Grunt...was already slacking off. "Two drops of hydrochloric acid...stir rigorously for several seconds until noticeable change in colour." It was hardly his fault. He had thought that getting promoted meant more chances to do something interesting...but no. Cleaning, cleaning, moving things, running errands, and more cleaning were the only things that he had been doing since his promotion. They really should just hire maids if there was such a need for people to clean. "...I suppose that's why they have trainees and grunts." He thought aloud with a wry smile, his hand hovering above the beaker full of blueish, bubbling liquid.

Blip...Blip...Chirp!~

His PDA's lit screen went unnoticed, as it had been for the past hour and a half, in favour of carefully dropping in two measured drops from the eyedropper gently held between his steady fingers. As soon as the acid hit the mixture, it began to change colour from an almost translucent blue to a dark, ugly brown. "Hm...maybe I should have only added one drop..." He muttered, absently stirring with his right hand while taking notes in a well used, leather bound notebook with the left. "Adding a Rawst berry to neutralize." His eyebrows furrowed in vague worry as the, now sludgy, mixture began to hiss and boil over. "...Interesting. I wonder if-"

Blip...Blip...BlipBlipBlipBlipBlipBlip Chirp!~

"Virus! For the love of all things green and growing will you cease that racket!" He exclaimed in exasperation, finally turning his attention to the PDA sitting to the left of his notebook. The Porygon appeared on the screen with a series of soft, apologetic noises and closed whatever it was that it had been doing. "...I'm not angry." He murmured, briefly touching his finger to the screen in an approximation of petting the pokemon and causing it to trill happily. "Just hush for now, alright?" He was already turning back to where the brown sludge was sluggishly boiling. "Now...what to do with you..." He tapped his pen thoughtfully against his bottom lip before beginning to flip through his chemistry book in hopes of finding out just what, exactly, he had made.

VRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR Beep!

Startling, Zacharie nearly dropped his rather heavy book on his foot. "God ******** dammit." He groused, grabbing a pair of tongs to remove the beaker from the small Bunsen burner. Virus was making quite the racket, obviously trying to inform him that it wasn't the actual source of the disturbance. "I know Virus, I know. It's a message." He grumbled, taking up the PDA and peering down at the screen. "Go ahead and pull it up." For a second the Porygon seemed almost...guilty, before pulling up the rarely used chat client.

Chat log 0978452 13:45
.......
....
..
.
...@#@#*!!!!#&!%!%!!!@...
...&&*@!!@#^#!!!!!%^*!!...
...%#@#*!!!!^&!$$!%!!!!&*^...
...$%*$*&#*$^*&@%(#*$%$*()&%_($@$#*&%...
Who is this?

He couldn't make heads or tails of the symbols, not that he had really expected himself to. Faleen hadn't given him Virus to handle all of his computer work for nothing. "Have you...been chatting with someone?" He asked, his annoyance quickly giving way to amusement. While Virus was cheerful and friendly, it was also very professional and hardly ever played around when he was working. The Porygon gave a low, guilty, whirring noise and fidgeted slightly on the screen. "Ah, another Porygon? Well, I don't mind...but it looks like your friend was caught as well." He must have been someone in the base...his chat client was through Team Rocket so only registered members could contact him but it still worried him. "Go ahead and reply." He shrugged slightly, watching as Virus typed out its response.

Hello, you have reached the pokemon known as Virus. My trainer is currently occupied with various experiments and cannot answer at this time. Who, may I ask, am I speaking to?

Zacharie snorted at the formal message, but nodded his consent and the pokemon sent it off.  

[lZAYA ORlHARA]

Nakura was staring Chrome down, in the middle of trying to figure out if he could make the Porygon fess up better outside of its little virtual sanctuary, when a new message popped up on the chat client. Momentarily distracted, the grunt shifted his gaze to the new line of text which actually turned out to be readable by human standards. Blinking, he raised his brows in surprise.

"A pokemon known as 'Virus'?" he repeated, puzzled. "Like a...virus pokemon? I thought I read about one of those...something that infected electronics called MissingNo...or is it a pokemon virus like Pokérus?" Chrome shook its head vigorously in response to its trainer, but the grunt wasn't paying attention. He was much more interested in solving the mystery based on his own conclusions. If it was just a nickname, 'Virus' sounded like one of 1337's pokemon. The Rotom that possessed his laptop, perhaps?

But pokemon couldn't speak English, could they? Well, psychic-types could communicate telepathically through thoughts, but that wasn't the same thing. And yet he'd heard Agent 1337 had an Alakazam, which were supposedly a pokemon species intelligent enough to read, so maybe they could also write as well as type. And yet what would anyone be conversing with Chrome for? Was this Virus spying on him, perhaps under its trainers orders...?

"Ne, Chrome, will you shut up a minute?" Nakura complained, his Porygon making a series of whirrs, chirps, beeps, and other electronic noises as it tried to communicate with him. "I can't understand you. You're not making sense. I don't speak virtual or pokemon or whatever language you're using."

Lowering its head meekly, Chrome once more withdrew back behind the chat window. And its trainer realized...if Chrome had been able to translate his speech into text, he must have at least understood how to pronounce words if not their meaning. But if it had gotten that information from a document program, it was possible it could have also learned the definitions of things too. Data was pretty simple for a virtual pokemon to download. Even if it couldn't make human sounds for speech, maybe its understanding of human languages wasn't such a far-fetched idea after all.

"Chrome," Nakura spoke up. "I'm sorry for speaking so harshly to you earlier. I've just been...out of sorts recently and trying to get back into the routine of things. And this is something new."

Chrome peered out cautiously from behind the window once more.

"Please tell your friend 'Virus' - whoever and whatever it is - that this is Grunt Nakura, trainer of the Porygon called Chrome, and that I'd like to know what kind of pokemon Virus is as well as the identity of its trainer."

Blinking once, the pokemon nodded and quickly proceeded to type out the reply.

This is Grunt Nakura, trainer of the Porygon called Chrome. I would like to know what kind of pokemon you, Virus, are as well as the identity of your trainer.

Of course Chrome knew the answer to both, but its trainer hadn't seemed to think to ask it. Or perhaps he just didn't trust it. Whatever the case, the pokemon didn't think it was its place to intervene.  

[insidiousEnigma]

While he waited for a response, the teen began idly flipping through his book again. Until he could identify what, exactly, he had just made it wasn't the best idea to leave his little concoction sitting for too long. He certainly didn't want another repeat of the 'bathroom incident', as he had taken to calling it. So...it had seemed like he had either made some sort of neutralizer...or a putty like explosive.

It'd be for the best if he could figure out which one.

VRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR Beep!

Startled for the second time in five minutes, Zacharie turned his attention back to his phone. "...Nakura?" He cocked his head slightly, well at least it was confirmed that other person was a member of Team Rocket. He felt the knot of nervous tension in his chest unfurl. Now....Nakura. He could have sworn he'd heard that name before. It'd been a long time since he'd heard it but..."Izaya?" He could vaguely recall the rather...strange, man introducing himself by that name when he had first arrived at the base all those months ago. "Virus, go ahead and send a reply." The pokemon chirped its understanding and busied itself with typing out a response.

Greetings, Grunt Nakura. I am a Porygon and my trainer is Grunt Zacharie.

Taking a moment to read over the reply, the Grunt shrugged and nodded his consent. "Thank you, Virus. Go ahead and send it."