ENGLISH NAME	JAPANESE NAME	POKEMOPOLIS NAME	DODGINESS RATING	ANIMATION	STORY	TEAM ROCKET	MORAL LEARNT
511: Sandshrew's Locker!	515: Miru to Keshi to Mizu no Soko!	The Little Liar and her Stolen Sandshrew			The twerps meet a liar and spend most of the episode topless.	Not topless at all!	Lie to get the things you want, never tell the truth, ever!

Today's pre-episode teaser finds the twerps swimming underwater towards a.... mansion!? A Gyarados attacks from out of the mansion, and then we see Team Rocket capture an Abra and a young girl in a net fired from a Magikarp missile!

What!?!

Joining the episode proper, we find Piplup splashing happily in the water next to Dawn while Buizel enjoys a swim. Ash and Brock are looking over a map - well, Brock is, anyway, Ash just stares and enthusiastically agrees with whatever Brock says.

According to the map, they're only a couple of days away from Hearthome City, and Ash shouts out to Dawn the information despite the fact she's only like a foot away, and she tells him in a way that WANTS to sound catty that she did hear them.

But watching from the shadows of the trees across the other side of the river, Team Rocket.... wait... not Team Rocket? Just a lady with red hair, is it Jesse.....? No, just some little girl, grinning as a shadow falls ominously across her face, making note of Dawn's Piplup and Buizel and menacingly declaring that she could "use those."

Well it's ABOUT TIME Pokémon got around to having a psychotic insane killer child, dammit!

The twerps continue along when suddenly the little girl pops out, shorter than the twerps and displaying no potential threat to them outside of her atrocious hairstyle, in fact offering help, a shortcut to Hearthome City!

Her name is Mira and the twerps introduce themselves, and then she calls out her Abra, which Brock says looks great even though it looks like every other Abra in the world. Ash is confused what this has to do with a shortcut, and she explains that holding on to Abra as it teleports will teleport them as well! Apparently this is the result of lots of training, and the twerps eagerly take this stranger at her word and touch Abra as it teleports... and takes them with it! Straight to Hearthome......



....DAM!?!

She's teleported them to a dam, and apologises, telling them she made a mistake.... but before they try again, can she ask them a favour? She spins them a tale about the time she dropped her Grandmother's pendant into the lake. Brock figures out that she wants their help and Dawn notes that Mira didn't make a mistake at all, she deliberately brought them there.

Ash hasn't got a fucking clue what is going on.

She admits that she did bring them here in the hope they would help, and since she has essentially hijacked them and teleported them against their will to a place who knows how far out of their way, they all agree to go lake diving for her Grandmother's shitty old piece of costume jewellery. She explains that Abra can't Teleport under water, so she was hoping to use Dawn's Piplup and Buizel to search. But how did she know about those Pokémon? She admits to stalking them down by the lake earlier and they... laugh! Ash even cracks that she's planned this from the start, and yet they find nothing sinister or troubling about this, and continue to eagerly offer their assistance.

Down at the lakeside, they change into bathing suits (Dawn STILL has a short skirt!) and take rebreathers from Mira and dive in. They swim down, down into the lake and then... wow..... Ash realises that the lake covers an entire town, drowned beneath the waves, and some rather inspiring, near operatic music swells as they look over the drenched, ruined remains of a once vibrant town.



They approach a large mansion, inside of which drift abandoned bags and shoes, which is quite creepy actually, and then a Gyarados bursts out of the mansion straight at the twerps. Dawn motions to Buizel and Piplup to attach, but it easily dodges their attacks and blasts them with Hyperbeam, then takes a shot at Ash and Brock, then whips up a whirlpool and sends the twerps, Mira and the Pokémon blasting out of the water and into the air screaming.

Sitting back on the shore, they take the rebreathers out and Mira admits that she knew about the Gyarados, explaining with a beaming smile that if they'd known about it they wouldn't have come... and Brock has had enough. He demands to know what else she hasn't told them, and when Ash still doesn't understand, Brock notes that she took them straight to the drowned town, straight to the big building, she obviously knows what she wants, it probably isn't the pendant, and he wants to know what she actually needs them for.

She blushes and admits she made up the story about the pendant, explaining that the big building used to be a school where she and her two best friends spent happy days. We see the school in happier, dryer days, and we see the three girls playing in the school and discovering a Pokéball, one with a Pokémon already inside of it. They took turns raising it, but then one day some people showed up who they didn't know and told them they would be building a dam that would flood the town, so they all had to move away. The three of them moved, but the Pokéball was lost in the move, each of the others thinking another had it, and when Mira finally realised it must be in an old secret hiding place of theirs, the town was flooded and the school underwater, and a Gyarados that her and Abra can't defeat has set up home in the school and doesn't like strangers showing up.

Hang on, there was a Pokémon already inside it? Somewhere some poor trainer has spent years trying to find the Pokéball with their beloved Pokémon inside it!

Ash can't understand why she wouldn't tell the truth, and she explains she was embarrassed, after all she is supposed to be a trainer and she can't even figure out a way to fight the Gyarados. They ask what type of Pokémon was in the Pokéball and she tells them it was a Sandshrew, which is weak against water and therefore in grave danger buried under a hundred million tons of water in a school guarded by a pissed off water dragon.

Yeah, an Eevee would be totally fine that situation.... :/

Brock has a plan however, and they're quickly back into the water and heading for the school again..... all except for Ash and Pikachu. The Gyarados bursts out, and Buizel and Piplup zoom in, swimming around the Hyperbeam. Buizel hit a shot on Gyarados, which manages to block Piplup's Bubble before taking another shot from Buizel. It crashes into the ground and then bursts back up after the twerps, who swim away, Buizel and Piplup taking the lead, Gyarados following, following, following, and bursting out of the water in a massive leap... straight into a trap!



Ash has Pikachu blast Gyarados with Thunderbolt as the other twerps and Mira emerge, and the massive water dragon crashes back into the water and plummets to the bottom of the lake. Brock's plan was perfect, they were able to make use of Pikachu's Thunderbolt without zapping any of them, as it was out of the water when hit, and now they swim down into the disturbingly empty drowned school, that excellent music swelling again as the twerps move through the halls towards the secret hiding place and.... TEAM ROCKET ON A SHARPEDO SUBMARINE THE FUCK OUT OF NOWHERE!



Don't you dare say you saw that coming, Gentle Dodgers. Don't you fucking dare!

They blast a Carvanha-Missile at the twerps who dodge aside, and then a Magikarp Net-Missile that spreads out and wraps around Abra.... and Mira too when she grabs it in an attempt to save it, the net hauls them both in.

Dawn sends Buizel and Piplup after them, James noticing them coming and Meowth blasting them with Remoraid torpedoes and disappearing into the murky depths of the lake.... and man the music is on fire today!

Up on the lakeshore, Team Rocket have changed back into their regular outfits and are discussing dumping (murdering!?!) Mira. Luckily for her, the girl is able to use her one strength against their one weakness - their arrogance and her ability to just fucking lie her ass off! She tells them that they're the real deal, she's always wanted to be a member of Team Rocket and she asks them for advice on how to join, because she wants to be cool like them!

They tell her that she would have to enrol at Team Rocket's Training Academy, and Mira eagerly says that she and Abra will both join... and then has Abra Teleport her away leaving Team Rocket behind with stupid looks on their faces!



She couldn't have just done that they moment they left the water?

Team Rocket are horrified at first.... then furious, fires burning as they declare that they WILL have their vengeance on her.

The twerps meanwhile are looking for Team Rocket.... by running back and forth in front of the tents on the lakeside shore.....

Wow...I mean... holy shit.

Mira and Abra Teleport back into place beside them, Mira waving happily that they're back. Even Ash isn't so dumb that he can't figure out she used Teleport to escape, and they quickly head back into the water and down to the school. Heaving down the corridor again, they enter a locker-room, then move to the secret hiding place which is.... a locker.

It's a fucking locker. It's probably assigned to one of them by name, for fuck's sake!

She opens the locker, and this is the point where you would expect there to be no Pokéball and Mira to say,"OH shit..." but no, there it is!

They return to shore and Mira calls out Sandshrew, and out it pops, looking sleepy and a little confused, what with the not eating and being trapped in a state of flux between reality, existence and non-existence for who knows how the hell long. It seems pleased to see one of the three people who effectively stole it from whoever it's real trainer was though, and Brock says it looks pretty healthy all things considered... and then Team Rocket grab Abra up in another net hanging beneath their Happy Buddha Face Meowth Balloon!

"Is that someone stating the obvious I hear?"
"When it comes to 'no duh' the twerp has no peer!"
"On the wind!"
"Past the stars!"
"In yer ear!"
"Bringing chaos at a breakneck pace."
"Dashing hope, putting fear in its place."
"A rose by any other name's just as sweet."
"When everything's worse, our work is complete."
"Jesse!"
"And James!"
"Meowth, dat's a name!"
"Putting the do-gooders in their place."
"We're Team Rocket!"
"In your face!" they finish together.
"WOBBBBBB-UFFET!"
"Mime Mime, mime-mime!"

Mira seems unconcerned, however, and calls on Abra to Teleport.... but it can't! Team Rocket got a net that absorbs psychic powers!

Wait.... what?

So Ash calls out Turtwig and tears through the net with Razor Leaf, and Abra falls towards the ground and then teleports to safety, as a horrified Team Rocket remember that the twerps have lots and lots of non-Psychic Pokémon.

They send in Cacnea and Dustox to fight, but Turtwig blasts them both back, and an impressed Mira asks Ash if she can join them in fighting. She has Sandshrew blast them back into Team Rocket before Pikachu hits a Thunderbolt and sends them blasting off again, Jesse and James snapping and deciding they've captured Abra, asking it to Teleport them to safety......



Well, that or they're just doing their utmost not to look at Meowth's asshole.

Ash and Mira cheer, and then Mira suggests that maybe they should do exactly what she told them she'd do in the first place... teleport them to Hearthome City.



And for once, she tells the truth!

They've finally arrived, a lot earlier than they would have beforehand thanks to Mira, despite everything she put them through. She tells them that she should be thanking them (which she should) but they insist it's all good - they don't care, they're finally in Hearthome City!

But that does beg the question, what about all the poor bastards waiting patiently on the side of the road who were waiting to be Characters of the Day!?!

BEST QUOTES

"When it comes to "no duh" the twerp has no peer!"

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