Chapter 81: Giovanni (Patreon)

Route 1, inside a secret base hidden deep within Viridian Forest.

Giovanni, the Viridian Gym Leader and boss of Team Rocket, known to the world as "Giovanni of the Earth," sipped his red wine and stroked the head of the Persian lying beside his chair.

The Persian wasn't part of his main team. He mostly kept it as a pet, but with good food and proper training it had naturally reached Gym-class strength.

Persian knew its place perfectly well. It always submitted when its Trainer touched it, and now and then it let out a meow or two.

Just then, a contact request chimed beside Giovanni's ear.

He set down his glass and opened the video link.

A young woman in an office-lady outfit and glasses appeared on the screen.

"Boss." The woman addressed him respectfully, though her expression carried a trace of unease.

Giovanni kept stroking Persian's head, ignoring the unease. "Zhenniao, what is it?"

"Well, you see..." Zhenniao pushed up her glasses and tried to keep her voice calm. "The members we sent to Cameran Palace were caught by the League."

"Oh?" Giovanni's hand paused for a moment, but his expression stayed calm. "I seem to remember we'd already greased plenty of palms on the League's side. How did something still go wrong?"

Zhenniao passed the blame immediately. "It was the leader of Second Squad, sir. She gave herself away early. According to the plants we've buried inside the League, the room next to the guesthouse where those two idiots were staying was occupied by a Trainer who's also a psychic. That psychic seems to have a connection to Dragon Tamer Lance. After accidentally overhearing their conversation, he reported it straight through Dragon Tamer Lance to Damalanqi, and then..."

"And then one of Team Rocket's most important steps got wrecked?" Giovanni's hand finally left Persian's head.

He sat up a little, folded his hands under his chin, and a cold light bloomed in his eyes.

"Zhenniao, since when did Team Rocket get so easygoing that even trash gets promoted?"

"Eek!" The aura rolling off Giovanni clearly terrified Zhenniao, and she hurried to apologize. "It's all my fault for misjudging people. Please punish me, Boss."

Giovanni still trusted Zhenniao's ability. He knew in his heart that this operation being intercepted was nothing but pure accident and coincidence.

That said, he had no intention of giving up.

After all, he truly did need the genetic map of the living Mew to make the final adjustments to that guy.

With the thought crossing his mind, Giovanni spoke. "As for the captured members, other than those two worthless fools, get as many of the rest out on bail as you can."

Zhenniao nodded hard. "Yes, sir!"

"Also, since the operation at Cameran Palace has been stopped by the League, that old man Damalanqi will most likely keep a close watch on the Tree of Beginning for a while. So turn our target to other Psychic-type mythical or legendary Pokémon for the time being."

Zhenniao had never been a good Trainer or a mythologist, and she couldn't help looking puzzled. "Which ones do you mean?"

Giovanni rattled them off as if they were old friends. "Lugia in the Orange Islands, Latias and Latios in Alto Mare, the Lake Trio in the Sinnoh region, and Celebi, right here in Viridian Forest... I'm not asking you to capture them all. With the strength of the people below you, you couldn't anyway. But I want you to bring back at least one sample of tissue from these legendary and mythical Pokémon. A feather, a fingernail, an eyelash, anything. And if you can't do that, heh..."

Giovanni didn't finish the sentence.

But Zhenniao clearly understood.

As an underground organization in the Kanto region, Team Rocket didn't just carry out destructive research on Pokémon. Unregistered people and orphans from various cities had also been seized and sent to its laboratories.

As Team Rocket's second-in-command, Zhenniao had read plenty of terrifying descriptions in those reports.

If she were to become one of those unlucky wretches...

Hiss...

The thought made Zhenniao shudder in spite of herself, and she swore on the spot. "I guarantee the mission will be completed!"

"Mm, I trust you." Giovanni smiled, though no matter how you looked at it, the expression didn't belong to a good man. Then, as if remembering something, he added, "Oh, right. Once the festival at Cameran Palace ends, call Apollo back from Johto and have him go warn that meddling psychic. Remember, don't kill him. I don't want to face the League openly just yet. Other than that, Apollo can do as he pleases."

"Yes, sir."

…

Back on Renan's side, he was in the middle of a battle.

"Nidoking, Thunderbolt!"

The black-haired boy standing in the command area gave the order.

Not far in front of him, the purple beast, fully evolved and raised to Lv33, let out a roar, yellow arcs of electricity crackling around its body.

In the next instant, the Skarmory, which had used Aerial Ace and was closing on Nidoking at high speed, was struck dead-on by a bolt of lightning.

It let out a wail and crashed heavily to the ground.

"Skarmory is unable to battle, so the winner of this match is Renan of Celadon City."

Hearing the ruling, Skarmory's Trainer couldn't help swearing. "Stealth Rock, Flamethrower, Thunderbolt, Ice Beam... Is my luck really that bad? I draw an opponent with this kind of quality in the preliminaries?"

Renan took out a Poké Ball, recalled Nidoking, and murmured, "Good work."

As a Gym-class psychic, he naturally heard the grumbling from the other side.

But it wasn't only the other Trainer. Renan also felt there was something off about the Battle Festival's matchups.

Of the four Trainers placed in the same preliminary group, leaving himself aside, the Skarmory he'd just beaten had spiritual fluctuations clearly at the early Elite stage.

The other two, who had fought first, had each sent out a single Pokémon as well, one at mid-Elite and one at late Elite.

He'd said it several times before: a Trainer who reaches Elite class is already an absolute pillar of the League.

Yet in the preliminaries of the Battle Festival at Cameran Palace, Renan had run into three of them in a row.

Looking at the other groups' matches, there were plenty of Torchic, Chikorita, Rattata... baby Pokémon pecking at each other, their spiritual fluctuations not even reaching Veteran level.

And the tournament was a single-Pokémon, winner-takes-all format, which left a lot of room for upsets.

If he hadn't watched the other two opponents fight first and chosen to play it safe by sending out the newly evolved Nidoking, the result just now might well have been his own defeat.