INTERLUDE - ROARK

“Fair enough,” Roark said after a pause. “I’ll look into it. Now leave, I have work to do.”

Roark van Aarde watched as the two young trainers left his office. As soon as they were gone, he relaxed into his chair and sighed.

“Paul, you and the others can leave early,” Roark told the gym trainer who led them to his office. “I’ll close up.”

Paul smiled. “Thank you sir. Have a good night.”

Roark stretched with a groan. What he had just heard was almost unbelievable, but he didn’t get the sense that the kids were lying. On the off-chance that they were right, it was better to verify their story.

“More work for me,” Roark sighed. He opened up a familiar app on his computer and scrolled through his contacts. He paused before pressing the call button. “Ahh, just do it.”

He called his boss. Roark heard his computer ring for a few seconds until he heard a smooth voice on the other end of the call.

“Good evening, Roark. To what do I owe the pleasure?” The Champion of the Sinnoh region asked.

“Cynthia. I just wanted to check up on you and let you know about something that might be important,” The gym leader declared as he immediately straightened up as if she was in the room with him. “I hope I’m not taking too much of your time?”

“If you were, I wouldn’t have answered. How’s work treating you?” Cynthia asked.

“Don’t even talk to me about work,” Roark groaned. “This is the worst year so far… I’m having to battle for longer and longer hours, but I’ll manage. At least the gym trainers do most of the paperwork now.”

“Good,” She simply said. “I got word from the Directorate that trainers are complaining about you. Apparently, you’ve been going extra hard this year.”

“Pff, the Directorate. What do they know? More and more trainers are joining the Circuit each year because they won a few battles at trainer school with their first Rattatta. That doesn't mean I’m obligated to let them win out of pity.”

“I’m just letting you know, Roark. I’ve already told them that the average skill level is going down, I just want you to be informed about what they think of you.”

Roark groaned again. Sinnoh was governed by a top-down structure system. But each of these ‘ranks’ had trainers and non-trainers in charge, as a sort of balance of power system. Gym leaders and mayors cared for their respective cities— although cities without gym leaders only had mayors. The Elite Four and the Directorate oversaw the entire region, and finally, the Champion and the leader of the Directorate— the Prime Minister— were the supreme authority of the region. Most of the time, Roark was mostly fine with this system. After all, trainer supremacy led to the rise of Team Rocket in Kanto. It was always good to have some checks and balances on power.

Now was not most of the time, though. The Directorate clearly didn’t know what they were talking about, and it showed.

“Thank you for the information, though. Do let them know I won’t be changing the way I battle,”

“Of course. And the family? Have you still not made up with your father?”

Roark winced. “I have nothing to say to Byron,” He blurted out. “And I have a lot of work with the gym. What about you?” He tried changing the subject.

“Oh, I haven’t been to Celestic in a long while now,” Cynthia said. “I’ll have to get back soon, thank you for reminding me. Time goes by so fast that sometimes months have passed before I realize it.”

They kept talking about their lives for a while. Roark knew that it was a strange relationship to have with his boss, but Cynthia was more of a friend to every gym leader than a boss. They still had to show her respect, and everybody admired her greatly, but when she spoke to him, Roark could tell she cared. Cynthia would let him talk to her about his problems, and months later, she would ask if he had fixed them. He knew how busy she was all the time— and that she had relationships like this with hundreds of people. The scale of it boggled the mind sometimes, and yet when Roark still had the audacity to complain to her, she listened and empathized with him.

“I almost forgot, I wanted to ask you about something. Two trainers came into my office just before I called and told me about a potential criminal organization. Have you heard anything about that? We might need to look into it.” Roark asked. He described some of the event that Grace and Denzel had told him.

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Cynthia stayed silent.

“Cynthia?”

“So you found out, hm,” She sighed. “I didn’t want to worry you.”

Roark frowned. “Worry me? It’s my job to know! So they were right then? They talked about a uniform with a single ‘G’ on it.”

“Correct. We’ve been tracking such individuals for a few months now. They’ve been popping up all over the region.”

“They threatened to kill two kids,” Roark hissed, raising his voice. “Were there any in Oreburgh? Have they killed anyone yet?”

“Not yet. We haven’t managed to catch them for anything illegal yet. Threatening murder is new for them, so I might be able to finally get something done now.”

The gym leader sighed. "There was something about a police report in Sandgem, can you check with them? Apparently they didn't believe the kids, I'd like to see whoever took their reports punished," He said.

"I'll have my contacts there check it out."

“You still haven’t told me why I wasn’t informed about this, Cynthia.”

“Knowledge about Team Galactic is on a need-to-know basis,” She simply said. “And you, unfortunately, did not need to know. If they ever feel cornered, there's no telling what they're capable of. I’m sorry if I’m sounding harsh here.”

“Who knows? You owe me that now, at least.” He asked.

“The Elite Four, the Directorate, Wake, Fantina, and Byron all know. The younger gym leaders were kept in the dark.”

“So my dad knows, but I don’t?!” Roark said, slamming his desk. “That is bullshit, and you know it.”

“Look at this objectively, Roark,” Cynthia calmly said. “Younger gym leaders are more vulnerable. Maylene is fourteen, and the only reason she’s a gym leader is because of her incredible talent. Candice is eighteen, and so is Gardenia. Volkner is twenty-two… you’re the eldest in a new generation. We had an entire line of leaders retire almost all at once.”

“The kids make sense,” Roark acknowledged. “But I’m twenty-four. If you don’t trust me with this, I don’t even know why I bothered to become a gym leader in the first place.”

“I did what I thought was best. Let’s move past this. Is there any more information those two trainers told you? And tell me their names and their ID, please,” Cynthia said.

Roark acquiesced, telling her the rest of Grace and Denzel had told him, including the location of this supposed new lake.

“The location’s a little fuzzy because they didn’t really have precise coordinates,”

“Alright,” She said.

“That should be everything. What do we do now? What’s the plan?” Roark asked. He wanted to take the fight to this organization and take them down before they became a threat.

“I wish I could tell you I’d fly somewhere and take them down, but they’re still quite an elusive group. We’ve seen them across the region, but there’s no information on a potential base of operation or anything. I’ll have to ask Vernon to address the Directorate to create some kind of committee to allocate more resources to the investigation.”

“That’ll take time. People could die.”

“I wish I could tell you something else, but my hands are tied, Roark. There are procedures that need to be followed.”

The gym leader clicked his tongue. “Fine, the Directorate is being a pain in the ass again. But promise me that if something happens, you’ll be there to stop it,” Roark asked.

“I will. The moment I hear anything about a problem, I’ll fly on Garchomp and deal with it.”

Roark nodded. “Just keep me informed, at least. And let me tell the others. Even Maylene deserves to know. We trust her with running a gym, so we should trust her with this information.”

“The Meowth’s out of the bag anyway, so go ahead. And Roark,” She said, before pausing. “Get some sleep. You sound tired.”

The phone call ended, and Roark collapsed against his chair. This was bigger than he had ever imagined, and he was just starting to know about it.

Was Cynthia taking the best course of action? He thought as he looked at the ceiling. She was Sinnoh’s best champion in a long time, and it wasn’t even close. Her skill as a Pokemon trainer was so far ahead of everyone else that it wasn’t even funny, and she had been promoted to Champion more than twenty years ago now as Sinnoh’s youngest Champion. But was time clouding her judgment? She was almost forty, and Roark worried that age had made her grow complacent in the system she implemented. The Directorate, the Mayors, they were all her ideas. Cynthia was beloved throughout Sinnoh because she had been responsible enough to split up her power with others, and under her, the region had undergone immense growth, but sometimes trainers just had better judgment about these things!

“And yet…” He muttered.

Roark knew troubling times were ahead. He glanced at the picture on his desk and smiled. Maylene, Candice, Volkner, Gardenia, and he stood in the frame with their arms around each other. They were his best friends. His brothers and sisters. His family.

Tomorrow he would worry about telling them about this new ‘Team Galactic’. For now, though? Roark closed the gym, headed back to his apartment, and crashed into his bed.