CHAPTER 41 — Divided We Fall

We split up into teams.

Bugsy stayed behind with the injured League Trainers and combat medics to ensure their safety while Jasmine, Whitney, and Clair headed north to fight the Garbodor. Meanwhile, I went with Pryce to the river. When we burst out of the forest and laid eyes on the riverbank, we saw League Trainers on either side locked in smaller battles with Rocket grunts.

The river itself was a free-for-all zone.

All sorts of Water type Pokemon were duking it out in there without any sort of guidance from trainers. I’d imagined something like a massive school of fish to contend with, but it turned out to be a dozen or so Basculin giving our side trouble.

The jaws of their species were said to be strong enough to even indent iron sheets. One of them sank its teeth into a Slowbro’s tender flesh and pulled it under completely. I only saw quick flashes of the Basculin as they propelled themselves in and out of the water with Aqua Jets, yet I could still tell something was off. Their scales had lost their vibrant hues.

Brie and Zuzu were in the thick of it already. My Lapras had completely cut off the southern end of the river. Behind her, the water was frozen solid in waves of sloping ice, and she was stationed in front of it like the last sentry in a frigid tundra. Any hostile Pokemon that got remotely close to her became a frozen statue in return. Meanwhile, my Azumarill was chasing Basculin.

Even though she was moving around with her own Aqua Jet, Zuzu was having trouble keeping up with the fish. She wasn’t a particularly fast Pokemon in general, but I was still surprised to see how quick these Basculin were. The more sickly-looking Basculin managed to stay ahead of her as they cut across the water, and they were continuously speeding up. I didn’t see the visible use of an Agility in effect.

Some of their dull scales even peeled off and floated atop the water. A type of powder leaked out from them and dyed the river an ominous, murky hue. I would think about that later.

Right now, we had a situation to settle.

“All League Trainers, get your Pokemon out of the water,” I spoke into my comms link, deciding to take charge of this operation.

It was better to round up all of the Basculin in one go.

The League forces were quick to comply and issue orders to their own Pokemon. While everything from Poliwrath to Seaking and more returned to their trainers, Pryce and I kept ourselves busy taking out Rockets. A few had decided to sic their Pokemon on us. It wasn’t the smartest move, but the grunts were surrounded on all sides and didn’t have any other option but to fight.

“Keep up shields,” I told the Pokemon closest to me, but any Protects turned out to be unnecessary in the end.

These grunts were weak.

Pryce’s Abomasnow only had to scream out a single Blizzard for everything to freeze over, but a few grunts and their Pokemon were able to duck for cover in time. Lico slammed them to the ground with waves of psychic energy. For good measure, Choux knocked them out with Play Roughs.

By this point in time, it was just the Basculin left in the river and my own Pokemon. Zuzu and Brie were the last ones to crawl onto the riverbank. Now with free reign, I pointed at the river and said one word.

“Gravity.”

Perhaps it was a little overkill, but Taffy and Audi both focused glowing eyes on the water and reversed it. Basculin and water alike were raised high above into the air. The fish flopped and struggled this way and that, but they couldn’t do anything in mid-air suspension.

It was now that I finally got a clear view of them.

I’d already noted their flaking scales and sickly skin earlier, but I could see one other odd trait: their eyes. Like the Amoonguss from before, these Basculin had extremely bloodshot eyes to the point where it looked like they would just pop out of their heads completely. I eyed their throbbing veins and the yellowish mucus they spat out, and I could definitely conclude one thing.

Something was wrong with these Basculin.

I was going to give an order to my Ice types, but Pryce was one step ahead of me. His own team threw out blindingly fast rays of Ice Beam, and suddenly my Pokemon were holding up ice cubes. I had them lower the frozen blocks onto the riverbank instead, but I kept an eye on them.

I still remembered what had happened earlier with the Amoonguss and wondered if the same thing would happen here—

Case in point, the frozen Basculin actually thumped in place. The sound of cracking ice alerted us that they were attempting to break out. This time, Pryce and I gave out the same command simultaneously.

“Freeze them over!”

Through our combined efforts, we had our Ice types renew their icy prisons and apply multiple layers. We waited a few seconds after we were done, but nothing happened. With the Basculin taken care of, the rest of the League forces were able to fall back into a more organized formation and concentrate on apprehending the Rockets.

Pryce couldn’t do much since his team was more suited for widespread attacks that covered large areas, so while he watched the perimeter, my Pokemon jumped in to assist the League Trainers.

“Knock them out for interrogation later!” I barked, but my team already knew.

Cackles filled the air as my Ghosts popped in and out of shadows to strike at the enemy’s backsides. My fliers gave them cover fire from the skies, and the rest of my land-based Pokemon simply charged at their opponents without a care in the world. With how weak these Rocket grunts were, we didn’t actually have to help too much. The League forces were already taking them down methodically.

We were done in minutes.

I had my Audino and Hatterene help heal some of the injured League Pokemon while I listened to the communications line. Everyone was giving status updates.

“Arin, how are things over there?” Lance’s voice crackled over the line.

“We’re done here. Some injured Pokemon, but nothing serious. These Basculin though? Something’s wrong with them. I think they might have been drugged—”

BOOM!

Everyone’s heads, including mine, snapped up at the sound of a nearby explosion. I saw plumes of smoke billowing through the sky above the trees, and my eyes widened.

Wasn’t that the direction Jasmine and the other Gym Leaders had gone off in?

I locked gazes with Pryce for the briefest of seconds. He gave a curt nod, and that was my cue to take off sprinting while he stayed behind. Multiple voices overlapped each other in my ear as I ran.

“Explosion at point five—”

“Squad Four, report! Come in!”

I smelled the aftermath before I even saw or came across it.

Rancid scents — a combination of metal, burning flesh, and everything rotten under the sun — were thick in the air. My eyes watered a bit as I ran, and Silque helpfully put up an additional barrier around me just to filter out the smell. My heart threatened to burst out of my chest when I finally careened to a halt.

The clearing I was in looked like it had gone through hell.

Earth everywhere had been churned up and spat back out as if through a grinder. Trees had been blown right out of the ground and lay scattered in splintered pieces. A few had spilled into large, smoking craters in the ground that still sizzled with fading embers. My eyes latched onto the things wriggling down at their bases, small clumps of… plastic and miscellaneous garbage that looked like they were clinging to life.

I paid more attention to the people in the clearing, the ones I’d been searching for.

“Jas! Whitney! Clair! Are you all okay?!” I called out with no small amount of urgency, and I bounded toward them with Pokemon in tow.

The three ladies were crouched behind a collection of their Pokemon. They all turned at the sound of my voice, and I was relieved to see that none of them had visible injuries. Jasmine’s Metagross and Clair’s two Dragonair let down their Protect shields as I stopped in front of them, but not before I saw the small cracks running across their glowing surfaces. Just a few feet away, Jasmine’s Steelix had curled its body protectively around a group of League Trainers and their Pokemon. The behemoth’s steel plates hissed with rising steam as the giant withdrew its tail. All the League Trainers appeared to be fine barring some injuries on their outer limbs—

No… I saw one person lying still on the ground. My chest tightened.

“We’re fine,” I heard Jasmine say, and I wrenched my gaze back to her.

Jasmine had a hand on Whitney’s shoulder. The teenager looked the most shaken out of the group, but she still managed to look me in the eye and reaffirm Jasmine’s statement. Clair did the same with a quick nod of her head.

“What happened?” I asked. I was sure everyone else on the communications line was probably waiting to hear about the exact same thing.

“We— We were fighting off the unknown species, the… Garbodor,” Whitney spoke up. She stumbled over her words at first, but she quickly calmed down after taking a breath. “They had red eyes, Arin, and they kept fighting without stopping. We thought we knocked them out, but they got back up and grew bigger. Then they exploded—”

So the Garbodor had all used Explosion… That explained the gooey messes back in the craters.

Whitney cut off suddenly to audibly swallow. When she didn’t resume her explanation, Clair took over in a brisk, clipped tone. Her nose wrinkled a bit from the lingering putrid smell in the air.

“They seemed to get stronger with every second that passed,” Clair said, and her eyes bored into mine. I couldn’t tell what I saw there, unease or frustration, but Clair wore a hard frown as she continued. “And their physical appearances eroded to match. I’ve never seen this species before so I don’t have a point of reference to draw from, but I’m under the belief these Pokemon have been drugged.”

Her last words were directed more into her comms link than to me. Heavy silence followed in the wake of her words, but it was fleeting due to the fact that we were still in the middle of an operation.

“ …We’ll discuss this later,” Lance finally said, and I agreed quietly in my head.

I shared the same opinion as Clair, and speaking as someone who’d actually seen these types of Pokemon before, what they had looked like today was definitely out of the norm. The red eyes, their altered appearances, the unnatural physical abilities they showed… all of these pointed to something having been done to these Pokemon, most likely a performance-enhancing drug of some sort.

Was it sickening? Definitely, but it should have been within range of our expectations. I clenched a fist in frustration. Team Rocket had been known to widely experiment on Pokemon in the past. Clearly, that had not changed fifteen years later.

I pulled myself out of my thoughts to walk over to the craters. I heard Jasmine updating Lance on the situation here — one death and a few injuries among the League forces — but I was focused on the splattered remains of Garbodor.

They’d been wriggling earlier, but they’d since stopped. A few had even crumbled to dust. I didn’t want to receive a nasty surprise if they reassembled later, so I had my Pokemon watch over the craters. We’d need to bring the pieces back to League HQ for analysis.

I heard them say over the line that the other squads had finished capturing enemy forces. Falkner and the others had successfully returned from pursuing fleeing Rockets as well. Since it appeared like we were done here, Lance ordered everyone to meet up at the Indigo Plateau.

“The opening ceremony is almost finished, so those of us here at the stadium will join you soon,” Lance said with great reluctance. He seemed torn about the idea of leaving the stadium undefended, but the urgency of the situation demanded a meeting sooner rather than later.

We decided to reconvene with Bugsy at the makeshift medical station first. We were already hurrying, but when we heard the distant sounds of fighting, we picked up our pace.

We were greeted by the scene of Bugsy’s Pokemon standing over unconscious Amoonguss bodies. The ground around them was wet with crushed pieces of ice, and the Amoonguss themselves were littered with a variety of fresh cuts and wounds. They also oozed a great deal of pus and other foul scents, and my group turned our noses away until our Psychic types reapplied barriers around us.

“Y-You’re back,” Bugsy said, shoulders melting with relief. He was clutching one of his Pokeballs while his Scizor stood next to him protectively. He gestured with a trembling hand to the Amoonguss around him as we walked over. “Um, I’m not exactly sure what happened, but they managed to break out of the ice. I-It looked like they grew stronger? They only fought for a few seconds before they fell over on their own though, I… I didn’t really do much…”

By the time he got out his last word, the rest of the Gym Leaders had rejoined us in the clearing. We formed a loose circle while the League Trainers moved injured soldiers and Pokemon around us. Pryce’s expression was the coldest I’d ever seen.

“If we’re going by the assumption that these Pokemon have been drugged, then the ice only seems to slow down whatever’s in their system,” he nearly spat out. “The… Basculin… I was watching over broke free and grew to twice their size. They flopped around pathetically before fainting.”

“Definitely some sort of drug,” Morty agreed in a quiet voice. “The Rockets we were chasing had some Arbok that looked like they’d been experimented on, too.”

No one responded. Each of us grimaced and stewed over bad thoughts. This was a conversation best left for when everyone was around, so without further ado, we got ready to leave.

The trip back to League HQ was a quiet one.

Silence rife with tension and questions begging to be unleashed filled the atmosphere as we Teleported into a private meeting room. I was reminded of the last time I was in a room like this for a Team Rocket situation. Then and now, no one sat down. We all remained standing with stiff or troubled expressions.

We held ourselves together until Lance, the Indigo Elite Four, and the Kanto Gym Leaders Teleported in from the Indigo Stadium.

Then the floodgates opened.

“Unova Pokemon in Kanto—”

“They’re experimenting on Pokemon!”

“People died today, Lance! What is the public going to think?”

Over a dozen different voices rose up and clamored over one another in a mixture of everything from anger to shock to grief. We’d been expecting a normal operation today, not… the mess we found ourselves in instead. I remained silent with a few others and waited.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

Lance did not disappoint.

“STOP!”

The emphatic shout was loud and demanded silence. The room did not quiet instantly, but everyone eventually settled down to the point where Lance was actually able to lead the conversation. He half-glared at us as he held up a hand.

“There is a lot to discuss. I know you’re agitated,” he said tersely, “but please, let us go about it in a more organized manner. First, casualties. From the reports I got, three people died. Twenty more were injured.”

The silence in that room almost became stifling. From an outsider’s perspective, perhaps it might have been viewed as a good scenario that so few perished, but… anything above zero was too many. In an ideal world, there shouldn’t have been any deaths at all.

But this was reality.

We’d been lucky so far that we hadn’t lost anyone. There was a bitter feeling in my throat as Lance talked about honorable discharges and sending condolences to bereaved families. Some League Pokemon had suffered grievous injuries and would be given the finest treatment at the Plateau’s medical facilities. Ditto cells would be used to regrow any missing limbs they had.

The same could not be said for the human soldiers. For all their wondrous properties, Ditto cells were only compatible with Pokemon. Soldiers who had fallen prey to Basculin bites or Garbodor explosions would not be able to regrow lost limbs but have to use prosthetic ones instead.

“We’ll talk about how to release this information and handle the media later,” Lance finished, suddenly looking weary.

I didn’t blame him. The media was going to jump all over today’s news, especially after how clean the League’s previous Rocket operations had been. We could only hope they would go easy on us considering the work we’d been putting in thus far.

Lance’s eyes hardened as he swept his gaze over us. “Moving onto the next topic of discussion… whether or not the hostile Pokemon today were drugged. We’ve got teams looking over the Pokemon we sent them, but they’re not going to get anything back for awhile—”

“They were definitely experimented on,” a voice full of grim conviction spoke up.

All eyes turned to Chuck. The normally jovial man’s face was one of utmost seriousness as he looked at Lance, arms crossed over his chest.

“What I saw today reminded me of similar sights from the Rocket War,” Chuck explained, and his jaw tightened. “Red eyes. Sunken skin. Erratic behavior. I think it’s pretty obvious they were given drugs that enhanced their physical abilities at the cost of their wellbeing.”

“He’s right,” a new voice spoke up. Much to my surprise, it was the reclusive Blaine. The old man didn’t look at any of us, but his fingers tightened around the loose tie he wore. “What was it that you all said over the communications line… ah yes, they seemed to grow in strength over time? And exhibited one last hoorah of strength before bowing out? Seems to me like this drug gives them a sudden push in power, but their bodies can’t take it. It’s similar to a drug they used in the Rocket War, yet this one seems a little more potent.”

It was at this point Blaine raised his head to look around at everyone. It felt like his gaze swept over me at some point, but I couldn’t tell because of his dark shades.

“Of course, that’s mere speculation on my part. I wasn’t even there to see any of it in person,” Blaine gruffed out. “If the League needs it, I suppose I could lend a hand to the forensics team. Just give me some more samples to work with.”

He snapped his mouth shut after that and returned to pointedly looking at the floor. He’d said his piece. Lance seemed just as surprised as me that Blaine had bothered contributing to the discussion at all, and I wondered not for the first time what kind of person the Cinnabar Gym Leader was.

“Thank you, that would be appreciated, Blaine,” Lance finally said after he’d gathered his thoughts.

I was still stuck on what Blaine had brought up, the fact that it was similar to a drug the Rockets had used in the past. That held some scary implications. First, this lent further credence to the idea that these were true Rockets revived from remnants. Second, if this drug seemed to be more potent than its last version, didn’t that mean the drug was improving?

And that it still had room to improve…?

I thought back to how the drugged Pokemon today had been able to smash their way out of ice and put a few cracks in Protects, all of which had been created by Elite-tier Pokemon. The drug had been enough for some run-of-the-mill Pokemon to try and cross the power difference between them and Pokemon under the command of Indigo’s best trainers. Of course, they’d ultimately failed in the end due to a combination of factors, but it was still unsettling.

Arceus forbid, but if the Rockets managed to further refine this drug and mass produce it—

I stopped my morbid thoughts there. I didn’t want to somehow will that terrible future into coming true.

Lance opened up the discussion to the floor at that moment, and everyone pitched in with their own observations and thoughts regarding the Pokemon we’d faced today. We all agreed that they were stronger than regular run-of-the-mill Pokemon, that they seemed to receive surges of increased power at irregular intervals, and that they kept fighting mindlessly until either the drug wore off or they received a colossal amount of damage that they couldn’t get back up from.

In other words, they were like damn zombies from horror movies, or at least weaker versions of them.

There wasn’t too much we could say regarding the Pokemon experimentation, not until we got more concrete results from the lab at least. So, Lance held up a hand once the conversation started dwindling to a halt.

“These drugged Pokemon are concerning. From now on, we’ll operate under the assumption there are more of them and assign more Ace Trainers or Gym Leaders to future Rocket operations,” Lance announced.

We all gave our instant approval. With more hands on deck, hopefully future casualties remained low, very low.

A look of unease crossed Lance’s face at that moment, and it made me anxious in turn. He opened his mouth and looked like he was choosing his words very carefully when next he spoke.

“Today’s incident brings up the fact that Team Rocket has more up their sleeves than we thought,” Lance began in a troubled voice. His voice sounded a little strained. “The average combat level of their members appears to be low, but these drugged Pokemon introduce a new danger factor as well as… other concerns.”

He looked at me and Lt. Surge, and I had a feeling I knew where this conversation was going. There was an item on the agenda we hadn’t gotten to yet.

“Arin and Surge were able to identify the unknown species today as Pokemon originating from Unova,” Lance continued in as neutral of a tone as he could manage. “This begs the question of how the Rockets were able to acquire these Pokemon in the first place—”

“Unova. They’re colluding with the Unovan government.”

The bitter declaration came from none other than Pryce. We all looked at the Mahogany Gym Leader. His lips had curled back in the beginnings of a snarl.

“Right after we sign a damned treaty with other regions, we encounter foreign Pokemon on Indigo soil?” Pryce spat out. He lurched forward with an angry expression, hands tightly grasping the cane in his hands. “If that isn’t a sign of treacherous cooperation, I don’t know what is. The Unovan government is clearly working with Team Rocket in hopes of taking over Indigo once our forces have collapsed. They’re simply pretending to be on our side and treating us like fools.”

Pryce’s confident — and resentful — words stirred up the Beedrill’s nest. People were looking around with conflicted expressions.

“No,” I spoke up, trying my hardest not to grit my teeth with frustration. Why was Pryce always so quick to distrust? My eyes narrowed as I waved a hand through the air. “That’s jumping a bit too far, isn’t it? Team Rocket could have traveled to Unova or somehow acquired these Pokemon on their own—”

“So many of them?” Pryce scoffed out loud. “And how did the Unovan government not notice Pokemon being swiped from within their borders, hmm? I stand by my previous statement. The Unovan government is supplying Team Rocket with Pokemon. In fact, Team Rocket might even be an organization they made to pull Indigo down. We just never realized it.”

I had no proof to support mine or Pryce’s arguments. Worse, as much as I didn’t agree with the other man’s words, I couldn’t completely refute it either. Alder, I knew, would never stoop to something like endangering a whole region and her people just to take over the country later. He didn’t have those kinds of evil ambitions, and he would certainly never support anyone who did.

I couldn’t say the same about the rest of the Unovan government, though. Maybe there were corrupt officials with their own agendas, and they were working outside of Alder’s watchful eye and colluding with Team Rocket—

Dammit, no, I couldn’t let Pryce’s words get to me like this.

“‘We don’t need Indigo.’”

I whipped my head around. That voice had been Janine’s. The purple-haired girl stared back at me and the others with a nervous expression.

“That is what… the former Team Rocket leader said before he died, yes? According to Champion Oak at our last meeting,” Janine hastily tacked on. She took a deep breath before continuing. “And… the Unovan government has always rejected correspondence and diplomatic relations with our country until now. They have never seen us as equals. Perhaps more like… a nation to take over.”

Janine and her sharp mind. Of course she would bring up something like that into this discussion. I hated to admit it, but the quote actually made more sense that way.

Still, my heart sank. No. No, no… This was not going in a direction I liked. Too late, some of the other Gym Leaders had already begun nodding their heads.

“It… It does make more sense when you put it like that,” Erika hesitantly agreed.

Falkner closed his eyes. “Certainly suspicious. And with an outside force to back them up, it would make more sense why Team Rocket was so strong in the past. They had support from a whole country.”

“Just because Unova wasn’t willing to open their borders to us back then doesn’t mean they were waiting for a chance to strike us down!” I said in a half-exasperated tone. We were barking up the wrong tree here. “It was due to a difference in political ideals and structures!”

“Well, the context of what the Team Rocket leader said becomes a lot clearer when framed with Unova in mind—” Falkner started, but Morty cut him off.

“Forget about what the Team Rocket leader said for a moment, everyone,” he said, and he inclined his head. “Let’s focus purely on the ‘now’ rather than what was said fifteen years ago. I can’t say much about the Unovan government as I know next to nothing about them and how they work, but I’ll say this as a counterargument to Pryce’s speculation: who can say this isn’t the work of Team Rocket? That they’re the ones playing us for fools by using Unova Pokemon?”

Thank fucking Arceus.

“Yes, exactly,” I said firmly. I was never more grateful than I was at that moment for Morty’s intelligence and rational side. “I can only agree with one thing Pryce said: that it’s suspicious how we encountered Pokemon from other regions after signing a treaty not too long ago. To me, it feels like they’re trying to misdirect any hostility onto Unova rather than them.”

I saw people wavering again at my and Morty’s words, even physically pausing in place as they took them in consideration. At the very least, my instincts told me that this was not the work of Unova. There was no one at fault here but Team Rocket, and I was beginning to be sure of one thing.

That they were definitely, certainly, hiding more than we thought.

“That would be clever,” Sabrina admitted with a dip of her head. “Despicable, but clever.”

“Or,” Pryce followed up with a hint of annoyance peeking through his voice, “that’s exactly what they want us to think, and we’ll end up attacked by supposed allies by the end of it.”

The old man turned to Lance. Without blinking, he said just three words.

“Cancel the treaty.”

There were more than a few splutters and outbursts from people, and even Lance looked like he was on the verge of yelling something from the way he stared incredulously at Pryce.

“Excuse me?” he said.

Pryce jutted his chin. “Cancel the treaty, the Interpol invitation, whatever damned else there is. I don’t trust those foreign governments. Who’s to say they will not take advantage of us while we’re preoccupied with Team Rocket and come invade?”

“Pryce Yanagi, you’re speaking to the Champion of the Indigo League,” Lance ground out in a strained voice. “I will not move because you wanted me to—”

“Yes, and I was the one who led this country for years before you,” Pryce snapped back. “Stop thinking with your heart and think with your head! We can’t afford trust in this situation. We need to operate on our own and not give away information—”

“I’m not going to risk the safety of Indigo’s people!” Lance countered, voice finally rising above room level. The Elite Four looked like they wanted to step in, but they held themselves back. “Forgive me for saying this, but even when Champion Oak was in office, the League had trouble rooting out Team Rocket. This time, I’d like to be thorough, and if that means calling in outside help, so be it!”

“You fool!” Pryce spat. Without turning, he raised his cane and pointed it at…

Lt. Surge.

“While we’re on the topic of whether or not to trust Unova,” Pryce hissed, “let us not forget we have someone here from said region, and they conveniently did not recall the so-called Amoonguss species we fought today until our forces were down. That excuse you gave, Surge? Ridiculous. Worst lie I’ve heard in years. It was almost like you were waiting for the League Trainers to get close.”

“Now wait a damn minute,” Surge growled. The hulking man took a heavy step forward, eyes narrowing into thin slits. “Please do not tell me you’re fucking insinuating I’m colluding with the Rockets, too?”

“I am,” Pryce said frostily.

That was all Surge needed to hear before he snapped. Bruno tensed as if expecting Surge to charge at Pryce, but the Vermilion Gym Leader stayed in place and raised a fist threateningly.

“Listen here, you piece of shit!” Surge thundered. Veins bulged in his neck from anger. “Fine, so I committed a mistake and couldn’t recognize the mushrooms sooner. That does NOT fucking mean I’m a Rocket! I was working off those damn fuzzy monitors and what I could see from afar! I assure you, if I had been there with that squad, I would have stopped those men before they even got a whiff of danger.”

Pryce went on as if Surge hadn’t even spoken. “Not to mention, we had one other person who conveniently did not warn the League Trainers in time.”

And, surprise surprise, he pointed his cane at me now.

For fuck’s sake. Not this again. I felt my blood pressure rising to possibly be on par with Surge’s. Out of everything we were dealing with, this had to be the most trivial thing.

I had no idea what kind of life experiences had turned Pryce into someone who apparently could not place even a meager amount of trust in people, but it frustrated me.

Greatly.

“We’ve been over this already!” I snapped, and I threw my hands up into the air. “Remember the psychic check we even did last time?”

Pryce just glared at me.

“I have said it before, and I’ll say it again. It’s suspicious that everything that’s happening now is occurring after you joined our ranks.”

“Oh, so it’s not enough that you’re painting me as the villain. You just have to go after our newest addition again?” Surge scoffed, and he slammed a fist against his chest. “Fucking ridiculous. I’ve had enough of you and your distrust, you—”

More expletives poured out of him, but they were covered up by increasingly loud voices coming from both camps of the Unova argument.

“Okay, this conversation is getting derailed—” one of the Waterflower sisters tried to say in a cheerful voice, but she went unheard.

“Pryce, leave Surge and Arin out of this,” Giovanni tried to say over all the noise. He stepped up with cold eyes. “We entertained your theory before. Now we need to focus on the crux of the matter—”

“I might have to agree with Pryce. On the treaty thing, I mean! It might be best if we stick to ourselves…”

“Are you kidding? If anything, I think today’s incident has revealed we could use more heads to unravel this mess!”

“Unova has to be the one behind Team Rocket!”

Pretty soon the entire room had devolved into full-on arguing. There were people defending me, defending Surge, others yelling about how suspicious the other regions were… I personally traded verbal blows with Pryce for a few moments before I took a step back, breathing in through my nose to calm myself. More yelling ensued around me.

It was a mess.

“ENOUGH!” Lance roared.

He had to yell it two more times before people started shutting up, and he had to yell it a third time before all arguing stopped completely. Lance’s face was red as he strode up to the front of the room and slammed his hands down on the empty meeting table.

The bang was loud enough that a few of the younger Gym Leaders jumped.

Lance did not speak at first. He breathed in and out a few times, and then he finally opened his mouth.

“I did not call everyone here so that we could point fingers at each other and argue like children,” he bit out, and I had to give him props for the way he was trying to control his tone. His facial expression suggested he was anything but calm. “We are the pillars of Indigo. We must trust each other and work together to keep our country safe. If we can’t work together, then who will? Who will protect our people?”

He paused to sweep his gaze over us. We remained silent.

“Indigo is strong, but only when we work together,” Lance went on. There almost seemed to be a pleading undertone to his voice, but perhaps I was imagining it. “I’m not going to cancel the treaty. I will, however, be talking to Alder about today’s incident and our Council, and I’m ending this meeting here for today. We’re clearly all too worked up to hope for any fruitful discussion, so go back to your Gyms and cool your heads. Expect another meeting soon… probably.”

And that was that.

The meeting ended on the most sour note it could have. I tried to catch Lance’s eye as he walked out of the room with the Elite Four at his heels. He met my gaze, but he only offered a small, tight smile before disappearing through the door.

I’d have to talk to him another time. He was going through much stress of his own as the person who had to hold everyone and everything together.

Except for me and the Gym Leaders I was close to, nobody else bothered saying goodbye before they Teleported away. Everyone’s faces looked worse than they had before coming into the meeting room, and it was depressing.

My own face looked so terrible that when I got back to the Gym, everybody asked me what was wrong. I only waved away their concerns and shut myself in my office to brood. They would hear about today’s operation later when the Indigo League finally published its dreaded news.

I was equal parts fuming and contemplating as I busied myself with answering business emails about advertisements, sponsorships, and other inquiries regarding the Cherrygrove Gym. I even opened up applications again for gym trainers while I was stuck at my desk.

So much had happened today, but the world kept moving. So did I. We had to.

I didn’t know what to make of the operation nor the botched meeting even after I crawled into bed that night. Vel asked me if I was okay, and I silently rubbed the top of his head in response.

Was I okay? Was Indigo okay? I didn’t know. All I knew was there was a rift growing between the Indigo upper ranks, and hopefully, it wasn’t a permanent one. We needed to be unified if we wanted to face whatever Team Rocket threw at us. I fell asleep running through things I needed to do for the rest of the week around the Gym.

The next day, in the midst of brewing tension, guests showed up at the Indigo Plateau.

Interpol agents had finally arrived.