CHAPTER 43
Moments after Lance and I stepped out of his office, we found ourselves face-to-face with Looker and his two colleagues in the hallway. Apparently, they’d been on their way to find the Champion.
Looker greeted me first with a polite nod of his head, a gesture that I returned. He then glanced at the man standing next to me.
“Champion Lance, we were wondering if we could join you for the interrogation with the captured Rockets,” Looker asked. “If not, we’ll meet with the rest of our team to do research. Thank you again for the offices and temporary living spaces by the way.”
Lance waved a hand through the air dismissively.
“It’s the least we could do for guests. Think nothing of it. As for the interrogation…” Lance paused, eyes drifting between me and the agents behind Looker. “Sabrina gets a bit sensitive when too many people are around for that. How about one of you joins me, and the other two can show Arin to your offices? He was interested in looking at the records, too.”
I was?
“Very well,” Looker readily agreed.
Meanwhile, I avoided showing any surprise on my face and resisted the urge to stare at Lance. I hadn’t expected it to be so soon, but it seemed I was on supervision duty earlier than expected. I just wished Lance could have given me a little more warning.
With one wordless nod of my head, Lance and Looker went down the hallway. Echo and Mint went down another. I followed them. The trip was far too silent for my liking, so I decided to strike up conversation as we made a few turns.
“It’s a pleasure to be working with Interpol from now on. I’m the Cherrygrove Gym Leader—”
“We know,” Echo interrupted not unkindly. She had no distinguishable accent, so it was hard to tell what region she was from. “We’ve heard many things about you, Leader Arin—”
“Arin’s fine,” I said as the one to cut in this time. “We’ll be seeing a lot of each other from now on at meetings.”
“Arin, then,” Echo amended. “Our team received a quick briefing of Indigo and its leaders from the rest of the alliance before coming here.”
It was now that the broad-shouldered man walking next to her spoke up.
“You’re also quite famous in the Galovea Continent,” Mint remarked. There was the briefest hint of an accent peeking through his voice… Galarian, I believed. He had an oddly soothing voice for a man of his stature.
I could only smile wryly in response. There was no way to refute that because it was the truth. Before I’d settled down in Paldea, I’d blown through regional League Circuits like a force of nature. People naturally recognized me on the streets at one point.
“What Abilities do you have?” I decided to ask, changing topics.
“…I’m afraid we’d like to keep that information secret for the time being. Rest assured, however, that we will reveal them in due time and use them as they are needed.”
That cautious reply from Echo only made me more curious, but I didn’t push for answers. I ended up immersing myself in conversation with the Interpol agents instead. They asked me questions about life in Johto or how I felt about the Team Rocket situation. By the time we finally got to the offices, I’d talked much more than I thought I would.
“Here we are,” Mint quietly announced as he pushed open the doors. “Champion Lance has kindly given us access to a number of old and new reports regarding Team Rocket. ”
There were Interpol officers already hard at work in the room we walked into. Some were poring over papers and binders at tables, a few were grabbing things from shelves and filing cabinets, and yet others could be seen bustling around in adjacent rooms. Nothing but the sounds of quiet footsteps and rustling of paper filled the air.
Echo and Mint sat down at the largest table in the room and presumably picked up research from where they had left off. That meant I was left to my own devices. While this wasn’t exactly how I imagined I’d be spending my morning, I wasn’t complaining. It was a good chance for me to learn more about Team Rocket.
I took a seat at the same table as my escorts and reached for the collection of binders in the middle. There were records dating as far back as twenty years ago, around the time when Team Rocket initially surfaced, and plenty more that offered information on their activities right before, during, and after the Rocket War.
I decided to start with the most recent reports first just to clarify what I already knew about the organization. My eyes scanned pages full of printed information.
Ever since the National Day incident, the League had been making progress behind the scenes locating taking down Rocket bases on their own. Routes 12, 19, 35, and 41… They’d found bases scattered across both Kanto and Johto according to a map with circled locations. There didn’t seem to be a common denominator between any of them or anything that suggested where the Rocket HQ could be.
The back page had information regarding Rocket grunt interrogations. There was nothing useful there. The grunts didn’t reveal any specific information like base locations. The only note regarding the fates of captured Rocket grunts was a fat X, so I could only assume one thing: they had been disposed of.
I wouldn’t have been surprised if my guess was right. From my time working with the Paldea League, I’d already gotten many glimpses into the darker things a government needed to do to keep their country and citizens safe.
I flipped to the next page. This one detailed the kinds of Pokemon the League had taken from Rockets. Lots of Poison and Dark types as expected, and most of them were species native to and commonly found across Kanto-Johto. A number of these Pokemon were undergoing therapy barring the new drugged species we’d found. Some of them appeared to have been forcefully captured from the wilds or bought from black markets, but there were other Pokemon that willingly followed the Rockets and relished in bloodshed.
That was pretty much all the relevant information regarding recent Rocket operations. It was sad to see how little there was. Hopefully, now that we had Interpol on board, that would slowly change.
I set aside the binder of recent reports now and dragged the ones full of older records towards me. I was about to read things that the public had no idea about.
The first binder had a broad overview of Team Rocket at its prime. The hierarchy had consisted of one leader, a handful of executives who were each in charge of their own division, elite officers, and then a massive army of grunts. I ran my eyes over the list of known executive names and their pictures. I didn’t recognize any of them. Even in the notes section, they were stated to have been ordinary people with families and no previous criminal backgrounds. All executives had died in battle during the war.
There were testimonies from citizens who had been kidnapped and later rescued from attempted artificial psychic experiments, old photographs of Pokemon locked up in cages and ones suffering from the side effects of experimentation, faded newspaper clippings of crime scenes and public outrage at the time…
I hadn’t been born yet when Team Rocket initially emerged from the shadows, and I hadn’t been fully aware of their wrongdoings either as I grew up in the years preceding the Rocket War. Getting a deeper glimpse into what the organization had been like back then was… sobering.
Still, this wasn’t enough. I was invested by this point and wanted more information, so I continued flipping through pages. Eventually, I found records of old interrogations with Rockets. Some were as early as the first few months when the organization first sprang up. Much to my frustration, most of them didn’t have useful information. The current League had problems getting any information out of Rockets because they didn’t know anything.
The League back then had a different sort of problem than us when it came to interrogating Rockets: either the Rockets offed themselves first, or they’d had their memories tampered with long before getting caught.
ROCKET ARREST / INTERROGATION NO. 082
INCIDENT NO. 67500197
Rocket grunt was captured today at 14:10 KST and brought to a secure League holding facility. Regular interrogation was conducted first before a psychic check due to long interrogation room queues and lack of available skilled psychics. The following statement was taken from alias Pin (real name: Naoto Miuji). The following statement was taken in Building Alpha at 14:30 KST in the presence of Officer Banu Yoruko.
—
Q: How many members does Team Rocket have?
A: Going right to the point, are we? As if I’d answer.
Q: We could switch to the psychic check if you prefer. We’re only holding this discussion right now because the higher-ups wanted to give you a final luxury. Tell us about your organization, and we can potentially lighten your sentence.
A: Lies. What’s the point? No matter if I talk or get my mind literally picked apart, I’m a dead man either way.
Q: Talk.
A: I’m glad my colleagues managed to get away at least. I know they’ll remember me. I know Boss will remember me, too.
Q: Now we’re talking. Who is Boss? Is that the leader of your entire organization?
A: I’m not going to tell you.
Q: You’re just another grunt in an army of them. Your “leader” won’t care what happens to you. They’re using you for their cause, whatever that may be.
A: You can’t sway me. We share the same goal as Boss. We always have, and we’ll always believe in each other.
Q: How many of you are there? What is your cause?
A: Too bad I won’t be around to see our glorious future happen.
Q: What do you—
A: Remember us. Carve our names into your hearts. Everything we do, we do for the sake of ROCKET.
A: …
—
INCIDENT NOTES
Interrogation was cut short due to Rocket having ingested poison. Captured operative died instantly. Officer in charge of the case was reprimanded for failing to properly check for hidden capsules. Incident to be brought up with higher-ups and discussed at the next meeting.
As upsetting as the conclusion to that interrogation was, now that had been an interesting read. This grunt from fifteen years ago had talked more than any of the grunts we’d captured nowadays.
It wasn’t unsurprising for an organization that grew as rapidly as Team Rocket did to have had incredibly loyal members who believed in their cause, but that brought up the question of what their cause was. If we knew that… much more light would be shed on the situation.
I kept reading through files. I was so engrossed in my research that I barely heard the office doors open at some point. It was only when someone cleared their throat that I looked up. That someone was Lance, and he was accompanied by everyone who’d gone to the interrogation rooms with them. Sabrina wasn’t with them. I wondered if she’d gone back home to rest after using her powers so much.
“We’re done with our business,” Lance stated almost unnecessarily. He motioned to one of the empty side rooms. “We’ll fill you three in. Come.”
The binders were put aside. Echo, Mint, and I followed the others into another room, and Lance opened his mouth as soon as the doors closed. He did not look happy.
“More useless grunts. They didn’t tell us anything new,” Lance told us with a bitter edge to his voice. He looked like he wanted to say something else, but he gestured tiredly to Looker instead. Said agent turned to face all of us with a serious expression.
“Hope for the best, plan for the worst,” he said. When I stared at him with furrowed brows, he bowed his head apologetically. “It’s a motto I live by, but I digress. Remember what I said during the meeting? About Team Rocket not being what it seems and that we need to approach this from a fresh perspective?”
He paused meaningfully for a few seconds.
“I find it hard to believe an organization like this seemingly has so few members and bases compared to their prime. No matter how you think about it, it’s not enough to go against the might of the Indigo League,” Looker said. “And after what I saw during today’s interrogation… I’m now led to believe one of two things.”
He held up fingers as he spoke.
“One, these grunts are telling the truth. Team Rocket only has so few forces. OR…” Looker trailed off, wearing a grim expression. “This is the much more likely scenario: two, these grunts are telling the truth, but only what they themselves believe to be true.”
My eyes widened. “You mean…”
“They were deliberately told too little or false information by their recruiters, or both,” Echo mused out loud next to me.
Looker snapped his fingers together.
“Exactly,” the man said with a nod of his head.
Koga and Agatha shared looks.
“We did find it suspicious,” Koga admitted. His arms were folded over his chest. “There were no signs of their minds being tampered with, but the information they had didn’t line up with our expectations of a revived Team Rocket… especially based on our previous experiences with them fifteen years ago.”
“I also found it strange how Koga’s Clan and my Ghosts were only able to find Rocket bases now,” Agatha added with a sour expression. “There’s a lot of ground to cover between two whole regions, but we haven’t been slacking off ever since Team Rocket sightings first came in a year ago. The fact remains that we never found anything like bases up until recently. I hate to admit it, but—”
“They’re letting themselves be found,” Lorelei finished. Next to her, Lance’s eyes narrowed into thin slits.
“That’s what I was thinking as well,” Looker agreed. He began pacing around the room while gesturing occasionally at empty air. “It seems to me like these bases you’ve uncovered are bait. Disposable forces. Pawns.”
“It would explain why we haven’t had a lot of trouble so far… why the grunts we’ve found are mostly new recruits, and why they’re so weak,” I added. Looker pointed a finger my way without looking, eyes glinting with appreciation.
“Yes. The purpose of these easy operations seems to be lowering the guard of the Indigo League… making you underestimate their forces,” Looker continued. “There are probably bases and trained soldiers that they’re spending more effort concealing from us.”
He took a deep breath and directed his next question to Lance.
“How many forces did Team Rocket have in its prime?”
“Hundreds of thousands,” Lance easily answered, but he did not do so without an uneasy look.
It was a look that Looker mirrored. “Plan for the worst. Let’s operate under the belief that they’ve gathered that many forces at their disposal. Or, if that’s too much, let’s assume at least half. The point is… we’re probably facing more than we could have realized.”
I tensed at his words. It didn’t help that a heavy silence befell the room, one that I could almost feel pushing down on my shoulders.
I didn’t want to be the one who asked, but we needed to continue this conversation.
“Would it be right to assume they’re waiting for a moment to strike?” I ventured to ask. That seemed the most likely idea to me. If the Rockets had been feeding us false intel and sacrificial bases to give a sense of security, that seemed to imply they were getting ready for a big operation.
“I’m afraid so,” Looker said. He bit his lip before continuing. “I can’t say why or what they’re waiting for, but if they’re going to such efforts to hide their real forces… there’s certainly a reason for it.”
“Why did they not strike earlier? Or now even?” Bruno countered in a gruff voice. “They could have caught us off guard.”
“If we’re going to be asking those kinds of questions, then why did Team Rocket announce their comeback on National Day at all?” Agatha bit out. “They could have waged war without a moment’s notice, but they didn’t. They made a statement instead. It’s like I’ve said before: they take pleasure in creating terror.”
“…They might be increasing their forces as much as possible before launching a war,” Lorelei said out loud after a moment’s hesitation.
Lance’s face darkened. “We’ll stop them before it comes to that,” he said in a decisive tone that left no room for questioning.
“As much as I’d like to discuss Team Rocket’s motives or why they bothered doing a flashy display on your country’s holiday,” Looker said slowly, “we can discuss those another time. I think it’s probably best we focus on locating more of their bases first. We have to not only keep doing what we can to chip away at their numbers, but we need to find some of their real members to get answers from, not these disposable pawns they keep giving us.”
“Agreed.” Lance inclined his head. “But how are we going to accomplish that? All our talk so far seems to indicate that the Rockets are better at hiding their forces than we thought. And like Agatha stated… searching both Kanto and Johto will be difficult even with all of the forces at our disposal. There’s simply so much land. Parsing through all of it will take too much time.”
I was pretty sure we all raised eyebrows when Looker’s lips twitched upwards into a grin.
“That’s why we need to narrow it down first,” he announced. “Echo, if you would…”
The woman next to me silently unhooked a capsule from her belt and clicked it. A ray of crimson light shot out from the release mechanism and eventually formed an uncommon Pokemon, one that I had seen maybe once or twice before during my travels.
“What Pokemon is this?” Lance asked with no small amount of curiosity.
He stared at the pink and purple Pokemon that nearly came up to his height. It wore a unique purple shell around its head… or more accurately, the shell wore the body. Around its neck was a cape-like collar. I eyed the sinister eyes peeking out from the shell, but I wasn’t unsettled. I felt more impressed with how disciplined the Pokemon was if anything. It stood at full attention. A Galarian Slowking.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
“A regional variant of Slowking,” Echo supplied. There was no time for Lance or the Indigo Elite Four to inquire further. Looker dove right into an explanation.
“Does the Indigo League have a number of trained Psychic type Pokemon with specialties outside of Teleportation or mind reading?” he inquired.
Lance’s brows furrowed. “Yes. Some of them directly work under our League Trainers, but others are affiliated with us and work with keepers at local shrines or temples. For example, we have Xatu who look into potential harvests and bad weather. Why do you ask?”
“It was merely to help draw a comparison,” Looker reassured him. “Echo’s team isn’t combat-oriented, but each of them has a psychic specialty of their own. Slowking here is good at locating things.”
“How—”
“The specifics can be discussed another time,” Echo gently interrupted Bruno. “May I have a map of Kanto-Johto? And if you could all step back a bit please…”
Koga disappeared in the blink of an eye and returned with the requested item. Echo unfurled the map and laid it out on a table nearby while the rest of us backed up. Now that Slowking had more breathing space, the stout Pokemon walked up to the map and stared at it. Echo remained close to her Pokemon. I could barely make out a few words of what she was whispering.
“Imagine it. Feel the… land around us. Find… Rockets… look for… large clusters… negative energy and thoughts…”
When she was done whispering, the woman took a step back of her own and reached up. One hand was placed against Slowking’s back. An encouraging gesture perhaps?
“Start,” she ordered softly.
Slowking stiffened. For several long seconds, nothing happened. Then—
“———. ————, ———…”
The Shellder’s eyes and gem glowed bright pink. Underneath its shell, Slowking’s mouth moved as it chanted something in an unknown language and raised its arms. I saw the air visibly distort around it. Even its words seemed to twist and bend until I could no longer make sense of audible vowels or consonants. It almost sounded like white noise to me.
I didn’t know a lot about Galarian Slowking, but it was theorized they could commune with the universe. Researchers had documented them performing strange rituals or making concoctions from toxins, none of which they had the faintest clue as to their meanings. They were almost like sorcerers in a sense.
And if that was the case, then the inhuman sounds I was hearing now could have been likened to incantations.
More distorted words flowed from Slowking’s mouth. The air around it continued to shift in place, but now there was a change. Something bubbled up from the ends of Shellder’s tubes, a dark and murky substance with a foul odor. Poison.
The poison exploded outwards and swept through the air around Slowking and its trainer like river currents. I eyed them with no small amount of trepidation and hoped this was part of the process. Before our gazes, the viscous liquid began to stop swirling and mold itself into shapes instead.
What were they? My eyes narrowed as globs of poison continued to solidify and connect themselves to each other. Eventually, they formed… figures. Not just figures, but a whole damn landscape. People made of dripping poison walked through a forest. They even had newsboy caps on their heads, a distinct trademark of the Rocket uniform.
I understood right away that Slowking was showing us a glimpse of a possible Rocket location. I wondered how it was doing this. Future Sight? Or the move unique to their line, Eerie Spell? I had no idea, but it was fascinating.
The little play made of poison was quite detailed right down to the textures, yet this wasn’t very helpful considering how many forested areas we had in our country. I changed my tune when a mountain rose up in the distance beyond the trees. A very distinct mountain with a distinct shape.
“Fucking hell,” someone swore out loud in a whisper. I barely registered that it was Lance because I was too busy cursing in my own head. “Please do not tell me the Rockets made a base in Mt. Moon of all places.”
I wanted to quip back that it could have been worse if it was Mt. Silver instead, but this was still pretty bad. Mt. Moon was an enormous mountain and the largest one in Kanto. There were abundant amounts of minerals and other resources that could be found there, and it was home to elusive Clefairy protected by strict laws. It also happened to be an intricate maze of tunnels and winding pathways, so it was not going to be easy searching the inside for Rockets.
Or maybe Lance and I were both thinking of the worst-case scenario, and maybe the Rockets had made a base outside Mt. Moon instead.
Our only saving grace was that the period for trainers to collect Kanto Gym Badges was over. We wouldn’t have to deal with or worry about as many passing trainers compared to an ongoing Circuit season.
Discussion had to come later. The poisonous landscape shifted in place and transformed into a new one… a vast stretch of ocean. No visible landmarks, so that was a shame. At least we knew now that some of their bases were out at sea somehow. Underwater maybe? Or could they have engineered something similar to Pacifidlog Town’s layout?
I couldn’t stop to think. The poison shifted again, and again, and again in an increasing tempo of change. The landscapes started to blur before our eyes with how fast the scenes were transforming from one to another. I could barely make sense of what I was seeing. A forest with distinctly-shaped trees I didn’t get a chance to quite make out, stretches of grass and small lakes overlooked by cliffs, something that looked like a cave…
Slowking’s chanting started to slow down. The images it was conjuring up from poison started to speed up until suddenly—
Pop!
The poison evaporated with a loud hiss. Not a single droplet remained in the air. The Shellder on Slowking’s head directed the body to look down at the map. I saw the Pokemon’s legs tremble from exhaustion, but it had enough energy left to make rough circles on the map with psychic energy. Then it fell to its knees. Echo immediately whispered a thank-you to the spent Pokemon and returned it.
Even after she’d attached the Pokeball back to her belt, nobody spoke. We were all in a state of shock over what we’d witnessed.
“Speaking as Slowking’s trainer… that was better than I could have ever expected considering he was covering two regions,” Echo murmured, breaking the silence. “Criminals like these tend to cover their tracks with illusions and the like, so he could only glean potential insights regarding a few general locations. I’m sorry we couldn’t get anything clearer.”
Her words snapped us back to reality. Lance jerked his head from side to side.
“No, no. Do not apologize please. That was more than helpful,” he told her in a faint voice. Our Champion marched over to the table and peered down at the map. We followed him. There were markings on the map indicating what areas to search. There was still a lot of ground to cover, but…
“This is excellent. Thank you,” Lance finally said, and he tore his gaze away from the paper to look at Echo and the other Interpol members. “We’ll concentrate our efforts on these areas for now.”
Lance didn’t say it, but there was still the Copperajah in the room. I took the plunge for the group.
“The biggest worry is Mt. Moon,” I spoke up. Even when every pair of eyes turned to me, I kept my head up with a firm gaze. “Whether or not they’re hiding in or out of it, that’s the one place we know for sure that seems to be associated with them.”
Lance wore a pained expression as he sucked in a breath. “…It is. I’ll let the other Gym Leaders know what we discussed and saw today. I’m also going to have to ask Brock to help with Mt. Moon searches going forward.”
Looker stepped forward with a hand placed over his chest. “May Interpol assist with search efforts? ”
Lance hesitated for the briefest of moments before nodding. “Alright,” he agreed. “We’re going to need to reallocate forces across the country. I’ll have Rangers form specialized squads to help patrol the seas. The Waterflower sisters can help them. We should also…”
Minutes crawled by as he and the others discussed logistics. I actually offered to assist with search efforts, but Lance declined my help and told me to focus on my city and its surrounding areas instead.
“We’ve got plenty of League Trainers, Arin. Leave it to them for now,” he said. “I’ll call you if we need help.”
I couldn’t argue with that. Even if I felt a strong urge to help, my team was made up of fighters, not investigators. I would have to trust our forces and leave it up to the professionals.
The meeting ended soon enough. Lance patted me on the shoulder, thanked me for staying so long, and then walked away to talk to the Elite Four. The last thing I did was give my contact details to Looker and his colleagues. As the representative of the alliance, I’d be seeing them frequently. I’d have to give status updates to Lance and the other Kinjoh Champions, too, regarding how cooperative and useful Interpol was.
So far, so good. They were competent.
I Teleported back home with many thoughts swirling in my head.
----------------------------------------
Arin and the Elite Four had all left.
Only Lance remained to answer any questions that arose, and he was currently giving deployment orders over the phone to subordinates. Looker refrained from glancing over at him.
Looker had been a trained agent of justice for two decades now, and he was able to pick up on subtle body language and other tells by this point. There were of course ways to hide emotions, lies, and memories through the help of Pokemon, but unless said Pokemon were very skilled and specialized in those fields, there were usually small signs that gave them away. Looker also doubted that was the case in this situation. Too excessive. The way Lance and Arin had behaved back in the hallway earlier made him wonder if they were keeping an eye on Interpol.
He also happened to be very aware of the small security cameras on the ceilings that watched them every second.
He dared not ask Lance if there was a problem, but he could only guess that the Indigo League was still a bit wary about collaborating with an organization they’d previously known nothing about… as well as giving them access to sensitive information. Reasonable worries in all aspects.
No matter. They would just have to work hard and prove to the Indigo League that Interpol was trustworthy, and that it hadn’t been a mistake to reach out to their organization. Truth be told, Looker’s superiors had long been considering branching out into the Kinjoh Area to continue their dreams of global peace.
It was truly terrible such an opportunity had come to them at the expense of a whole country’s security, but that was what had happened. The only thing they could do now — their solemn duty — was to help resolve the crisis here.
And like Looker had said before… that meant working from the ground up.
Looker was seated at a table with Echo and Mint. While flipping through a binder, he subtly caught Echo’s eye. The woman didn’t need to ask him what he wanted. She released her Delphox wordlessly. The fox-like Pokemon pretended to grab books from high up on a shelf for her trainer, but her eyes glowed ever faintly.
There was a gentle sensation in Looker’s mind as Echo’s Delphox established a telepathic link between their group. He spoke as soon as the sensation passed.
Mint, did you get anything from him? Looker asked in his mind.
Nothing bad, Mint replied. The man wasn’t looking at him but at papers in his hand. The three of them were carrying on like normal even as they held a private telepathic conversation. Leader Arin was friendly all things considered. I don’t think he noticed anything was off during our initial conversation.
Even though he had an intimidating appearance befitting a fighter, Mint and his Ability were more suited for investigative work. If he concentrated, he was able to spread feelings of tranquility through his voice. Very useful for irate Pokemon and slightly less effective on humans, but it lowered their guards all the same. It also dulled their judgment when responding to inquiries and made it much easier for Mint to detect discrepancies in their behavior.
Mint’s voice was like a drug in that sense, but Looker knew his colleague had never liked that comparison.
And?
No changes in body language, microexpressions, or verbal responses even when he relaxed into the conversation. Don’t think he’s hiding anything. I think we should remove him from the list and move on to other people, Mint said.
Alright, Looker agreed.
Yes, Lance or the Indigo League couldn’t know about this silent conversation they were having. Why?
It was because Looker and his colleagues were checking for spies.
They may not have finished going through everything the Indigo League had on Team Rocket, which was admittedly not much, but there was one thing they’d all agreed on beforehand: there were too many suspicious things going on and too little information to go off of. Something was afoot.
Spies were always a possibility for every case and more so for a situation as complicated as this one. Looker didn’t want to alarm the Indigo League, though, which is why he deemed it more appropriate to privately scope out the situation first with his team.
He knew it wasn’t very nice to snoop into their characters and backgrounds without them knowing considering they were allies now, but this was something necessary that needed to be done. They were going to painstakingly dismantle this case piece by piece, and that meant checking the people closest to them first.
If nobody turned out to be suspicious, then that was great. If someone did turn out to be a traitor feeding information to the Rockets, well… that was definitely not ideal. Either way, Looker would still explain and apologize at the end to Lance even if the Champion never caught on. That was the morally right thing to do.
Looker was already aware Lance had ordered a psychic check for all of the Indigo elites. He understood this… Samuel Oak was a very powerful trainer and a former Champion, but he wasn’t quite sure he could trust the results. Nothing was ever truly foolproof in his honest opinion. Especially when it came to matters as complicated as the human psyche, that’s where things got tricky. Sometimes, even the best psychics could not fully maneuver that playing field even if they had all the time and experience in the world.
Mint’s Ability wasn’t one hundred percent accurate either, but it was an alternative to browsing someone’s mind at least and offered a second perspective on things.
One of the people Looker had been most hoping was not a spy was Arin Watanuki. He had long been a person of interest on Interpol’s watchlist ever since he set foot on the Galovea Continent years ago. He was more than an excellent trainer, and he had an Ability of his own. Then when you combined the strength he wielded with the political connections he had… frankly, you had a terrifying figure to be on the opposite side of.
Luckily, he seemed to have passed Mint’s check. They could proceed to the rest of the Gym Leaders. Lance and the Elite Four had already been cleared by Mint when Interpol first arrived at the League HQ. Out of the remaining people to check, there were a few in particular that caught his attention.
From the Kanto side, there was Blaine Katsura, Sabrina Natsume, and Matisse Surge.
Blaine was said to be a very reclusive man. What was it he did on his island? Research? What kind of research? Looker also wouldn’t have been surprised if the Cinnabar Gym Leader secretly had a powerful Psychic type he was using to cover up any connections to Team Rocket. Considering Blaine’s background as a veteran of two different wars, it wasn’t too far-fetched of an idea. Psychic types were generally very useful Pokemon to have on hand, and never more so than during wartime. Blaine could have had one left over from his war days.
Next, Sabrina. The woman was widely regarded as not just Indigo’s but the entire Kinjoh Area’s best human psychic. She knew the inner workings of her own mind the best… maybe even better than people expected. There was the chance she had shielded her mind so discreetly that any connections to Team Rocket seemingly weren’t there at all.
Then there was Surge. The Vermilion Gym Leader had immigrated to Kanto from Unova over a decade ago. Coincidentally, the Rocket War occurred not long after, and Surge rose to prominence for his efforts in quelling it. The timing was a little suspicious.
From the Johto side, there was Morty Matsuba and Pryce Yanagi to consider now that Arin Watanuki was out of the picture.
Morty wasn’t very suspicious all things considered, but Looker found him notable for his minor clairvoyance and the fact that he was an Ability Holder. He was also a Ghost Specialist, and Ghosts were able to mess with the abilities of Psychic types. Could they do it discreetly, though? That depended on the individual. At any rate, there was a chance he could have fooled the psychic check somehow.
Finally, Pryce. He was on the list for similar reasons as Blaine. There was a chance he had hidden a powerful Psychic type away somewhere. This possibility went up considering Pryce was a former Champion. He knew how to train Pokemon. Pryce was also a war veteran who had survived two different conflicts, and people tended to view him in a negative light for his cold and distrustful attitude. Looker had seen as much for himself in the previous meeting.
Hopefully they didn’t have any traitors within the upper ranks. That would not spell a good start to this case.
He turned his attention now to Echo. How are you and your Slowking doing?
Tired, she replied honestly. I’m still surprised we even got results despite how vague they were. Slowking’s going to be out of commission for at least two weeks, though. Today took a lot out of him.
You sure you’re fine? Mint asked.
Yes. Just a bit of a headache coming on—
Echo stopped abruptly. Both Looker and Mint nearly paused in what they were doing as a thin trail of blood trickled from Echo’s nostrils. She calmly pulled out a handkerchief from her pocket and wiped away the evidence.
Never mind. Trying to cover two regions was a bit of a stretch after all, Echo muttered. She stuffed the dirtied cloth back out of sight.
Take it easy, Echo. We’re gonna need you in good shape for the summer solstice, Looker said.
If we need to. If we haven’t finished this all by that point, Echo reminded him.
There was a part of him that hesitated, but Looker agreed.
If.
They already had so much on their plates. As soon as they finished reading some more materials on Team Rocket, they were going to join Lance and the League forces out in the field for investigative work.
Looker wanted to rub his temples. He had a feeling he was going to need a lot of coffee while they were stationed in Indigo.
----------------------------------------
My trip at the League HQ had lasted longer than I thought.
By the time I got back to the Cherrygrove Gym, it was way past lunchtime. I was too satisfied with the morning’s events to care, though. Putting aside the idea that the Rockets were evidently much more dangerous than we’d initially gauged them to be, I was glad about other things. We’d cleared Unova’s name and gotten new leads regarding Rocket bases.
Progress, no matter how small, was still progress.
At any rate, I was hungry. So were my Pokemon. I pulled my phone out from my pocket and texted the gym group chat, letting everyone know I was back. Then I opened the doors of my office intending to get food… only to find myself face-to-face with Neil and a familiar purple-haired girl instead.
“Janine?” I blinked.
“I was just coming to get you,” Neil said with thinly-veiled amusement. “Leader Janine has been waiting here since a few hours ago.”
I stared at the Fuchsia Gym Leader while Neil walked away to give us privacy. Had she seriously been waiting for me to come back ever since the meeting ended?
Janine merely bowed her head in acknowledgement.
“May I request a short chat?” the teenager asked in the quietest voice I’d ever heard from her.
“Sure,” I agreed. Whatever she wanted to talk about, it seemed important. I gestured to a room down the hall. “I’d be happy to talk, but I need to feed my Pokemon first at least.”
I got a nod of understanding from Janine, and then I was off to get lunch ready. Janine followed me for some reason. She truly lived up to her skills as a Kyou ninja. Her steps were so airy and light that I practically couldn’t hear them at all.
She stayed outside the dining hall while I grabbed specialized kibble for my team. Once I got everything set up and released my Pokemon, I rejoined Janine outside. We walked back to my office in silence. I offered her tea or another drink as she settled herself down in a seat, but she politely declined. I couldn’t help but stare at her curiously as I took a seat of my own. It was hard to tell what she was thinking. Her expression was the definition of a neutral mask.
I cleared my throat. “So what did you want to talk about?”
Janine was still expressionless as she fiddled with her hands. A few moments of awkward silence passed.
“I… felt like I should apologize,” she finally admitted.
Oh. I had a feeling I already knew what this was about, but I asked anyway.
“About what?”
It was now I saw her facade begin to crack, and hints of guilt appeared instead. Janine lifted her head and looked at me with an apologetic gaze.
“For yesterday. For… leading the meeting at HQ down the wrong path,” she elaborated in a quiet voice. “By bringing up what the Team Rocket leader said fifteen years ago, I ended up creating support for false accusations of Unova… as well as you and Surge. I… I truly didn’t think Pryce would take the conversation that way. I’m sorry.”
My hunch turned out to be right. There wasn’t anything else that Janine might have felt the need to apologize about.
“You don’t have to apologize,” I reassured her, and I meant it. That meeting had pissed me off, but most — if not all — of the blame fell on one person… which wasn’t her. “I may not have agreed with the meaning of that quote, and I still don’t, but it was a perspective no one else had considered before. It’s not like you said it out of malicious intentions… right?”
Janine’s hands flew through the air in front of her in hurried motions. “Of course not, I swear. I…” she sighed, shoulders slumping. Her hands fell back onto her lap. “I was trying to contribute something useful to the conversation. I failed.”
I listened patiently as she went on in a weary voice. Her usual formal manner of speaking went forgotten.
“Most of the other Gym Leaders are much older and have experience with these kinds of meetings and crises. They’ve lived through less peaceful times,” she explained, biting her lip. “They’re able to offer their own viewpoints on the situation and contribute to discussions. I wanted to do the same…”
I looked at Janine, and what I saw was a very guilt-ridden teenager. She was clearly more hung up over this than she initially seemed to be.
“I get that,” I said gently. I had to carefully choose my next words while Janine stared at me. “You wanted to be helpful. So does everyone else. There’s a lot about the situation we don’t know. It’s inevitable that we’re going to have clashing opinions as we put our heads together and try to figure everything out.”
“Even if those clashing opinions end up causing more trouble than good?” Janine asked, wincing.
I couldn’t answer entirely yes or no to that.
“We need as many viewpoints as we can get,” I said instead, still with a gentle tone. “So long as we’re able to have a civil discussion, even a wrong perspective could help propel us to new possibilities we hadn’t thought of before. Look… no real harm came out of the, er, avalanche you started. You saw Pryce apologize today, right?”
I ignored how I still wasn’t happy with him.
“Plus, we ended up revisiting the Unova topic and closing it in a more peaceful manner this morning. Think about it this way: you pushing the conversation in that direction ultimately helped us analyze it more thoroughly and eliminate a wrong possibility,” I finished.
Janine didn’t say anything at first. She sat there with a thoughtful expression, so I snatched my thermos off my office desk and took a sip of water while she mulled over my words. I had just set it back down when Janine finally moved. Her head bobbed up and down in the most hesitant of nods.
“I understand,” she told me. Janine finally met my gaze and offered a small smile. “I’m going to use what happened as a learning experience. Thank you, Arin. I appreciate you trying to cheer me up.”
Ah, she knew.
“No problem. Like I said, it really wasn’t anything to apologize for,” I said with a smile of my own. Janine got up from her seat, so I did the same.
“I’m planning on visiting Surge, too. No matter if he minded it or not, I’ll feel better if I can at least explain myself,” Janine declared.
That… was going to be an interesting meeting. “He won’t bite… I think. Just think of him as a giant Teddiursa when you go.”
Janine’s face contorted into some strange, disturbing expression. It was only a few seconds later that I realized she was trying to hold back a laugh.
“What an odd comparison,” she choked out. “You might be one of the few people in Indigo who could say that about Surge.”
“Well…” I shrugged, grinning. “It’s not like I said it to his face. Could you imagine his reaction?”
“Pfft.”
On that cheerful note, I waved goodbye to Janine and saw her off from my office doors. I was smiling to myself as I headed down the hall. No burning daylight. I had work to do.
But first… lunch.