Marcus had learned, over the course of thirty-seven days as Giovanni, that there were few pleasures in life more satisfying than watching idiots fail on your behalf.
He was sitting in his office, feet up on the desk—a posture the original Giovanni would never have assumed, but Marcus had decided that a man who owned 51% of Silph Co., had two legendary orbs en route to his vault, and was running a criminal empire that spanned three regions could put his feet wherever he damn well pleased—watching a live intelligence feed on the monitor mounted to his wall.
The feed showed a clearing somewhere on Route 24, north of Cerulean City, where two things were happening simultaneously.
The first thing was that Archie, leader of Team Aqua, was getting his ass handed to him by a twelve-year-old boy.
The second thing was that it was magnificent.
The battle had started seven minutes ago, according to the timestamp on the feed. Marcus's surveillance team—three operatives with long-range cameras and directional microphones, positioned in the treeline approximately two hundred meters from the engagement—had picked up the confrontation when Archie's team had attempted to set up a "marine survey station" on the banks of a river that fed into the ocean north of Cerulean. Red had stumbled across them while traveling between cities, and because Red was constitutionally incapable of walking past a criminal operation without dismantling it, had immediately challenged Archie to a battle.
Archie, to his credit, had not backed down. Archie never backed down. That was simultaneously his greatest strength and his most catastrophic weakness.
Marcus leaned forward, watching the feed with the analytical intensity of a man watching game film.
Archie's Sharpedo—his lead Pokémon, a brutal torpedo of teeth and rage—was circling on the riverbank, its stubby legs surprisingly mobile on land but clearly less comfortable than it would have been in water. The Pokémon's jaws snapped open and shut rhythmically, a threat display that was genuinely intimidating if you didn't know what you were looking at.
Marcus knew what he was looking at. Sharpedo was a glass cannon—devastating Attack stat, respectable Speed, defenses made of wet paper. One solid hit from the right move and it would fold like a lawn chair in a hurricane.
Red knew it too. The kid—small for his age, with the iconic red cap pulled low over sharp, calculating eyes that were far too old for a twelve-year-old's face—had opened with his Pikachu. Not his strongest Pokémon, not by a long shot, but the right Pokémon. Because Pikachu was fast, Pikachu was Electric-type, and Sharpedo was Water/Dark with a four-times weakness to nothing but a crippling inability to take special hits.
"Pikachu—Thunderbolt."
Red's voice was quiet. Almost eerily quiet. No shouting, no dramatic declarations, no theatrical pointing. Just a calm, measured command, delivered with the confidence of someone who had already calculated six moves ahead and knew exactly how this was going to end.
Pikachu moved.
Marcus had seen Pikachu fight in the games a thousand times. Little yellow mouse, little lightning bolt animation, damage number, done. What he saw on the surveillance feed was something else entirely.
Pikachu launched off the ground like a ballistic missile with ears. Its small body compressed, legs coiling, and then exploded upward and forward in a trajectory that covered thirty feet in less than a second. At the apex of its leap, its cheeks—those round, red electrical sacs that every Pokémon fan recognized—began to blaze, not with the cute little sparks of the anime but with actual, genuine, terrifying arcs of electricity that crawled across its body like living things, snapping and crackling and ionizing the air until Marcus could practically smell the ozone through the screen.
The Thunderbolt hit Sharpedo like the wrath of God.
Not a beam. Not a bolt. A detonation of electrical energy that erupted from Pikachu's body in a blinding corona of white-blue light, the thunderclap arriving a fraction of a second after the flash, so loud that the surveillance equipment's audio feed clipped into distortion. The electricity found Sharpedo's Water-type body like it was a lightning rod—which, in terms of type effectiveness, it basically was—and the shark Pokémon screamed.
Marcus had heard Pokémon cry out in battle before. His own team made sounds when they were hit—grunts, roars, hisses of pain. But Sharpedo's scream was different. It was the sound of a predator discovering, in the most visceral way possible, that it was prey. The electricity coursed through its body, every muscle locking up, its jaws clamping shut so hard that one of its teeth cracked, and then it collapsed—not slowly, not dramatically, but all at once, like someone had cut its strings. It hit the ground with a wet, heavy thud and didn't move.
One hit.
One single, devastating hit.
Archie stared at his fallen Pokémon with an expression that cycled through shock, denial, anger, and a grudging, furious respect in the space of about two seconds. He recalled Sharpedo with a snarl and reached for his next ball.
"Muk! Get in there!"
The Poké Ball burst open and Muk materialized—a massive, amorphous blob of toxic sludge that immediately began oozing across the ground, its body giving off noxious vapors that wilted the grass beneath it. Muk was a smart choice, actually. Poison-type, not weak to Electric, with enough special bulk to absorb a Thunderbolt and the moveset to threaten Pikachu with Ground-type coverage.
Red studied the Muk for exactly one second. Then he recalled Pikachu.
No hesitation. No attachment. No "Pikachu can handle this." The kid read the matchup, recognized the disadvantage, and switched immediately. Clinical. Cold. Perfect.
"Charizard."
The Poké Ball opened and the clearing changed.
Heat. Immediate, oppressive, suffocating heat, radiating outward from the massive Fire/Flying-type that materialized in a burst of flame and fury. Charizard—Red's Charizard, evolved from the Charmeleon that had set a Rocket grunt's hat on fire—was enormous. Not just big for a Charizard, but big in a way that suggested this particular specimen had been training at an intensity that bordered on obsessive. Its wingspan was easily twenty feet, its scales were the deep, burnished orange of heated metal, and its tail flame—the one that every Pokédex entry said would kill the Charizard if it went out—burned with a white-hot intensity that made the air shimmer for ten feet in every direction.
Its eyes found Muk and narrowed.
It did not look impressed.
"Flamethrower," Red said.
Charizard opened its mouth and the world caught fire.
Marcus had to shield his eyes from the monitor. The Flamethrower wasn't a beam or a stream or a "fire attack"—it was a cataclysm. A column of white-orange flame fifty feet long and ten feet wide erupted from Charizard's maw with a roar that the surveillance microphones couldn't even begin to accurately capture, the sound reaching Marcus's speakers as a distorted, bass-heavy rumble that vibrated the glass on his desk. The fire hit Muk like a wave hits a sandcastle, and the Poison-type melted—not fainted, melted, its amorphous body collapsing in on itself as the extreme heat broke down the molecular bonds holding its sludge-form together. The grass around the impact zone didn't burn so much as cease to exist, reduced to ash in milliseconds, the earth beneath it baked into a cracked, steaming hardpan.
Muk reformed—barely. The sludge Pokémon pulled itself back into a vaguely coherent shape, but it was diminished, wavering, its body visibly thinner and less stable. It had survived through sheer bulk and Poison-type resistance to Fire, but it was on its last legs.
"Sludge Bomb!" Archie roared.
Muk gathered what remained of its strength and hurled a massive glob of toxic sludge at Charizard—a last-ditch attack, desperate and wild, aimed more by hope than by skill.
Charizard didn't dodge. It didn't need to.
"Dragon Claw," Red said.
The dragon surged forward, one massive claw igniting with draconic energy—a swirling, violet-tinged aura that coated the claw like a gauntlet of pure power—and swatted the Sludge Bomb out of the air like a man swatting a fly. The toxic glob disintegrated on contact, its component molecules shredded by the Dragon-type energy, and the claw continued its arc, slamming into Muk's center mass with a force that sent the Poison-type hurtling backward into a tree.
The tree cracked.
Muk slid down the trunk, leaving a trail of toxic residue on the bark, and pooled at the base in a formless puddle.
It did not get up.
Marcus watched Archie's face. The man was—there was no other word for it—rattled. Two Pokémon down in under three minutes, neither one having landed a single meaningful hit. His hand was shaking as he reached for his third Poké Ball.
"Crawdaunt! Show this kid what Team Aqua is made of!"
Crawdaunt materialized—a hulking, armored crustacean with massive pincers and an attitude problem. Water/Dark type. Decent Attack, decent bulk, respectable movepool. Against a Fire/Flying Charizard, it had a theoretical type advantage with its Water moves.
Theory and practice, however, were very different things.
"Crawdaunt—Crabhammer!"
Crawdaunt surged forward, its right pincer glowing with concentrated Water-type energy, rearing back for a devastating physical strike. It was fast—faster than Muk, faster than Sharpedo on land, its legs churning across the scorched earth with surprising agility.
Red watched it come. His expression didn't change. Marcus, watching through the screen, felt a chill run down his spine. He'd seen that expression before. He'd worn it himself, in his previous life, during competitive matches when an opponent made a move he'd predicted three turns ago.
Red had already won. He was just going through the motions.
"Charizard. Fly up. Then Solar Beam."
Two commands. Linked. Sequential.
Charizard's wings snapped open and the dragon launched itself skyward with a single, titanic wingbeat that sent a shockwave across the clearing, flattening the grass and staggering Crawdaunt mid-charge. The crustacean's Crabhammer swung through empty air where Charizard had been a fraction of a second earlier, the momentum carrying Crawdaunt stumbling forward, off-balance, exposed.
Above, Charizard hovered, wings spread wide, tail flame blazing. The sunlight—already intense on this clear afternoon—seemed to concentrate around the dragon, streams of solar energy visibly flowing toward its open mouth like rivers of golden light being pulled into a whirlpool. The process took two seconds. In competitive battling terms, Solar Beam was a two-turn move—one turn to charge, one turn to fire. In real combat, two seconds was an eternity and also not nearly enough time for Crawdaunt to do anything about what was happening.
Crawdaunt looked up.
Crawdaunt, Marcus reflected, had just enough intelligence to understand that it was about to have a very bad day.
The Solar Beam fired.
It was beautiful. Marcus, despite everything—despite the fact that he was watching his own distraction get demolished, despite the strategic implications, despite the cold, calculating part of his mind that was analyzing every second of this battle for exploitable patterns—couldn't help but appreciate the sheer, devastating beauty of the attack.
A column of concentrated solar energy, blindingly bright, eerily silent for the first microsecond before the thermal expansion hit and the air itself exploded outward in a shockwave that rattled the surveillance cameras. The beam struck Crawdaunt with the precision of a sniper and the force of a bomb, and the crustacean was—
Gone.
Not dead. Fainted. But gone from the spot where it had been standing, blasted backward so far and so fast that the cameras had to pan to find it. It was embedded in a boulder fifty feet from the point of impact, its armored shell cracked in three places, its pincers hanging limp, its eyes swirled into the universal Pokémon expression of unconsciousness.
Archie stood in the devastated clearing, his team of three wiped out in four minutes and eleven seconds, and stared at Red with an expression that Marcus could only describe as "existential crisis in progress."
Red recalled Charizard with the same quiet, efficient motion he did everything. No celebration. No trash talk. No fist pumps or victory poses. Just a boy with a Poké Ball, putting his partner away, already thinking about what came next.
"Your team is blocking the river," Red said. His voice carried across the clearing, flat and calm. "Move them."
Archie opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"This isn't over, kid!" he finally managed, his voice cracking slightly in a way that completely undermined the bravado he was attempting. "Team Aqua's mission is bigger than one battle! The oceans need us! The world needs us! We'll—we'll be back!"
He recalled his fainted Pokémon, gathered his surviving grunts (who had been watching the battle from the sidelines with expressions ranging from horror to "I should update my resume"), and retreated upstream with the haste of a man whose dignity had been thoroughly and publicly murdered and who needed to be somewhere else before the funeral.
Red watched them go.
Then he sat down on a rock, pulled a sandwich out of his backpack, and started eating lunch, apparently unbothered by the fact that he had just single-handedly dismantled a criminal organization's field operation while barely breaking a sweat.
Marcus turned off the feed.
He sat in silence for a long moment, staring at the blank screen.
"That kid," he said slowly, "is absolutely terrifying."
Ace, curled on the couch across the room, purred in agreement.
Dratini, coiled around the leg of his desk, chirped nervously. Even through a screen, even from hundreds of miles away, even in a pre-recorded surveillance feed, Red's Charizard had radiated a killing intent that Dratini's developing draconic instincts had recognized and recoiled from.
Marcus reached down and scratched Dratini's horn reassuringly. "Don't worry. We're not fighting him. Not yet. Not until we're ready."
He replayed the battle in his mind. Not the spectacle of it—the fire and lightning and devastation—but the strategy. The choices. The decision-making.
Red had led with Pikachu against Sharpedo. Perfect type matchup, perfect speed advantage. One-shot. Then he'd switched to Charizard for Muk—not because Charizard was super-effective against Poison (it wasn't), but because Charizard's raw power could overpower Muk's bulk, and Fire-type moves had the secondary effect of burning away Muk's toxic defenses. Then Solar Beam for Crawdaunt—a Grass-type move, on a Fire-type Pokémon, used specifically because the sunlight boosted by Charizard's presence (was that Drought? Did Red's Charizard have Drought? Or had it just been a sunny day?) eliminated the charge time.
Three different Pokémon. Three different strategies. Three different ways to lose, all executed with the kind of cold, clinical precision that spoke of a trainer who didn't just know type matchups—who didn't just memorize charts and damage calculators—but who understood battling at a fundamental, intuitive level that most people never reached.
Red was not a prodigy. Red was a savant.
And Marcus was going to have to fight him eventually.
He pulled out his notebook and began writing.
RED - BATTLE ANALYSIS (ENGAGEMENT #1: VS. ARCHIE)
Team observed: Pikachu, Charizard (evolved from Charmeleon). Others not deployed.
Tactical notes:
- Switches immediately when matchup is unfavorable. No ego, no attachment, pure optimization.
- Uses off-type coverage moves (Solar Beam on Charizard). Indicates deep movepool and creative team building.
- Commands are minimal and calm. No wasted words. Pokémon respond instantly—bond-level obedience, not just training.
- Charizard's power output is significantly above species average. Either exceptional individual, exceptional training, or both.
- Pikachu's Thunderbolt output is similarly above average. This may be a pattern—Red's Pokémon may all be operating above their statistical norms.
Strategic assessment: DO NOT ENGAGE until full team composition is known and counter-strategies are developed. This trainer will not make mistakes. Victory against Red will require overwhelming advantage or a strategy he cannot predict.
He circled the last sentence twice.
A strategy Red cannot predict. That was the key. Because if Marcus fought Red using conventional tactics—type advantages, power plays, standard battle theory—Red would dismantle him the same way he'd dismantled Archie. The kid was too good at the fundamentals. You couldn't out-fundamental a savant.
But Marcus had things Red didn't. Resonance. Coverage moves that no Gym Leader should have. An evolving Dratini that was going to become a Dragonite. The possibility of Mega Evolution, of Z-Moves, of Paradox forms. Weapons from the future deployed in the present.
When the time came, Marcus would fight Red not as Giovanni the Ground-type Gym Leader, but as Giovanni the man who had broken every rule the Pokémon world had established and rewritten them in his own favor.
But that was a problem for later. Right now, he had another feed to watch.
He switched to Camera Array B: Mt. Moon, exterior.
Maxie's defeat was less spectacular but no less complete.
The Team Magma leader had set up his "research station" at the entrance to Mt. Moon's cave system, exactly where Marcus had suggested. The station was legitimate—actual geological equipment, actual scientists (Team Magma grunts with actual degrees, because Maxie insisted on academic credentials even in his criminal organization), actual research being conducted. Maxie was many things, but a fraud wasn't one of them. When he said he was going to study geological formations, he actually studied geological formations.
The problem was that he'd also been using the research station as a base for Team Magma field operations—recruiting trainers, proselytizing about the importance of land expansion, and generally making himself a nuisance in a way that was impossible for a traveling trainer to ignore.
Red had arrived at Mt. Moon three days after the Archie incident. He'd been, according to surveillance reports, visibly confused about why there were two different criminal organizations operating in Kanto, having apparently expected to only have to deal with Team Rocket. The confusion had not slowed him down.
Marcus watched the feed.
The battle took place inside the cave, which made for worse camera angles but more dramatic lighting—the flashes of attack moves illuminating the stalactites and casting wild, dancing shadows across the walls.
Maxie led with Camerupt. His ace. His pride and joy. A massive, lumbering volcano-camel that radiated heat like a furnace and could, when properly motivated, erupt with enough force to collapse a cave system.
Which was, Marcus noted with some concern, exactly where they were fighting. Inside a cave. With a Pokémon that could cause eruptions. Maxie's strategic planning left something to be desired.
Red studied the Camerupt for three seconds—long enough, apparently, to formulate a complete battle plan—and sent out his Ivysaur.
Not Charizard. Not Pikachu. Ivysaur.
Marcus frowned. Ivysaur was Grass/Poison. Camerupt was Fire/Ground. Grass was weak to Fire. This didn't make sense. Red didn't make bad type matchup choices. He'd proven that against Archie. So why—
"Ivysaur. Growth."
Oh.
Oh.
Red wasn't going for a quick kill. Red was going for a setup.
Ivysaur planted its feet, its bulb glowing with a soft green luminescence, and Marcus watched the Grass-type's body visibly change. Its muscles tightened. Its vines thickened. The bulb on its back swelled, pulsing with concentrated solar energy that the cave's ambient light should not have been sufficient to provide, except that Ivysaur's bulb apparently contained its own photosynthetic energy reserves that were now being activated at full capacity.
Growth. A stat-boosting move. +1 Attack, +1 Special Attack. And in sunlight, it was +2 each.
There was no sunlight in the cave.
Red didn't care.
"Camerupt—Flamethrower! Burn it now!" Maxie barked, adjusting his glasses with the frantic energy of a man who had just realized he might be in trouble.
Camerupt opened its mouth. The volcano humps on its back glowed cherry-red, magma churning beneath the surface, and a torrent of fire erupted toward Ivysaur—
"Sleep Powder."
Ivysaur's bulb opened and a cloud of sparkling, blue-green spores billowed outward, not toward Camerupt but into the path of the Flamethrower. The fire hit the spore cloud and something unexpected happened—the heat dispersed the spores, yes, but it also carried them. The updraft from the Flamethrower turned the Sleep Powder into an aerosol, a fine mist of soporific particles that rode the thermal currents upward, outward, and then downward, settling over Camerupt like snowfall.
The Flamethrower sputtered and died as Camerupt's eyes drooped. Its legs wobbled. The volcano humps cooled from cherry-red to dull orange. And then, with a ground-shaking thud, the massive Fire/Ground type toppled onto its side and began to snore.
Maxie stared.
Red had used the enemy's own attack as a delivery mechanism for a status move. He'd predicted the Flamethrower, predicted its trajectory, predicted the thermal dynamics, and used them to his advantage. In real-time. Against a type disadvantage.
This kid was twelve.
"Growth," Red said again. Calm. Quiet. Like he was ordering coffee.
Ivysaur grew. +2 more. Its vines were now thick as pythons, its bulb blazing with stored energy, its body practically vibrating with accumulated power.
"Giga Drain."
Ivysaur's vines shot forward, crossing the fifteen-foot gap between it and the sleeping Camerupt in the blink of an eye. They wrapped around the volcano Pokémon's body—around its legs, its neck, its humps—and squeezed. Green energy flowed along the vines, draining Camerupt's life force in visible rivers of emerald light that fed back into Ivysaur, healing the minor Flamethrower burns on its leaves, restoring its stamina, making it even stronger.
The Giga Drain, boosted by two Growths and STAB (Same Type Attack Bonus—Grass move on a Grass-type), hit with a force that made the +4 modifier look like cheating. Camerupt's health bar—if it had one visible—would have gone from full to zero in a single, brutal instant. The volcano Pokémon twitched in its sleep, its body going limp, the last of its energy drained away.
It fainted without ever waking up.
Maxie recalled Camerupt with trembling hands. His face behind his glasses was a masterpiece of barely contained fury.
"Mightyena! We will not be humiliated!"
Mightyena materialized—a Dark-type wolf, lean and fierce, baring its fangs with a growl that echoed through the cave. Dark-type. Not weak to Grass. A better matchup.
But Ivysaur had +4 Attack and +4 Special Attack now. Matchups barely mattered at that point.
Red studied Mightyena the way a surgeon studies an x-ray.
"Sludge Bomb."
Ivysaur opened its bulb wide and launched a concentrated sphere of toxic matter directly at Mightyena. The Dark-type tried to dodge—fast, agile, darting to the left—but the Sludge Bomb wasn't aimed at where Mightyena was. It was aimed at where Mightyena was going to be.
It hit the wolf mid-dodge, exploding on impact into a shower of corrosive purple sludge that coated Mightyena's left side. The Dark-type yelped—a sharp, pained sound that echoed off the cave walls—and stumbled, its legs slipping on the now-toxic ground.
"Crunch! NOW!" Maxie screamed.
Mightyena rallied. To its credit, the wolf was tough—Dark-types were hardy, resilient, built to fight through pain and disadvantage. Its jaws lit up with dark energy, teeth elongating, shadows gathering around its mouth like a cloak, and it lunged at Ivysaur with a ferocity that was genuinely frightening.
Its teeth found Ivysaur's side. Crunched down. Hard.
Ivysaur bellowed—a deep, resonant cry of pain that shook loose pebbles from the cave ceiling. The Crunch was super-effective, Dark against Grass, and it hurt. Blood—green, plant-based blood, thick as sap—welled around Mightyena's teeth.
Marcus leaned forward. This was the first hit Red had taken in two battles. How would the kid respond?
"Ivysaur. Giga Drain. Point blank."
Ivysaur's vines, all four of them, wrapped around Mightyena's body while its teeth were still embedded in Ivysaur's side. The wolf's eyes went wide—it was trapped, locked in by its own bite, unable to release without exposing itself, unable to hold on without being drained. The vines tightened. The green energy flowed. Mightyena's strength visibly left its body, pouring through the vines into Ivysaur, the Grass-type's wound closing in real-time as the stolen life force healed it.
Mightyena held on for three seconds. Then its jaw went slack, its eyes rolled back, and it collapsed.
Ivysaur stood over it, battered but functional, its bulb blazing with the combined energy of two opponents.
Maxie was down to his last Pokémon.
He sent out Golbat.
Marcus watched Red's response. The kid recalled Ivysaur—not because it couldn't handle Golbat, but because it was injured and he didn't risk damaged Pokémon when he had healthy alternatives. Pure optimization. Again.
"Pikachu."
Pikachu materialized, cheeks sparking, body coiled and ready.
Golbat was fast. Flying/Poison. Immune to Ground, resistant to Grass and Fighting, but fatally, catastrophically weak to Electric.
This was going to be quick.
"Wing Attack!" Maxie commanded, his voice tight with desperation.
Golbat dove, wings slicing through the cave air, the whoosh of displaced air echoing in the confined space. It was fast—genuinely fast, maybe the fastest Pokémon on Maxie's team—and it came in low and hard, trying to use speed and angle to compensate for the type disadvantage.
"Thunder."
Not Thunderbolt. Thunder.
Marcus's eyes widened.
Thunder was—for those not versed in Pokémon mechanics—Thunderbolt's bigger, meaner, angrier older brother. Where Thunderbolt was a controlled, focused beam of electrical energy, Thunder was an act of God. One hundred base power. Seventy percent accuracy. And when it hit—when it hit—
The cave lit up.
Every shadow disappeared. Every crevice, every crack, every hidden corner of the cavern was exposed by a light so bright, so absolute, so overwhelmingly white that for a single, frozen moment, the cave was not a cave but a negative space, a void of pure luminescence in which physical objects existed only as dark silhouettes against an infinite, blazing canvas.
The sound came after. Not a crack of thunder—a detonation. A shockwave of compressed air that blew outward from Pikachu's body in a visible ring, slamming into the cave walls hard enough to crack stone, shaking loose stalactites that crashed to the floor in a rain of shattered rock. The noise was beyond loud—it was physical, a force that hit Marcus through his speakers and made his chest vibrate, and he was watching a recording from miles away.
Golbat was hit by approximately 1.21 gigawatts of directed electrical fury.
The bat Pokémon didn't scream. It didn't have time to scream. The Thunder hit it at the peak of its dive, caught it in mid-wingbeat, and the energy discharge was so total, so complete, so absolute that Golbat's body simply locked up—every muscle contracting simultaneously, every nerve firing at once, its wings snapping rigid, its mouth frozen open in a silent shriek—and then it fell.
It hit the cave floor with a limp, boneless thwap and did not move.
The silence that followed was somehow louder than the Thunder had been.
Maxie stood in the settling dust, his glasses cracked, his coat singed, his hair standing on end from the residual static charge, and stared at the unconscious Golbat with the expression of a man who had just watched his entire worldview get deconstructed in real-time by a child who wasn't even breathing hard.
Red recalled Pikachu. Looked at Maxie. His expression was the same flat, unreadable mask it had been throughout both battles—throughout, apparently, every battle. No joy, no anger, no triumph. Just assessment. Just evaluation.
"Don't block the cave entrance," Red said. "People use this path."
He turned and walked into Mt. Moon, his footsteps fading into the darkness.
Maxie stood alone in the crater-pocked, scorched, stalactite-littered remains of his "research station" and did not speak for a very long time.
Marcus turned off the second feed.
He sat in his chair, staring at the ceiling, processing what he'd just watched.
Two battles. Two criminal leaders, each with teams of three. Total engagement time: approximately eleven minutes combined. Total hits taken by Red's Pokémon: one (the Crunch on Ivysaur, immediately healed by Giga Drain). Total Pokémon Red used: three (Pikachu, Charizard, Ivysaur). Total strategic mistakes made by Red: zero.
The kid was a monster.
But—and this was the part that made Marcus's plan work—Archie and Maxie didn't know they were pawns. Despite being demolished. Despite being humiliated. Despite having their teams swept by a twelve-year-old while standing in the smoking ruins of their operations. They were still here.
Because true believers didn't quit.
Marcus had counted on this. It was the reason he'd chosen Archie and Maxie specifically, rather than any other criminal leader he could have lured to Kanto. Other criminals—rational criminals, pragmatic criminals—would have assessed the situation, recognized that they were outmatched, and left. Cut their losses. Gone home.
Archie and Maxie were not rational. They were not pragmatic. They were ideologues. They had a mission. And the mission was more important than any single defeat, any personal humiliation, any amount of evidence that the universe was actively and enthusiastically trying to tell them to stop.
Archie's surveillance feed, still running on a secondary monitor, showed the Team Aqua leader pacing the deck of his base camp on the Seafoam Islands, ranting to his subordinates about the "setback" and how it "only proved the importance of their work" and how they would "redouble their efforts" and "show this kid the power of the sea." His grunts nodded along with the glazed, automatic agreement of people who had heard this speech many, many times.
Maxie's feed showed a similar scene at Mt. Moon—the Team Magma leader had retreated to a secondary position deeper in the cave, where he was delivering a lecture to his operatives about "perseverance in the face of adversity" and "the indomitable spirit of scientific inquiry" while his cracked glasses sat slightly askew on his nose.
Neither of them was leaving.
Neither of them had any idea that their presence in Kanto was serving Giovanni's interests rather than their own.
Neither of them suspected that, thousands of miles away in Hoenn, their bases were being infiltrated by creatures that were not what they appeared to be.
Marcus allowed himself a grin.
"Pawns," he murmured. "Beautiful, useful, oblivious pawns."
Boss, the office Persian, purred from the couch. It was the purr of a cat that approved of cunning.
The intercom on Marcus's desk buzzed.
"Sir? There are three... individuals here to see you. They say they're members of a 'special operations unit.' They seem... distressed."
Marcus frowned. He didn't have any special operations units scheduled for debriefing today. "Send them in."
The door opened.
Three people shuffled into the office. Two humans and a Pokémon. All three looked like they'd been through a blender—clothes torn, hair disheveled, covered in a fine layer of soot and what appeared to be Pikachu-induced scorch marks.
Marcus stared at them.
They stared back.
"You're Jessie, James, and Meowth," Marcus said.
The woman—Jessie, tall, with magenta hair that defied gravity and apparently also defied whatever recent trauma had flattened the rest of her appearance—snapped to attention. Or tried to. Her left leg buckled slightly and she caught herself on James's shoulder.
"Y-yes, sir! Agent Jessie, reporting!" Her voice cracked. She was trying very hard to be professional and failing in ways that were almost poignant.
James—blue-haired, handsome in a delicate, aristocratic way, looking like a man who had been born into privilege and then deliberately chosen the worst possible career path—saluted weakly. "Agent James, sir. At your service." He sounded like a man who had recently questioned every decision he'd ever made and arrived at no satisfying answers.
"Meowth," said Meowth. It was a talking Pokémon. A talking Pokémon. Marcus knew this from the anime, but hearing it in person—in real life—was deeply, profoundly surreal. The cat Pokémon stood on its hind legs, its coin-shaped charm glinting on its forehead, and despite its battered appearance, it carried itself with the jaunty, streetwise confidence of a creature that had been through hell and decided to treat the experience as a learning opportunity.
"Tell me," Marcus said, settling back in his chair and steepling his fingers, "why you're in my office looking like you lost a fight with a power plant."
The three of them exchanged glances. Jessie nudged James. James nudged Meowth. Meowth sighed—a very human sigh, world-weary and long-suffering—and spoke.
"So, Boss, here's da ting. We was in Pallet Town, see? Standard recruitment operation. Scope out new trainers, identify promising targets, maybe swipe a Pokémon or two if da opportunity presented itself. Routine stuff. Bread and butter."
Marcus nodded. Standard grunt work. Low-level, low-risk, low-reward.
"And den," Meowth continued, "dis kid shows up."
Marcus felt a familiar sensation in his stomach. "What kid?"
"He's maybe ten. Eleven tops. Got a Pikachu. But not just any Pikachu, Boss. Dis Pikachu is—" Meowth paused, searching for the right word. "—unreasonable."
"Unreasonable."
"Unreasonable. Like, unreasonably powerful. Like, 'dat ting should not be able to do what it does' powerful. We challenged da kid—t'ree against one, fair and square—"
"Fair and square meaning three-on-one in your favor," Marcus clarified.
"—and da Pikachu vaporized us." Meowth's voice dropped to a whisper. "One Thunderbolt, Boss. One. Knocked out Jessie's Ekans, James's Koffing, and—" He hesitated. "—and me. All t'ree of us. At da same time. Wit' one move."
Silence.
Marcus processed this information.
"The kid's name," he said slowly. "What was the kid's name?"
"Ash," Jessie said, her voice small. "Ash Ketchum."
Of course.
Of course there was an Ash.
Because of course this world wasn't just the game universe. It had elements of the anime too. Of course it did. Why would the universe make things simple? Why would Marcus get to deal with only one impossibly talented child prodigy when it could give him two?
Red and Ash. Both from Pallet Town. Both with absurdly powerful Pikachu. Both apparently hardwired to interfere with criminal operations on a molecular level.
This was fine. This was completely fine. Everything was fine.
"So," Marcus said, his voice impressively controlled for a man experiencing an internal crisis, "you were defeated by a single Pikachu. A new trainer's Pikachu. On your first mission."
The three of them wilted. Jessie's lower lip trembled. James looked like he was about to cry. Meowth's ears flattened against its head.
Marcus studied them. In the anime, Jessie, James, and Meowth were comic relief—bumbling, incompetent, perpetually defeated, yet strangely endearing. They spent the entire series chasing Ash's Pikachu and failing in increasingly elaborate ways, and despite being nominal villains, they were arguably the most sympathetic characters in the show.
The original Giovanni would have demoted them. Reassigned them. Possibly fired them.
Marcus had a different idea.
"Sit down," he said, gesturing to the chairs in front of his desk.
They sat, looking terrified.
"You lost to a kid with a Pikachu. That's bad. But you're here, in my office, reporting your failure honestly instead of trying to hide it. That's good." He leaned forward. "I value honesty more than success. Success can be trained. Honesty is a character trait."
Three sets of eyes blinked at him in perfect unison.
"Here's what's going to happen," Marcus continued. "You three are being reassigned. Not demoted—reassigned. I have a specific role in mind for you."
"A... role, sir?" James ventured.
"Ash Ketchum. The kid who beat you. I want you to follow him. Monitor him. Report his movements, his team composition, his battling style. Do not engage him in combat. Do not try to steal his Pikachu. Do not reveal your affiliation with Team Rocket. Just watch. Observe. Report."
"You... want us to spy on a ten-year-old?" Jessie asked.
"I want you to gather intelligence on a trainer who may become a significant threat to our operations. His battling ability, his team development, his travel patterns, his relationships, his weaknesses. Everything. Send weekly reports directly to my office."
The three of them looked at each other. Looked back at Marcus. Looked at each other again.
"Boss," Meowth said carefully, "not for nuthin', but... dat's da most sensible order anyone in dis organization has ever given us."
"I know. That's why I'm the boss."
Jessie, James, and Meowth stood, saluted with significantly more enthusiasm than they'd had when they walked in, and marched out of the office with the renewed purpose of people who had been given a mission they might actually be able to accomplish.
As the door closed behind them, Marcus made a mental note to add Ash Ketchum to his threat assessment file, right next to Red.
Two prodigies. Both from Pallet Town. Both with absurdly powerful Pikachu.
What was Professor Oak feeding those kids?
The encrypted message from Cinnabar Island arrived at 2 PM.
Marcus opened it with the careful, reverent attention of a man opening a letter that might contain either the best news or the worst news of his life.
PROJECT M - STATUS UPDATE - DAY 37
FROM: Dr. Fuji, Lead Researcher
TO: Giovanni, Director
CLASSIFICATION: ULTRA
Sir,
I am pleased to report significant progress in the Project M development cycle.
As of this morning's scan, the subject has reached 71% projected development. Growth rates remain consistent with revised models. All physical parameters are within expected ranges. Organ development is complete. Muscular system is fully formed. Skeletal structure has ossified to final specifications.
The primary development of note is cerebral.
The subject's brain has entered its final formation phase. Cortical folding has accelerated dramatically over the past five days, and the neural density readings have exceeded our most optimistic projections by a factor of three. To provide context: the average Alakazam—the current benchmark for Pokémon psychic capability—has a neural density of approximately 12.7 million neurons per cubic centimeter. The subject's current reading is 847 million.
I want to be very clear about what this number means, sir.
This is not a Pokémon brain. This is not even an enhanced Pokémon brain. What is forming inside this tank is, to the best of our ability to measure and understand, the most complex neural structure that has ever existed on this planet. The psychic potential encoded in this brain is beyond our ability to quantify with existing technology. Our measurement equipment, which was designed to assess Pokémon up to and including Legendary-class psychic types, has been rendered functionally obsolete. We are, in a very real sense, measuring the unmeasurable.
The behavioral psychology team you authorized has been invaluable. Dr. Akane Mori, the team lead, has developed a protocol for first-contact communication that I believe will significantly reduce the risk of hostile response upon the subject's awakening. Her approach emphasizes:
1. Environmental comfort - The awakening chamber has been redesigned to eliminate harsh lighting, sharp surfaces, and other stimuli that might trigger a fear response. The space is warm, softly lit, and contains natural materials (wood, stone, water features) that Dr. Mori believes will be psychologically soothing.
2. Emotional presence - Dr. Mori has recommended that the first person the subject sees upon awakening should be someone who radiates genuine positive emotion toward it. Not clinical detachment, not scientific curiosity, but actual, authentic care. She suggests that this person should be you, sir.
I concur with her recommendation. The subject will be the most powerful psychic entity on Earth from the moment it opens its eyes. It will be able to read emotions as easily as we read text. If the first mind it touches is cold, calculating, or afraid, it will respond accordingly. If the first mind it touches is warm, welcoming, and genuinely caring, there is a significantly higher probability of a positive outcome.
The containment upgrades you authorized are 80% complete. The new systems are rated for psychic output approximately fifty times beyond our previous maximum. Whether this will be sufficient for the subject remains, honestly, uncertain. But it is the best we can do with current technology.
Projected awakening timeline: 6-10 weeks.
I await your instructions.
Respectfully,
Dr. Fuji
Marcus read the report twice. Then a third time. Then he set it down, closed his eyes, and sat in silence for five minutes.
847 million neurons per cubic centimeter. The most complex neural structure ever to exist on the planet. A mind that would be able to read emotions like text, a psychic potential beyond measurement, a being that would wake up in six to ten weeks and immediately become the most powerful creature in the world.
And Dr. Mori wanted Marcus to be the first person it saw.
The first mind it touched.
The first emotion it felt.
He thought about that. Really thought about it. Not strategically—not in terms of control or leverage or asset management—but humanly. What would it be like to wake up for the first time? To open your eyes and see a world you'd never seen before? To reach out with a mind more powerful than any mind that had ever existed and touch another consciousness for the first time?
What would Mewtwo need in that moment?
Not a master. Not a creator. Not a boss.
It would need someone who cared about it. Genuinely. Not for what it could do or what it represented or how it could be used, but for what it was. A living being. A person. A Pokémon, yes, but a person.
Could Marcus be that? Could a crime lord from another dimension who was using Mewtwo's creation as a strategic asset genuinely, authentically care about the creature itself?
He looked at Dratini, asleep on the desk, its tiny body curled around his pen cup, one eye half-open, purring softly in its sleep.
He looked at Ace, draped across the couch, one paw twitching as she chased something in her dreams.
He looked at Boss, sitting on the windowsill, watching the city below with the calm, omniscient gaze of a creature that understood the world far better than it let on.
Yes. He could.
Because he wasn't faking it. He wasn't pretending to care about Pokémon as a strategic gambit. He cared. He had always cared. He had cared since he was seven years old and picked up a Game Boy and chose Squirtle as his starter and named it "Buddy" and cried when it fainted for the first time.
He was a Pokémon fan. Not the kind who complained about graphics and bought the game anyway. The kind who loved these creatures—these imaginary, impossible, wonderful creatures—with a sincerity that transcended cynicism, that survived disappointment, that endured twenty years of increasingly questionable game design decisions and came out the other side still caring.
He was going to be there when Mewtwo woke up. And the first thing Mewtwo's impossibly powerful mind was going to feel from him was genuine, honest, unshakeable love.
He typed a reply to Dr. Fuji:
Acknowledged. I will be present for the awakening. Notify me forty-eight hours in advance of projected consciousness emergence. In the meantime, continue the environmental modifications per Dr. Mori's specifications. Add a garden. Living plants, not artificial. And a window, if structurally possible—even a small one. The first natural light this being sees should be sunlight, not fluorescent.
Also, it needs a name. Not "the subject." Not "Project M." A name. Something that acknowledges what it is—not what we made it to be, but what it is in itself. A living creature that deserves to be called something other than a designation.
I'll think of one.
He sent the message, leaned back, and steepled his fingers.
Six to ten weeks. The clock was ticking on the most important moment of his new life.
No pressure.
The Hoenn operation report arrived at 4 PM, and it was, without question, the funniest intelligence briefing Marcus had ever read.
He had expected the infiltration to be difficult. He had expected complications, setbacks, possibly even combat. Breaking into the bases of two criminal organizations—even understaffed ones—was inherently risky, and Marcus had prepared contingency plans for a dozen different failure scenarios.
What he had not expected was for the entire operation to go so smoothly that it was almost insulting.
The infiltration teams hadn't been composed of standard Rocket operatives. Marcus had gotten creative. Instead of sending humans—who would need to be disguised, briefed, equipped, and supported with extraction plans—he'd sent Ditto.
Specifically, he'd sent twelve specially trained Ditto, each one capable of near-perfect transformation into any person it had seen or been shown a photograph of. Rocket R&D had been working with Ditto for years—the shapeshifting Pokémon were natural espionage assets—and Marcus's twelve were the best of the best, capable of maintaining their disguises indefinitely, mimicking speech patterns and body language with uncanny accuracy, and operating independently in hostile environments for extended periods.
Six Ditto, disguised as Team Aqua admins, had walked into the Lilycove City base three days ago. Six more, disguised as Team Magma admins, had entered the Jagged Pass base at the same time.
They had walked in through the front doors.
Nobody had stopped them. Nobody had questioned them. Nobody had even looked at them suspiciously.
Marcus had to re-read this part of the report three times to make sure he wasn't misunderstanding.
The Ditto—shapeshifting blobs of pink goo disguised as high-ranking criminal officials—had walked into two separate secret bases through the front doors, in broad daylight, without anyone even raising an eyebrow. The guards had saluted them. The staff had greeted them. One of the Ditto-as-Aqua-Admins had been offered coffee by a junior operative who was worried it looked tired.
The people of Hoenn, Marcus concluded, were not very observant.
Or perhaps the Ditto were just that good. He preferred to believe this, because the alternative—that two major criminal organizations had security protocols so lax that literal shapeshifting blobs could walk in unchallenged—was too depressing to contemplate.
Once inside, the Ditto had performed their tasks with the quiet, methodical efficiency of creatures that didn't experience anxiety, ego, or moral conflict. They were, in many ways, the perfect operatives—no ambition, no fear, no potential for betrayal. They wanted to complete their mission and receive treats. That was the entire extent of their motivational framework, and it made them terrifyingly effective.
The Blue Orb had been located in Team Aqua's vault—a reinforced chamber in the lowest level of the Lilycove base, protected by a keycode lock, a fingerprint scanner, and a retinal scanner, all of which had been bypassed by a Ditto that had transformed into Archie himself. The guards outside the vault had watched "Archie" walk in, take the orb, walk out, and leave the building, and had assumed their leader had decided to bring it along on his Kanto trip. Nobody questioned it. Nobody called to verify.
Nobody.
The Red Orb's acquisition had been even more anticlimactic. It had been sitting on a display pedestal in Maxie's personal office. In a glass case. Unlocked. With a small placard that read "Red Orb - Handle With Care."
It was like stealing a book from a library that didn't have a checkout system. One Ditto-as-Maxie had walked into the office, picked up the orb, put it in a briefcase, and walked out. Total time in the office: forty-three seconds.
Both orbs were now in transit to Kanto, carried by separate teams via separate routes, each sealed in energy-dampening containment cases designed by Rocket R&D to suppress any ambient power the orbs might emit. Estimated arrival: seventy-two hours.
The research data had been copied in its entirety from both bases—terabytes of information on Kyogre, Groudon, Primal Reversion, the orbs' energy signatures, and the Weather Trio's behavioral patterns. The Ditto had simply sat down at computer terminals (in their disguised forms), plugged in data drives, and downloaded everything. The IT departments of both organizations hadn't even flagged the downloads, because the Ditto were copying data under admin-level credentials.
Marcus read the summary of the Primal Reversion data with particular interest. According to Team Magma's research, the Red Orb could channel what they called "Omega Energy"—a form of primal earth energy that, when focused through the orb and directed at Groudon, triggered a transformation into Primal Groudon: a being of such immense power that its mere presence could evaporate oceans and reshape continents.
Team Aqua's research described a parallel phenomenon with the Blue Orb and "Alpha Energy," which could awaken Primal Kyogre—a being whose power over the oceans was so absolute that it could drown entire landmasses and plunge the world into an endless storm.
Neither team, Marcus noted with grim satisfaction, had actually used the orbs yet. They'd been studying them, analyzing them, building toward an eventual awakening that they believed would fulfill their respective visions.
That awakening was never going to happen now. The orbs were in Marcus's hands, and they were going straight into the most secure vault Team Rocket had, locked behind every security measure money could buy, and they were staying there.
The world was safer already, and nobody knew it.
He filed the report, authorized bonus payments for the Ditto handlers (the Ditto themselves received their bonuses in the form of gourmet Poké food and, bizarrely, stickers, which they apparently loved), and moved on to the final item on his agenda for the day.
Silph Co.
The press conference was held in the lobby of Silph Co.'s headquarters in Saffron City.
Marcus stood at the podium—Giovanni's podium, Giovanni's suit, Giovanni's face, Giovanni's voice—and addressed a crowd of reporters, shareholders, business analysts, and curious citizens with the practiced ease of a man who had spent thirty-seven days becoming very, very good at lying to people's faces.
"Thank you all for coming," he said, his baritone filling the lobby with the warm, confident resonance of someone who belonged at this podium and had always belonged at this podium. "I'll keep this brief."
The cover story was elegant. Giovanni, the well-known and respected Viridian City Gym Leader, had become increasingly concerned about the pace of technological development in Kanto. The region was falling behind its neighbors in Pokémon care technology, in training resources, in the tools and equipment that trainers needed to succeed. Silph Co., as the region's leading technology company, had the potential to change that—but it needed investment. It needed vision.
And so Giovanni, civic-minded businessman and Pokémon enthusiast, had decided to invest. Generously. Publicly. Transparently. He had purchased a "significant minority stake" (the actual number—51%, a controlling majority—was buried in the fine print of SEC filings that no reporter would ever bother to read) and had accepted a seat on Silph Co.'s board of directors, where he intended to advocate for increased R&D spending, expanded production capabilities, and a renewed focus on the Master Ball project.
"The Master Ball represents the pinnacle of Poké Ball technology," Marcus said, looking directly into the cameras with the sincerity of a man who believed every word he was saying and also happened to be planning to use said technology to capture legendary Pokémon. "Its development has been hindered by a lack of funding and institutional support. I intend to change that. Within two years, the Master Ball will be in production. Within five years, it will be available to elite trainers and researchers across the region."
Questions from the press were softball. Nobody questioned Giovanni's motives. Nobody dug into the ownership numbers. Nobody asked why a Gym Leader suddenly had enough money to buy a controlling stake in the largest corporation in Kanto. They asked about his "vision for Silph Co.'s future" and his "commitment to trainer welfare" and whether he planned to "expand into other markets."
Marcus answered them all with charm, confidence, and a level of corporate doublespeak that would have made a Fortune 500 CEO weep with admiration.
The Silph Co. president—a kindly, grey-haired man named Hiroshi who genuinely cared about technology and trainers and was completely, utterly, hopelessly naive about the corporate shark that had just swallowed his company—stood beside Marcus throughout the press conference, beaming with genuine gratitude.
"Giovanni-san has been incredibly generous," Hiroshi told the reporters. "His investment will allow us to accelerate our most important projects and bring new products to market faster than ever before. We're very excited about this partnership."
Partnership. Marcus kept his smile firmly in place. It was not a partnership. It was an acquisition. Hiroshi just didn't know it yet.
After the press conference, Marcus shook hands, posed for photographs, and exchanged pleasantries with Silph Co. executives, all of whom were either already on his payroll (the three compromised board members), about to be on his payroll (two more board members who had been identified as "persuadable"), or irrelevant (everyone else).
The president pulled him aside as the crowd was dispersing.
"Giovanni-san, I want to thank you personally," Hiroshi said, his eyes moist with emotion. "The Master Ball project is my life's work. To have someone believe in it—someone with your resources, your reputation—it means more than I can say."
Marcus looked at this good, decent, trusting man who had just handed his company over to a crime lord on a silver platter, and felt—
Something.
Not guilt, exactly. More like... responsibility. Hiroshi believed in him. Believed that Giovanni was what he appeared to be—a generous businessman who wanted to make the world better. And while Marcus's motives were unambiguously selfish, his promise to develop the Master Ball was genuine. He was going to fund the project. He was going to bring it to production. He was going to make Silph Co. more successful and more profitable than it had ever been.
He was just also going to use the technology for his own purposes and ensure that Team Rocket had first access to every breakthrough.
"You've built something remarkable here, Hiroshi," Marcus said, and meant it. "I'm going to help you build it further."
Hiroshi bowed, deeply and genuinely, and Marcus returned the bow, and for a moment—just a moment—the crime lord and the idealist stood together in something that almost resembled real partnership.
Then Marcus got in his helicopter and flew back to Viridian City to oversee the arrival of two ancient orbs that could control the gods of weather.
The orbs arrived at 11 PM, under cover of darkness, in two separate armored transports that pulled into the underground loading dock of Team Rocket headquarters with the quiet, professional efficiency of an organization that had learned to move valuable items without attracting attention.
Marcus was waiting for them.
The containment cases were brought to his office by two senior operatives—men he'd hand-selected for the task, loyal, discreet, and absolutely terrified of disappointing him. They placed the cases on his desk, saluted, and left.
Marcus locked the door. Drew the blinds. Checked the security feeds to make sure he was alone.
Then he opened the first case.
The Blue Orb sat in its foam cradle like a jewel in a crown. It was beautiful—a sphere of deep, luminous blue, approximately the size of a softball, its surface swirling with internal currents of light that moved like ocean waves. It pulsed—slowly, rhythmically, like a heartbeat—and the pulse was accompanied by a subtle change in the room's atmosphere. The air felt heavier. Wetter. Marcus could taste salt on his lips and hear, somewhere at the very edge of his perception, the distant roar of waves crashing against a shore that didn't exist.
He reached out and touched it.
Cold.
Not physically cold. Metaphysically cold. The cold of the deep ocean, the cold of abyssal trenches where sunlight never reached, the cold of a place where pressure crushed everything and darkness was absolute and the only things that lived were ancient and vast and patient beyond human comprehension. It was the cold of Kyogre—of the sleeping god beneath the waves, dreaming of rain and tide and the slow, eternal churn of the world's waters.
Marcus pulled his hand back, breathing hard.
He opened the second case.
The Red Orb was its opposite in every way. Where the Blue Orb was cool and fluid, the Red Orb was hot—a sphere of deep, burning crimson that radiated heat like a miniature sun. Its surface didn't swirl so much as churn, like magma beneath a thin crust of cooling stone, bright lines of orange and gold tracing patterns that shifted and reformed continuously. The pulse was different too—not the steady rhythm of ocean waves but the irregular, rumbling beat of tectonic pressure, of continental drift, of forces that operated on timescales so vast that human history was a footnote.
He touched it.
Hot.
The heat of the earth's core. The heat of creation. The heat of a world being born, of continents splitting and mountains rising and volcanoes erupting in fountains of liquid rock that would, over millions of years, become the ground that people built their lives on. It was the heat of Groudon—the sleeping titan beneath the land, dreaming of sun and stone and the slow, inevitable emergence of new earth from old ocean.
Marcus pulled his hand back again.
He sat there for a long time, looking at the two orbs, feeling the weight of what he now possessed.
These were the keys to gods. Literal gods. Beings that could reshape the planet with a thought, that had fought each other in a cataclysmic war that had nearly destroyed the world, that slept now in uneasy truce beneath the earth and sea, waiting—always waiting—for the call that would wake them.
And the call was sitting on his desk.
He closed both cases. Locked them. Carried them personally to the vault—a reinforced chamber three floors below his office, protected by steel doors, electronic locks, biometric scanners, and a security team that Marcus paid very well to ensure that nobody who wasn't him ever got near the contents.
The orbs went onto a shelf next to a row of empty spaces that Marcus had already labeled.
BLUE ORB ✓
RED ORB ✓
JADE ORB (Rayquaza - location: Sky Pillar - STATUS: NOT ACQUIRED)
ADAMANT ORB (Dialga - location: Sinnoh - STATUS: NOT ACQUIRED)
LUSTROUS ORB (Palkia - location: Sinnoh - STATUS: NOT ACQUIRED)
GRISEOUS ORB (Giratina - location: Distortion World - STATUS: NOT ACQUIRED)
Six spaces. Two filled. Four to go.
He was collecting keys to gods the way some people collected stamps.
This was either the most responsible thing anyone had ever done (keeping world-ending artifacts safely locked away) or the most dangerous (concentrating them all in one place under the control of one person).
Marcus chose to believe it was the former.
He locked the vault, returned to his office, and found Dratini asleep on his keyboard.
The little dragon had grown again. It was now over six feet long—longer than Marcus was tall—and its scales had deepened to a rich, royal blue that seemed to absorb and re-emit light in a way that was almost hypnotic. Its horn was larger, its eyes (when open) were sharper, and its Dragon Rage had progressed from "party trick" to "legitimate threat." The evolution to Dragonair was close. Marcus could feel it in the way Dratini moved—more fluid, more purposeful, the baby clumsiness giving way to a serpentine grace that hinted at the magnificent creature it was becoming.
"Hey," he murmured, lifting the dragon off the keyboard and cradling it against his chest. Dratini chirped sleepily, nuzzled into the warmth of his suit, and went back to sleep.
Marcus sat down, pulled up his master plan on the computer, and began updating it.
DAY 37 STATUS UPDATE:
Silph Co.: ACQUIRED. 51% ownership. Board control established. Master Ball project fully funded. Projected first production run: 18 months.
Orbs: Blue Orb and Red Orb SECURED. In vault. Primal Reversion research data being analyzed by R&D.
Mewtwo: 71% development. Brain formation accelerating. Neural density off the charts. Awakening in 6-10 weeks. Behavioral team in place. Environmental modifications underway. I NEED TO BE THERE.
Paldea Expedition: Temporal displacement energy confirmed. Paradox Pokémon observed. Higher-resolution scans in progress.
Mega Stones: Kalos surveys ongoing. Hoenn surveys initiated using Team Magma's geological data (thanks, Maxie). No confirmed finds yet.
Distractions: Archie and Maxie both active in Kanto. Both defeated by Red. Both still operating. Both completely oblivious to manipulation. Functioning as intended.
Red: Five badges (defeated Koga since last update). Team confirmed: Charizard, Pikachu, Ivysaur (may have evolved?), Snorlax (new), Lapras (new), unknown sixth. THREAT LEVEL: EXTREME.
Ash Ketchum: New variable. Just left Pallet Town. Has absurdly powerful Pikachu. Jessie/James/Meowth reassigned to surveillance duty. THREAT LEVEL: UNKNOWN (monitoring).
He saved the file, encrypted it, and leaned back.
Thirty-seven days. In thirty-seven days, he had acquired a corporation, secured two legendary artifacts, deployed research teams to two continents, restructured his criminal empire's operations, trained his Pokémon to levels that would have taken the original Giovanni years, discovered a bond-evolution ability that shouldn't exist, and successfully manipulated two rival criminal leaders into serving as unwitting pawns in his grand strategy.
And somewhere in this building, forty-seven women were holding a fan club meeting about him.
He should probably look into that at some point.
...Nah. Probably not important.
He picked up Dratini, summoned Boss with a whistle, and headed for bed.
Tomorrow would bring new challenges, new opportunities, and—knowing this world—new absurdities.
The grind continued.
The grind was eternal.
END OF CHAPTER 4
Next Chapter: Dratini finally evolves, Marcus visits Cinnabar for Mewtwo's preparation, the Mega Stone search has its first breakthrough, the Giovanni Appreciation Society has a membership crisis (too many applicants, not enough chairs), and Red reaches Saffron City only to find that Silph Co. is... completely fine? No raid? No hostages? What is happening? Why is the Gym Leader on the board of directors? Red is confused. Red does not like being confused.