Chapter 157: Want Me to Leave Team Rocket? Take Them Down First.
"Kagura!"
Steven looked up at the dark-haired girl seated at ease on her Flygon, his expression heavy and grave.
Kagura of the Lorekeeper clan. Steven had already heard the full story from Joseph Stone.
"Champion Steven~ What does it feel like to have your father taken from you?"
Kagura watched him without urgency, her smile growing more brazen.
"That Joseph Stone — he had some spine, at least. Actually walked himself into a cell."
The words sounded like a compliment. No one missed the contempt underneath.
Cynthia and the others held their silence. There wasn't much to say. By any moral reckoning, Joseph Stone had been in the wrong — attempting to forcibly capture Rayquaza with a machine, and bearing responsibility for Shelly's death in the process. Those were serious offenses.
"Kagura. I know what happened. You have my word — I will see justice done for your sister."
Steven drew a breath and made the promise with full solemnity.
Even if Joseph Stone was his father, Steven understood clearly: his father had been wrong. Profoundly wrong.
"Justice? What kind of justice?"
Kagura gave a short, cold laugh.
"I can go with you, one by one, to have everyone involved arrested. But Kagura — I'm asking you to leave Team Rocket."
Steven held her gaze.
"I understand the desire to avenge your sister. But Team Rocket is not the right path."
"What exactly do you understand?"
Kagura laughed — a contemptuous sound.
But then her eyes shifted, and the curve of her mouth climbed higher.
"All right, Champion Steven. If you want me to leave Team Rocket, and you want to help me — do two things. Do those, and I'll consider it."
Kagura folded her arms, and the malice in her expression was a mirror image of Mammon's.
"Tell me." Steven felt the weight of what was coming — but he had no other option.
In his eyes, Kagura was the most pitiable figure in all of this. She should have had such a bright future ahead of her.
Her talent, her potential — she could have gone anywhere. But because of his father, and because of others driven by greed, she had been pushed into an abyss.
He genuinely wanted to help her.
"Besides your father Joseph Stone, the others who participated were the Berlitz family of Sinnoh, the Johto Pokémon Association, and the Macro Cosmos subsidiary that was competing against Devon Corp at the time."
Kagura's expression went dark.
At those words, Cynthia's face shifted. The Berlitz family?
"The Macro Cosmos subsidiary collapsed in the competition with Devon Corp years ago. But the Berlitz family and the Johto Pokémon Association are still standing."
"Steven, you said you want to help me. Destroy those two powers, and I'll leave Team Rocket. How's that?"
The Lorekeeper girl's words settled over the group.
No one spoke.
Steven's expression went through several changes. In terms of raw capability — yes, he could dismantle the Berlitz family and the Johto Pokémon Association. He had that power.
But how could he possibly do it?
The entire reason he wanted to pull Kagura back was to stop her from taking extreme action and destroying her own future. If he did this himself, what was the difference between them?
"Kagura. If the Berlitz family truly was involved, I promise you — on my name as Sinnoh's Champion — I will personally see them brought to account."
Cynthia spoke, her voice quiet and serious.
She genuinely hadn't known about this. She'd always had a favorable impression of the Berlitz family — and she particularly admired its current young heir, Platinum Berlitz, a remarkably talented and driven girl.
But if the family had genuinely participated in the Rayquaza Capture Operation, she would pursue it to the end without hesitation.
"The Johto Pokémon Association — I'll report that to the Kanto League. Kanto will give you an answer."
Giovanni added it quietly.
Privately, he was already enjoying the thought. Once this became public, whatever anyone else might do — the Dragon Master Lance and Lorelei the "fanatic" were both going to have something to say about the Johto Pokémon Association. Those two were quite capable of extreme responses.
Goodshow was going to have a very long headache.
"Heh."
Kagura gave two short, dismissive laughs. She'd only been testing them.
"Sending them to prison? I don't need that kind of help."
Her gaze swept across the group.
"As for the rest of you—"
She watched them with a widening grin.
"Mammon told me to give you a proper welcome today."
"Flygon!"
ROOAAR!!
Flygon's cry rang out, and in a cascade of brilliant rainbow light — Mega Flygon appeared.
In the next instant, Mega Flygon snapped its head forward, and a concentrated Dragon Pulse came screaming out.
"Flamethrower!"
Charizard surged upward, a powerful Flamethrower rising to meet it.
The two attacks collided in midair and detonated, the shockwave rolling outward in every direction.
"Hm?"
Kagura's eyes narrowed slightly. Her ace Flygon at full Mega strength was formidable.
And that Charizard's Flamethrower had stopped it dead?
"That's the Galar Champion Leon, is it? Not bad."
She looked at the tan-skinned young man. She hadn't seen him at the Rustboro battle.
So that was Leon.
"Kagura — I still hope you can step back. Hatred doesn't end. If you choose to resolve what's inside you through extremity alone, your life will be drawn into an endless cycle you can never leave."
Steven was still trying. In his view, hatred only begot more hatred — there was no final shore.
"Would it not be enough to see them spend the rest of their lives in a cell, reflecting on what they did?"
"No. It wouldn't."
What answered Steven was a sharp, raw cry that was almost painful to hear.
The girl's voice was saturated with grief and fury. Steven went still.
Her eyes had gone red. They looked at Steven — and somehow, through him, at Shelly.
The old tower. The shattered earth. A girl with no breath left in her.
"My sister is dead. Why did she have to die?!"
"ROOAAR!!"
Mega Flygon threw its head back, and a sphere of pure draconic energy condensed above it — Dragon Meteor Storm, as if containing the light of every star, blazing straight into the sky.
BOOM!!
The Dragon Meteor Storm climbed to its apex and burst apart. Dragon-energy meteors scattered across the sky, each trailing a blazing tail of light as they rained down — a brilliant, devastating shower.
CRASH. CRASH!
The meteors fell on the ocean's surface, each detonating on impact, turning the calm water into a churning chaos of rising waves.
Charizard threw itself between the falling meteors, intercepting them one after another — but it was a desperate scramble.
Cynthia quietly released Garchomp to help deflect the ones still incoming, or a few of the meteors were going to reach them.
Nemona watched Kagura with an expression of tangled, helpless sympathy. Honestly — she didn't know what to make of this. She couldn't imagine what she would become if her sister had gone through what Shelly had.
Nemona had never imagined, before all this, that the world contained things like this.
"Blood for blood."
Kagura's focus returned to the present. Cold eyes swept the group below.
The last few meteors were intercepted by Charizard and Garchomp.
"I will make every one of them regret that day."
The Lorekeeper's quiet declaration made Steven draw a long, slow breath.
"I'm sorry, Kagura."
He felt genuinely at a loss. A girl who only wanted justice for her innocent sister — was she wrong?
He didn't know. Especially with his own father among the guilty.
But what Steven knew was this: today, as a Team Rocket senior executive, Kagura was someone he had to defeat.
"Metagross!"
Steven released his ace. The Key Stone flashed, and evolutionary light blazed across Metagross.
A moment later — Mega Metagross.
"As expected. Mega Evolution." Kagura wasn't particularly surprised.
"Maybe nothing I say right now will reach you. If that's how it is — let's settle this here."
Steven's voice was steady.
"I will beat you, and bring you back to Lilycove."
"You think you can?" Kagura's smile was cold.
Mega Flygon roared at Mega Metagross. Mega Metagross fixed it with a cold, level stare.
"Then come."
Kagura looked around briefly, found the island not far away, and tapped Mega Flygon's back.
Mega Flygon banked toward it.
"I'll leave this to all of you for now."
Steven turned to Cynthia and the others.
"Go." Leon nodded, his tone serious.
"Do you need backup, Steven?" Nemona felt she had to ask.
Kagura's strength was something else entirely.
"No. As Hoenn's Champion — I've failed her. Whatever this costs, it's a responsibility I have to carry. I will beat her."
Steven said it quietly. He mounted Mega Metagross, and they rose and followed Kagura toward the island.
Watching Steven and Metagross disappear onto the island, Nemona felt, for some reason, like sighing.
She'd never had emotions this complicated before.
"Everyone — was Kagura wrong?"
Nemona asked the three seniors beside her, voicing the confusion she couldn't shake.
Cynthia was silent.
"The human heart… is the most unpredictable thing in the world. What a tragedy." Giovanni said softly, with a quiet exhale.
"She wasn't wrong." Leon frowned. "But she wasn't right, either."
He shook his head. That was all he could say.
"The ones who were wrong were the people who committed these crimes for their own greed. They…" Cynthia said it quietly. "They're not needed in this world."
Hearing Kagura screaming "why did she have to die" — Cynthia hadn't known what to do with her own feelings.
The world's dark corners were, after all, far too dark.
"Easy there, Cynthia." Leon said it with a quiet wince, keeping his voice low.
Though he was feeling something similar himself right now. Being a man, he was generally more inclined toward reason.
The League espoused a philosophy of benevolence. But Leon found himself suddenly wondering whether that was entirely correct.
Cynthia went quiet.
Nemona's expression was still a little lost. Giovanni glanced sideways at the three of them, and the very faint curve of his mouth was invisible.
Interesting.
UUUNN~!!
And then — from far across the horizon, a long, low call reached them. Deep and ancient, like something carried forward from the beginning of the world.
"Here it comes."
Leon's eyes sharpened as he looked toward the distant shape of the Lord of the Deep Sea, great fins spreading as it came.
Kyogre. It had arrived.
And almost in the same instant, Giovanni felt it — one of the Poké Balls at his side beginning to tremble, very slightly.
Second update! Don't worry, don't worry — I'll make up what I missed yesterday!
(End of chapter)
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