Day eighty-eight, and Hajime had opinions.
About everything.
Marcus had expected this. He'd expected the most powerful psychic mind on Earth to have thoughts about the world it had been born into. What he hadn't expected was the volume of opinions, the specificity of opinions, and the absolute, unwavering confidence with which a four-day-old being delivered judgments on topics ranging from architecture to weather patterns to the fundamental nature of consciousness.
The first opinion arrived at 6:03 AM, when Marcus made the decision to take Hajime outside for the first time.
They stepped through the front doors of Team Rocket headquarters into the morning air of Viridian City, and Hajime stopped.
Just... stopped. Froze in place, its violet eyes going wide, its mouth opening slightly, its psychic field expanding outward in a reflexive burst of sensory processing that made every electronic device within fifty meters flicker.
It was seeing the sky for the first time.
Not through a two-foot window bored through sixty feet of rock. Not through Marcus's memories, absorbed during their hours of psychic contact. The actual sky—vast, blue, impossibly deep, stretching from horizon to horizon without boundary or limit, filled with clouds that drifted with the lazy confidence of objects that had no obligations and nowhere to be.
"It's... big," Hajime whispered.
"Yeah."
"It doesn't end."
"Not from where we're standing."
"That seems like a design flaw. Things should have edges. How do you know where the sky stops and the not-sky begins?"
"You don't. That's kind of the point."
Hajime stared at the sky for a full minute. Then it looked at Marcus with an expression that managed to combine wonder, indignation, and the particular frustration of a supremely logical mind encountering something that defied categorization.
"I have decided that I like the sky but I do not trust it."
"That's... fair."
They walked. Through Viridian City's morning streets, past shops that were just opening, past trainers heading for the gym, past Pokémon of every shape and size going about their business—Growlithe trotting beside their owners, Pidgey pecking at crumbs on the sidewalk, a Machoke carrying boxes for a delivery service, a pair of Butterfree drifting overhead on the morning thermals.
Hajime had opinions about all of them.
"That creature—" it pointed at a Growlithe, not Marcus's Blaze but a standard Fire-type version, "—is made of fire and fur. That is contradictory. Fire destroys fur. How does it exist?"
"Biology doesn't always follow logic."
"Then biology is wrong."
A Machamp walked past, its four arms laden with packages. Hajime watched it with narrowed eyes.
"That one has too many arms."
"Two extra, yeah."
"What does it need four arms for? What task requires four simultaneous limb operations? This seems excessive."
"It's a Fighting-type. The extra arms are for punching."
"It needs four arms for punching? How much punching is it doing? Is there a punching crisis? Should I be concerned?"
Marcus was biting the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. "No. No punching crisis. It's just how Machamp are built."
Hajime made a small, skeptical hmph that was so precisely calibrated to express "I accept this information but I want you to know that I find it unsatisfactory" that Marcus suspected the newborn god had been practicing its skeptical noises in the Poké Ball.
The opinion cascade continued as they walked.
Trees: "Acceptable. They produce oxygen and provide shade. However, they are extremely slow. I have been watching that one for thirty seconds and it has not moved at all. Is it asleep? Should I wake it?"
Gravity: "Still rude."
Wind: "The sky is touching me. The sky should not touch me. I did not give the sky permission to touch me."
A Pidgey that landed on a bench near them: "Ah. A sky creature. Small. Fluffy. Appears to have limited cognitive capacity. I will allow it to exist."
The sun: "Too bright. Who approved this? There should be a committee."
An ice cream shop: "What is that substance the small humans are consuming? It appears to be a frozen dairy product infused with... I can feel them enjoying it. Their minds are producing significant quantities of dopamine. I want some."
Marcus bought Hajime an ice cream cone.
The psychic god took one lick, experienced the combined sensory input of sugar, cream, cold, and vanilla on taste buds that had never tasted anything before, and froze in place for approximately four seconds while its brain—the most complex neural structure on the planet, capable of processing information at speeds that made supercomputers look like abacuses—attempted to categorize the experience and failed.
"This," Hajime said, very quietly, with the reverence of a being experiencing a revelation, "is the best thing."
"Better than headpats?"
A long, agonized pause. The psychic equivalent of a computer running a calculation so complex it consumed 100% of processing power.
"Equal to headpats," Hajime decided. "But in a different category. Headpats are warm-nice. This is cold-nice. I want both. Simultaneously. Can I have both simultaneously? Can you scratch my head while I eat ice cream?"
"I only have two hands."
"That is a design flaw in humans. You should have four arms, like the punching creature."
They sat on the bench—the newborn god eating ice cream with the focused, methodical intensity of a being that was treating each lick as a scientific experiment, and the crime lord scratching behind its ears with one hand and holding his coffee with the other—and watched Viridian City wake up.
People walked past. Some stared—a six-foot lavender Pokémon sitting on a bench eating ice cream was not, by any standard, a normal sight. But this was the Pokémon world. Unusual Pokémon appeared in unusual places all the time. And Hajime, sitting quietly with its ice cream, radiating a gentle psychic aura of contentment that made everyone within fifty meters feel slightly happier for reasons they couldn't explain, didn't trigger any alarms.
One small girl—maybe five years old, clutching her mother's hand—stopped in front of the bench and stared at Hajime with the wide-eyed, unfiltered wonder that only children could produce.
"What's that Pokémon?" she asked her mother, loudly, because children had not yet learned the concept of indoor voices.
Hajime looked at the girl. The girl looked at Hajime.
"I am Hajime," Hajime said. Out loud. With its voice.
The girl's eyes got wider. "It TALKS!"
"Yes. I talk. I also eat ice cream. Observe." Hajime took a deliberate, performative lick of its cone. The girl giggled.
"Can I pet it?" the girl asked her mother.
The mother—who was looking at Hajime with the nervous expression of someone who didn't recognize the species and wasn't sure whether petting it would result in cuddles or catastrophe—hesitated.
Hajime lowered its head to the girl's eye level. "You may pet me," it declared. "I have been informed that this is called a 'headpat' and it is one of the two best things in existence."
The girl reached out and patted Hajime's head with the gentle, slightly sticky hand of a child who had recently been eating something with syrup on it.
Hajime's eyes closed. The psychic purr activated. The entire bench vibrated. Marcus's coffee rippled.
"This is acceptable," Hajime murmured. "Small human, you may continue."
The girl patted with both hands. Hajime purred louder. The mother relaxed. Marcus drank his coffee and watched the most powerful Pokémon in the world receive headpats from a kindergartener, and felt—not for the first time, and probably not for the last—that the universe was fundamentally absurd and he was grateful for every second of it.
Day eighty-nine.
Marcus tested Mega Mewtwo.
He did this as far from civilization as physically possible—a barren mountain plateau in the wilderness north of Cerulean City, accessible only by air, uninhabited for miles in every direction, chosen specifically because whatever happened during the test would happen to rocks and trees and empty sky instead of buildings and people and infrastructure.
He landed the helicopter on a flat section of the plateau, stepped out into the thin, cold mountain air, and released Hajime from its ball.
The psychic god materialized, looked around at the bleak, windswept landscape, and immediately rendered judgment.
"This place is ugly."
"I know. That's the point. If something goes wrong, there's nothing here to break."
"What could go wrong?"
Marcus held up the Mewtwoite Y—the blue-white Mega Stone that his Kalos team had recovered from Team Flare's territory. It pulsed with psychic energy that was visible to the naked eye—a soft, ethereal glow that made the air around it shimmer.
"This stone can make you stronger," Marcus said. "Much stronger. Temporarily—it only works during a battle or a focused activation, and it wears off. But while it's active, your power will increase by... a lot."
"Define 'a lot.'"
"I genuinely don't know. In the games—" He caught himself. "In the theoretical models I've studied, the increase is approximately forty to sixty percent across all combat parameters. But you're already operating at a level that the models weren't designed to measure. So the actual effect could be... more."
Hajime studied the Mega Stone with its psychic senses. Its eyes narrowed—the analytical expression that Marcus had learned indicated deep processing.
"The stone is resonating with my biology," it said. "I can feel it... calling. Like it knows what I am and wants to make me more of it."
"That's exactly what it does. The Key Stone—" Marcus raised his right wrist, the rainbow-gleaming band, "—acts as a bridge. My bond with you activates the Key Stone, the Key Stone resonates with the Mega Stone, and the Mega Stone triggers the transformation."
"Our bond is the catalyst?"
"Yes. Without a genuine bond, nothing happens. The stone stays inert."
Hajime was quiet for a moment. Then: "I want to try."
Marcus nodded. He'd expected this. Hajime was, despite its youth, an intensely curious being—the kind of mind that encountered a new phenomenon and immediately wanted to understand it through direct experience. Telling it about Mega Evolution without letting it try would have been like showing a child a playground and telling them they could only look.
"Okay. I'm going to activate the Key Stone. You're going to feel the connection form—it'll feel like the bond between us, but amplified, channeled through the stones. When the transformation starts, don't fight it. Let it happen. Your body will change temporarily—it might feel strange, but it's not painful."
"I am four days old and I can lift buildings with my mind. I think I can handle 'strange.'"
Marcus couldn't argue with that.
He took a breath. Centered himself. Reached for the Old Fire.
The bond between him and Hajime was—different from his other bonds. Not stronger, necessarily—the connection with Ace, built over months of shared experience, was the deepest and most refined. But the bond with Hajime was wider. More encompassing. It wasn't a thread of connection between two points—it was a field, a shared psychic space where Marcus's consciousness and Hajime's consciousness overlapped and intermingled, each one aware of the other at all times, each one influencing and being influenced by the other.
He activated the Key Stone.
Rainbow light erupted from his wrist—the familiar, prismatic blaze of Mega Evolution energy, arcing through the mountain air, reaching for the Mewtwoite Y that hung from a simple cord around Hajime's neck (Marcus had fashioned it that morning; Hajime had declared the cord "functional but aesthetically inadequate" and requested something nicer for next time).
The Mega Stone answered. Blue-white light blazing, meeting the rainbow beam in mid-air, the two energy streams colliding and merging into a single, blinding cascade of evolutionary power that connected Marcus's wrist to Hajime's stone to Hajime's body in a triangle of light that was—
More.
More than Kangaskhan. More than any Mega Evolution Marcus had triggered before. The energy wasn't just flowing—it was flooding, a torrent of power so vast that the Key Stone on Marcus's wrist vibrated hard enough to rattle his teeth, the connection between trainer and Pokémon stretched to its absolute limit by the sheer volume of evolutionary energy passing through it.
Hajime screamed.
Not in pain. In transformation. The same birth-cry that Kangaskhan had made, amplified a thousandfold, a psychic detonation of sound and fury that shattered every rock within a hundred-meter radius, blew Marcus's hair back, pushed the helicopter ten feet across the plateau, and was probably audible in Cerulean City.
The light consumed Hajime's body. Its silhouette changed—not growing larger, like Mega Kangaskhan, but growing different. More streamlined. More elegant. More focused—every unnecessary element stripped away, every attribute concentrated, every aspect of Mewtwo's biology refined to its absolute peak.
The light faded.
Mega Mewtwo Y floated three feet off the ground.
It was—
Marcus's brain attempted to process what he was seeing and encountered something it had never encountered before: a being that existed at the absolute theoretical maximum of what a Pokémon could be. Not the "very powerful" maximum of Kyogre or Groudon. Not the "extremely powerful" maximum of regular Mewtwo. The absolute maximum. The ceiling. The point beyond which the concept of "Pokémon power" simply ran out of numbers to describe.
Mega Mewtwo Y was smaller than regular Mewtwo—shorter, lighter, its body condensed and refined. Its head had changed—larger, more elongated, with a crest that swept backward like a crown. Its tail had shifted from the base of its spine to the back of its head, a long, sinuous appendage that floated behind it like a banner. Its eyes—
Its eyes were no longer violet. They were white. Pure, blazing, incandescent white—the same white as Forge's eyes, except that where Forge's whiteness was volcanic, Mega Mewtwo Y's whiteness was psychic. The condensed, refined, maximally potent expression of psychic energy, burning in eye sockets that could no longer contain it.
The psychic field was—Marcus couldn't feel the edges. He could feel Hajime's normal psychic field—a radius of about fifty meters in which its presence was tangible. Mega Mewtwo Y's psychic field had no edges. It extended outward in every direction, encompassing the mountain, the plateau, the surrounding wilderness, reaching toward Cerulean City to the south and Mt. Moon to the west, a sphere of psychic awareness so vast that it was less like a "field" and more like a "dimension."
"Hajime?" Marcus said carefully. "How do you feel?"
Mega Mewtwo Y turned its blazing white eyes toward him.
When it spoke, the voice was different. Not louder—deeper. More resonant. Carrying overtones that vibrated at frequencies the human ear couldn't process but the human brain could, creating a sensation of hearing something vast and ancient and impossibly powerful speaking from a place beyond the normal boundaries of reality.
"I feel," Mega Mewtwo Y said slowly, each word landing in Marcus's consciousness like a stone dropping into still water, "everything."
"Everything?"
"Everything. Every mind within... I don't know the distance. Far. Very far. I can feel the people in the city to the south—their thoughts, their emotions, their dreams. I can feel Pokémon in the forest below us—their instincts, their hunger, their territorial boundaries. I can feel the earth itself—the tectonic plates shifting, the magma flowing, the slow, patient movement of geological time."
It paused.
"I can feel you, Giovanni. Every layer. Every room. Even the closed ones."
Marcus's blood went cold.
"I can see everything you are," Mega Mewtwo Y continued. Its voice was gentle—still Hajime, still the headpat-loving, ice-cream-eating, gravity-criticizing newborn god. But also more. Elevated. Seeing from a height that made all the world's secrets look like words written on a page. "The crime lord. The strategist. The man who manipulates children and catches gods and loves his Pokémon with a fire that burns so brightly I can see it from any distance."
Marcus said nothing. There was nothing to say. His cover—every cover, every lie, every deception he'd built over three months—had just been rendered transparent by a four-day-old deity in its Mega form.
"I told you in the garden," Hajime said. "I do not need you to be entirely good. I need you to be this. The fire person. The person who stays."
The white eyes softened. Not in color—in intent.
"I still mean it. Even now. Even seeing everything."
Marcus exhaled. The breath shook.
"But," Hajime added, "you should probably know that I am never going to help you do the not-nice things. I will fight for you. I will protect you. I will be your partner and your friend and your headpat receptacle for as long as you want me. But I will not hurt innocent people. I will not be used as a weapon against those who do not deserve it. That is my line. Do not cross it."
"I won't," Marcus said. "I promise."
"You promise a lot."
"I keep my promises."
Mega Mewtwo Y studied him for a long moment. Then it smiled—a small, quiet, Hajime smile that looked strange on the Mega form's alien features but was unmistakably the same expression of gentle, patient, knowing warmth.
"Yes," it said. "You do."
Then it turned toward the mountain.
"Now. I believe you wanted to see what I can do."
"I—yes. But maybe aim away from the—"
Mega Mewtwo Y raised one hand and fired a Psystrike.
The mountain survived. Technically.
The peak—a craggy, snow-capped formation that had been standing for approximately twelve million years—was still there after the Psystrike hit. It was still recognizably a mountain. It still had slopes and ridges and the general mountainous characteristics that geologists used to classify a geological formation as "mountain."
But it was approximately thirty percent shorter.
The Psystrike had struck the upper third of the peak—not the summit directly, but the face of the mountain just below the snowline—and had removed it. Not exploded it. Not shattered it. Removed it the way an eraser removes pencil marks from paper—cleanly, completely, with a surgical precision that left the remaining mountain looking like someone had taken a bite out of it with a cosmic pair of jaws.
The removed material—approximately two million cubic meters of rock, ice, and sediment—was hovering. Three hundred feet above the mountain, held in place by Mega Mewtwo Y's telekinesis, rotating slowly in the thin air like the world's largest, most terrifying mobile.
"I could put it back," Hajime offered. "Or I could put it somewhere else. Where would you like two million cubic meters of mountain? I feel like it would make an excellent island."
Marcus was sitting on the ground. Not by choice—his legs had given out approximately two seconds after the Psystrike fired. He was sitting on the rocky plateau, staring at the levitating chunk of mountain, and his brain was producing a gentle, continuous tone of white noise that was either processing overload or the sound of his worldview completing its final, irrevocable collapse.
"Put it back," he managed.
Hajime put it back. The chunk of mountain descended slowly, settled into its original position with a precision that was accurate to within centimeters, and fused with the remaining mountain through a process that involved Mega Mewtwo Y's telekinesis operating at the molecular level, rebonding stone to stone with the same forces that had originally held them together.
When it was done, the mountain looked exactly as it had before. Not a crack. Not a seam. Not a single sign that the upper third had been temporarily separated from the rest and gone for a brief aerial tour.
Marcus stared.
"The Mega form is very nice," Hajime said, descending to the ground as the transformation faded, the blazing white eyes dimming to violet, the body returning to its normal proportions. "I feel like I could do anything. Is that normal?"
"I don't think anything about this is normal."
"Ah. Good. Normal seems boring."
Marcus deactivated the Key Stone. The Mega Evolution energy dissipated. Hajime was Hajime again—six feet of lavender psychic god, slightly disoriented from the power drop-off, but grinning in the way that suggested it was already looking forward to the next time.
"Can I have ice cream now?" Hajime asked.
Marcus looked at the mountain that had been temporarily thirty percent shorter. Looked at the four-day-old god that had made it happen. Looked at the Z-Ring on one wrist and the Key Stone on the other and thought about the Devastating Drake crater and the Mega Kangaskhan wall-punching and the Resonance afterimages and everything, everything he had accumulated over ninety days in this insane, wonderful, terrifying world.
"Yeah," he said. "You can have ice cream."
Day ninety, and Marcus discovered that one of his gym Pokémon was a fraud.
The discovery happened by accident. Marcus was in the Viridian City Gym, running a routine training session with his gym team—the group of Pokémon he used specifically for badge battles, separate from his personal battle team. The gym team consisted of Rhyhorn, Dugtrio, Nidoqueen, Nidoking, and Rhydon—solid Ground-types, well-trained, reliable.
He was working with Dugtrio on its Arena Trap ability—the talent that prevented opposing Pokémon from switching out—when he noticed something odd.
Dugtrio's left head was slightly off.
Not dramatically off. Not "obviously wrong" off. Just... slightly. The leftmost of Dugtrio's three heads was positioned approximately two millimeters higher than it should have been, and its eyes were approximately 0.5 millimeters too close together, and its nose was shaped in a way that was technically correct but lacked the subtle imperfections that characterized a living organism.
It was too perfect. Too symmetrical. Too precise.
Marcus stared at the left head.
The left head stared back.
A cold, creeping suspicion began to form in the back of Marcus's mind. A suspicion so absurd, so improbable, so completely insane that he almost dismissed it immediately. Almost.
He didn't dismiss it. Because in this world—a world where he had caught gods and resurrected ancient Pokémon and taught a four-day-old psychic deity to eat ice cream—the absurd was not a reason to dismiss. The absurd was a baseline.
"Dugtrio," Marcus said carefully. "Can you separate your heads for me? I want to check something."
Dugtrio—the real Dugtrio, the rightmost head and the center head—looked at him with confusion. Dugtrio didn't separate. Dugtrio was three heads on one body. The heads didn't come apart. That wasn't how Dugtrio worked.
The left head didn't look confused. The left head looked nervous.
Marcus leaned closer. "You," he said, addressing the left head specifically. "Transform back."
A beat of silence.
Then the left head of Dugtrio melted.
Not violently—gently, the way ice cream melts on a warm day, the features losing definition, the skin shifting from brown to pink, the eyes from narrow slits to the round, blank, perpetually cheerful dots that characterized one specific species of Pokémon.
A Ditto.
A Ditto had been posing as one-third of his Dugtrio.
For months.
Marcus stared at the Ditto. The Ditto stared at Marcus. The remaining two-thirds of Dugtrio stared at both of them with the bewildered expression of a Pokémon that had just discovered its leftmost head was an imposter and was having an existential crisis about it.
"How long?" Marcus asked.
The Ditto wobbled. The wobble was sheepish—the gelatinous equivalent of a child caught with its hand in the cookie jar.
Marcus pulled up his gym records on his communicator. Dugtrio had been on his gym team since before his arrival—since the original Giovanni's tenure. He checked the battle logs, the training records, the maintenance reports.
The Ditto had been there for four months. Since before Marcus had even arrived in this world. It had been posing as Dugtrio's left head for the entirety of the original Giovanni's final months and the entirety of Marcus's tenure.
It had participated in gym battles. Multiple gym battles. As one-third of a Dugtrio that had been fighting challengers, training with the team, and eating Poké food in the gym's facilities for over a hundred days.
And nobody had noticed.
Not the original Giovanni. Not Marcus, with his twenty years of game knowledge. Not any of the gym trainers. Not any of the challengers. Not the Pokémon League inspectors who conducted annual facility reviews. Nobody.
Marcus looked at the Ditto.
The Ditto wobbled apologetically.
"You've been maintaining a partial transformation—one-third of a Dugtrio, with a fully realistic face instead of the standard Ditto face—for four consecutive months without breaking character," Marcus said slowly. "During battles. During training. During sleep."
Wobble.
"That's... that's actually incredible. That shouldn't be possible. Dittos aren't supposed to be able to hold transformations for that long, or maintain that level of facial detail, or function as a component of another Pokémon."
Wobble wobble. This wobble was proud.
Marcus sat down on the gym floor and thought about his life. He thought about how he had been running a gym for three months with a Ditto hiding in plain sight as one-third of one of his Pokémon. He thought about how this Ditto was apparently so talented, so committed, so dedicated to the bit that it had been living as a Dugtrio head for four months without anyone noticing.
He thought about his security protocols.
His security protocols were, apparently, inadequate.
If a Ditto could infiltrate his gym team—if a Ditto could literally become part of one of his Pokémon and go undetected for months—then what else was he missing? Were there Dittos in his office? In his helicopter? In his coffee?
He looked at his coffee mug. The coffee looked normal. He drank it. It tasted normal.
But now he was going to be suspicious of his coffee forever.
"Okay," Marcus said, standing up. "New question. Why?"
The Ditto wobbled. It was a complex wobble—a wobble that communicated a narrative.
Marcus didn't speak Ditto. But the wobble was accompanied by a series of facial expressions (the Ditto had shifted back to its standard pink form but was cycling through emotional displays) that told a story:
It was lonely. It had been a wild Ditto living near Viridian City. It had seen the Dugtrio training outside the gym one day and thought the three-headed Pokémon looked like it had room for one more. It had transformed into a Dugtrio head and... joined.
The real Dugtrio hadn't objected. Dugtrios, being multi-headed Pokémon, apparently had a somewhat flexible concept of "how many heads constitute a complete organism." The real Dugtrio had simply accepted the new head as part of itself, the way you might accept a new roommate who moved in without asking but paid rent on time and didn't eat your food.
The Ditto had stayed because it was warm. Because it had friends—two friends, specifically, who were literally attached to it. Because it got fed regularly and trained regularly and had a purpose, which was more than it had ever had as a wild Ditto living under a rock on Route 1.
Marcus looked at the Ditto. Looked at the remaining two-thirds of Dugtrio, who were nuzzling the Ditto's pink blob form with the concerned affection of heads who had just discovered their third head was a different species and were dealing with it by being supportive.
"You know what?" Marcus said. "Fine. You can stay."
Wobble!
"But you're being registered as a separate team member. No more pretending to be a head. You're a Ditto. You fight as a Ditto. You train as a Ditto. And you get your own Poké Ball."
Wobble wobble wobble! Maximum enthusiasm.
Marcus produced a Poké Ball. The Ditto practically dove into it—the click was instantaneous, the fastest voluntary capture in the history of Pokémon training.
He clipped the ball to his belt and looked at the remaining Dugtrio, which was now a Dugtrio in the traditional sense—three heads, all genuine, looking slightly incomplete without their adopted fourth.
"I need better security," Marcus muttered.
He spent the rest of the afternoon conducting a thorough, slightly paranoid inspection of every Pokémon, piece of furniture, and staff member in the gym building. He found no additional Dittos.
He checked his coffee three more times anyway.
Day ninety-one. The Sinnoh report.
Marcus opened the encrypted file at 6 AM, coffee in hand (verified non-Ditto), and began reading.
Three sentences in, he set down the coffee.
Ten sentences in, he stood up.
Twenty sentences in, he was pacing.
SINNOH INTELLIGENCE REPORT - PRIORITY ALPHA
CLASSIFICATION: ULTRA-BLACK
SOURCE: Ditto Operative Network, Galactic Division
Sir,
Cyrus has completed the Red Chain.
Repeat: the Red Chain is complete. Ahead of schedule. Our operatives report that the final component—a crystallized fragment of Azelf's willpower energy—was successfully integrated into the Chain's structure forty-eight hours ago. The device is now operational.
Cyrus has scheduled the activation for fourteen days from today.
He intends to travel to Spear Pillar on Mt. Coronet, use the Red Chain to summon both Dialga and Palkia, bind them to his will, and use their combined power over Time and Space to unmake the existing universe.
Fourteen days, sir.
Marcus stopped pacing.
Fourteen days. Two weeks. In two weeks, Cyrus—the most intelligent, most dangerous, most genuinely nihilistic villain in the Pokémon franchise—was going to attempt to destroy reality.
In the games, this was stopped by the player character—a child, like always, who climbed Mt. Coronet, fought through Team Galactic, and confronted Cyrus at Spear Pillar. The intervention of Giratina (in Platinum) or the Lake Trio (in Diamond/Pearl) disrupted the Red Chain's control, freeing Dialga and Palkia.
But this wasn't the games. This was reality. And in reality, the Sinnoh player character—whoever that was in this world—might not be ready. Might not be strong enough. Might not even exist yet.
Marcus couldn't count on someone else saving the world.
He also couldn't save it himself. Flying to Sinnoh, confronting Cyrus directly, would blow every cover he had—reveal Team Rocket's global intelligence network, expose his Ditto operatives, and raise impossible questions about how a Kanto Gym Leader knew about a Sinnoh criminal organization's secret plans.
But he could influence events.
He sat down. Pulled out his notebook. Began writing.
SINNOH CRISIS - RESPONSE PLAN:
Option 1: Direct intervention. NO. Too visible, too many questions, too much exposure.
Option 2: Anonymous intelligence leak. Send the information to Sinnoh's authorities—the Champion, the Gym Leaders, the International Police. Let THEM handle it. Similar to the Archie/Maxie strategy.
Problem: Sinnoh's Champion is Cynthia. Cynthia is NOT Steven Stone. Cynthia is the most powerful Champion in any region, with a team that could solo most Legendary Pokémon. She doesn't need help. She needs INFORMATION.
Solution: Give her the information. All of it. Cyrus's plan, the Red Chain's function, the Spear Pillar location, the timeline. Anonymous source. Untraceable. Let Cynthia do what Cynthia does best—show up at the worst possible moment for the villain and destroy their plans through sheer, overwhelming, terrifying competence.
Additionally: alert the Lake Trio guardians. If our Dittos can get close enough to Uxie, Mesprit, and Azelf's containment units, they might be able to weaken the restraints from the inside. Give the Lake Trio a chance to break free when the moment comes.
Timeline: Immediate. Deploy intelligence package to Cynthia within 24 hours. Ditto sabotage team within 48.
Marcus drafted the intelligence package in two hours—a comprehensive briefing that detailed everything the Dittos had uncovered about Team Galactic's plans, presented in a format that was clinical, professional, and completely devoid of any identifying information about the source.
He had it delivered to Cynthia's private residence in Celestic Town through a Ditto operative disguised as a postal carrier.
Then he turned his attention to the other items on his rapidly evolving agenda.
Day ninety-three. The Hoenn Regional Conference.
The biannual Inter-Regional Pokémon League Conference was held in Mauville City, Hoenn—a massive gathering of Champions, Gym Leaders, League officials, and corporate sponsors from every region, ostensibly to discuss League policy and inter-regional cooperation, but actually to network, posture, and jockey for political influence.
Marcus attended as Giovanni, the Viridian City Gym Leader and Elite Four member, freshly famous from the tournament, publicly known to possess both Mega Evolution and a Legendary Pokémon. His reputation preceded him—literally, in the form of a wave of whispers and stares that followed him through the conference hall like a weather front.
Steven Stone was there.
The Hoenn Champion was everything Marcus had expected from the intelligence files—tall, silver-haired, impeccably dressed, radiating the calm, assured confidence of a man who had been the strongest trainer in his region for years and wore the title with the practiced ease of a tailored suit. He was also, Marcus noted, observant. Steven's eyes—sharp, analytical, constantly moving—tracked people and conversations with the precision of someone who understood that knowledge was power and was perpetually acquiring both.
Marcus engineered their meeting during the conference's evening reception—a cocktail event held in a glass-walled ballroom overlooking Mauville's famous cycling roads, where Champions and Gym Leaders mingled over expensive drinks and exchanged the kind of carefully meaningless conversation that powerful people used as social currency.
"Champion Stone," Marcus said, approaching with a glass of whiskey (not his usual; he was performing) and the warm, respectful smile of a fellow member of the establishment. "I don't believe we've been formally introduced. Giovanni, Viridian City."
Steven's handshake was firm, measured, the grip of a man who evaluated people through tactile contact. "I know who you are. Your tournament performance was... remarkable. The transformation your Kangaskhan underwent has been the subject of significant discussion in Hoenn."
"Mega Evolution," Marcus said. "I've been working with Professor Oak to study the phenomenon. It's early days, but the implications are significant."
"So I've heard. Oak published a preliminary paper last week—very theoretical, very cautious, but the underlying data is extraordinary." Steven's eyes sharpened. "You found the stones during a private expedition, I understand?"
"Yes. Remote location, undisclosed for ecological reasons."
"I respect that." A pause. A sip of his drink. The kind of strategic pause that suggested the next sentence had been pre-loaded. "Giovanni, I wanted to thank you."
"For what?"
"The intelligence package. About Teams Aqua and Magma."
Marcus's expression didn't change. Not by a millimeter. Not by a molecule. Giovanni's face was a mask of polite confusion that would have fooled a polygraph.
"I'm not sure what you mean."
Steven smiled. Not a naive smile—a knowing smile. The smile of a man who had received an anonymous intelligence package that had led to the arrest of two criminal leaders, and who had spent the subsequent weeks analyzing every aspect of the package to determine its source, and who had narrowed it down to a short list of people with the resources, the intelligence capabilities, and the motivation to produce such a comprehensive briefing.
"Of course," Steven said. "My mistake. Forget I mentioned it."
But his eyes said something else entirely. His eyes said: I know it was you. I don't know HOW you did it or WHY you did it. But I know it was you, and I'm watching you, and I'm trying to decide whether you're an ally or the most dangerous man I've ever met.
Marcus held Steven's gaze for a beat longer than necessary—long enough to communicate, without words: I am absolutely the most dangerous man you've ever met. But I'm also the man who removed two threats from your region without asking for anything in return. Decide which fact matters more.
The moment passed. Both men sipped their drinks. The conversation shifted to safer topics—League policy, training philosophy, the upcoming World Tournament.
But the chess game had begun.
Steven Stone was smart. Dangerously smart. The kind of smart that could be either Marcus's greatest asset or his greatest threat, depending on how the relationship developed.
Marcus spent the rest of the conference building the foundation for the former—three days of carefully structured interactions, shared meals, joint panel appearances, and late-night conversations about Pokémon battling and regional politics that positioned Giovanni as a trustworthy, knowledgeable, well-connected colleague.
By the end of the conference, Steven Stone regarded Giovanni as a potential ally—still suspicious, still watching, but willing to engage. Marcus had Steven's private contact information, an open invitation to visit Hoenn, and the beginning of a professional relationship that could, over time, be leveraged into something more.
Another piece on the board. Another potential asset. Another thread in the web.
Day ninety-six. Back in Kanto.
Marcus sat in his office, reviewing the conference notes, and began drafting the Lance strategy.
The power-behind-the-throne plan had been gestating since the League meeting weeks ago. Lance had accepted Giovanni's proposal for an intelligence division, appointed him to lead it, and subsequently deferred to Giovanni's expertise on every security-related matter that had come up.
Marcus was now, officially, the League's intelligence chief. He controlled what the League knew about criminal activity. He controlled which threats were investigated and which were ignored. He controlled the flow of information from the field to the Champion's desk.
This was useful. But it was defensive—it let Marcus protect Team Rocket from investigation. What he needed was offensive capability—the ability to shape League policy, to direct the Champion's actions, to determine the course of Kanto's future.
He needed Lance to trust him. Not just professionally—personally. The way a king trusts his most valued advisor. The way a warrior trusts the strategist who plans his battles. Complete, unconditional, "I will follow your counsel because I believe you have my best interests at heart" trust.
Building this trust required patience, consistency, and the strategic deployment of value.
Marcus drafted a plan.
OPERATION: THRONE
Objective: Establish Giovanni as Lance's most trusted advisor. Become the indispensable voice in the Champion's ear—the person Lance turns to for counsel on every major decision, the person whose opinion Lance values above all others.
Phase 1 (Current): Professional trust. Already established. Giovanni leads the intelligence division. Lance defers to Giovanni on security matters. Continue providing high-quality intelligence, accurate threat assessments, and actionable recommendations. Build a track record of being RIGHT—consistently, reliably, demonstrably right about threats and opportunities.
Phase 2 (Next 30 days): Personal trust. Transition from professional relationship to personal mentorship. Lance is a warrior, not a politician. He's uncomfortable with the political aspects of the Championship—the media, the bureaucracy, the constant pressure to be a public figure rather than a trainer. Giovanni can fill this gap—offering guidance on public relations, political strategy, and institutional management. Become the man who makes Lance's job EASIER.
Phase 3 (60-90 days): Strategic dependency. Lance should reach a point where he consults Giovanni on every major decision—not because he's told to, but because Giovanni's counsel has been consistently excellent and Lance has learned to rely on it. At this point, Giovanni effectively controls League policy through soft influence—never giving orders, never making demands, just offering "suggestions" that Lance invariably follows because they're always, ALWAYS good suggestions.
Phase 4 (Ongoing): Maintenance. Keep the relationship strong. Keep providing value. Never overreach. Never make Lance feel controlled or manipulated. The moment Lance suspects he's being managed rather than advised, the entire structure collapses. This must always feel like a genuine friendship. A partnership of equals.
Note: This IS a genuine friendship. Sort of. Marcus genuinely respects Lance—the man is honorable, powerful, and dedicated to doing what's right. The manipulation is real, but the respect is real too. They coexist. They always coexist.
He implemented Phase 2 immediately, calling Lance the next morning to "debrief" on the Hoenn conference and "share some thoughts" on League policy that Marcus had developed during the trip. Lance—grateful, as always, for Giovanni's insight—listened attentively, asked thoughtful questions, and adopted three of Marcus's four suggestions without modification.
The fourth suggestion—a proposal to restructure the League's regional communication protocols—Lance modified slightly before implementing, which was actually better for Marcus's purposes. A Champion who adopted every suggestion without question would eventually realize he was being led. A Champion who modified suggestions, who pushed back occasionally, who felt ownership over the final decisions—that Champion would never suspect he was being influenced, because he genuinely believed the choices were his.
Marcus was building a throne. Not for himself—for Lance. A comfortable, well-supported, excellently advised throne that gave the Champion everything he needed to succeed.
And behind that throne, invisible but omnipresent, Giovanni's hand rested—guiding, shaping, controlling.
The power behind the throne.
The whisper in the Champion's ear.
The most dangerous position in Kanto, held by the most dangerous man in Kanto, and nobody—not Lance, not Oak, not Red, not anyone—knew it existed.
Marcus closed his notebook.
On his belt, Hajime's ball pulsed warmly. The psychic god was sleeping—dreaming, probably, about ice cream and headpats and the way sunlight felt on its face. Dreaming the dreams of a four-day-old being that had been born into a world full of wonder and had decided, after extensive deliberation, that the world was nice.
Marcus petted Boss. Drank his coffee (verified non-Ditto for the third time today; he was never going to stop checking). Opened the next report.
The grind continued.
But it continued with a newborn god on his belt, a mountain that had been temporarily thirty percent shorter, and the quiet, growing certainty that he was building something that the world had never seen.
Something terrible.
Something beautiful.
Something that was, against all odds and in defiance of every expectation, working.
END OF CHAPTER 13