Chapter 185: Champion Alder, Save Me! That's Team Rocket Over There!
Ghetsis's mood, at this exact moment, was extremely poor.
He'd genuinely thought, for one shining second, that he'd finally found someone idiotic enough to swallow his entire spiel whole. Instead, the man had been angling to put him behind bars.
Insufferable. Did this brat have any idea how thoroughly inappropriate it was — building someone's hopes up like that and then yanking them away?
And the real problem here—
This man claimed to represent the righteous Team Rocket?
Righteous? Team Rocket — the criminal organization out of Kanto, the one the entire Kanto League had been hunting down for years? Their rap sheet ran to dozens of counts apiece; any Rocket officer who got arrested basically never saw daylight again.
Team Plasma didn't even get treated that harshly!
Ghetsis nearly laughed out loud despite himself. Then the actual implications caught up with him.
"You're with Team Rocket?"
His eyes narrowed, fixed on the black-clad young man with the unsettling aura.
Kanto's Team Rocket. Here. In Unova.
Ghetsis's expression flickered between several shades of dark. This was not good news — Unova was his. His territory. Team Plasma's.
"Glad to see the Sage can still process information." Mammon bared his teeth in a wide, faintly unsettling smile. He kept the formal honorific, but the mockery underneath it was unmistakable to anyone listening. "I'd assumed all that nonstop cult-preaching might have softened your brain past the point of recovery."
"Team Rocket isn't welcome in Unova." Ghetsis's face twitched, irregular and disturbing.
He managed, barely, to leash the fury building behind his eyes, delivering the line in a flat, ice-cold tone instead.
"Oh?" Mammon turned the Poké Ball idly between his fingers, eyeing Ghetsis with an expression that wasn't quite a smile.
"Seems I judged you too quickly. Your brain really hasn't fully recovered, has it." Mammon's tone was pure mockery.
"What exactly gives you standing to say something like that? Is Unova your house? You just get to decide who's welcome here?"
The rapid-fire questions had Ghetsis breathing audibly heavier, his expression curdling further with each one.
"Young man. You're genuinely starting to anger me."
The words came out low, almost a growl.
He'd never been spoken to like this. Ghetsis — respected wherever he went, feared even by Unova's own League at full strength!
"Pfft. That's what gets a reaction out of you?" Mammon snorted. "Pretty thin margins on your patience, huh."
This was, honestly, a fair assessment. Out of the entire roster of franchise antagonists across the games, Ghetsis was one of the worst when it came to actually handling defeat.
The man wasn't lacking in ambition, or in planning. To engineer Team Plasma's eventual dominance, he'd specifically adopted N — a child born inherently extraordinary — and meticulously controlled his upbringing, shaping him along a predetermined path.
And the plan had genuinely worked, for a while. He'd cultivated the perfect figurehead — a "King" for Team Plasma, devoted to him completely, his trust absolute. Leveraging Unova's founding mythology, Ghetsis had maneuvered N into the role of the legendary Hero of Ideals — or Truth, depending on the version.
If not for the protagonist, N would have been functionally unbeatable in the Black/White era — carrying the literal weight of the Dragon of Ideals/Truth on his shoulders.
Up to that point, every piece of Ghetsis's plan had fallen perfectly into place. And then N lost. To the protagonist.
That was the moment Ghetsis's true nature came pouring out, every drop of his shallow, fragile self-regard suddenly on full display.
Giovanni had lost too, in his day. So had Alder, in his time. Both had accepted that loss with something resembling grace — Giovanni had even withdrawn to reflect and retrain, fully intending to come back stronger and resume his ambitions later. Even Maxie and Archie, once they'd recognized their mistakes, had owned them outright — both had returned the orbs to the old woman and apologized by the end of their respective stories.
But Ghetsis alone could never accept defeat. He'd lost to a child, and the loss had broken something in him completely.
There was no denying Ghetsis's competence — engineering a plan a decade and a half in advance, raising N specifically to serve it, that took genuine, terrifying long-game ability.
But his arrogance, combined with how fragile that ego actually was underneath, had made his collapse inevitable from the start.
And once he had the upper hand, he never failed to pop the champagne early — that was Ghetsis's other fatal flaw.
In Black 2/White 2, after seizing control of Kyurem, he'd mocked N viciously the moment N arrived to talk him down — openly admitting he'd always viewed N as nothing more than a monster, not a son. The revelation devastated N completely.
N had spent his entire life thinking of Ghetsis as his father — even after the truth came out. And Ghetsis had been the one to personally shove him into the role of his enemy.
Sure, he'd had Kyurem under his control at the time, technically a tactical move. But the way he'd gone about it? Honestly — there wasn't a kind word for it. It was just embarrassing to watch.
"You insolent little—"
Ghetsis's expression finally collapsed completely, his glare fixed on Mammon with murderous intensity.
"Watch your mouth, Sage, or I might just be tempted to sew it shut for you."
Mammon held up a single finger, smile unwavering.
"Anyway — there's really only one thing I came here for today."
He continued, unhurried, perfectly at ease.
"Team Rocket's planning to establish ourselves here in Unova. And personally, I have a real problem with leaving other dark organizations operating in the same territory I'm in."
Ghetsis's eyes went considerably darker hearing that.
"So, Sage — would Team Plasma be willing to merge into Team Rocket? Or disband entirely. Or relocate to some other region and develop there instead. I'm honestly flexible on the specifics."
Mammon's pleasant tone made the twitch reappear on Ghetsis's face, more violent this time.
What had he just heard? Had this little brat genuinely just suggested folding Team Plasma into Team Rocket?
"Heh heh heh—"
Ghetsis couldn't suppress it — fury cracking into something that sounded vaguely like laughter, though it scraped out of his throat like it had to be forced.
"You've actually managed to amuse me, you insolent little brat."
His expression went entirely, glacially cold, the look in his eyes enough to make a person's scalp crawl.
"It's been a long while since I've heard a joke this funny. What exactly do you think Team Rocket is, that you have the gall to talk to me this way?"
His voice came out as a low, furious growl.
The opening offer alone — merge into Rocket, disband, flee to another region like a stray dog scrabbling for scraps — was genuinely laughable.
"This land belongs to Team Plasma! What gives a brat like you the right to come fight us over it?"
Ghetsis had largely composed himself again, his smile turning sharp and contemptuous.
He had no respect whatsoever for Team Rocket — at the end of the day, just another roach organization hiding in the gutters, surviving on borrowed time under League pressure.
But he was different. Team Plasma was different.
N had already awakened the Dragon of Ideals! Ghetsis was the chosen one in this story!
Once the plan ran its full course, the Unova League would be obliterated by Team Plasma's advance, and the entire region would belong to him.
That was Team Plasma. Team Rocket, competing with them? Laughable.
"I see. Truly impressive, Sage — you've got quite a gift for daydreaming in broad daylight."
Mammon gave him another round of mock applause, his tone of sincere admiration somehow making it worse.
Ghetsis's expression darkened instantly all over again, the brief calm shattering into fresh fury.
"Fine! FINE! You insolent little—! You've succeeded in angering me!"
A Poké Ball flashed open beneath his coat. A three-headed dragon, radiating violent intent, materialized beside him.
"Sage, sage — getting desperate now, are we? Going for the cornered-animal approach." Mammon's mouth curved into a slow grin.
"Call out now while you still can, boy. I'm about to show you exactly what real pain feels like." Ghetsis's eyes had gone thoroughly shadowed.
"Lord Ghetsis, we should withdraw — Officer Looker's group is going to arrive soon."
One of his subordinates, hovering behind him, leaned in to murmur the warning.
Public speeches like this always attracted complaints; "cultist" preachers like Ghetsis routinely had to clear out before authorities arrived. Getting cornered by Looker's people directly would be inconvenient.
But thanks to Mammon's interference, Ghetsis's window was running out fast.
"This won't take long. No need to rush." Ghetsis's tone stayed flat.
Even with the complications stacking up, all he wanted right now was to put this insufferable brat firmly in his place. The constant sniping, the mockery — he had a mouth like that, he could afford to learn a lesson about using it.
The subordinate opened his mouth, then thought better of it. Ghetsis was the boss, after all.
"Won't take long, the Sage says. Sounds like a man with a lot of confidence in himself."
Mammon clicked his tongue appreciatively. White light flashed, and Shiny Pheromosa materialized in front of him — long-limbed, elegant, one hand on her hip, regarding the three-headed dragon with cold superiority.
"A child like you isn't a problem at all." Ghetsis's tone stayed flat.
"Ohh~?" Mammon dragged the syllable out, long and deliberate.
The tic reappeared on Ghetsis's face again, more pronounced. No matter. He'd be enjoying the look of pure terror on that smug face very, very soon.
He'd taken down members of Unova's own Elite Four without breaking a sweat. What was some Rocket lackey going to do?
Victory was assured.
Then —
CRACK.
The savage three-headed dragon let out a low, agonized howl as something dark and ghost-fast slammed into it from the side. It crashed to the ground in a single brutal impact and didn't get back up.
"That's impossible!!"
Ghetsis's face had gone slack with disbelief, real shock and panic settling into his expression — exactly the look Mammon had been hoping for.
His ace — his strongest Pokémon — knocked out in a single hit? This irritating little Rocket brat was Champion-tier?!
Ghetsis's expression collapsed entirely. This was something he had genuinely, completely failed to anticipate.
This sniping, sarcastic little punk who hadn't shut up since the moment he opened his mouth — actually this strong?
This is a disaster.
"Oh dear, oh dear — apologies, Sage." Mammon grinned, putting on a face of mild embarrassment that fooled absolutely no one, the laughter audible underneath every word. "Got a bit carried away there. Looks like your three-headed dragon's out cold."
Ghetsis's expression cycled through several flavors of panic. He was already calculating whether to call for N — there was no question in his mind this brat had no intention of letting him off easy.
This kid had bad news written all over him. There was no telling what humiliation came next.
Ghetsis was not in the mood to find out. He needed N to come "rescue" him, and fast.
That was exactly when a flurry of rapid, urgent footsteps approached. Mammon turned to look.
Officer Looker and her unit — but the genuinely unexpected detail was the broad-shouldered man with long orange-red hair walking beside her, leading the group.
Alder.
Why is Alder here? What kind of coincidence is this?
Ghetsis had already discreetly sent a message to N from under his coat. The instant his eyes landed on Alder and Looker's unit, his eyes lit with something calculating, and he didn't hesitate.
"Champion Alder! Please, save me! That man over there — he's a member of the evil Team Rocket!"
Alder's expression changed instantly at the words.
Team Rocket?
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