Kanto region.
Indigo Plateau headquarters.
Lance stood at the floor-to-ceiling window in his red cape, brow furrowed, working through the latest stack of reports on Team Rocket activity across the region.
Team Rocket had been growing bolder in Kanto.
Reports of stolen Pokémon and illegal experimentation were coming in from multiple locations, but no matter how deeply they investigated, the core facility and the organization’s ultimate objective remained out of reach.
It was like searching for something at the bottom of the ocean, and it kept him up at night.
Worse, Team Rocket had been operating in Kanto for years.
Their influence had almost certainly grown beyond what any ordinary criminal organization could claim.
While Lance was turning all of this over in his mind, his private communication terminal chimed with an incoming call request.
He almost ignored it.
The terminal was known to very few people, mostly family.
He assumed it was someone checking in.
He answered.
And stopped completely.
“Hello?
Is this Lance?
It’s Moon!”
Moon.
He recalled the girl he had personally arranged transport for not long ago, the one he had sent off to Paldea.
He had never quite shaken the guilt over failing to protect her properly.
That was why he had given her his contact details when they parted, telling her to reach out if she ran into trouble in Paldea.
“It is.
Did you arrive safely?” His expression eased slightly.
“Is something wrong?”
“No, no, nothing like that!
I got settled in Paldea just fine.
I’m not calling about myself.
There’s something really important I need to tell you.”
“Oh?” Lance straightened slightly.
“What is it?”
As Moon began to speak, walking him through Team Rocket’s plan piece by piece, the calm in Lance’s expression dissolved.
The air around him seemed to grow heavier with each detail.
A deep, controlled anger began to build behind his eyes.
Human experimentation.
Cloning technology.
An artificially created Legendary Pokémon.
A secret island base.
A plan to use that Pokémon to dominate the world.
So that was it.
That was what all of it had been building toward.
The purpose behind it had never become clear.
This was not intelligence that an ordinary Trainer could stumble across.
Even the League’s own long-term undercover operatives had never transmitted anything this sensitive.
Lance stood straight, every instinct sharpened to a point.
Ninety percent probability this was genuine.
He was certain of it.
They had been stealing Pokémon and subjecting them to experiments, all in service of creating something like this.
Lance’s jaw tightened.
The anger was real and it burned, but he kept his voice measured.
“Thank you for this information, Moon.
This matter is extremely serious and extremely dangerous.
Leave everything that follows to us.
I will personally lead an investigation and dismantle Team Rocket’s experimental facility completely.”
“Don’t thank me,” Moon said quickly.
“Someone asked me to pass this along to you.”
Lance paused.
“Who?”
“I’m sorry, Lance.
They didn’t want their identity shared.
But please don’t worry, we’re behind you completely.” She hesitated, then added, “They also asked me to pass along one more thing.”
Lance felt a flicker of confusion.
Someone was operating behind the scenes here, pushing things in a particular direction.
And from Moon’s tone, whoever it was seemed to know him with some familiarity.
“What did they say?”
“Watch out for Giovanni.”
Lance’s grip on the terminal tightened.
Those words landed like a thunderclap.
Watch out for Giovanni.
Giovanni, the current Viridian Gym Leader.
A well-regarded businessman by Kanto’s public reckoning.
Then something shifted in Lance’s mind and a thought surfaced that he could barely bring himself to consider.
Could Giovanni be connected to Team Rocket?
No.
That was impossible.
A League member involved with an organization like Team Rocket was unthinkable.
But a quieter part of his mind said: what if?
The most impossible things had a way of being exactly what was true.
His responsibilities extended beyond his role as Kanto’s Dragon-type Elite Four member and Champion.
He was also a League investigator, and that was a job he had never taken lightly.
Lance collected himself, filed everything away in his mind, and steadied the storm of emotions rising beneath the surface.
“Understood.
Please pass along my gratitude to the person who sent this.
That warning may prove to be the most important piece of information we have.”
“I will!
Please be careful out there, Lance.”
The call ended.
Lance stood motionless at the window, his expression carrying a gravity it had rarely held before.
He replayed everything in his mind, turning each detail over methodically.
The more he thought, the more the implications unsettled him.
Moon was young, inexperienced, and had traveled alone to a region on the other side of the world.
There was no possible way she could have uncovered secrets that Team Rocket had buried for decades.
The artificial Legendary Pokémon, the island facility, the plan for world domination, these were the core secrets that countless elite League investigators had spent years trying to crack, combing every corner of Kanto without getting close.
And yet the person operating behind Moon had not only known all of it, they had also identified the one critical detail that everyone else had missed entirely.
Watch out for Giovanni.
Who was this person?
…
Paldea League.
Mesagoza.
Naoki was walking toward the training wing to pick up Zorua when a message from Moon came through on his screen.
Moon: Larry!
I told Lance everything about Team Rocket’s artificial Pokémon project.
He said the situation is extremely serious and has already mobilized Kanto League investigators and Trainers through the night.
The corner of Naoki’s mouth curved upward as he read it.
The Kanto League was now in play.
Tens of thousands of players descending on the situation alongside the elite force Lance was personally leading.
Giovanni and Team Rocket were going to have their hands more than full.
His objectives had been met.
The strategy post would earn him at least ten million League Credits in total.
As a side effect, it would significantly weaken Team Rocket as an organization, enough that even with players bolstering their ranks they would struggle to pose a serious threat to the wider world.
Players, Team Rocket, the Kanto League, and Mewtwo on the verge of awakening.
The outcome of that collision was genuinely something to look forward to.
Naoki sent Moon a brief message thanking her for her help and transferred a small sum of spending money her way.
Then he closed the panel, picked up his briefcase, and stepped back into the flow of the city, just another tired office worker among countless others, vanishing into the crowd without a trace.
…
P.S and Reviews would be helpful💎