The recruits marched through the underground complex in silence.
Each wore the same gray uniform and carried a single Poké Ball.
Nobody knew what came next.
Adrian walked near the center of the formation, quietly studying everything around him.
The Rocket base was enormous.
Steel corridors stretching in every direction, security doors dividing every sector, cameras rotating silently overhead.
Every few dozen meters, armed Rocket personnel stood guard with powerful Pokémon at their sides: an Arbok thicker than a man’s torso lay coiled beside one checkpoint, and farther ahead a scarred Houndoom watched the recruits pass without moving.
Scientists pushed carts filled with laboratory equipment while a Magneton floated overhead, powering machinery.
The air smelled of machine oil and recycled ventilation, nothing like the rain-soaked streets above.
Adrian counted exits out of habit.
Two behind them, sealed the moment the group passed through.
None visible ahead.
Whatever waited at the end of this corridor, there would be no simply walking back out of it.
This wasn’t a hideout.
It was a military installation.
Eventually, the group entered an enormous arena.
The doors slammed shut behind them.
Concrete battlefields filled the room, medical stations lined one wall, and observation windows overlooked everything from above.
Captain Mercer stood alone in the center.
“You’ve all received your first Pokémon.” His voice echoed through the chamber.
“Now we’ll determine who deserves to keep them.”
The recruits exchanged uneasy glances.
Mercer raised one hand.
“Release your Pokémon.”
Nearly two hundred Poké Balls burst open.
Red light flashed across the arena.
Croagunk appeared several meters in front of Adrian and, like most of the Pokémon in the room, backed away from its assigned trainer.
The familiar screen appeared before Adrian.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Pokémon Scan
Species: Croagunk ♂ Level: 5.
Rank: Baby Potential: Blue Ability: Anticipation Moves: Poison Sting · Mud-Slap · Fake Out (Egg Move) · Cross Chop (Egg Move) Status: Healthy Evaluation: Extraordinary Individual
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
He dismissed it.
Nothing had changed.
Mercer looked across the room.
“You have thirty minutes.
You have one objective.
Earn your Pokémon’s cooperation.
If it willingly returns to its Poké Ball before the timer expires, you pass.”
A recruit near the front raised a shaking hand.
“And…
if it doesn’t?”
Mercer’s face remained expressionless.
“You fail.” He pointed toward the sealed exits.
“There are no second chances.”
A giant digital timer illuminated the far wall.
30:00
“Begin.”
Panic exploded across the arena.
“Get back here!” “I’m your trainer!” “Come here!” Several recruits sprinted after fleeing Pokémon.
One lunged at an Ekans.
The snake struck instantly, its fangs burying deep into the recruit’s forearm.
He screamed as it wrapped around him before slithering away.
Another recruit grabbed a Spearow by the wing; the bird shrieked, its beak slashing across his face before it beat its wings furiously and tore free.
Blood sprayed across the floor.
Nearby, a Growlithe panicked as two recruits accidentally cornered it.
Flames burst from its mouth.
One recruit managed to dive aside.
The other wasn’t fast enough.
His uniform ignited, and his screams echoed through the arena as Rocket medics dragged him away.
Mercer never moved.
Adrian didn’t move either.
Croagunk continued watching him from nearly ten meters away.
If I chase it, it’ll keep running.
Across the room, disaster unfolded.
A frightened Magnemite released a burst of electricity into a cluster of recruits.
Several collapsed; one struck the back of his head against the concrete with a sickening crack and never stood again.
A Geodude rolled wildly across the arena after its trainer tried forcing it into a Poké Ball, crashing into another recruit’s knees and shattering both legs.
Someone screamed for help.
None came.
Rocket grunts remained perfectly still along the walls, their expressions never changing.
Five minutes passed.
The timer read:
25:01
Already, dozens of recruits were bleeding.
Several clutched broken arms.
Others limped after Pokémon that wanted nothing to do with them.
Adrian slowly lowered himself onto the floor.
Croagunk blinked.
Instead of approaching, Adrian removed the small packet of Pokémon food from his care kit, poured a few pellets into a bowl, and gently slid it across the concrete.
No words.
No commands.
No sudden movements.
He’d read that wild animals responded better to patience than persuasion, back in a life where the closest thing to a Pokémon had been a stray cat that took eight months to let him touch it.
He had no idea whether that lesson applied here.
Croagunk wasn’t an animal in any sense he fully understood, and pretending otherwise could get him killed just as easily as charging in blind.
But sitting still cost him nothing that charging would have, and right now that was reason enough.
Croagunk watched him carefully.
Elsewhere, another recruit finally cornered his Zubat.
The bat released Supersonic at point-blank range, and the recruit staggered blindly into the path of a terrified Sandshrew using Rollout.
The impact hurled him into the arena wall.
He collapsed in a crumpled heap.
A Rocket medic approached, knelt, checked for a pulse, and looked toward Mercer.
Mercer gave a single shake of his head.
The body was covered with a sheet.
The trial continued.
The arena grew quieter.
Not because people had calmed down, but because many had stopped shouting.
Some had figured out that panic accomplished nothing.
Others no longer had the strength.
Croagunk finally hopped forward.
One cautious step, then another.
It sniffed the food, and a few seconds later, began eating.
Adrian remained perfectly still.
Around him, the timer continued counting down.
By the fifteen-minute mark, the arena looked like a battlefield.
Stretchers carried away the unconscious.
Blood stained sections of the concrete.
Ten recruits had died.
Thirty-four others had suffered serious injuries, broken bones, deep lacerations, burns, or severe bites, and had been removed from the trial.
Nearly everyone left standing had abandoned force.
Some sat quietly.
Others simply waited.
One by one, frightened Pokémon began choosing to return to their trainers.
Mercer finally spoke again.
“Now you’re beginning to understand.” His cold gaze swept across the survivors.
“Pokémon are not machines.
You cannot command trust.
You earn it.”
Adrian picked up Croagunk’s Poké Ball.
Without saying a word, he pressed the release button.
A beam of red light extended toward the Poison-type.
Croagunk looked at the beam, then at Adrian.
After several long seconds, it hopped forward.
The red light enveloped it.
Click.
Adrian caught the Poké Ball in one hand.
He had passed the first trial.
He didn’t feel triumphant.
Whatever this feeling was, triumph wasn’t the word for it.
Around him, other recruits were still on their knees, still shouting names at Pokémon that had already stopped listening, still discovering that thirty minutes could be an entire lifetime long.
Adrian had needed exactly one bowl of food and the discipline not to reach for it.
Some of the people bleeding out on the concrete around him had needed far more and still hadn’t gotten it.
That wasn’t luck.
Luck was Croagunk’s potential, something Adrian hadn’t earned and couldn’t take credit for.
This had been something else.
Patience, mostly.
The willingness to sit still while people around him panicked.
He filed the lesson away without dwelling on it.
There would be time to think about what today meant later, assuming Team Rocket allowed him one.
As the timer reached zero, only one hundred and fifty-six recruits remained standing.
The rest had been carried from the arena, or covered by white sheets.
Mercer’s expression never changed.
“Welcome to Team Rocket.”