Hi! Welcome to Malevolence. This is the tale of Giovanni after the events of R/B/Y, and it's a journey of one man who lost everything. Please feel free to review, comment, whatever you like. I've not done this properly in quite some time, so I don't know what to expect tbh.
CHAPTER 1 - THE END
The end of an era only took a moment.
For Giovanni, it seemed like a lifetime. Every carefully weighed decision, every purposeful step forward; they all played out in his mind, over and over, like a film sequence trapped on repeat.
Team Rocket was his enterprise. His crowning achievement that far outstripped his pride as a Gym Leader. The immeasurable joy and satisfaction that he felt upon opening the golden-edged envelope from the Pokemon League with the word 'congratulations' printed in the subject box was nothing compared to the cold, incalculable sense of power he felt every day. As he watched his empire grow and spread out among the Kanto Region, infecting every corner of her fair towns and cities, he allowed himself a quiet sense of accomplishment, but on the outside, he was still every inch the stern and stoic leader that his Grunts had come to fear and admire.
To say that Team Rocket was born out of an accident would be untrue. This great and powerful organisation was no fluke; no random act of chance led to the creation of a genuine and potent threat. Giovanni had, since a young age, been searching for a way to change the very foundations of Pokemon and human partnerships; to redefine the boundaries and make them far more unequal. In his mind, they were nothing more than tools, as everyone was.
Now, one might point to the emotionally distant and cruel upbringing which had led the man to this point. It wouldn't be a stretch, after all, to presume; the years of neglect and distance had left a mark on a barely formed psyche. Unlike his peers, who grew up with love and affection, the young Giovanni had instead experienced thinly veiled disdain when he didn't perform well enough, when someone else beat him on a test in school, or when he didn't measure up to the impossible expectations placed upon him.
Unlike many people who left their formative years with warm memories and support, the requiem for his childhood was nothing more than a symphony of pain and indescribable anger. This rage was not a burning and focusing force levelled at any one person; instead, this was a slow, poisonous and consuming rancour that boiled and spat underneath the carefully crafted facade he'd long since perfected.
However, right then, none of it mattered. His organisation lay in ruins. He wasn't aware of the end until it arrived. Of course, there had been whisperings. The operation at Mt. Moon… foiled by a child. A beginning trainer with just a Pikachu, who had swept through and laid waste to the strike force he had sent to collect the fossils. At the time, he'd thought nothing of it. Just sheer luck, and a setback to a minor project. However, this was not to be an isolated incident. Like a small fire that grew in intensity and depth, mutterings began to file through the lower levels of the team. The boy with the Pikachu seemed to be almost everywhere. He bested the recruitment officer stationed outside of Cerulean City, took back the expensive technical machine for Dig that one of his grunts had stolen, and proved to be a problem for any member of his organisation that came up against him.
But still, Giovanni thought nothing of it until the day HQ was attacked.
He had been in his office when the alarm went. Someone had flicked the switch behind the poster in the Celadon Game Corner. It was against protocol for the guard stationed by the switch to press it without seeking authorisation from the security team inside the base, so it was reported directly to him. Accessing the CCTV footage of the casino and the steps leading down to it revealed to Giovanni his first glimpse of the child who would dismantle Team Rocket. The boy with the Pikachu walked unafraid into the heart of Team Rocket's Hideout, blasting aside his grunts with powerful electric attacks, the small mouse backed up by the three Starter Pokemon of the region, all in their middle phase of evolution. The quartet proved themselves to be well-trained and powerful, and they made quick work of the operatives in the compound, while the trainer himself seemed to navigate the maze of tiles with ease and locate the key to Giovanni's office.
However, Giovanni had not suffered through life to be rattled by a child, so he decided instead to test the young trainer. He placed his official team inside a briefcase and sent it on ahead with a trusted admin, instead selecting three Pokemon he had been training as new replacements for his more seasoned veterans. The crime boss aimed to assess what threat this boy posed. He listened to the cries of battle outside his office and watched as the door opened and the boy walked in silently. Piercing red eyes stared at him from underneath a cap, and the Pikachu on his shoulder cried out in defiance. So Giovanni threw his first Pokeball and battle commenced.
As he expected, the young man was skilled, and soon the three Pokemon lay in defeat. As his Kangaskhan fell to a combination of Leech Seed and Poisonpowder from Ivysaur, Giovanni accepted with some internal irritation that there might be a problem. So he stood up, looked once more at the boy who had not spoken at all during their battle, and left, leaving behind the Silph Scope he kept in his office on the chair. As he had expected, it was reported to him later that the child, referred to as Red by another boy of the same age, had taken the Silph Scope and used it to advance to the top of Pokemon Tower and rescue the old man, Mr Fuji from the team he'd sent out there.
Undeterred by this chain of events, Team Rocket had moved forward with their goals. Under cover of darkness, a specially trained strike team breached Silph. Co in Saffron City, and within an hour the building was under Rocket Control. They used it as a new base of operations, conducting experiments on captured Pokemon, and Giovanni himself personally began to sweat the President of Silph for information on their latest project - the Master Ball. A legendary Pokeball said to be able to capture anything without fail. Once the President yielded the design over to him, he could use it to create a tool for the unlimited acquisition of Pokemon. As a plan, it was foolproof, which is why irony dealt him a cruel blow and sent a fool to destroy everything.
The President was in the office with Giovanni, and he was just about to surrender the passcode for the files when the call was put out. The child from before, Red, had breached the building and was working his way up, one floor at a time. Reports from team leaders spoke of what seemed like a yellow blur firing out lethal bolts of electricity, and a viciously powerful Charizard tore through anything that remained. Giovanni listened to everything with interest and armed himself with his team. So when the child strode into the office, red eyes burning with determination, the leader of Team Rocket was the quintessential image of a cold and calculating businessman.
The battle was brutal and short. What the boy had in numbers, he lacked in levels and experience, but it didn't matter. One minute his Rhyhorn crushed the Pikachu underfoot, the next minute it was swept aside by a Blastoise. Kangaskhan grappled with the Charizard in a vicious brawl, but then found itself knocked down by a Snorlax that had speed one would not have assumed given its bulk. Giovanni found himself annoyed when Nidoqueen finally fell to the Lapras he'd seen in the labs earlier, and his chance for success fell with it, but he would not allow the child the satisfaction of weakness. Instead, he retreated to Viridian, back to his Gym, and threw himself into training. The final battle was coming, and he would be ready for it. For three week he trained and fought and pushed his Pokemon to their limits, and challengers soon began to fear the Viridian Gym, restored to its former glory.
When Red reached Viridian, his travels had hardened him. No longer was this the curious child who had stared at him from underneath a mess of black hair back in Celadon. Instead, a young man cut through his lieutenants and stood coldly. Few words were exchanged, but the battle was long and fierce. Unlike the previous skirmishes, neither side was holding back anything. The Viridian Gym was famous for its Earthquake technique, and it was one that Giovanni employed wherever he could. In the end, half of the boy's team fell to the attack, but even then, he could not stop the powerful attacks of the Blastoise, the Lapras and the Charizard, who's natural Flying type protected it from much of his offensive arsenal. Rhydon crashed to the ground, and it was at that moment, Giovanni knew his dream was over.
Inside, he was falling apart. His life was shattering and cracking around him - a thousand failures amplified and reflected for his private viewing. Team Rocket had been destroyed by a mere boy. He had failed the organisation - let down the men and women who had put their trust in him from the beginning. So, he knew what he had to do. He would leave, and go into hiding. Train again until he was ready, and then return to take back the world that was rightfully his. So he spoke the words that would end everything and watched his most trusted admin pale at his last command.
''I can't face my followers after being defeated like this. Team Rocket is... As of today, Team Rocket is finished!"
Okay! We're done with the first chapter. The next one will take place shortly after Giovanni disbands Team Rocket, and will explore his processing of the events of the games. Thanks for reading, see you all next time!