Darkness. That's all he felt as he entered the cold, interior room that was his office. He turned on the light, illuminating the walls that were covered in articles of various Pokémon and trainers that he had been tracking all these years. It never ceased to amaze him how often these certain people were in the press.
He then lumbered over to the desk after marveling for what seemed like hours at an object that was just sitting there, front and center, in the middle of a, large, white notepad that was also sitting in the middle of the desk.
And that object was a picture.
Now this was no ordinary picture. It was the picture he had been taking a particular interest to. It was a newspaper article that he had sent to him from the Alolan Islands, talking about the students of a Pokémon school that was in the area and how they'd been able to achieve great things in the last couple of months. But only one thing had caught his eye.
He read over the article attached to it and found that this young man had been attracting the attention of the Alolan Island guardians. This came to no surprise. The boy had a way of attracting the strangest of creatures to him. But these Alolan guardians didn't come to attack him, they came and befriended him.
And that's exactly what he had taken an interest to. This boy he had known all too well. This boy was one of the many, if not the main person who had destroyed his chance at world domination. It was in the blink of an eye that Zygarde had come to his aid and that many others followed suit.
He wasn't bitter or nothing.
Or at least he pretended not to be bitter.
But now it was time to enact a new plan. Something that not even this boy, who could gather all Pokémon of to himself like a moth to a flame, would see coming.
He felt a smile creep onto his lips, reveling in the fact of what was about to happen.
The million-dollar question was how in the world was he going to even entice this boy into a trap he couldn't get out of? Especially since he was in a completely different region then he had ever gone before. This part had him frustrated and it caused him to want to punch something.
Since he didn't have something to punch, he decided that it was best to throw his fists into the top of his desk.
In this mad rush of fury, everything shook as his fists met the wood. Nothing would stop the rage from flowing.
That is until a Greninja figurine fell off the desk and broke.
Luckily, it wasn't a bad break. Something that could be easily fixed with a bit of glue. But then it dawned on him…
"The boy had a Greninja didn't he?" He could only assume since the article talked about this boy having regional Pokémon that he had left some of the ones he had captured here in Kalos. This was the only explanation.
He abruptly turned to face the wall of photos and realized that he had been tracking the movements of said Greninja ever since he found out of its trainer's absence. It made him happy at the chance to capture it once more, but he also knew this wasn't going to be easy.
This was no ordinary Greninja.
He tried tracing the string trail from one end of the wall to the other, but grew confused as the lines intersected more than he thought they would. There was no real connection to a location. This Pokémon was too active.
He then realized though that even in the erratic mess that was the traveled path, there was always one connecting point.
The Lumiouse City Gym.
The thought of being so close to this famed Greninja created much excitement in him and he quickly turned to a nearby computer to check something out.
He quickly made it to the Lumiouse City website and found a ton of pictures of the gym. But it wasn't the location that he needed, he wanted to know who the gym leader was.
It took him a couple of minutes to find out how to discover anything else out about the Gym. When he did find out who the gym leader was, it felt like his heart did a flip inside his chest.
"The gym leader is still Clement," The one who had destroyed his mind control device and stopped the other Zygarde from destroying the city.
In pictures he found, he saw a robot who he couldn't quite identify, a young girl who he could only assume was his younger sister Bonnie, and he saw a bunch of Pokémon. He was surprised to find though that one of the Pokémon he saw was the very same Greninja.
He now knew he had to do.
And that was to capture this Greninja. Or at least scare it to the point where he could use it as bait to lure its trainer in.
"Nothing is going to stop me from making you my own this time," He took out a knife that had been sitting in a drawer and stabbed it through the picture in the article. It was of a young boy with jet black hair and on his shoulder, rode a Pikachu, "I will take you and then my plan for world domination will once again reign supreme!"
A laugh escaped from his lips. And it wasn't your run of the mill laugh, NO!
It was the laugh of a man who knew what he had to do and what he wanted.
And this time, nothing was going to stop him.